ABSTRACT
As Commander-in-Chief and the victor of Hohenfriedeberg and Soor, Frederick William the time bore himself decidedly better. When Frederick was sixteen years old he fell dangerously ill. His mother, the Queen, laid the blame for his illness on a certain long evening which his father had forced the boy to spend in the “Tobacco Parliament.” Frederick William I was vexed beyond measure when Noltenius, his Court chaplain, informed him that for some time past his son had made extremely little progress in “Christianity.” The rapidly ageing monarch’s worst crime against his great son was undoubtedly his choice for the unfortunate lad of a wife after his own—Frederick William’s—heart, though he knew perfectly well that their tastes in this matter differed absolutely. As a consolation, or as a reward, for his marriage, Frederick’s father had given him Castle Rheinsberg, situated on one of Prussia’s gloomy and sombre lakes.
