“It is with the greatest pleasure that I viewed the Prussian army! nothing can be compared to the beauty of the troops,—to the discipline which rules in all the ranks, to the simplicity and uniformity of their movements. It is a perfectly regular machine, wound up these forty years, and which has not suffered from other changes than those which could render it more simple and more swift. All the situations which one can suppose in a war, all the movements which ought to be introduced, have been, by constant habit, so inculcated in their heads, that all these operations are made almost mechanically. “If the resources of France, the vivacity of her soldiers, the intelligence of her officers, the national ambition, the delicate sensibilities which they are known to possess, had been applied to a system as well carried out, we should have been then as much ahead of the Prussians as our army is at this moment inferior to theirs; and that is much to say. [Illustration: FREDERICK II.] “I have seen also the Austrians, but not all assembled. Their general system of economy should be more admired than the manœuvres of their troops. Their method is not simple; our regiments are better than theirs, and such advantage as they could have in line over us, we could with a little practice surpass them. I really believe that there is no need for more instructions of details in some of our best regiments than in those of the Prussians; but their manœuvres are infinitely preferable to ours. “In a week I dined with the Prussian king, his dinner lasting three hours. The conversation was confined to the Duke of York, the king, myself, and two or three others, so that I had plenty of opportunity to listen to him, and to admire the vivacity of his wit and the charm of his graciousness. “At last I almost forgot he was a despot, selfish and severe. Lord Cornwallis was there. The king placed him next me at table, and on his other hand he had the son of the king of England; then he asked a thousand questions on American affairs.” This was surely a strange combination of circumstances and of guests; but just this sort of ironical environments would delight the sarcastic soul of the cunning old warrior. La Fayette had an equally strange experience in America. During his campaign in Virginia, in an action in which he was in command, General Phillips was killed, and this general had been the officer who had commanded the enemy’s troops at Minden when the father of La Fayette was slain. La Fayette met Cornwallis again in 1801, when the English lord came over to Paris to negotiate a general peace. American independence having been secured, La Fayette’s sympathies were aroused in behalf of the oppressed African race. His soul abhorred injustice of any sort, and when he met a wrong he always endeavored to aid in righting it.