GERMANY. 181 



Again, those who wish to pursue their studies still farther, have an 

 opportunity, on joining the army, in which every male, by the military 

 constitution of the monarchy, must serve for five years, of doing so in 

 the regimental school ; for it is one of the peculiar features of the military 

 system of Prussia, that it develops the moral as well as the physical 

 powers of the soldier. All that is deemed worthy of the attention of the 

 traveller I saw the palace, the university, the arsenal, the museum, and 

 the theatres. 



Full of the recollections of the great Frederick, I rode out to Potz- 

 dam, the " berceau" of modern tactics : it is still what it was in his days, 

 a vast caserne. You see on every side squads of recruits, marching, 

 wheeling, and handling their firelocks under veteran able instructors. I 

 walked to his tomb in the garrison chapel a plain monument of black 

 marble, unadorned by any inscription, marks the spot where lies the 

 victor of a hundred battle-fields. When Frederick, at the bloody affair 

 of Kunnensdorf, beheld his invincible battalions " ecrases" by the mur- 

 derous and well-directed fire of the Russians, struck with their steady 

 gallantry and iron formations, he is said to have exclaimed " Que 

 1'Europe prenne pour devise, Gare le Russes. Ces barbares lui joueront 

 un jour un vilain tour." His successor appears to have forgotten these 

 remarkable words, which made such an impression upon the master 

 mind of Napoleon. 



As we were leaving the gardens, two officers crossed our path, one of 

 whom, a tall lank figure, who with downcast eyes, the arms folded 

 behind the back, walked a little in advance of the other, forcibly 

 arrested my attention. The expression of his countenance w r as melan- 

 choly in the extreme, while the well-squared epaulettes, compressed 

 waist, swelling chest, and the scrupulous care with which every part of 

 his uniform was arranged, proclaimed the military dandy. It was the 

 King Frederick William, and his aid-de-camp Baron Von S . 



I confess I was struck with the pensive and abstracted air of the 

 monarch. " Quel air reveur," I remarked to my companion, an old 

 French general officer who had kindly taken upon himself the office of 

 cicerone in my perambulations around Berlin. " C'est qu'il improvise 

 une uniform," he replied with a smile ; " to-morrow the Gazette will 

 convey an order to make some alteration in the ' tenue of the Guards." 

 What the great Frederick did for tactics, his successor, Frederick Wil- 

 liam, nicknamed " Der Schneider Konig,"* has done for military cos- 

 tume it has been the constant study of his life. Neither the vicissitudes 

 of his country, the toils of the camp, nor the wiles of diplomacy, have 

 been able to divert him from his favourite pursuit; and it is only justice 

 to say that the dress of the Prussian army is in the best military taste, 

 uniform throughout, and a-piece with the elaborate drilling of the men, 

 and the science and instruction of the officers. Napoleon testified his 

 surprise at the immense " savoir" of his Prussian majesty on this im- 

 portant point, although he complained sadly of being constantly impor- 

 tuned both by Frederick and the Czar Alexander with such frivolous 

 questions as, " What quantity of padding was requisite for a hussar's 

 jacket ?" or to give an opinion on the form of a Hulan's shako. " Certes," 

 said the Emperor one day to General Rapp, " had the French army at 

 Jena been commanded by a tailor it would have been a second ' Eos- 

 bach.'" 



* Tailor king. 



