I was born at KÖnigsberg in Prussia, February 16, 1726, of one of the most ancient families of the country. My father, who was lord of Great Scharlach, Schakulack, and Meichen, and major-general of cavalry, died in 1740, after receiving eighteen wounds in the Prussian service. My mother was daughter of the president of the high court at KÖnigsberg. After my father’s death she married Count Lostange, lieutenant-colonel in the Kiow regiment of cuirassiers, with whom she went and resided at Breslau. I had two brothers and a sister; my youngest brother was taken by my mother into Silesia; the other was a cornet in this last-named regiment of Kiow; and my sister was married to the only son of the aged General Valdow.

My ancestors are famous in the Chronicles of the North, among the ancient Teutonic knights, who conquered Courland, Prussia, and Livonia.

By temperament I was choleric, and addicted to pleasure and dissipation; my tutors found this last defect most difficult to overcome; happily, they were aided by a love of knowledge inherent in me, an emulative spirit, and a thirst for fame, which disposition it was my father’s care to cherish. A too great consciousness of innate worth gave me a too great degree of pride, but the endeavours of my instructor to inspire humility were not all lost; and habitual reading, well-timed praise, and the pleasures flowing from science, made the labours of study at length my recreation.

My memory became remarkable; I am well read in the Scriptures, the classics, and ancient history; was acquainted with geography; could draw; learnt fencing, riding, and other necessary exercises.

My religion was Lutheran; but morality was taught me by my father, and by the worthy man to whose care he committed the forming of my heart, whose memory I shall ever hold in veneration. While a boy, I was enterprising in all the tricks of boys, and exercised my wit in crafty excuses; the warmth of my passions gave a satiric, biting cast to my writings, whence it has been imagined, by those who knew but little of me, I was a dangerous man; though, I am conscious, this was a false judgment.

A soldier himself, my father would have all his sons the same; thus, when we quarrelled, we terminated our disputes with wooden sabres, and, brandishing these, contested by blows for victory, while our father sat laughing, pleased at our valour and address. This practice, and the praises he bestowed, encouraged a disposition which ought to have been counteracted.

Accustomed to obtain the prize, and be the hero of scholastic contentions, I acquired the bad habit of disputation, and of imagining myself a sage when little more than a boy. I became stubborn in argument; hasty to correct others, instead of patiently attentive: and, by presumption, continually liable to incite enmity. Gentle to my inferiors, but impatient of contradiction, and proud of resisting power, I may hence date, the origin of all my evils.

How might a man, imbued with the heroic principles of liberty, hope for advancement and happiness, under the despotic and iron Government of Frederic? I was taught neither to know nor to avoid, but to despise the whip of slavery. Had I learnt hypocrisy, craft, and meanness, I had long since become field-marshal, had been in possession of my Hungarian estates, and had not passed the best years of my life in the dungeons of Magdeburg. I was addicted to no vice: I laboured in the cause of science, honour, and virtue; kept no vicious company; was never in the whole of my life intoxicated; was no gamester, no consumer of time in idleness nor brutal pleasures; but devoted many hundred laborious nights to studies that might make me useful to my country; yet was I punished with a severity too cruel even for the most worthless, or most villanous.

I mean, in my narrative, to make candour and veracity my guides, and not to conceal my failings; I wish my work may remain a moral lesson to the world. Yet it is an innate satisfaction that I am conscious of never having acted with dishonour, even to the last act of this distressful tragedy.

I shall say little of the first years of my life, except that my father took especial care of my education, and sent me, at the age of thirteen, to the University of KÖnigsberg, where, under the tuition of Kowalewsky, my progress was rapid. There were fourteen other noblemen in the same house, and under the same master.

In the year following, 1740, I quarrelled with one young Wallenrodt, a fellow-student, much stronger than myself, and who, despising my weakness, thought proper to give me a blow. I demanded satisfaction. He came not to the appointed place, but treated my demand with contempt; and I, forgetting all further respect, procured a second, and attacked him in open day. We fought, and I had the fortune to wound him twice; the first time in the arm, the second in the hand.

This affair incited inquiry:—Doctor Kowalewsky, our tutor, laid complaints before the University, and I was condemned to three hours’ confinement; but my grandfather and guardian, President Derschau, was so pleased with my courage, that he took me from this house and placed me under Professor Christiani.

Here I first began to enjoy full liberty, and from this worthy man I learnt all I know of experimental philosophy and science. He loved me as his own son, and continued instructing me till midnight. Under his auspices, in 1742, I maintained, with great success, two public theses, although I was then but sixteen; an effort and an honour till then unknown.

