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Rh night after the battle of Dettingen (June 16, 1743) the bandmaster of the Guards, as the father had then become, lay in a wet furrow, which sowed in him the seeds of an illness that never left him during the rest of his life. It spread a cloud of gloom over the family circle for nearly twenty years.

Isaac Herschel was a man of intelligence, qualified to talk on higher matters than flute-playing or band music. But he was not head of his own house. Like many foolish fathers, he allowed the eldest son to usurp his place, nor did he shield the younger children from the eldest's bullying. Apparently the mother, a woman of small intelligence, had also a favourite in her eldest daughter, Sophia, who lived away from home, and whom Caroline did not see till she came back to be married to Griesbach, a musician of commonplace ability in the Guards' band. Sophia was then about twenty-one, Caroline four or five. Caroline liked neither her sister nor her sister's husband. But the married daughter did not remain long away from the family she left. War broke out, one of the interminable wars of Frederick the Great, which drove her back to her father's house. There the impatience of her temper and her dislike of children drove Caroline from little warmth or affection within the house to cold and neglect outside. What neither father nor mother would have allowed in a well-regulated family, the child was forced to endure, with sullen and natural resentment. An elder brother and an elder sister considered the position of household drudge good enough for Caroline, without schooling, and even without sewing. While the father and sons showed unusual knowledge, and even developed somewhat of genius