Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 95

Böttgher 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, Böttgher 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, Böttgher 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. He was buried _at night_—as if he had been a dog—in the Johannis Cemetery of Meissen. Such was the treatment and such the unhappy end, of one of Saxony’s greatest benefactors.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 95 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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