May a miller, he exclaimed, fiercely, who has no water, and consequently can not grind, have his mill taken from him? Is that just? Here is a nobleman wishing to make a fish-pond. To get more water for his pond, he has a ditch dug to draw into it a small stream which drives a water-mill. Thereby the miller loses his water, and can not grind. Yet, in spite of this, it is pretended that the miller shall pay his rent, quite the same as at the time when he had full water for his mill. Of course he can not pay his rent. His incomings are gone.
The slow fever, he wrote, which consumes me, has not thrown any disorder into my understanding. Condescend to listen to me, sire, now that I can not be suspected of any illusion or deceit. There is an end to the house of Prussia if you continue to brave all Europe confederated against you. You force all Europe to arm to repel your encroachments. The princes of Europe are leagued against your majesty by justice and by interest. Their subjects regard your ruin as essential to the re-establishment of peace and the safety of monarchical government. They read in your success the slavery of the human race, the annihilation of laws, the degradation of society.Again the king interrupted him, saying, The public will be much obliged to you, sir! But hear me. With respect to Russia, you know how matters stand. From the King of Poland I have nothing to fear. As for the King of England, he is my relation. If he do not attack me, I shall not him. If he do attack me, the Prince of Anhalt, with my army at G?tten, will take care of him.To this tumult succeeded a fresh burst of mirth, during which the prince slipped away, and, aided by his pages, retired to his171 apartment; and the princess immediately followed. The day after this adventure the court was at its last gasp. Neither the prince nor any of the courtiers could stir from their beds.
ONE:
TWO:On the 7th of January, 1742, Fredericks eldest brother, William Augustus, was married to Louisa Amelia, a younger sister of the kings neglected wife, Elizabeth. The king himself graced297 the festival, in gorgeous attire, and very successfully plied all his wonderful arts of fascination. He appeared, says Bielfeld, so young, so gay, so graceful, that I could not have refrained from loving him, even if he had been a stranger.
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ONE:
TWO:After this address to the assembled generals Frederick rode out to the camp, and addressed each regiment in the most familiar and fatherly, yet by no means exultant terms. It was night. The glare of torches shed a lurid light upon the scene. The first regiment the king approached was composed of the cuirassiers of the Life Guard.
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ONE:Still the clergymen pressed upon him his sins, his many acts of oppression, his unrelenting and unforgiving spirit. Singularly enough, most of the members of the tobacco parliament were present at this strange interview; and some of them, courtier like, endeavored to defend the king against several of the charges brought against him. The king might emphatically be called a good hater; and he hated his brother-in-law, the King of England, perhaps with passion as implacable as ever took possession of a human heart. In allusion to this, one of the clergymen, M. Roloff, said,
TWO:It was now midwinter. Frederick, having established his troops in winter quarters, took up his residence in Breslau. His troubles were by no means ended. Vastly outnumbering foes still surrounded him. Very vigorous preparations were to be made for the sanguinary conflicts which the spring would surely introduce. Frederick did what he could to infuse gayety into the society at Breslau, though he had but little heart to enter into those gayeties himself. For a week he suffered severely from colic pains, and could neither eat nor sleep. Eight months, he writes, of anguish and agitation do wear one down.Indisputably enough to us, if not yet to Frederick, Reinsberg and Life to the Muses are done. On a sudden, from the opposite side of the horizon, see miraculous Opportunity rushing hitherward; swift, terrible, clothed with lightning like a courser of the gods; dare you clutch him by the thunder-mane, and fling yourself upon him, and make for the Empyrean by that course rather? Be immediate about it, then; the time is now or never! No fair judge can blame the young man that he laid hold of the flaming Opportunity in this manner, and obeyed the new omen. To seize such an Opportunity and perilously mount upon it was the part of a young, magnanimous king, less sensible to the perils and more to the other considerations than one older would have been.
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TWO:I replied, You are in such a humor I know not what to make of it.
FORE:If the English Princess Amelia come here as the bride of my son, she will bring with her immense wealth. Accustomed to grandeur, she will look contemptuously upon our simplicity. With her money she can dazzle and bribe. I hate my son. He hates me. Aided by the gold of England, my son can get up a party antagonistic to me. No! I will never, never consent to his marrying the Princess Amelia. If he is never married it is83 no matter. Fortunately I have other sons, and the succession will not be disturbed.10There was nothing left for his Prussian majesty but to abandon Silesia, and retire within his own original borders, defeated and humiliated, the object of the contempt and ridicule of Europe, or to press forward in the conflict, summoning to his aid all the energies of despair.
