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