The Confessions of Frederick the Great Author:Frederick Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Confessions of Frederick the Great The spirit of these Confessions and the principles advocated by Frederick are very closely in line with the teachings ... more »of Treitschke and with the national policy championed by Bernhardi. MORNING THE FIRST ORIGIN OF OUR FAMILY IN the times of disorder and confusion, amidst barbarous nations, there was seen to spring up a new arrangement of sovereignties. The governors of different countries shook off the yoke of subjection, and soon became powerful enough to overawe their masters; they obtained privileges, or, to come nearer to the truth, it was with the form of one knee on the ground that they ran away with the substance. Among those daring ones, there were several who laid the foundations of the greatest monarchies; and perhaps, on a fair calculation, even all the emperors, kings, and foreign princes at this very time owe their respective states to them. As for us, we are, mostundoubtedly, in that case. I see you blush at this. I forgive you for once; but let me advise you never to play the child so again. Remember, once for all, that, in matter of kingdoms, he catches them that can; and that there is no wrong but in the case of being forced to return them. The first of our ancestors, who acquired some rights of sovereignty over the country of which he was governor, was Tassillon, of Hohenzollern. The thirteenth of his descendants was Burgrave of Nuremberg; the twenty-fifth of them was Elector of Brandenburg, and the thirty-seventh, King of Prussia. Our family, as well as all the others, has had its Achilles', its Ciceros, its Nestors, its drivellers and its drones, its mothers-in-law, and, without doubt, its women of gallantry. It has also often aggrandized itself by those kinds of right, which are only known to princes at on...« less