FORE: Sunday next I shall be at a little place near Cleves, where I shall be able to possess you at my ease. If the sight of you dont cure me, I will send for a confessor at once. Adieu. You know my sentiments and my heart.
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FORE:135 As the king was about to take leave of his child, whom he had treated so cruelly, he was very much overcome by emotion. It is a solemn hour, in any family, when a daughter leaves the parental roof, never to return again but as a visitor. Whether the extraordinary development of feeling which the stern old monarch manifested on the occasion was the result of nervous sensibility, excited by strong drink or by parental affection, it is not easy to decide. Wilhelmina, in a few words of intense emotion, bade her father farewell.
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FORE:397 Some years before this time Frederick had taken possession of East Friesland, and had made Emden a port of entry. It was a very important acquisition, as it opened to Prussia a convenient avenue for maritime commerce. With great vigor and sagacity Frederick was encouraging this commerce, thus strengthening his kingdom and enriching his subjects. England, mistress of the seas, and then, as usual, at war with France, was covering all the adjacent waters with her war-ships and privateers. Frederick had inquired of the English court, through his embassador at London, whether hemp, flax, or timber were deemed contraband. No, was the official response. Freighted with such merchandise, the Prussian ships freely sailed in all directions. But soon an English privateer seized several of them, upon the assumption that the planks with which they were loaded were contraband.The crowd heard what he said. With bursts of laughter they tore the caricature in pieces, scattered it to the winds, and greeted the king, as he rode away, with enthusiastic shouts of Our Fritz forever.
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FORE:CHAPTER XXXI. THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED.
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FORE:There can be but little doubt, however, that the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles will ere long be in the hands of Russia. I know that I or my successors, said the Czar Nicholas, must547 have Constantinople. You might as well arrest a stream in its descent from a mountain as the Russians in their advance to the Hellespont.184
FORE:On the 10th of August there was a magnificent review of the Prussian army on the plain of Strehlin, to which all the foreign embassadors were invited. During the night of the 9th, General Schwerin and Prince Leopold, with eight thousand Prussian troops, horse and foot, arrived in the southwestern suburbs of Breslau, and, at six oclock in the morning, demanded simply a passage through the city for their regiments and baggage, on the march to attack a marauding band of the Austrians on the other side of the Oder.
FORE:I have now the honor, and, what is still more, the pleasure of being with the king at Potsdam. I have the honor to dine and sup with him almost every day. He has more wit than I have wit to tell you; speaks solidly and knowingly on all kinds of subjects; and I am much mistaken if, with the experience of four campaigns, he is not the best officer of his army. He has several persons with whom he lives with almost the familiarity of a friend, but he has no favorite. He shows a natural politeness for every body who is about him. For one who has been four days about his person, you will say, I pretend to know a great deal about his character. But what I tell you you may depend upon. With more time I shall know as much of him as he will let me know, and no one of his ministry knows any more.On the 10th of October Frederick was attacked by the gout, and for three weeks was confined to his room. This extraordinary man, struggling, as it were, in the jaws of destruction, beguiled the weary hours of sickness and pain by writing a treatise upon Charles XII. and his Military Character. On the 24th of October, the Russian commander, quarreling with General Daun, set out, with his whole force, for home. On the 1st of November the king was carried in a litter to Glogau. Cold weather having now set in, General Daun commenced a march for Bohemia, to seek winter quarters nearer his supplies. Frederick, his health being restored, rejoined his troops under Henry, which were near Dresden. The withdrawal of both the Russians and Austrians from Silesia greatly elated him. On the 15th of November he wrote to DArgens from Maxen, a village a little south of Dresden:
FORE:The King of Prussia can not sleep. The officers sit up with him every night, and in his slumbers he raves and talks of spirits and apparitions.
FORE:At the close of the business, the king, who had been exceedingly courteous during the whole interview, took General Neipperg aside, and, beckoning Lord Hyndford to join them, said, addressing Lord Hyndford,
