ONE:66 Just as these troubles were commencing, there was, in May, 1729, a marriage in the Prussian royal family. Some two hundred miles south of Brandenburg there was, at that time, a small marquisate called Anspach, next in dignity to a dukedom. The marquis was a frail, commonplace boy of seventeen, under the care of a young mother, who was widowed, sick, and dying. Much to the dissatisfaction of Sophie Dorothee, the queen-mother, Frederick William had arranged a marriage between this young man, who was far from rich, and his second daughter, Frederica Louisa, who was then fifteen years of age.7
ONE: Berlin, 1st of March, 1743.After half an hour of rapid and terrific fire, the Prussian troops were ordered to advance and storm the works of the foe on the Mühlberg Hill. Like wolves in the chase, these men of iron nerves rushed forward through torrents of grape-shot and musket-shot, which covered their path with the dead. In ten minutes they were in possession of the hill-top, with all its batteries. The left wing of the Russian army was thrown into a maelstrom whirl of disorder and destruction. One hundred and eighty of the artillery pieces of the enemy fell into the hands of the victors.
ONE:The next morning they learned that Lieutenant Katte had been arrested. All the private papers of Fritz were left, under Kattes charge, in a small writing-desk. These letters would implicate both the mother and the daughter. They were terror-stricken. Count Finckenstein, who was in high authority, was their friend. Through him, by the aid of Madam Finckenstein, they obtained the desk. It was locked and sealed. Despair stimulated their ingenuity. They succeeded in getting the letters. To destroy them and leave nothing in their place would only rouse to greater fury the suspicion and rage of the king. The letters were taken out and burned. The queen and Wilhelmina immediately set to work writing new ones, of a very different character, with which to replace them. For three days they thus labored almost incessantly, writing between six and seven hundred letters. They were so careful to avoid any thing97 which might lead to detection that paper was employed for each letter bearing the date of the year in which the letter was supposed to be written. Fancy the mood, writes Carlyle, of these two royal women, and the black whirlwind they were in. Wilhelminas dispatch was incredible. Pen went at the gallop night and day. New letters of old date and of no meaning are got into the desk again, the desk closed without mark of injury, and shoved aside while it is yet time.Frederick affected great contempt for public opinion. He wrote to Voltaire:
