After following Frederick’s career through many phases in a dozen years, we observe him with interest as he quits the whirlpool of foreign adventure for the calm of government at home. We may well enquire how far three crowded and strenuous campaigns have transformed our hero. It is impossible that the deeds done at Breslau, Mollwitz, Klein Schnellendorf, Olmütz, and Chotusitz and the strenuous toil of twenty months in departments new to him should have left no mark upon himself. The story outlined in the foregoing chapter suggests that he moved from place to place and from task to task with great speed and that his life, perhaps even his throne, were more than once in danger. But it can convey no adequate idea of the inundation of ambassadors, generals, messengers, officials, and busybodies which daily surged in upon the King. Frederick, it must be remembered, was his own commander-in-chief and his own prime minister at a time when, as he himself confessed in later years, he had not the least knowledge of war, when, owing to his father’s jealous absolutism, he had had the briefest possible experience of diplomacy, and when his powers both in war and in diplomacy were taxed by the problems of a newly-won province which must be conciliated at all costs. [Illustration: THE PARADE GROUND AT POTSDAM.] The strain was indeed severe. Under it Frederick became more statesmanlike but not more humane. After a course of the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle, he diverted himself as of old with literature and the society of wits. But he made no effort to improve his domestic life. His queen had retired to Schönhausen, a modest country-house in the dreary plain which lies on the north side of Berlin—a dwelling so remote that the swift expansion of recent years has not yet brought it within the city. The King’s thoughts ran already upon a bachelor establishment at Potsdam, the Sans Souci of later years, where he might escape from the society of his relations to enjoy that of his friends. For his subjects he attempted to provide few benefits beyond a codification of the law—little enough for one who had held out hope of a revolution in the art of kingship. It is true that he built the great Opera House at Berlin, that he lavished money upon actors and musicians, and that he endowed an Academy of Sciences. But he made French the only vehicle of learned and literary thought; and though Berlin might shine in Europe, the Prussian people gained little benefit thereby.