He renounced all magnificence, pastimes and recreations, and reduced his menu to the utmost frugality. He had affected display in dress, but in future wore the uniform of a common soldier. There had been a rumour that he had entertained a passion for a lady of the Court. But whether this was true or not, it is certain that he abstained from the society of women for ever after, not only to avoid coming too much under their influence, but that he might prove to his soldiers his determination to live under the severest discipline; possibly, too, he wished to pose as the only Prince who had conquered so difficult a temptation. He also resolved to abstain from wine for the rest of his life. Some people say that he made this resolve in order to curb nature in every particular, and to add a new virtue to his heroism; but the majority say that he took this means of punishing himself for an excess which he had once committed, leading to an insult offered to a lady at table in the presence of his mother. If that was so, his self-condemnation and the life-long deprivation which he imposed on himself are none the less to be admired. He began operations by a promise of relief to his brother-in-law, the Duke of Holstein. Eight thousand men were immediately sent to Pomerania, a province bordering on Holstein, to protect the Duke against the attacks of the Danes. The Duke certainly needed them; his dominions were already ravaged, his castle at Gottorp taken and the town of Tonning closely besieged, the King of Denmark being there in person, to enjoy a conquest of which he felt certain. This spark enflamed the empire. On one side the Saxon troops of the King of Poland and those of Brandenburg, Volfenbuttel and Hesse-Cassel marched to join the Danes. On the other the King of Sweden’s 8,000 men, the troops of Hanover and Zell, and three Dutch regiments came to the help of the Duke. While the little country of Holstein was thus made the theatre of war two squadrons, one from England and the other from Holland, appeared in the Baltic. These two States were guarantors of the treaty of Altena, which the Danes had broken, and they were all the more eager to relieve the oppressed Duke, as it was to the interest of their trade to prevent the growth of the power of the King of Denmark. For they knew that the Danes, when they once had control of the Sound, would lay heavy dues on the trading nations, as soon as they were strong enough to do so. The English and the Dutch had, for this reason, kept, as far as possible, the balance of power equal between the princes of the North; they joined the King of Sweden, who seemed on the point of being overwhelmed by many enemies acting in concert, and helped him for the same reason that the others attacked him, viz. because they thought him incapable of self-defence.