rederick called the Queen to watch his soldier son, and
immediately ordered the court artist to paint a picture of the scene on
canvas. A day or two later he told Fritz of a plan he had in store. He
would form a military company of boys of his own age for him, build them
an arsenal on the palace grounds, and have them drilled by officers of
the army.

With the King to speak was to act. A month had not passed before the
small boy, dressed in a general's uniform, found himself in command of
about three hundred youths of his own age, all properly equipped with
uniforms and arms, and known as "The Crown Prince Cadets." They made a
remarkable contrast to that other regiment of which King Frederick
William was so proud, which was made up of giants, men all over six feet
six inches tall, seized wherever they were found in Prussia and
elsewhere and forced into his army.

The boy general and his cadets were drilled hours at a time day after
day by the Prussian officers, in the hope of making soldiers of them and
nothing else. Fritz hated it; he wanted to read and to learn music, and
day by day he found less and less time to steal off to those wonderful
meetings in the woods or to romp with Wilhelmina in the schoolroom. The
French governess who had taught him was taken away, and he was placed
under military tutors who made him learn gunnery and battle tactics at
the arsenal which his father had built for him on the grounds.

When the boy was ten the King started to take him to all the military
reviews. In going from garrison to garrison the King rode on a hard
wagon called a sausage-car, which was simply a padded pole about ten
feet long on which the riders sat astride. Ten or more men would jolt
over the roads on such cars with the King summer and winter, and he made
the boy ride in front of him, through the broiling sun or the winter
snow, waking him whenever he fell asleep by pulling his ear and saying,
"Too much sleep stupefies a fellow."

In such iron fashion the father did his best to change the sensitive,
gentle nature of his son to something like his own.

At the age of ten Fritz's days were marked out hour by hour by Frederick
William. Not even Sunday was free. He was marched from teacher to
teacher, all sports were denied him, and he was never allowed to read
or play. His hair was kept close cut, his clothes were heavy and coarse,
he was treated more like a prisoner than a prince. To the boy's masters
the King gave