On August 4, 1730, the attempt was made. The confederates tried to steal from the royal camp at dawn and to ride into France. Such a flight was not without precedent in Hohenzollern history. Frederick’s grandfather, sharing the general belief that his stepmother had poisoned his brother and meant to poison himself, had first sought shelter at Cassel with his aunt and at a later date had quitted the Great Elector’s court altogether. But for the heir to a crown to flee beyond the bounds of Germany was a still graver step. The youth of eighteen had hardly calculated the probable consequences of success. Where was Frederick William’s heir to find a safe asylum? Louis XV. was not likely to be to him what Louis XIV. had been to the Old Pretender. George of England would hardly expose Hanover to the vengeance of the King of Prussia. His envoy had in fact refused to countenance the scheme. Nor would the Emperor care to sacrifice the Prussian alliance to mere sentiment. Even if Frederick should succeed in finding a refuge for himself, he would none the less have left two dear hostages at the mercy of the King. “Your mother would have got into the greatest misery,” declared Frederick William a year later. “Your sister I would have cast for life into a place where she would never have seen sun and moon again.” Thanks, however, to the vigilance of Colonel von Rochow, his keeper, and to the panic of his page, Frederick did not even mount the horse that was to have borne him out of Germany. His abortive attempt inaugurated one of the strangest tragedies in history. From the very fact that he was the guest of other princes Frederick William could not act in haste. The scheme was betrayed to him at Mannheim on August 6th, and he ordered von Rochow to deliver his son to him at his own town of Wesel, alive or dead. In this mood they continued the tour of pleasure, sailing down the Rhine and visiting the potentates upon its shores. At last, on the evening of the 12th, they reached Wesel. Frederick William at once interrogated his son, who lied and protested his submission. The King replied by despatching him to Spandau under the care of a general, who was enjoined to frustrate any attempt at rescue by killing his prisoner.