Chapter 3

"'Tell me now: how did you get on in the last War [KARTOFFEL KRIEG, no fighting, only a scramble for proviant and "potatoes"]? Most likely ill! You in Saxony too could make nothing out. The reason was, we had not men to fight against, but cannons! I might have done a thing or two; but I should have sacrificed more than the half of my Army, and shed innocent human blood. In that case I should have deserved to be taken to the Guard-house door, and to have got a sixscore there (EINEN OFFFENTLICHEN PRODUKT)! Wars are becoming frightful to carry on.'

"'This was surely touching to hear from the mouth of a great Monarch,' said Herr Lieutenant-Colonel von Backhof to me, and tears came into that old soldier's eyes." Afterwards his Majesty had said:--

"Of the Battle of Fehrbellin I know everything, almost as if I myself had been there! While I was Crown-Prince, and lay in Ruppin, there was an old townsman, the man was even then very old: he could describe the whole Battle, and knew the scene of it extremely well. Once I got into a carriage, took my old genius with me, who showed me all over the ground, and described everything so distinctly, I was much contented with him. As we were coming back, I thought: Come, let me have a little fun with the old blade;--so I asked him: 'Father, don't you know, then, why the two Sovereigns came to quarrel with one another?'--'O ja, your Royal HighnessES [from this point we have Platt-Deutsch, PRUSSIAN dialect, for the old man's speech; barely intelligible, as Scotch is to an ingenious Englishman], DAT WILL ICK SE WOHL SEGGEN, I can easily tell you that. When our Chorforste [Kurfursts, Great Elector] was young, he studied in Utrecht; and there the King of Sweden happened to be too. And now the two young lords picked some quarrel, got to pulling caps [fell into one another's hair], AND DIT IS NU DE PICKE DAVON, and this now was the upshot of it.'--His Majesty spoke this in Platt-Deutsch, as here given;--but grew at table so weary that he (they) fell asleep." So far Backhof;--and now again Fromme by way of finish:--

"Of his Majesty's journey I can give no farther description. For though his Majesty spoke and asked many things else; it would be difficult to bring them all to paper." And so ends the DAY WITH FRIEDRICH THE GREAT; very flat, but I dare say very TRUE:--a Daguerrotype of one of his Days.