Do you remember that rhyme about the noble Duke of York and his ten thousand men, marching up to the top of a hill and marching down again? More about that shortly. ☺
After a few years of riotous
living in England (following in his elder brother’s footsteps once again, much
to their father’s dismay) Frederick proposed to a girl he’d met during his
years on the continent, Frederica of Prussia, great-niece of Frederick the Great.
It wasn't a love match, and the fact that they had no children allowed them to
drift apart, but they always remained good and loyal friends and Frederick visited her
frequently at the country estate she preferred to live at, Oatlands, where she
was able to indulge her extreme fondness for dogs and other animals. Her
husband, in the meanwhile, continued his military career; though Frederick
tried, he ended up doing poorly not through incompetence but through bad luck
and unreliable allies (the “noble Duke of York” rhyme might have come about
from his participation in the disastrous Flanders Campaign against France in
1793-94.) A further campaign in 1799, a joint invasion of Holland with the Russians,
also ended badly.
A scandal in 1809 involving
the sale of officers’ commissions by the Duke's mistress Mary Ann Clark, supposedly with his tacit permission—a scandal that seems to have been constructed
by poor Fred’s political opponents—led to his resignation as C-in-C, though the
uncovering of the plot came to light soon after, and he was reinstated by his
brother, now the Prince Regent, in 1811. Fortunately, the rest of his life went on
quietly—he did his job, continued to amiably carouse and gamble away vast
amounts of money, and remained a fundamentally nice guy. To Prinny’s enormous
sadness his favorite brother died in 1827.
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