It was impossible to believe that he had truly repented because he had halfway lost a battle.
As for the good King, he refused to break his word to his friend to save his kingdom, merely because Napoleon commanded him.
"Let the war go on," he said, and suffering Prussia, its houses burned to the ground, without food, with the cruel French everywhere, cried:
"Hoch to our King! He is a good man, and true, and we will shed our last drop of blood in his service!"
And so General Bertrand left Memel, and the war went on.
But everywhere there was much suffering. Even the King and the Queen had little to eat and no money to buy anything, for the French had burned the farmhouses, the farmers were in the army, and this poor land must feed not only its own people, but all the enemy. Sometimes seven villages could be seen burning at once, and behind Napoleon's white horse stalked two dreadful figures. One, called Death, commanded executions in every town and slew thousands on the battlefield, and refused to spare hungry little children. Gaze where the poor Prussians would, the shadow of his great scythe was over them. The other, Famine, breathed on the poor down-trodden fields, and nothing flourished; with her fierce hands she gathered up all the wine in the cellars, the potatoes saved for winter, the meat, the fruit, all there was to eat everywhere.
The poor Prussians between them were desolate.
In those cruel days there came to the King's house in Memel two simple people of a sect of which there are some now in America, the Mennonites. Their name was Nicholls, and they asked to see the King and the Queen.
When they came before their Majesties, Abraham, the husband, holding in his hand a bag, addressed the unhappy, worried-looked King:
"Majesty," he said, "I bring you from my people, who send me as their deputy, two thousand gold Fredericks. We have collected them among ourselves, and offer them as a token of love and respect to our sovereign."