Three days after my last public exordium, a contemptible fellow sought a quarrel with me, and obliged me to draw in my own defence, whom, on this occasion, I wounded in the groin.

This success inflated my valour, and from that time I began to assume the air and appearance of a Hector.

Scarcely had a fortnight elapsed before I had another with a lieutenant of the garrison, whom I had insulted, who received two wounds in the contest.

I ought to remark, that at this time, the University of KÖnigsberg was still highly privileged. To send a challenge was held honourable; and this was not only permitted, but would have been difficult to prevent, considering the great number of proud, hot-headed, and turbulent nobility from Livonia, Courland, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, who came thither to study, and of whom there were more than five hundred. This brought the University into disrepute, and endeavours have been made to remedy the abuse. Men have acquired a greater extent of true knowledge, and have begun to perceive that a University ought to be a place of instruction, and not a field of battle; and that blood cannot be honourably shed, except in defence of life or country.

In November, 1742, the King sent his adjutant-general, Baron Lottum, who was related to my mother, to KÖnigsberg, with whom I dined at my grandfather’s. He conversed much with me, and, after putting various questions, purposely, to discover what my talents and inclinations were, he demanded, as if in joke, whether I had any inclination to go with him to Berlin, and serve my country, as my ancestors had ever done: adding that, in the army, I should find much better opportunities of sending challenges than at the University. Inflamed with the desire of distinguishing myself, I listened with rapture to the proposition, and in a few days we departed for Potzdam.

On the morrow after my arrival, I was presented to the King, as indeed I had before been in the year 1740, with the character of being, then, one of the most hopeful youths of the University. My reception was most flattering; the justness of my replies to the questions he asked, my height, figure, and confidence, pleased him; and I soon obtained permission to enter as a cadet in his body guards, with a promise of quick preferment.

The body guards formed, at this time, a model and school for the Prussian cavalry; they consisted of one single squadron of men selected from the whole army, and their uniform was the most splendid in all Europe. Two thousand rix-dollars were necessary to equip an officer: the cuirass was wholly plated with silver; and the horse, furniture, and accoutrements alone cost four hundred rix-dollars.

This squadron only contained six officers and a hundred and forty-four men; but there were always fifty or sixty supernumeraries, and as many horses, for the King incorporated all the most handsome men he found in the guards. The officers were the best taught of any the army contained; the King himself was their tutor, and he afterwards sent them to instruct the cavalry in the manoeuvres they had learnt. Their rise was rapid if they behaved well; but they were broken for the least fault, and punished by being sent to garrison regiments. It was likewise necessary they should be tolerably rich, as well as possess such talents as might be successfully employed, both at court and in the army.

There are no soldiers in the world who undergo so much as this body guard; and during the time I was in the service of Frederic, I often had not eight hours’ sleep in eight days. Exercise began at four in the morning, and experiments were made of all the alterations the King meant to introduce in his cavalry. Ditches of three, four, five, six feet, and still wider, were leaped, till that someone broke his neck; hedges, in like manner, were freed, and the horses ran careers, meeting each other full speed in a kind of lists of more than half a league in length. We had often, in these our exercises, several men and horses killed or wounded.

It happened more frequently than otherwise that the same experiments were repeated after dinner with fresh horses; and it was not uncommon, at Potzdam, to hear the alarm sounded twice in a night. The horses stood in the King’s stables; and whoever had not dressed, armed himself, saddled his horse, mounted, and appeared before the palace in eight minutes, was put under arrest for fourteen days.

Scarcely were the eyes closed before the trumpet again sounded, to accustom youth to vigilance. I lost, in one year, three horses, which had either broken their legs, in leaping ditches, or died of fatigue.

I cannot give a stronger picture of this service than by saying that the body guard lost more men and horses in one year’s peace than they did, during the following year, in two battles.

We had, at this time, three stations; our service, in the winter, was at Berlin, where we attended the opera, and all public festivals: in the spring we were exercised at Charlottenberg; and at Potzdam, or wherever the King went, during the summer. The six officers of the guard dined with the King, and, on gala days, with the Queen. It may be presumed there was not at that time on earth a better school to form an officer and a man of the world than was the court of Berlin.

I had scarcely been six weeks a cadet before the King took me aside, one day, after the parade, and having examined me near half an hour, on various subjects, commanded me to come and speak to him on the morrow.

His intention was to find whether the accounts that had been given him of my memory had not been exaggerated; and that he might be convinced, he first gave me the names of fifty soldiers to learn by rote, which I did in five minutes. He next repeated the subjects of two letters, which I immediately composed in French and Latin; the one I wrote, the other I dictated. He afterwards ordered me to trace, with promptitude, a landscape from nature, which I executed with equal success; and he then gave me a cornet’s commission in his body guards.

