HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA
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deadliest feats of war ever done. No want of intrepidity and
rugged soldier-virtue in the Prussian troops or their Crown-
Prince; least of all on that terrible day, 11th September, 1709;--
of which he keeps the anniversary ever since, and will do all his
life, the doomsday of Malplaquet always a memorable day to him.
[Forster, i. 138.] He is more and more intimate with Leopold,
and loves good soldiering beyond all things. Here at Berlin he has
already got a regiment of his own, tallish fine men; and strives
to make it in all points a very pattern of a regiment.

For the rest, much here is out of joint, and far from satisfactory
to him. Seven years ago [1st February, 1705.] he lost his own
brave Mother and her love; of which we must speak farther by and
by. In her stead he has got a fantastic, melancholic, ill-natured
Stepmother, with whom there was never any good to be done; who in
fact is now fairly mad, and kept to her own apartments. He has to
see here, and say little, a chagrined heart-worn Father flickering
painfully amid a scene much filled with expensive futile persons,
and their extremely pitiful cabals and mutual rages; scene chiefly
of pompous inanity, and the art of solemnly and with great labor
doing nothing. Such waste of labor and of means: what can one do
but be silent? The other year, Preussen (PRUSSIA Proper, province
lying far eastward, out of sight) was sinking under pestilence
and black ruin and despair: the Crown-Prince, contrary to wont,
broke silence, and begged some dole or subvention for these poor
people; but there was nothing to be had. Nothing in the treasury,
your Royal Highness:--Preussen will shift for itself; sublime
dramaturgy, which we call his Majesty's Government, costs so much!
And Preussen, mown away by death, lies much of it vacant ever
since; which has completed the Crown-Prince's disgust; and,
I believe, did produce some change of ministry, or other
ineffectual expedient, on the old Father's part. Upon which the
Crown-Prince locks up his thoughts again. He has confused
whirlpools, of Court intrigues, ceremonials, and troublesome
fantasticalities, to steer amongst; which he much dislikes, no man