ng the front rank of the first regiment, accompanied by
a number of officers, with whom he had just been discussing this very
question of equipment; suddenly, he stopped short in his walk, and
extracting a piece of gold from his pocket, dropped it on the ground,
and told the men nearest him to pick it up, adding that whoever got
hold of it first, might keep it! Several of them made frantic attempts
to bend down in order to get the money, but so tight were their
uniforms and belts that they found it absolutely impossible to reach,
the coin, which Emperor Frederick ultimately picked up himself, and
handed to them.

"And how do you expect to win battles with soldiers hampered to such
an extent as that in their movements?" he exclaimed contemptuously
to the officers around him. "What greater demonstration than this is
needed to prove the justice of my argument?"

The incident was reported to the then Minister of War, who immediately
lodged a complaint with Frederick's father, the result being that
"Unser Fritz," at that time Crown Prince of Prussia, was placed by old
Emperor William for several weeks under arrest in his palace!

Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the heir apparent to the ancient throne of
the Wittelsbachs, was sentenced by his grandfather, the prince regent,
to no less than three months' close arrest in his quarters at Munich,
for having left the kingdom without permission, in order to spend
three days at Paris, in fair but frail company; while the widowed
Duchess of Aosta on one occasion was placed under arrest in her palace
of Turin by her brother-in-law, King Humbert, because she had ventured
to appear in public on her wheel wearing a pair of bloomers!

Prince and Princess Frederick-Leopold, the latter a younger sister of
the Empress of Germany, have both been condemned on several occasions
by the kaiser to close confinement in their palace under the most
stringent kind of arrest, for having disobeyed his majesty's commands
with regard to the management of their household. Duke Ernest-Gunther
of Schleswig-Holstein, the brother of the empress, has been subjected
to more numerous orders of arrest by his imperial kinsman than any
prince of the blood now living.

Severe as are European monarchs nowadays in punishing the disobedience
of the members of their families, they do not, however, venture any
longer to proceed to such extremities as the father of Frederick the
Great, who when the latter was still crown pr