Thus happily and peacefully, surrounded by luxury and splendor, watched over with tenderest care, our hero’s life slipped by till the end of his eighth year, when a storm burst over the country that shook the Prussian throne to its foundations. Chapter II A Hard School The throne of France was occupied at that time by the insatiable Napoleon I. Born on the island of Corsica, the son of an advocate, he entered the French army during the Revolution and rose step by step until by his remarkable talents and ability he attained the highest honors of state. His ambition was to make France mistress of the world, and aided by the blind devotion of the people he seemed in a fair way of realizing this dream, for one country after another succumbed with astonishing rapidity to his victorious legions. Prussia was spared for some time, but in 1806 King Frederick William Third, unable for his own honor or that of his country longer to endure Napoleon’s aggressions, was reluctantly forced to declare war, and the country’s doom was sealed. Deluded by the traditions of former glories under the great Frederick, the army and its leaders thought it would prove an easy task for the battalions that had once withstood the onset of half Europe to protect the frontiers of the Fatherland against the Corsican conqueror, but disaster followed swiftly. The guns of Jena and Auerstädt scattered those golden mists of self-delusion and betrayed with startling clearness the degeneracy of the military organization, which, like the machine of government, bore little trace of Frederick the Great’s influence save in outward forms. The defeat of October 14, 1806, decided the fate of Prussia. Like a roaring sea the French swept over the country, and two days later it became necessary for the safety of the royal children to remove them from Berlin. Their nearest refuge was the castle at Schwedt on the Oder, where their mother joined them, prepared to share with her darlings the cruel fate that had befallen them. Sitting with her two eldest sons and their tutor Delbrück that evening, she spoke those stirring words that proved such a help and inspiration to Emperor William in after years.