public-spirited man, eagerly bent upon improving the condition of
Suabian husbandry. In 1775, having become known as an expert in
arboriculture, he was placed in charge of the ducal forests and
nurseries at Castle Solitude, and there he spent the remainder of his
days in peaceful and congenial activity. He died in 1796.

For the impressionable Fritz one can hardly imagine a more momentous
change of environment than this which took him from a quiet rural
village to the garish Residenz of a licentious and extravagant prince.
Karl Eugen,[4] Duke of Wuerttemberg, whom men have often called the
curse, but the gods haply regard as the good genius, of Schiller's
youth, came to power in 1744 at the age of sixteen. The three preceding
years he had spent at the Prussian court, where Frederick the Second
(not yet the Great) had taken a deep interest in him and tried to teach
him serious views of a ruler's responsibility. But the youth had no
stomach for the doctrine that he was in the world for the sake of
Wuerttemberg. Having come to his ducal throne prematurely, through the
influence of the King of Prussia, he began well, but after a few years
shook off the restraints of good advice and entered upon a course of
autocratic folly that made Wuerttemberg a far-shining example of the
evils of absolutism under the Old Regime. Early in his reign he married
a beautiful and high-minded princess of Bayreuth, but his profligacy
soon drove her back to the home of her parents. Then a succession of
mistresses ruled his affections, while reckless adventurers in high
place enjoyed his confidence and fleeced the people at pleasure. To
gratify his passion for military display he began to raise unnecessary
troops and to hire them out as mercenaries. In 1752 he agreed with the
King of France, in consideration of a fixed annual subsidy, to supply
six thousand soldiers on demand. The money thus obtained was mostly
squandered upon his private vices and extravagances. On the outbreak of