THREE:This was a very serious suggestion. None of these sovereigns professed to be influenced by any other considerations than their own interests. And it was manifest that Austria could easily outbid Prussia, if determined to purchase the French alliance. For a moment the king was silent, apparently somewhat perplexed. He then said,
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THREE:Frederick had seen many dark days before, but never one so dark as this. In the frenzy of his exertions to retrieve the lost battle, he cried out to his soldiers, his eyes being flooded with tears, Children, do not forsake me, your king, your father, in this pinch! The retreat became a flight. In endeavoring to cross the little stream called the Hen-Floss, there was such crowding and jamming at the bridges that the Prussians were compelled to leave one hundred and sixty-five guns of various calibre behind them. Had the Russians pursued with any vigor, scarcely a man of the Prussian army could have escaped. But General Soltikof stood in such fear of his opponent, who had often wrested victory out of defeat, that he attempted no pursuit.DArgens spent the winter with the king at Leipsic. He gives the following incident: One day I entered the kings apartment, and found him sitting on the floor with a platter of fried meat, from which he was feeding his dogs. He had a little rod, with which he kept order among them, and shoved the best bits to his favorites.
THREE:The latter part of May, Frederick, in his head-quarters at Frankenstein, learned that an Austrian army under Prince Charles, and a Saxon army under the Duke of Weissenfels, in columns, by strict count seventy-five thousand strong, had defiled through the passes of the Giant Mountains, and entered Silesia near Landshut. Day after day he ascended an eminence, and, with his glass, anxiously scanned the horizon, to detect signs of the approach of the foe. On Thursday morning, June 3, an immense cloud of dust in the distance indicated that the decisive hour was at hand.
THREE:558Augustus William, overwhelmed by his disgrace, and yet angered by the rebuke, coldly replied that he desired only that a court-martial should investigate the case and pronounce judgment. The king forbade that any intercourse whatever should take place between his own troops, soldiers, or officers, and those of his brother, who, he declared, had utterly degraded themselves by the loss of all courage and ambition. The prince sent to the king General Schultz to obtain the countersign for the army. Frederick refused to receive him, saying that he had no countersign to send to cowards. Augustus William then went himself to present his official report and a list of his troops. Frederick took the papers without saying a word, and then turned his back upon his brother. This cruel treatment fell with crushing force upon the unhappy prince. Conscious of military failure, disgraced in the eyes of his generals and soldiers, and abandoned by the king, his health and spirits alike failed him. The next morning he wrote a sad, respectfully reproachful letter to423 Frederick, stating that his health rendered it necessary for him to retire for a season from the army to recruit. The reply of the king, which was dated Bautzen, July 30, 1757, shows how desperate he, at that time, considered the state of his affairs. Hopeless of victory, he seems to have sought only death.