So another unhappy year for Prussia passed away and brought in 1809.
The Queen's pink cheeks had faded to white, her eyes showed that their blue had been washed with tears, and about her mouth were lines of sorrow.
"If posterity," she wrote, "will not place my name amongst those of illustrious women, yet those who are acquainted with the troubles of these times will know what I have gone through and will say, 'She suffered much and endured with patience,' and I only wish they may be able to add: 'She gave being to children worthy of better times and who by their continual struggles have succeeded in attaining them.'"
Sometimes she talked this way to the Crown Prince and little William, and their eyes would glow and they would promise that they would do great things for Prussia.
When she went through Königsberg streets, in the warm days when the flowers were in bloom, it was the joy of all the little children to offer her nosegays. Never did she decline one, and she always had a smile for everybody.
One day came news of Otto which startled his father and sent his mother weeping to bed. Major Shill, a brave Prussian soldier, refused to stop fighting against Napoleon, and became a great hero of Prussia, though on the 30th of December, 1808, while the King and Queen were in St. Petersburg on a visit to the Czar Alexander, the Emperor had withdrawn his soldiers from Prussia, and the Brandenburg Hussars and a cavalry regiment under this Major Shill entered Berlin.
When Napoleon began again to fight the Austrians Major Shill departed from Berlin against the French without a declaration of war, angering the King, but attracting a thousand to his banner.
Among them was Otto von Stork.
"Do not grieve, my dear parents," he wrote; "never shall I lay down my arms until Napoleon is defeated."
But what were a thousand men?