endic
populations, and a Marck or Border Fortress of Salzwedel set up against
them:--Bailiff of Buhlitz, I say, sallies forth with several carts, with
all the population of the Village, with a troop of horse to escort, and
probably flags flying and some kind of drums beating;--publicly rakes
together the hay, defiant of the Prussian Majesty and all men; loads
it on his carts, and rolls home with it; leaving to the Brandenburgers
nothing but stubble and the memory of having mown for Hanover to eat.
This is the 28th June, 1729; King of Prussia is now at Magdeburg,
reviewing his troops; within a hundred miles of these contested
quag-countries: who can blame him that he flames up now into clear blaze
of royal indignation? The correspondence henceforth becomes altogether
lively: but in the Britannic Archives there is nothing of it,--Dubourgay
having received warning from my Lord Townshend to be altogether ignorant
of the matter henceforth, and let the Hanover Officials manage it. His
Prussian Majesty returns home in the most tempestuous condition.

We may judge what a time Queen Sophie had of it; what scenes there were
with Crown-Prince Friedrich and Wilhelmina, in her Majesty's Apartment
and elsewhere! Friedrich Wilhelm is fast mounting to the red-hot pitch.
The bullyings, the beatings even, of these poor Children, love-sick
one of them, are lamentable to hear of, as all the world has
heard:--"Disobedient unnatural whelps, biting the heels of your poor old
parent mastiff in his extreme need, what is to be done with you?" Fritz
he often enough beats, gives a slap to with his rattan; has hurled
a plate at him, on occasion, when bad topics rose at table; nay at
Wilhelmina too, she says: but the poor children always ducked, and
nothing but a little noise and loss of crockery ensued. Fritz he
deliberately detests, as a servant of the Devil, incorrigibly rebelling
against the paternal will, and going on those dissolute courses: a silly
French cockatoo, suspected of disbelief in Scripture; given to nothing
but fifing and play-books; who will bring Prussia aud himself to a bad
end. "God grant he do not finish on the gallows!" sighed the sad Father
once to Grumkow. The records of these things lie written far and wide,
in the archives of many countries as well as in Wilhelmina's Book.

To me there was one undiplomatic reflection continually present:
Heavens, could nobody have got a bit of rope, and hanged those two
Diplomatic swindl