FORE:Never was there a place in the world where liberty of speech was so fully indulged, or where the various superstitions of men were treated with so much ridicule and contempt. God was respected. But those who, in His name, had imposed on mankind, were not spared. Neither women nor priests ever entered the palace. In a word, Frederick lived without a court, without a council, and without a religion.
FORE:Frederick William, in his extreme exasperation, seriously contemplated challenging George II. to a duel. In his own mind he arranged all the detailsthe place of meeting, the weapons, the seconds. With a stern sense of justice, characteristic of the man, he admitted that it would not be right to cause the blood61 of his subjects to flow in a quarrel which was merely personal. But the eight cart-loads of hay had been taken under circumstances so insulting and contemptuous as to expose the Prussian king to ridicule; and he was firm in his determination to settle the difficulty by a duel. The question was much discussed in the Tobacco Parliament. The Prussian ministers opposed in vain. The true method, I tell you, said the king, is the duel, let the world cackle as it may.
FORE:At eight oclock in the evening his body was borne, accompanied by a battalion of the Guards, to Potsdam; eight horses drew the hearse. An immense concourse, in silence and sadness, filled the streets. He was buried in a small chapel in the church of the garrison at Potsdam. There the remains of Frederick and his father repose side by side.
FORE:What! cried the queen, have you had the barbarity to kill him?
FORE:It was early in January, 1760, that the two hostile armies went into winter quarters. General Daun, with his seventy-two thousand triumphant troops, held Dresden. He encamped his army in an arc of a circle, bending toward the southwest from the city, and occupying a line about thirty miles in extent. Frederick, with thirty-two thousand troops depressed by defeat, defiantly faced his foe in a concave arc concentric to that of Daun. The two antagonistic encampments were almost within cannon-shot of each other.
FORE:280 Yes, I say, the king rejoined. That is my answer, and I will never give any other.
TWO:Against this unprincipled declaration General Schulenburg remonstrated, declaring it to be unchristian and dishonorable. But the prince seemed to regard such suggestions very contemptuously. I can perceive, the general adds, that if he marries, it will only be that he may have more liberty than now. It is certain that if he had his elbows free he would strike out. He said to me several times, I am young; I want to profit by my youth.
TWO:At the close of these festivities at Mühlberg Frederick William and his suite took boat down the River Elbe to his hunting palace at Lichtenberg. Here they killed, in a grand hunting bout, a thousand animals, boars and deer. The Crown Prince, dishonored by insults which he could not revenge, and stung to the87 quick by innumerable humiliations, followed, dejected, like a guarded captive, in the train of his father. The unhappy prince had but just returned to his garrison at Potsdam, where spies ever kept their eyes vigilantly upon him, when his friend, Captain Guy Dickens, brought him the answer, returned from London, to the confidential communication of the Crown Prince to his uncle, the British king. The substance of the document was as follows:
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TWO:In accordance with this request, Voltaire repaired to Cleves to visit the king. Many years afterward, having quarreled with Frederick, and being disposed to represent him in the most unfavorable light, he gave the following account of this interview in his Vie Prive:
TWO:You are quite right, responded the king. We will manage Daun. What I lament is the number of brave men who have died this morning. The Castle at Reinsberg.Slender Purses of Fritz and Wilhelmina.Liberality of Fritz.The Ball at Monbijou.Adventures of Fritz and Wilhelmina.Letters.The Interview.Anecdote of the King.Wilhelminas Account of her Brother.Mental and Physical Maladies of the King.Fredericks cruel Neglect of his Wife.Daily Habits of the young Prince.The shameful Carousal.
Butors de race impertinente, I never in my life was in so bad a posture as in this campaign. Miracles are still needed to overcome the difficulties which I foresee. I do my duty as well as I can. But remember, my dear marquis, that I can not command good fortune. I am obliged to leave too much to chance, as I have not the means to render my plans more certain.Though Frederick, in his private correspondence, often spoke very contemptuously of Voltaire, it would seem, if any reliance can be placed on the testimony of Voltaire himself, that Frederick sedulously courted the author, whose pen was then so potential in Europe. By express invitation, Voltaire spent a week with Frederick at Aix la Chapelle early in September, 1742. He writes to a friend from Brussels under date of December 10:
TWO:You are quite right, responded the king. We will manage Daun. What I lament is the number of brave men who have died this morning. The Castle at Reinsberg.Slender Purses of Fritz and Wilhelmina.Liberality of Fritz.The Ball at Monbijou.Adventures of Fritz and Wilhelmina.Letters.The Interview.Anecdote of the King.Wilhelminas Account of her Brother.Mental and Physical Maladies of the King.Fredericks cruel Neglect of his Wife.Daily Habits of the young Prince.The shameful Carousal.
