“All next day the body lay in state in the palace; thousands crowding, from Berlin and the other environs, to see that face for the last time. Wasted, worn, but beautiful in death, with the thin gray hair parted into locks, and slightly powdered.”[201]
At eight o’clock in the evening his body was borne, accompanied by a battalion of the Guards, to Potsdam; eight horses drew the hearse. An immense concourse, in silence and sadness, filled the streets. He was buried in a small chapel in the church of the garrison at Potsdam. There the remains of Frederick and his father repose side by side.
“Life’s labor done, securely laid
In this, their last retreat:
Unheeded o’er their silent dust
The storms of life shall beat.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] “He got no improvement in breeding, as we intimated; none at all: fought, on the contrary, with his young cousin, afterward our George II., a boy twice his age, though of weaker bone, and gave him a bloody nose, to the scandal and consternation of the French Protestant gentlemen and court dames in their stiff silks. ‘Ahee your electoral highness!’ This had been a rough unruly boy from the first discovery of him.”—Carlyle.
[2] Geständnisse eines Œsterreichischen Veterans, i., p. 64.
[3] “When his majesty took a walk, every human being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie. If he met a lady in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go home and mind her brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers, he admonished the reverend gentleman to betake himself to study and prayer, and enforced this pious advice by a sound caning administered on the spot. But it was in his own house that he was most unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends.”—Macaulay.
[4] “It was the queen-mother who encouraged the prince in his favorite amusement, and who engaged musicians for his service. But so necessary was secrecy in all these negotiations that if the king, his father, had discovered he was disobeyed, all these sons of Apollo would have incurred the danger of being hanged. The prince frequently took occasion to meet his musicians a-hunting, and had his concerts either in a forest or cavern.”—Burney, Present State of Music in Germany, ii., 139.
[5] “One of the preceptors ventured to read the ‘Golden Bull’ in the original Latin with the prince royal. Frederick William entered the room, and broke out, in his usual kingly style, ‘Rascal, what are you at there?’ ‘Please your majesty,’ answered the preceptor, ‘I was explaining the “Golden Bull” to his royal highness.’ ‘I’ll Golden Bull you, you rascal!’ roared the majesty of Prussia. Up went the king’s cane, away ran the terrified instructor, and Frederick’s classical studies ended forever.”—Macaulay.
[6] “Frederick William and George II., though brothers-in-law, and, in a manner, brought up together, could never endure each other, even when children. This personal hatred and settled antipathy had like to have proved fatal to their subjects. The King of England used to style the King of Prussia my brother the sergeant. The King of Prussia called the King of England my brother the player. This animosity soon infected their dealings, and did not fail to have its influence on the most important events.”—Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, by Frederick II., vol. ii., p. 69.