would
certainly have made a great man of me, he could even have made me
Statholder of Holland." And when it was maintained in reply that he
himself was a greater King, he answered: "You speak according to your
judgment; he would have taught me how to command the armies of all
Europe. Do you know of anything greater?" So much did this strange
Prince feel the not having become Field-Marshal. When he sat dying in
his wooden chair, had cast behind him all earthly cares, and was
observing with curiosity the process of dying in himself, he desired
the funeral horse to be fetched from the stable, and in accordance with
the old custom of sending it as a legacy from the Colonel to the
General in command, he ordered the horse to be taken on his behalf to
Leopold Von Dessau, and the grooms to be flogged because they had not
put the right housings on him.[8] Such was the Prince whose example was
followed by the whole nobility of his country and in his army. Already
under the great Elector had a sovereign contempt for all education
displayed itself but too frequently in the army; already had such a
repugnance to all learning been instilled into the early deceased
Electoral Prince Karl Emil, by the officers around him, that he
maintained that he who studied and learnt Latin was a coward. In the
"_Tabak's Collegium_" of King Frederic William, still worse expressions
were at first applied to this class of men. With the King himself there
was undoubtedly an alteration in the last years of his life, but this
tone of indifference to all knowledge which did not bear upon their own
profession, remained with most of the Prussian officers till this
century, in spite of all the endeavours of Frederic the Great. In 1790
the people still used the term, a Frederic William's officer, for a
tall thin man, in a short blue coat, with a long sword and a tight
cravat, who was spruce and earnest in all his actions as in service and
had learnt little. About the same time Lafontaine, chaplain to the
regiment Von Thadden, at Halle, complained of the little education of
the officers. Once after giving them an historical lecture, a valiant
captain took him on one side and said, "You tell us things that have
happened thousands of years ago, God knows where; will you not tell us
one thing more? How do you know this?" And when the chaplain gave him
an explanation, the officer answered, "Curious! I thought it had always
been as it is now in Prussia." The same cap