History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 04 by Thomas Carlyle

This Siege of Stralsund, the last military scene of Charles XII., and the FIRST ever practically heard of by our little Fritz, who is now getting into his fourth year, and must have thought a great deal about it in his little head, -- Papa and even Mamma being absent on it, and such a marching and rumoring going on all round him, -- proved to be otherwise of some importance to little Fritz.

Most of his Tutors were picked up by the careful Papa in this Stralsund business. Duhan de Jandun, a young French gentleman, family-tutor to General Count Dohna (a cousin of our Minister Dohna's), but fonder of fighting than of teaching grammar; whom Friedrich Wilhelm found doing soldier's work in the trenches, and liked the ways of; he, as the foundation-stone of tutorage, is to be first mentioned. And then Count Fink von Finkenstein, a distinguished veteran, high in command (of whose qualities as Head-Tutor, or occasional travelling guardian Friedrich Wilhelm had experience in his own young days [_Biographisches Lexikon aaler Helden und Militairpersonen, welche sich in Preussischen Diensten berumht gemacht haben_ (4 vols. Berlin, 1788), i. 418, ? Finkenatein. -- A praiseworthy, modest, highly correct Book, of its kind; which we shall, in future, call _Militair-Lexikon,_ when referring to it.]); and Lieutenant-Colonel Kalkstein, a prisoner-of-war from the Swedish side, whom Friedrich Wilhelm, judging well of him, adopts into his own service with this view: these three come all from Stralsund Siege; and were of vital moment to our little Fritz in the subsequent time. Colonel Seckendorf, again, who had a command in the four thousand Saxons here, and refreshed into intimacy a transient old acquaintance with Friedrich Wilhelm, -- is not he too of terrible importance to Fritz and him? As we shall see in time! --