Page:Life and surprising adventures of Frederick Baron Trenck.pdf/4

 at the university. I accepted this proposal without hesitation; and a few days after we set off Potzdam.

I was presented to the King, to whom I known since the year 1740, as one of the  scholars in the university. He was much with the pertinence of my answers; my for I was tall: and my manly assurance. I permission to enter into the Life  in quality of Cadet, with promises of speedy.

The Life Guards were at that time, the and school of all the Prussian Cavalry. They only of one squadron of men chosen  the whole army. Their uniform was the brilliant in Europe; the dress and  of an officer costing two thousand crowns. cuirass, which was covered with silver, its and the horse's furniture, amounted  to seven hundred.

This squadron consisted only of six officers, an hundred and forty-four men; but we had  ways fifty or sixty supernumeraries, and as  spare horses; for the King took all the  men he met with into his Guards. The were the best in the army. The King them himself, and afterwards employed them  drill the rest of the Cavalry.

The duty of no other soldier in the world hard, as was that of a Life Guard man; at  time I was in this service, I had not eight  rest in eight days. The exercise used to four o'clock in the morning; when we  the new evolutions the King was desirous ; we leaped ditches, three, four,  and six feet wide, and even more, till some  or other broke his neck. Sometimes, in a