I have not my
Louisa now; to whom now shall I run for advice or help!" would the poor
Kurfurst at times exclaim.

He had some trouble, considerable trouble now and then, with mutinous
spirits in Preussen; men standing on antique Prussian franchises
and parchments; refusing to see that the same were now antiquated,
incompatible, not to say impossible, as the new Sovereign alleged; and
carrying themselves very stiffly at times. But the Hohenzollerns had
been used to such things; a Hohenzollern like this one would evidently
take his measures, soft but strong, and ever stronger to the needful
pitch, with mutinous spirits. One Burgermeister of Konigsberg, after
much stroking on the back, was at length seized in open Hall, by
Electoral writ,--soldiers having first gently barricaded the principal
streets, and brought cannon to bear upon them. This Burgermeister,
seized in such brief way, lay prisoner for life; refusing to ask his
liberty, though it was thought he might have had it on asking. [Horn,
_Das Leben Friedrich Wilhelms des Grossen_ (Berlin, 1814), p. 68.]

Another gentleman, a Baron von Kalkstein, of old Teutsch-Bitter kin, of
very high ways, in the Provincial Estates (STANDE) and elsewhere, got
into lofty almost solitary opposition, and at length into mutiny proper,
against the new "Non-Polish SOVEREIGN," and flatly refused to do homage
at his accession in that new capacity. [Supra, pp. 383, et seqq.]
Refused, Kalkstein did, for his share; fled to Warsaw; and very
fiercely, in a loud manner, carried on his mutinies in the Diets and
Court-Conclaves there; his plea being, or plea for the time, "Poland is
our liege lord [which it was not always], and we cannot be transferred
to you, except by our consent asked and given," which too had been a
little neglected on the former occasion of transfer. So that the Great
Elector knew not what to do with Kalkstein; and at length (as the case
was pressing) had him kidnapped by his Ambassador at Warsaw; had him
"rolled into a carpet" there, and carried swiftly in the Ambassador's
coach, in the form of luggage, over the frontier, into his native
Province, there to be judged, and, in the end (since nothing else would
serve him), to have the sentence executed, and his head cut off. For the
case was pressing! [Horn, pp. 80-82.]--These things, especially this of
Kalkstein, with a boisterous Polish Diet and parliamentary eloquence in
the rear of him, gave rise to criticism; and require