ONE:Fritz went in the royal carriage, with suitable escort, to meet the young marquis on the Prussian frontier, as he came to his bridals. They returned together in the carriage to Potsdam with great military display. The wedding took place on the 30th of May, 1729. It was very magnificent. Fritz was conspicuous on the occasion in a grand review of the giant grenadiers. Wilhelmina, in her journal, speaks quite contemptuously of her new brother-in-law, the Marquis of Anspach, describing him as a foolish young fellow. It was, indeed, a marriage of children. The bridegroom was a sickly, peevish, undeveloped boy of seventeen; and the bride was a self-willed and ungoverned little beauty of fifteen. The marriage proved a very unhappy one. There was no harmony between them. Frederick writes: They hate one another like the fire (comme le feu). They, however, lived together in incessant petty quarrelings for thirty years. Probably during all that time neither one of them saw a happy day.Frederick found himself plunged into the midst of difficulties and perils which exacted to the utmost his energies both of body and of mind. Every moment was occupied in strengthening his posts, collecting magazines, recruiting his forces, and planning to circumvent the foe. From the calm of Reinsberg he found himself suddenly tossed by the surges of one of the most terrible tempests of conflict which a mortal ever encountered. Through night and storm, almost without sleep and without food, drenched and chilled, he was galloping over the hills and through the valleys,244 climbing the steeples, fording the streams, wading the morasses, involved in a struggle which now threatened even the crown which he had so recently placed upon his brow. Had Frederick alone suffered, but few tears of sympathy would have been shed in his behalf; but his ambition had stirred up a conflict which was soon to fill all Europe with the groans of the dying, the tears of the widow, the wailings of the orphan.
TWO:The plan of France, as conceived and pushed resolutely forward by the Count of Belleisle, the renowned minister of Louis XV., was to divide Germany into four small kingdoms of about equal power, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, and Austria. The King of Bavaria, as one of the protgs of France, was to be chosen Emperor of Germany. To accomplish this, Austria was to be reduced to a second-rate power by despoiling the young queen, Maria Theresa, of large portions of her territory, and annexing271 the provinces wrested from her to the petty states of Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony, thus sinking Austria to an equality with them. France, the grand nation, would then be indisputably the leading power in Europe. By bribery, intimidation, and inciting one kingdom against another, the court of Versailles could control the policy of the whole Continent. Magnificent as was this plan, many circumstances seemed then combining to render it feasible. The King of Prussia, inspired simply by the desire of enlarging his kingdom by making war against Austria, and striving to wrest Silesia from the realms of Maria Theresa, was co-operating, in the most effectual way possible, to further the designs of France. And it had now also become a matter of great moment to Frederick that he should secure the alliance of the court of Versailles.
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