FORE:When I am dead, he said, petulantly, you will see Berlin full of madmen and freethinkers, and the sort of people who walk about the streets.Having reached the shelter of K?niggr?tz, he counted his troops, and found that he had in rank and file but thirty-seven thousand men. Of these, twenty-two thousand, from sickness, exhaustion, and wounds, were in hospital. Thus, out of the army of ninety thousand men with which he had commenced the campaign early in December, at the close of the month he could array but fifteen thousand on any field of battle.
FORE:It was but sixty miles from Prague to Tabor. The march of Fredericks division led through Kunraditz, across the Sazawa River, through Bistritz and Miltchin. It was not until the ninth332 day of their toilsome march that the steeples of Tabor were descried, in the distant horizon, on its high, scarped rock. Here both columns united. Half of the draught cattle had perished by the way, and half of the wagons had been abandoned.
FORE:A stern military commission was, however, appointed to interrogate the prince from questions drawn up by the king. The examination took place the next day. The prince confessed that94 it was his intention to cross the Rhine at the nearest point, and to repair to Strasbourg, in France. There he intended to enlist incognito as a volunteer in the French army. He refused to tell how he obtained his money, or to make any revelations which would implicate his friends Katte and Keith.
THREE:
THREE:At Frankfort-on-the-Main the party were to take boats to descend the river. The prince was informed that the king had given express orders that he should not be permitted to enter the town, but that he should be conducted immediately to one of the royal yachts. Here the king received an intercepted letter from the Crown Prince to Lieutenant Katte. Boiling with indignation, he stalked on board the yacht, and assailed his captive son in the coarsest and most violent language of abuse. In the frenzy of his passion he seized Fritz by the collar, shook him, hustled him about, tore out handfuls of hair, and thrust his cane into his face, causing the blood to gush from his nose. Never before, exclaimed the unhappy prince, pathetically, did a Brandenburg face suffer the like of this.
