From Schwedt, the sorrowing but heroic Queen travelled to Stettin. There, on her own responsibility, she caused the arrest of the cabinet councillor Lombard, who had originally been a wig-maker and was now universally considered a traitor, and who had fled from Berlin to escape the threatening anger of the populace. Subsequently the King released Lombard, but deposed him and never saw him again. The King had gone from the battlefield to Sömmerda, where he collected a few scattered detachments of troops about him. Learning that the enemy had already passed round his left flank, he went on to Magdeburg, accompanied by a squadron of dragoons, reached Berlin on the eve of October 20, but did not enter the city, and arrived, on the morning of the same day at the fortress of Cüstrin, where his wife also arrived in the evening at ten o’clock. What a meeting after only a week! [Illustration: _QUEEN LOUISE and her two sons_] On the road she had not even been able to get fresh horses at Bärwalde. Rather than furnish them the steward had turned them loose. So far had some of their subjects already fallen from their allegiance. Bad feeling, cowardice, treachery, and incompetence had spread since the misfortune at Jena, through military, official, and citizens’ circles. One fortress and one division of troops after another were needlessly surrendered to the enemy. It became evident that since the last years of Frederick the Great social decay had spread, not only in the army, which was insolently resting on its former laurels, but in official circles and even in the life of the people. Of this few had had any inkling, least of all the thoroughly upright King and the noble Louise. “Disaster had to come, or we should have burst with pride,” acknowledged a Prussian years afterwards.