s which
can crush and trample everything under foot, and is ready to enthrone
itself on corpses."

Nevertheless, the queen loyally aided her consort in his effort to
improve the condition of the realm. Their travels through the provinces
and the newly acquired Polish territories had a good effect. The
domestic life of the royal family was a model one and made for morality
in the lives of their subjects. The royal couple were patrons of arts
and letters, and Queen Louisa was particularly enthusiastic in support
of culture. But soon the wheel of fortune turned; the king, pacific in
the extreme, did not recognize in time that, unless he would join in the
coalition against the overweening pride and power of France, Prussia
would, single handed, be compelled sooner or later to meet that power.
The battle of Austerlitz prostrated Austria completely, and the doom of
Prussia approached.

In the years of threat and war Queen Louisa lost a beloved son, Prince
Ferdinand, and the sorrow alarmingly aggravated her previous
indisposition. The waters of Pyrmont restored her somewhat, and as for a
time painful political events were kept from her, the change of scene
and the affections of her relatives and dearest friends brought to her
once more a glimpse of happiness, the last that was to come into her
brief life. Yet her constitution had been shaken by the harassing
anxieties of the situation, and added sorrow was soon to fall upon
unhappy Prussia. The army was repeatedly defeated, and blow after blow
fell upon the unhappy country. The queen and her children fled to the
confines of the realm, to Konigsberg, the coronation city of the
Prussian kings. There her third son, Frederick Charles, fell ill with
typhoid fever. The child recovered, but his mother contracted the
disease and again went down to the brink of death. The famous physician
Hufeland describes the anxieties of the crisis: "The queen was in the
utmost danger, and all night long the wind howled terrifically. . . .
The wind was so strong, it blew down a gable of the old castle. By the
blessing of God the queen passed over the crisis of the fever, and was
beginning to rally, when suddenly came the news that the French were
approaching. It was feared that the queen was not strong enough to bear
removal, and it was therefore put off as long as possible, but she
begged to be taken away, quoting the words of King David:

'I am in great straits: let us now fall into the hand of