243 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63British public was documented in broadsheets and decorated pottery;
American colonists named one of their little towns 'King of Prussia';
French civilians laughed at the defeats which their armies suffered at
his hands. Elsewhere the respective causes of Frederick and Maria
Theresa were taken up with such enthusiasm as to occasion out-
breaks of violence among Venetian monks and gondoliers, and
awaken fears of a civil war in Switzerland (Meyer, 1955, 145).
Frederick reflected:
Our militaiy glory looks veiy fine, seen from a distance. But if
you had witnessed the distress and hardship with which it had
been acquired, in what physical deprivations and struggle, in
heat and cold, in hunger, filth and destitution, then you would
have learnt to think quite differently about this 'gloiy'. (Koser,
1921, III. 165)
Frederick returned to Berlin by way of Silesia and the Neumark. He
was expected in the capital on 30 March 1763, and the companies of
urban militia were waiting outside the Frankfurter Tor to greet him.
Frederick, however, had stopped for a time on the field of Kunersdorf,
with its gloomy landscape and gloomier memories, and the citizens
began to murmur when the bleak afternoon wore on and nothing was
yet seen of the king. The indignation was shared by Frederick's friend
the Marquis d'Argens, who burst out: 'I wrote to him that he owed it
to his people to acknowledge their appreciation. It is quite unforgiv-
able for him not to put in an appearance!' (Nicolai, 1788-92, I, 49).
Frederick arrived in his shabby campaign coach at eight in the
evening, by which time darkness had fallen, and he drove on to the
Schloss by a roundabout route. It is said that the early hours of the
next day found him back at his desk, working.