The Emperor Joseph had been embarrassed in his ambitious plans by the conscientious scruples of his mother. He now entered into a secret alliance with the Czarina Catharine, by which he engaged to assist her in her advance to Constantinople, while she, in her turn, was to aid him in his encroachments and annexations to establish an empire in the West as magnificent as the czarina hoped to establish in the East.
Delighted with this plan, and sanguine in the hope of its successful accomplishment, the czarina named her next grandson Constantine. Austria and Russia thus became allied, with all their sympathies hostile to Frederick. Old age and infirmities were stealing upon the king apace. Among the well-authenticated anecdotes related of him, the following is given by Carlyle:
“Loss of time was one of the losses Frederick could least stand. In visits, even from his brothers and sisters, which were always by his own express invitation, he would say some morning (call it Tuesday morning), ‘You are going on Wednesday, I am sorry to hear’ (what you never heard before). ‘Alas! your majesty, we must.’ ‘Well, I am sorry; but I will lay no constraint on you. Pleasant moments can not last forever.’ This trait is in the anecdote-books; but its authenticity does not rest on that uncertain basis. Singularly enough, it comes to me individually, by two clear stages, from Frederick’s sister, the Duchess of Brunswick, who, if any body, would know it well.”
We have often spoken of the entire neglect with which the king treated his virtuous and amiable queen. Preuss relates the following incident:
“When the king, after the Seven Years’ War, now and then in carnival season dined with the queen in her apartments, he usually said not a word to her. He merely, on entering, on sitting down at table, and leaving it, made the customary bows, and sat opposite to her. Once the queen was ill of gout. The table was in her apartments, but she was not there. She sat in an easy-chair in the drawing-room. On this occasion the king stepped up to the queen and inquired about her health. The circumstance occasioned among the company present, and all over the town, as the news spread, great wonder and sympathy. This is probably the last time he ever spoke to her.”[193]
“The king was fond of children; he liked to have his grand-nephews about him. One day, while the king sat at work in his cabinet, the younger of the two, a boy of eight or nine, was playing ball about the room, and knocked it once and again into the king’s writing operation, who twice or oftener flung it back to him, but next time put it in his pocket, and went on. ‘Please your majesty, give it me back,’ begged the boy, and again begged: majesty took no notice; continued writing. Till at length came, in the tone of indignation, ‘Will your majesty give me my ball, then?’ The king looked up; found the little Hohenzollern planted firm, hands on haunches, and wearing quite a peremptory air. ‘Thou art a brave little fellow. They won’t get Silesia out of thee?’ cried he, laughing, and flinging him his ball.”[194]
The fault-finding character of the king, and his intense devotion to perfecting his army, both increased with his advancing years. After one of his reviews of the troops in Silesia, in the year 1784, he wrote in the following severe strain to the commanding general:
“Potsdam, September 7, 1784.
“My dear General,—While in Silesia I mentioned to you, and will now repeat in writing, that my army in Silesia was at no time so bad as at present. Were I to make shoemakers or tailors into generals, the regiments could not be worse. Regiment Thadden is not fit to be the most insignificant militia battalion of a Prussian army. Of the regiment Erlach, the men are so spoiled by smuggling they have no resemblance to soldiers; Keller is like a heap of undrilled boors; Hager has a miserable commander; and your own regiment is very mediocre. Only with Graf Von Anhalt, with Wendessen, and Markgraf Heinrich could I be content. See you, that is the state I found the regiments in, one after one. I will now speak of their manœuvring.
“Schwartz, at Neisse, made the unpardonable mistake of not sufficiently besetting the height on the left wing; had it been serious, the battle had been lost. At Breslau, Erlach, instead of covering the army by seizing the heights, marched off with his division straight as a row of cabbages into that defile; whereby, had it been earnest, the enemy’s cavalry would have cut down our infantry, and the fight was gone.
“It is not my purpose to lose battles by the base conduct of my generals; wherefore I hereby appoint that you, next year, if I be alive, assemble the army between Breslau and Ohlau; for four days before I arrive in your camp, carefully manœuvre with the ignorant generals, and teach them what their duty is. Regiment Von Arnim and regiment Von Kanitz are to act the enemy; and whoever does not then fulfill his duty shall go to court-martial; for I should think it a shame of any country to keep such people, who trouble themselves so little about their business.”
The king seemed to think it effeminate and a disgrace to him as a soldier ever to appear in a carriage. He never drove, but constantly rode from Berlin to Potsdam. In the winter of 1785, when he was quite feeble, he wished to go from Sans Souci, which was exposed to bleak winds, and where they had only hearth fires, to more comfortable winter quarters in the new palace. The weather was stormy. After waiting a few days for such a change as would enable him to go on horseback, and the cold and wind increasing, he was taken over in a sedan-chair in the night, when no one could see him.
In August, 1785, the king again visited Silesia to review his troops. A private letter, quoted by Carlyle, gives an interesting view of his appearance at the time: