Frederick was so busy cantoning his troops that he did not take possession of his head-quarters in Leipsic until the 8th of December. He occupied the Apel House, No. 16 Neumarkt Street, the same which he had occupied before the battle of Rossbach. The same mistress kept the house as before. Upon seeing the king, the good woman exclaimed, in astonishment, How lean your majesty has grown!Frederick William was too stern a man to shed many tears over his fathers death. The old king was ostentatious in his tastes, fond of parade and splendor. The son had almost an insane contempt for all court etiquette and all the elegancies of24 life. As he stood by his fathers dying bed, his unamiable, rugged nature developed itself in the disgust, almost rage, with which he regarded the courtly pageantry with which the expiring monarch was surrounded. The remains of the king were allowed to be conveyed to the tomb with that pomp which had been dear to him while living.
ONE:The heresy about predestination, writes Carlyle, or the election by free grace, as his majesty terms it, according to which a man is preappointed, from all eternity, either to salvation or the opposite, which is Fritzs notion, and indeed Calvins, and that of many benighted creatures, this editor among them, appears to his majesty an altogether shocking one. What! may not deserter Fritz say to himself, even now, or in whatever other deeps of sin he may fall into, I was foredoomed to it? How could I or how can I help it? The mind of his majesty shudders as if looking over the edge of an abyss.
My dearest Brother,Death and a thousand torments could not equal the frightful state I am in. There run reports that make me shudder. Some say that you are wounded, others that you are dangerously ill. In vain have I tormented myself to have news of you. I can get none. Oh, my dear brother, come what may, I will not survive you. If I am to continue in this frightful uncertainty, I can not stand it. In the name of God, bid some one write to me.Dr. Zimmermann, whose work on Solitude had given him some renown, had been sent for to administer to the illustrious patient. His prescriptions were of no avail. On the 10th of August, 1786, Frederick wrote to his sister, the Duchess Dowager of Brunswick:Though General Soltikof had lost an equal number of men, he was still at the head of nearly eighty thousand troops flushed with victory. He could summon to his standard any desirable re-enforcements. An unobstructed march of but sixty miles would lead his army into the streets of Berlin. The affairs of Frederick were indeed desperate. There was not a gleam of hope to cheer him. In preparation for his retirement from the army, from the throne, and from life, he that evening drew up the following paper, placing the fragments of the army which he was about to abandon in the hands of General Finck. By the death of the king, the orphan and infant child of his brother Augustus William (who had died but a few months before) would succeed to the throne. Frederick appointed his brother Henry generalissimo of the Prussian army.
路见不平Eason吼