Each mark of bounty from the monarch increased an ardour already great, inspired me with gratitude, and the first of my wishes was to devote my whole life to the service of my King and country. He spoke to me as a Sovereign should speak, like a father, like one who knew well how to estimate the gifts bestowed on me by nature; and perceiving, or rather feeling, how much he might expect from me, became at once my instructor and my friend.

Thus did I remain a cadet only six weeks, and few Prussians can vaunt, under the reign of Frederic, of equal good fortune.

The King not only presented me with a commission, but equipped me splendidly for the service. Thus did I suddenly find myself a courtier, and an officer in the finest, bravest, and best disciplined corps in Europe. My good fortune seemed unlimited, when, in the month of August, 1743, the King selected me to go and instruct the Silesian cavalry in the new manoeuvres: an honour never before granted to a youth of eighteen.

I have already said we were garrisoned at Berlin during winter, where the officers’ table was at court: and, as my reputation had preceded me, no person whatever could be better received there, or live more pleasantly.

Frederic commanded me to visit the literati, whom he had invited to his court: Maupertuis, Jordan, La Mettrie, and Pollnitz, were all my acquaintance. My days were employed in the duties of an officer, and my nights in acquiring knowledge. Pollnitz was my guide, and the friend of my heart. My happiness was well worthy of being envied. In 1743, I was five feet eleven inches in height, and Nature had endowed me with every requisite to please. I lived, as I vainly imagined, without inciting enmity or malice, and my mind was wholly occupied by the desire of earning well-founded fame.

I had hitherto remained ignorant of love, and had been terrified from illicit commerce by beholding the dreadful objects of the hospital at Potzdam. During the winter of 1743, the nuptials of his Majesty’s sister were celebrated, who was married to the King of Sweden, where she is at present Queen Dowager, mother of the reigning Gustavus. I, as officer of my corps, had the honour to mount guard and escort her as far as Stettin. Here first did my heart feel a passion of which, in the course of my history, I shall have frequent occasion to speak. The object of my love was one whom I can only remember at present with reverence; and, as I write not romance, but facts, I shall here briefly say, ours were mutually the first-fruits of affection, and that to this hour I regret no misfortune, no misery, with which, from a stock so noble, my destiny was overshadowed.

Amid the tumult inseparable to occasions like these, on which it was my duty to maintain order, a thief had the address to steal my watch, and cut away part of the gold fringe which hung from the waistcoat of my uniform, and afterwards to escape unperceived. This accident brought on me the raillery of my comrades; and the lady alluded to thence took occasion to console me, by saying it should be her care that I should be no loser. Her words were accompanied by a look I could not misunderstand, and a few days after I thought myself the happiest of mortals. The name, however, of this high-born lady is a secret, which must descend with me to the grave; and, though my silence concerning this incident heaves a void in my life, and indeed throws obscurity over a part of it, which might else be clear, I would much rather incur this reproach than become ungrateful towards my best friend and benefactress. To her conversation, to her prudence, to the power by which she fixed my affections wholly on herself, am I indebted for the improvement and polishing of my bodily and mental qualities. She never despised, betrayed, or abandoned me, even in the deepest of my distress; and my children alone, on my death-bed, shall be taught the name of her to whom they owe the preservation of their father, and consequently their own existence.

I lived at this time perfectly happy at Berlin, and highly esteemed. The King took every opportunity to testify his approbation; my mistress supplied me with more money than I could expend; and I was presently the best equipped, and made the greatest figure, of any officer in the whole corps. The style in which I lived was remarked, for I had only received from my father’s heritage the estate of Great Scharlach; the rent of which was eight hundred dollars a year, which was far from sufficient to supply my then expenses. My amour, in the meantime, remained a secret from my best and most intimate friends. Twice was my absence from Potzdam and Charlottenberg discovered, and I was put under arrest; but the King seemed satisfied with the excuse I made, under the pretext of having been hunting, and smiled as he granted my pardon.

Never did the days of youth glide away with more apparent success and pleasure than during these my first years at Berlin. This good fortune was, alas, of short duration. Many are the incidents I might relate, but which I shall omit. My other adventures are sufficiently numerous, without mingling such as may any way seem foreign to the subject. In this gloomy history of my life, I wish to paint myself such as I am; and, by the recital of my sufferings, afford a memorable example to the world, and interest the heart of sensibility. I would also show how my fatal destiny has deprived my children of an immense fortune; and, though I want a hundred thousand men to enforce and ensure my rights, I will leave demonstration to my heirs that they are incontestable.