ward attempt at justification on the
part of an old friend, and when the latter returned, the old intimacy
was gone forever. The King would not let him go, but he took pleasure
in punishing the renegade by stinging speeches and harsh jokes.
Finally the Frenchman, deeply hurt, asked for his dismissal. His
request was granted, and the sorrow and anger of the King is seen from
the wording of the order. When the marquis, in the last letter which
he wrote the King before his death, represented to him again, and not
without bitterness, how scornfully and badly he had treated an
unselfish admirer, Frederick read the letter without a word. But he
wrote with grief to the dead man's widow telling her of his friendship
for her husband, and had a costly monument erected for him in a
foreign land. The great prince fared similarly with most of his
intimates. Magic as was his power to attract, he had demoniac
faculties for repelling. But if any one is disposed to blame the man
for this, let him be told that hardly another king in history has so
unsparingly disclosed his most intimate soul-life to his friends as
Frederick.

Frederick had worn the crown only a few months when the Emperor
Charles VI. died. Now everything urged the young King to risk a
master-stroke. That he determined upon such a step was in itself, in
spite of the momentary weakness of Austria, a token of bold courage.
The countries which he ruled had perhaps a seventh as many inhabitants
as the broad lands of Maria Theresa. True, his army was for the time
being far superior to the Austrian in numbers and discipline, and
according to the ideas of the time, the mass of the people was not
then in the same way as today available for recruiting purposes. Nor
did he fully realize the greatness of Maria Theresa. But even in the
preparations for the invasion the King showed that he had long hoped
to measure himself against Austria. In an exalted mood he entered upon
a struggle which was to be decisive for his own life and that of his
State. He cared little at heart for the right which he might have to
the Silesian duchies, and which with his pen he tried to prove before
Europe. For this the policy of the despotic States of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries had no regard whatever. Any one who could
find a plausible defense of his cause made use of it, but in case of
need the most improbable argument, the most shallow pretext, was
sufficient. In this way Louis XIV. had m