I was born at Konigsberg in Prussia, February 16, 1726, of one of the most ancient families of the country. My father, who was lord of Great Scharlach, Schakulack, and Meichen, and major-general of cavalry, died in 1740, after receiving eighteen wounds in the Prussian service. My mother was daughter of the president of the high court at Konigsberg. After my father's death she married Count Lostange, lieutenant-colonel in the Kiow regiment of cuirassiers, with whom she went and resided at Breslau. I had two brothers and a sister; my youngest brother was taken by my mother into Silesia; the other was a cornet in this last-named regiment of Kiow; and my sister was married to the only son of the aged General Valdow.
My ancestors are famous in the Chronicles of the North, among the ancient Teutonic knights, who conquered Courland, Prussia, and Livonia.
By temperament I was choleric, and addicted to pleasure and dissipation; my tutors found this last defect most difficult to overcome; happily, they were aided by a love of knowledge inherent in me, an emulative spirit, and a thirst for fame, which disposition it was my father's care to cherish. A too great consciousness of innate worth gave me a too great degree of pride, but the endeavours of my instructor to inspire humility were not all lost; and habitual reading, well-timed praise, and the pleasures flowing from science, made the labours of study at length my recreation.
My memory became remarkable; I am well read in the Scriptures, the classics, and ancient history; was acquainted with geography; could draw; learnt fencing, riding, and other necessary exercises.
My religion was Lutheran; but morality was taught me by my father, and by the worthy man to whose care he committed the forming of my heart, whose memory I shall ever hold in veneration. While a boy, Iwas enterprising in all the tricks of boys, and exercised my wit in crafty excuses; the warmth of my passions gave a satiric, biting cast to my writings, whence it has been imagined, by those who knew but little of me, I was a dangerous man; though, I am conscious, this was a false judgment.
A soldier himself, my father would have all his sons the same; thus, when we quarrelled, we terminated our disputes with wooden sabres, and, brandishing these, contested by blows for victory, while our father sat laughing, pleased at our valour and address. This practice, and the praises he bestowed, encouraged a disposition which ought to have been counteracted.
Accustomed to obtain the prize, and be the hero of scholastic contentions, I acquired the bad habit of disputation, and of imagining myself a sage when little more than a boy. I became stubborn in argument.; hasty to correct others, instead of patiently attentive: and, by presumption, continually liable to incite enmity. Gentle to my inferiors, but impatient of contradiction, and proud of resisting power, I may hence date, the origin of all my evils.
How might a man, imbued with the heroic principles of liberty, hope for advancement and happiness, under the despotic and iron Government of Frederic? I was taught neither to know nor to avoid, but to despise the whip of slavery. Had I learnt hypocrisy, craft, and meanness, I had long since become field-marshal, had been in possession of my Hungarian estates, and had not passed the best years of my life in the dungeons of Magdeburg. I was addicted to no vice: I laboured in the cause of science, honour, and virtue; kept no vicious company; was never in the whole of my life intoxicated;was no gamester, no consumer of time in idleness nor brutal pleasures; but devoted many hundred laborious nights to studies that might make me useful to my country; yet was I punished with a severity too cruel even for the most worthless, or most villanous.
I mean, in my narrative, to make candour and veracity my guides, and not to conceal my failings; I wish my work may remain a moral lesson to the world. Yet it is an innate satisfaction that I am conscious of never having acted with dishonour, even to the last act of this distressful tragedy.
I shall say little of the first years of my life, except that my father took especial care of my education, and sent me, at the age of thirteen, to the University of Konigsberg, where, under the tuition of Kowalewsky, my progress was rapid. There were fourteen other noblemen in the same house, and under the same master.
In the year following, 1740, I quarrelled with one young Wallenrodt, a fellow-student, much stronger than myself, and who, despising my weakness, thought proper to give me a blow. I demanded satisfaction. He came not to the appointed place, but treated my demand with contempt; and I, forgetting all further respect, procured a second, and attacked him in open day. We fought, and Ihad the fortune to wound him twice; the first time in the arm, the second in the hand.
This affair incited inquiry:- Doctor Kowalewsky, our tutor, laid complaints before the University, and I was condemned to three hours' confinement; but my grandfather and guardian, President Derschau, was so pleased with my courage, that he took me from this house and placed me under Professor Christiani.
Here I first began to enjoy full liberty, and from this worthy man Ilearnt all I know of experimental philosophy and science. He loved me as his own son, and continued instructing me till midnight.
Under his auspices, in 1742, I maintained, with great success, two public theses, although I was then but sixteen; an effort and an honour till then unknown.
Three days after my last public exordium, a contemptible fellow sought a quarrel with me, and obliged me to draw in my own defence, whom, on this occasion, I wounded in the groin.
This success inflated my valour, and from that time I began to assume the air and appearance of a Hector.
Scarcely had a fortnight elapsed before I had another with a lieutenant of the garrison, whom I had insulted, who received two wounds in the contest.
