Luise, Queen, consort of Frederick William III, King of Prussia, 1776-1810; Queens -- Germany -- Prussia -- Biography
In the new campaign against Austria, Napoleon arrived before Vienna, May
10. After overthrowing the brave army led so gallantly by Archduke Carl,
in the battle of Wagram (July 5-6, 1809), he dictated the humiliating
peace treaty at Schönbrunn on October 14, which made the return of the
royal family to Berlin impossible. Therefore Louise passed another
summer with her family at the country-seat near Koenigsberg. Her health
grew worse, and an intermittent fever depleted her system. Austria’s new
misfortune, which completed the enslavement of Germany, increased her
illness.—“God knows where I may be buried—scarcely in Prussian soil!
Austria is singing her swan song and then adieu, Germania!” she wrote in
her journal, fearing the utmost from Napoleon’s anger and greed and no
longer believing there was any future for them on earth.
Notwithstanding all this, she devoted herself zealously, as far as her
strength allowed her to do so, to the schools of the adjacent metropolis
of Koenigsberg, as the nurseries of a better future. She was especially
interested in the “model institute” installed in the orphans’ home by
School-director Zeller. She studied detailed reports and took a lively
interest in all that pertained to the moral elevation of the people. She
clearly perceived that this would cost great sacrifices. To her sorrow
she realized that neither reason nor justice, morality nor piety had
been awakened by the misfortunes which had overtaken Prussia. She wrote
to a friend: “Our natures are too hardened through selfishness and false
education for them to be easily shaken or disciplined. Only great
revolutions can and will accomplish this.”
She watched with great interest during this cruel and sorrowful time,
the revolt of the people of the Tyrol under the leadership of the
heroic, simple, and pious Andreas Hofer, innkeper of Passeyr, against
the foreigners. “Hofer!” she wrote, “what a man! This Hofer, a peasant,
becomes a field-marshal, and what an able one! His weapons, prayer; his
ally, God! He fights with folded hands and bent knee, and slays as with
the flaming sword of the cherubim!” How she must have mourned over the
fallen hero, when, betrayed by a countryman, he was taken prisoner by
the French and shot on the walls of the fortress at Mantua, February 20,
1810!
At the beginning of September Louise had to be taken back to the city
castle as the result of a relapse. In those days of suffering she found
a comforter in the excellent, liberal-minded Pastor Borowsky. Once, when
the King was looking dejectedly into the future, he took him by the
button of his uniform and frankly said to him: “Your Majesty must learn
faith!” Borowsky describes the Queen thus:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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