Acme Library of Standard Biography (Classic Reprint)

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1kg Limited, Feb 4, 2018 - Biography & Autobiography - 802 pages
Excerpt from Acme Library of Standard Biography

Frederick was succeeded by his son, Frederick William, a prince who must be allowed to have possessed some talents for administration, but whose character was disfigured by the most odious vices, and, whose eccentricities were such as had never been seen out of a mad house. He was exact and diligent in the transaction of business, and he was the first who formed the design Of Obtaining for Prussia a place among the European powers, altogether out of proportion toher extent and population, by means of a strong military organization. Strict economy enabled him to keep up a peace establishment of sixty thousand troops. These troops were disciplined in such a manner, that, placed beside them, the household regiments Of Versailles and St. James would have appeared an awkward squad. The master of such a force could not but be regarded by all his neighbors as a for midable enemy and a valuable ally.

But the mind of Frederick William was so ill-regulated that all his inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the char actor of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips. While the en voys of the court of Berlin were in a state of such squalid poverty as moved the laughter of foreign capitals - while the food of the royal famil y was so bad that even hunger loathed it - no price was thought too extravagant for tall recruits. The ambition of the king was to form a brigade of giants, and every country was ransacked by his agents for men above the ordinary stature. These resear'ches were not confined to Europe. NO head that towered above the crowd in the bazaars of Aleppo, Of Cairo, or of Surat, could escape the crimps of Frederick William. One Irishman more than seven feet high, who was picked up in London hy the Prussian ambassador, received a bounty of nearly sterling - very much more than the ambas sador's salary. This extravagance was the more absurd because a stout youth of five feet eight, who might have been procured for a few dollars, would in all probability have been a much more valuable soldier. But to Frederick William this huge Irishman was what a brass Otho or a Vinegar Bible is to a collector of a different kind.

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