With the last day threatened mankind.164 On the fourth day after the arrival of the Crown Prince at Baireuth, a courier came with a letter from the queen conjuring him to return immediately, as the king was growing worse and worse. Frederick immediately hastened to Potsdam, and on the 12th of October entered the sick-chamber of his father in the palace there. He seems to have thought nothing of his wife, who was at Berlin. We have no evidence that he wrote to her during his absence, or that he visited her upon his return. For four months the king remained a great sufferer in Potsdam, trembling between life and death. It was often with great difficulty that he could breathe. He was impatient and irritable in the extreme. As he was rolled about in his Bath chair, he would petulantly cry out, ��Air! air!�� as if his attendants were to blame for his shortness of breath. The distress from the dropsy was very great. ��If you roll the king a little fast,�� writes an attendant, ��you hear the water jumble in his body.�� The Crown Prince was deeply affected in view of the deplorable condition of his father, and wept convulsively. The stern old king was stern to the end. He said one day to Frederick, ��If you begin at the wrong end with things, and all go topsy-turvy after I am gone, I will laugh at you out of my grave.��
ONE:In this hour of peril the genius of the Prussian monarch was remarkably developed. He manifested not the slightest agitation or alarm. His plan was immediately formed. Indeed, there was no time for a moment��s delay. The Austrians had moved rapidly and silently, concealing their approach by a thick veil of hussars. They were already in solid columns, confident of victory, advancing upon the Prussian camp. Frederick was compelled to form his line of battle under fire of the Austrian batteries. The discipline of the Prussians was such that this was done with a recklessness of danger, rapidity, and mechanical precision which seemed almost miraculous, and which elicited the admiration of every one who beheld it.
TWO:The queen, looking reproachfully at Grumkow, remarked, ��I know full well to whom I owe all this.�� She then excused herself, saying that she was not well, and retired to her apartment. There she communicated to the anxious Wilhelmina the cruel message of the king. Sophie Dorothee then wrote a very earnest letter to Queen Caroline, the wife of George II., imploring that all obstacles in the way of the marriage of Wilhelmina with the Prince of Wales might be withdrawn. The idea of marriage with either Weissenfels or Schwedt was dreadful. But, on the other hand, the wrath of the king, the divorce of the queen, and75 the imprisonment of both mother and daughter in the chateau of Oranienburg, were also dreadful. Fritz was taken into the councils of his mother and sister. It was decided that he should also write to his aunt, urging his suit for the Princess Amelia. It is true that George II. was ready to accede to this marriage, but Frederick William threw obstacles in the way. It was probably the hope of Fritz to secure Amelia, notwithstanding his father��s opposition. The ready pen of Wilhelmina was employed to draft the letter, which her brother submissively copied. As it was not probable, in the intricacies in which the question was now involved, that both marriages could take place together, Fritz wrote pleading for the marriage of Wilhelmina at once, pledging his word that he would remain faithful to the Princess Amelia.��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.��
THREE: Destruction of the Army of Prince Charles.��Dismay in Vienna.��Testimony of Napoleon I.��Of Voltaire.��Wretchedness of the King.��Compromise rejected.��New Preparations for War.��Treaty between England and Prussia.��Plan of the Campaign.��Siege of Olmütz.��Death of Prince Augustus William.��The Baggage Train.��The irreparable Disaster.��Anxiety of Frederick for Wilhelmina.��The March against the Russians.��The Battle of Zorndorf.��Anecdotes of Frederick.
