ONE:To his mother he was very considerate in all his manifestations of filial affection, while, at the same time, he caused her very distinctly to understand that she was to take no share whatever in the affairs of government. When she addressed him, upon his accession to the throne, as Your Majesty, he replied, Call me son. That is the title of all others most agreeable to me. He decreed to her the title of Her Majesty the Queen-mother. The palace of Monbijou was assigned her, where she was surrounded with every luxury, treated with the most distinguished attention, and her court was the acknowledged centre of fashionable society.The Saxons, much irritated, were rather more disposed to thwart his plans than to co-operate in them. The Austrian horsemen were vigilant, pouncing upon every unprotected detachment. Frederick marched for the capture of Brünn, the strongest fortress in Moravia. It had a garrison of seven thousand men, under the valiant leader Roth. To arrest the march of Frederick, and leave him shelterless on the plains, the Austrian general laid sixteen villages in ashes. The poor peasantsmen, women, and childrenfoodless and shelterless, were thus cast loose upon the drifted fields. Who can gauge such woes?
TWO:The months rolled rapidly on, and Fritz, having entered his fourteenth year, was appointed by his father, in May, 1725, captain in the Potsdam Grenadier Guard. This giant regiment has attained world-wide renown, solely from the peculiarity of its organization. Such a body of men never existed before, never will again. It was one of the singular freaks of the Prussian king to form a grenadier guard of men of gigantic stature. In the prosecution of this senseless aim not only his own realms were ransacked, but Europe and even Asia was explored in search of giants. The army was with Frederick William the great object of life, and the giant guard was the soul of the army. This guard consisted of three battalions, 800 in each, 2400 in all. The shortest of the men were nearly seven feet high. The tallest were almost nine feet in height. They had been gathered, at an enormous expense, out of every country where they could be found. No greater favor could be conferred upon the king than to obtain for him a giant. Many amusing anecdotes are related of the stratagems to which the king resorted to obtain these mammoth soldiers. Portraits were painted of all of them. Frederick William paid very little regard to individual rights or to the law of nations if any chance presented itself by which he could seize upon one of these monster men. Reigning in absolutism, compared with which the despotism of Turkey is mild, if he found in his domains any young woman of remarkable stature, he would compel her to marry one of his giants. It does not, however, appear that he thus succeeded in perpetuating a gigantic race.
