Ten days after the battle of Collin, his mother died; a few weeks later, in anger, he drove his brother August Wilhelm away from the army, because he had not carried on the war with sufficient vigour. This Prince died in that same year, of grief, as the King was informed by the officer who reported it. Shortly afterwards he received the account of the death of his sister of Baireuth. One after another his Generals fell by his side, or lost the King's confidence; because they were not able to come up to the superhuman requirements of this war. His old soldiers, his pride, the iron warriors who had gone through the test of three severe wars--they who, dying, still stretched out their hands to him and called upon his name--were expiring in heaps around him; and those who filled up the wide gaps which death incessantly made in his army were young recruits, some of good material, but many bad ones. The King used them, as he had done the others, with strictness and severity; but even in the worst subjects his look and word inspired both bravery and devotion. But he knew that all this would not avail; short and cutting was his censure, and sparing was his praise. Thus he continued to live; five summers and winters came and went; the labour was gigantic; he was unwearied in planning and combining; his eagle eye scrutinisingly scanned what was most distant and most trivial, and yet there was no change and no hope. The King read and wrote in his hours of rest, just as before; he made his verses and kept up a correspondence with Voltaire and Algarotti; but he was resolved all this must soon come to an end, a short and quick one. He carried with him, day and night, what would free him from Daun and Laudon. The whole affair of life sometimes appeared to him contemptible. The disposition of the man, from whom the intellectual life of Germany dates its new era, deserves well to be regarded with reverence by Germans. It is only possible to give some idea of it by the way in which it breaks out in Frederic's letters to the Marquis d'Argens and Frau von Camas. Thus does the great King speak of his life:-- "1757, _June_.--The only remedy for my sorrow lies in the daily work I am obliged to do, and in the continual distractions which the number of my enemies occasion me. If I had died at Collin, I should now be in a haven where I should fear no more storms. Now I must navigate on a stormy sea till I have discovered in some small corner of earth, that good which I have never yet found in this world. For two years I have been standing like a wall in which misfortune has made its breaches. But do not think that I am becoming weak; one must protect oneself in these unfortunate times by bowels of iron and a heart of bronze, in order to lose all feeling. The next month will decide the fate of my poor country. My calculation is, that I shall save or fall with it. You can have no idea of the dangers in which we are, nor of the terrors which surround us."