He was ready to
spend money and grant favours; but liberty he would not give. He
regarded Bottgher as his slave. In this position, the persecuted
man kept on working for some time, till, at the end of a year or
two, he grew negligent. Disgusted with the world and with himself,
he took to drinking. Such is the force of example, that it no
sooner became known that Bottgher had betaken himself to this vice,
than the greater number of the workmen at the Meissen factory
became drunkards too. Quarrels and fightings without end were the
consequence, so that the troops were frequently called upon to
interfere and keep peace among the "Porzellanern," as they were
nicknamed. After a while, the whole of them, more than three
hundred, were shut up in the Albrechtsburg, and treated as
prisoners of state.
Bottgher at last fell seriously ill, and in May, 1713, his
dissolution was hourly expected. The King, alarmed at losing so
valuable a slave, now gave him permission to take carriage exercise
under a guard; and, having somewhat recovered, he was allowed
occasionally to go to Dresden. In a letter written by the King in
April, 1714, Bottgher was promised his full liberty; but the offer
came too late. Broken in body and mind, alternately working and
drinking, though with occasional gleams of nobler intention, and
suffering under constant ill-health, the result of his enforced
confinement, Bottgher lingered on for a few years more, until death
freed him from his sufferings on the 13th March, 1719, in the
thirty-fifth year of his age.
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