A Royal Pain

Mention has been made of Frederick the Great, who had an extremely weird and unhappy childhood. This was because his father, Frederick William I was... idiosyncratic to say the least. He was extremely frugal (he refused to leave candles burning in his palace when he wasn't using them, immaterial of whether or not someone else was using them) but spared no expense for his armies. This devotion to the military led to the creation of the "Postdam Giants," i.e. a military corps made up of the tallest soldiers in Europe, a vicious and abusive relationship with Frederick the Great, and the habit of carrying around a walking stick (which Frederick William I is actually carrying in his right hand in the portrait to the right) so he could more conveniently bludgeon anyone who displeased him.

As Frederick William I went walking one day, he saw a peasant obviously trying to hide. Frederick William I then asked what the man was doing, to which the peasant replied that he was afraid of His Majesty.

"Afraid?" roared Frederick William I. "You ought to love me and not be afraid; yes, to love me I tell you!" At this point, Frederick William I beat the peasant with his walking stick, since, as everyone knows, violent beatings with walking sticks are the best method of inducing tender feelings on the part of anyone.

Frederick the Great on Voltaire

This is taken from Frederick the Great's early journals:

"I admire [Voltaire's] eyes, so clear and piercing... I would kiss his eloquent lips, 100 times."

This came as something of a surprise to Voltaire when he found out, particularly considering Voltaire was, at that time, madly in love with Emilie du Chatelet, a renowed physicist. They were on the outs at the time of the trip because Emilie was actually much smarter than Voltaire, which had sent Voltaire into a passion when they discovered it (Emilie placed above Voltaire in an essay contest for the Academie des Sciences).

Fortunately, though Frederick the Great wrote that most evenings he and his court full of young men "lost money at cards, danced till we fell; whispered in each other's ears, and when that had shifted to love, began other delicious moves", Voltaire talked about Emilie a great deal and was off the hook.

Less fortunately, he was still irritated with Emilie for being smarter and his name-dropping turned to mocking quips and compaints about her, which Did Not Amuse Emilie when word got back to her.

A Moment with Voltaire

Voltaire visited Frederick the Great as a French spy, something which he took no pains to conceal. Most of Europe then thought of Frederick the Great as a floofy monarch who didn't pose a threat to anyone because his claim to fame had been trying to run off with his boyfriend, and then getting caught. His father then threw Frederick the Great into prison, where the guards mocked Frederick for playing his flute and reading French literature.

Surely Frederick wouldn't catch on. The fact that most of Europe was pretty pissed at Voltaire for his satirical poetry, and the mission was pretty much given as a 'get-the-hell-out-of-my-country-if-you-won't-stop-writing-about-me' sort of trip by Louis XV did not daunt Voltaire either. Thus, he set off from France in high spirits, going so far as to grandly inform a sentry gaurding Westphalia, "I am Don Quixote!"

The sentry apparently did not speak any language other than German and, smiling and nodding, let Voltaire pass.