ONE: Wilhelminas Letter to her Mother.Cruel Response.The Court Festival.First Interview with the Prince of Baireuth.His Character and Appearance.Interview between the King and Fritz.The Partial Reconciliation.Divine Decrees.The Kings Sense of Justice.The Kings Discipline of the Judges.Character of Fritz.Wilhelminas Annoyances.Her Marriage.Interview between Wilhelmina and Fritz.The Departure.The region thus annexed to Prussia was in a deplorable state of destitution and wretchedness. Most of the towns were in ruins. War had so desolated the land that thousands of the people were living in the cellars of their demolished houses.
TWO:The Crown Prince met the masons by agreement at Korns Hotel. On the night of Tuesday, August 14th, 1738, the king having that evening continued his journey, Frederick, after adopting177 extreme precautions to prevent any publicity of the act, fearing probably only lest it should reach his fathers ears, passed through the mysterious rites of initiation. It does not, however, appear that subsequently he took any special interest in the society.28
ONE:I can well say, he writes, that I never in my life saw any thing more beautiful. They marched with the greatest steadiness, arrow straight and their front like a line, as if they had been upon parade. The glitter of their clear arms shone strangely in the setting sun, and the fire from them went on no otherwise than a continued peal of thunder. The spirits of our army sank altogether, the foot plainly giving way, the horse refusing to come forwardall things wavering toward dissolution.As Fredericks seven years struggle of war may be called superhuman, so was there also, in his present labor of peace, something enormous, which appeared to his contemporaries almost preternatural, at times inhuman. It was grand, but also terrible, that the success of the whole was to him, at all moments, the one thing to be striven after. The comfort of the individual was of no concern at all.189
TWO:
ONE:In the midst of these preparations for a new campaign against a veteran army of two hundred and eighty thousand enemies, Frederick yet found sufficient leisure for peaceable occupations. He consecrated some hours every day to reading, to music, and to the conversation of men of letters.164
TWO:Frederick was now in imminent danger of being assailed by a coalition of Austria, Russia, Poland, and England. Indeed, it was by no means certain that France might not also join the alliance. All this was the result of Fredericks great crime in wresting Silesia from Austria. Such was the posture of affairs when, in the summer of 1755, Frederick decided to take a trip into Holland incognito. He disguised himself with a black wig, and assumed the character of a musician of the King of Poland. At Amsterdam he embarked for Utrecht in the common passage-boat. The king mingled with the other passengers without any one suspecting his rank. There chanced to be in the boat a young Swiss gentleman, Henry de Catt, twenty-seven years of age. He was a teacher, taking a short tour for recreation. He gives the following account of his interview with the king, whom, at the time, he had no reason to suppose was other than an ordinary passenger. We give the narrative in his own words:
