The raven was a tame one, which had got lost and was seeking for its home. The story, however, spread, and created great sympathy for the imprisoned princess. There was a large number of French refugees in Berlin. With characteristic kindness, at the risk of incurring the royal displeasure, they sent daily a basket of food, which was placed in a situation from which Wilhelminas maids could easily convey the contents to her, while compassionate sentries kindly looked the other way. The princess wrote to her father, imploring permission to receive the sacrament, from which she had been debarred for nearly a year. The reply from her-father was couched in the following terms:
Wusterhausen, where the young Crown Prince spent many of these early years of his life, was a rural retreat of the king about twenty miles southeast from Berlin. The palace consisted of a plain, unornamented, rectangular pile, surrounded by numerous outbuildings, and rising from the midst of low and swampy grounds tangled with thickets and interspersed with fish-pools. Game of all kinds abounded in those lakelets, sluggish streams, and jungles.
Director
The garrison retired to avoid capture. Berlin surrendered on the morning of October 9th. For three days the enemy held the city. The semi-barbaric soldiers committed fearful outrages. The soldiers sacked the kings palaces at Potsdam and Charlottenburg, smashing furniture, doors, windows, mirrors, statuary, cutting the pictures, and maltreating the inmates. Potsdam, April 1, 1744.Charles Albert, who took the title of the Emperor Charles VII., was the son of Maximilian, King of Bavaria, who was ruined at Blenheim, and who, being placed under the ban of the empire, lived for many years a pensioner upon the charity of Louis XIV. Charles was then but seven years of age, a prince by birth, yet homeless, friendless, and in poverty. With varying fortunes, he subsequently married a daughter of the Emperor Joseph. She was a cousin of Maria Theresa. Upon the death of his father in 1726, Charles Albert became King of Bavaria; but he was involved in debt beyond all hope of extrication. The intrigues of Frederick placed upon his wan and wasted brow the imperial crown of Germany. The coronation festivities took place at Frankfort, with great splendor, on the 12th of February, 1742.Voltaire replied from Leipsic: