No, the prince replied; but if the king absolutely will have it, I will marry to obey him. After that I will shove my wife into a corner, and live after my own fancy.
It was a peculiarity quite inexplicable which led Frederick to exclude females from his court. His favorites were all menmen of some peculiar intellectual ability. He sought their society only. With the exception of his sister, and occasionally some foreign princess, ladies were seldom admitted to companionship with him. He was a cold, solitary man, so self-reliant that he seldom asked or took advice.
ONE:As is usual under such circumstances, a quarrel arose among his officers. Young Leopold proposed one plan, Marshal Schwerin another. They were both bold, determined men. Frederick found it difficult to keep the peace between them. It was now October. Winter, with its piercing gales, and ice, and snow, was fast approaching. It was necessary to seek winter quarters. Frederick, with the main body of his army, took possession of Budweis, on the Upper Moldau. A detachment was stationed at Neuhaus, about thirty miles northeast of Budweis.
TWO:
THREE:
FORE:In very rapid march, the troops advanced through Grünberg toward Glogau, about forty miles in the interior. Here there was a fortified town, which was considered the key of Northern Silesia. It was but feebly garrisoned, and was entirely unprepared for resistance. By great exertions, the Austrian governor of the province, Count Wallis, and his second in command, General Browne, succeeded in placing behind the works a little garrison of one thousand men. The whole population was summoned to work upon the ramparts. Count Wallis remained in Glogau. General Browne took command of the troops and garrisons abroad. But there was a division of sentiment within the walls. Quite a large portion of the population was Protestant, and would be glad to come under the protection of Protestant Prussia. The Catholics were zealous for the continued reign of Austria.To whose continual sluggishness and strange want of concertto whose incoherency of movements, languor of execution, and other enormous faults, we have owed, with some excuse for our own faults, our escape from destruction hitherto.
Frederick, Prince Royal of Prussia.There were other abodes of the king, the Berlin and Potsdam palaces, which retained much of the splendor with which they had been embellished by the splendor-loving monarch, Frederick I. There were but few regal mansions in the world which then surpassed them. And though the king furnished his own apartments with Spartan simplicity and rudeness, there were other portions of these royal residences, as also their surroundings in general, which were magnificent in the highest degree. The health of little Fritz was rather frail, and at times he found it hard to devote himself to his sturdy tasks with the energy which his father required. My adorable Sister,The Hanover doctor has wished to make himself important with you, my good sister; but the truth is, he has been of no use to me. The old must give place to the young, that each generation may find room clear for it; and life, if we examine strictly what its course is, consists in seeing ones fellow-creatures die and be born. In the mean while, I have felt myself a little easier for the last day or two. My heart remains inviolably attached to you, my good sister. With the highest consideration, my adorable sister, your faithful brother and servant,543 I look upon this day, the king replied, as the fairest of my life; for it will become the epoch of uniting two houses which have been enemies too long, and whose mutual interests require that they should strengthen, not weaken, one another.192 On the 22d of June a complaint was made to the king that the Roman Catholic schools were perverted to seducing Protestants to become Catholics. Frederick returned the complaint with the following words written upon the margin:This lasted till nightfall. As darkness veiled the awful scene the exhausted soldiers dropped upon the ground, and, regardless of the dead and of the groans of the wounded, borne heavily upon the night air, slept almost side by side. It is appalling to reflect upon what a fiend to humanity man has been, as revealed in the history of the nations. All the woes of earth combined are as nothing compared with the misery which man has inflicted upon his brother.
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