Not less remarkable was the relation in which King Frederic William stood to his officers. He heartily feared and hated the wily sagacity of the diplomats and higher officials, but he readily confided his secret thoughts to the simple, sturdy, straightforward character of his officers, which was sometimes a mask. It was a favourite fancy to consider himself as their comrade. Many were the hours in which he treated as his equals many who wore the sash. He used to greet with a kiss all the superior officers down to the major, if he had not seen them for a long time. Once he affronted the Major Von Juergass by using the opprobrious word by which officers then denoted a studious man; the drunken man replied, "That was the speech of a cowardly rascal," and then got up and left the party. The King declared that he could not allow that to pass, and was ready to take his revenge for the insult with sword or pistol. When those present protested against this, the King asked angrily how otherwise he could obtain satisfaction for his injured honour? They contrived a means of doing it by lieutenant-Colonel Von Einsiedel taking the King's place in the battalion, and fighting the duel in his stead. The duel took place, Einsiedel was wounded in the arm; for this the King filled his knapsack full of thalers, and commanded him to carry the heavy burden home. The King could not forget that as Crown Prince he had never risen in the service beyond a Colonel, and that a Field-Marshal was higher than himself. He therefore lamented in the "_Tabak's Collegium_,"[7] that he had not been able to remain with King William of England: "He would certainly have made a great man of me, he could even have made me Statholder of Holland." And when it was maintained in reply that he himself was a greater King, he answered: "You speak according to your judgment; he would have taught me how to command the armies of all Europe. Do you know of anything greater?" So much did this strange Prince feel the not having become Field-Marshal. When he sat dying in his wooden chair, had cast behind him all earthly cares, and was observing with curiosity the process of dying in himself, he desired the funeral horse to be fetched from the stable, and in accordance with the old custom of sending it as a legacy from the Colonel to the General in command, he ordered the horse to be taken on his behalf to Leopold Von Dessau, and the grooms to be flogged because they had not put the right housings on him.[8] Such was the Prince whose example was followed by the whole nobility of his country and in his army. Already under the great Elector had a sovereign contempt for all education displayed itself but too frequently in the army; already had such a repugnance to all learning been instilled into the early deceased Electoral Prince Karl Emil, by the officers around him, that he maintained that he who studied and learnt Latin was a coward. In the