first signal: the manner he himself pointed out. At Potsdam, which the
king had reserved for himself, and which our troops were interdicted
from entering, his orders were, that the French officers should
frequently show themselves, in order to observe, and to accustom the
people to the sight of them. He recommended every degree of respect to
be shown, both to the king and his subjects; but at the same time he
required that every sort of arms should be taken from the latter, which
might be of use to them in an insurrection; and he pointed out every
thing of the kind, even to the smallest weapon. Anticipating the
possibility of the loss of a battle, and the chances of Prussian
_vespers_, he ordered that his troops should be either put into barracks
or encampments, with a thousand other precautions of the minutest
description. As a final security, in case of the English making a
descent between the Elbe and the Vistula, although Victor, and
subsequently Augereau, were to occupy Prussia with 50,000 men, he
engaged by treaty the assistance of 10,000 Danes.

All these precautions were still insufficient to remove his distrust;
when the Prince of Hatzfeld came to require of him a subsidy of 25
millions of francs to meet the expenses of the war which was preparing,
his reply to Daru was, "that he would take especial care not to furnish
an enemy with arms against himself." In this manner did Frederick,
entangled as it were in a net of iron, which surrounded and held him
tight in every part, put between 20 and 30,000 of his troops, and his
principal fortresses and magazines, at the disposal of Napoleon[2].

[Footnote 2: By this treaty, Prussia agreed to furnish two hundred
thousand quintals of rye, twenty-four thousand of rice, two million
bottles of beer, four hundred thousand quintals of wheat, six hundred
and fifty thousand of straw, three hundred and fifty thousand of hay,