It was a cold, dreary autumnal morning. The Austrian army, according to Fredericks statement, amounted to sixty thousand men.86 But it was widely dispersed. Many of the cavalry were scouring the country in all directions, in foraging parties and as skirmishers. Large bodies had been sent by circuitous roads to occupy every avenue of retreat. The consolidated army, under Prince Charles, now advancing to the attack, amounted to thirty-six thousand men. Frederick had but twenty-six thousand.87
Voltaire, speaking of this conflict, says, It was the most inconceivable and complete rout and discomfiture of which history433 makes any mention. Thirty thousand French and twenty thousand imperial troops were there seen making a disgraceful and precipitate flight before five battalions and a few squadrons. The defeats of Agincourt, Cressy, and Poitiers were not so humiliating.110My blackguard daughter may receive the sacrament.
ONE:The next day M. Hartoff called at the residence of M. Kannegiesser, and informed him that the ministers, understanding that he designed to ask an audience to-morrow to remind them64 of the answer which he demanded, wished to say that such applications were not customary among sovereign princes; that they dared not treat farther in that affair with him; that, as soon as they received instructions from his Britannic majesty, they would communicate to him the result.Such was the Tobacco Parliament in its trivial aspects. But it had also its serious functions. Many questions were discussed there which stirred mens souls, and which roused the ambition or the wrath of the stern old king to the utmost pitch.
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ONE: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.
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quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta
sunt explicabo accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa
quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae.
THREE:On the 8th of June the English and Dutch ministers, not yet aware of the alliance into which Frederick had entered with France, presented the joint resolution of their two courts, exhorting Frederick to withdraw his army from Silesia. Lord Hyndford, who was somewhat annoyed by the apparent impolicy of the measure just at that time, solicited and obtained a private audience with the king, hoping by apologies and explanations to make the summons a little less unpalatable to his majesty. In the brief interview which ensued Lord Hyndford appealed to the magnanimity of the king, declaring that it would be generous and noble for him to accept moderate terms from Austria. The king angrily interrupted him, saying,See there; that is the way to mark out camps.192
FORE:
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FORE:548 Fredericks share, writes Mr. Carlyle, as an anciently Teutonic country, and as filling up the always dangerous gap between his Ost Prussen and him, has, under Prussian administration, proved much the most valuable of the three, and, next to Silesia, is Fredericks most important acquisition.
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FORE:Sire, affairs which I can not neglect, and, above all, the state of my health, oblige me to it.444 Good evening, gentlemen, good evening. Can you make room for me here, do you think?
FORE:Guarantee me the possession of Silesia, and pay me seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the expenses of this campaign, and I will withdraw my army.Monseigneur,I am bound to give your excellency some account of my journey to Aix la Chapelle. I could not leave Brussels until the second of this month. On the road I met a courier from the King of Prussia, coming to reiterate his masters orders on me. The king had me lodged in quarters near his own apartment. He passed, for two consecutive days, four hours at a time in my room, with all that goodness and familiarity which form, as you know, part of his character, and which does not lower the kings dignity, because one is duly careful not to abuse it. I had abundant time to speak with a great deal of freedom on what your excellency had prescribed to me, and the king spoke to me with an equal frankness.
155 He then gave her a thousand crowns. Wilhelmina manifested a little natural reluctance in receiving the money. But he shrugged his shoulders and said,The Saxons were compelled to a precipitate retreat. Their march was long, harassing, and full of suffering, from the severe cold of those latitudes, and from the assaults of the fierce Pandours, every where swarming around. Villages were burned, and maddened men wreaked direful vengeance on each other. Scarcely eight thousand of their number, a frostbitten, starving, emaciate band, reached the borders of Saxony. Curses loud and deep were heaped upon the name of Frederick. His Polish majesty, though naturally good-natured, was greatly exasperated in view of the conduct of the Prussian king in forcing the troops into the severities of such a campaign. Frederick himself was also equally indignant with Augustus for his want of co-operation. The French minister, Valori, met him on his return from these disasters. He says that his look was ferocious and dark; that his laugh was bitter and sardonic; that a vein of suppressed rage, mockery, and contempt pervaded every word he uttered.It will be remembered that, in the note which M. Valori accidentally dropped, and which Frederick furtively obtained, the minister was instructed by the French court not to give up Glatz to the Prussian king if he could possibly avoid it. But Frederick had now seized the city, and the region around, by force300 of arms, and held them with a gripe not to be relaxed. Glatz was a Catholic town. In the convent there was an image of the Virgin, whose tawdry robes had become threadbare and faded. The wife of the Austrian commandant had promised the Virgin a new dress if she would keep the Prussians out of the city. Frederick heard of this. As he took possession of the city, with grim humor he assured the Virgin that she should not lose in consequence of the favor she had shown the Prussians. New and costly garments were immediately provided for her at the expense of the Prussian king.From of old, life has been infinitely contemptible to him. In death, I think, he has neither fear nor hope. Atheism, truly, he never could abide: to him, as to all of us, it was flatly inconceivable that intellect, moral emotion, could have been put into him by an Entity that had none of its own. But there, pretty much, his Theism seems to have stopped. Instinctively; too, he believed, no man more firmly, that Right alone has ultimately any strength in this world: ultimately, yes; but for him and his poor brief interests, what good was it? Hope for himself in divine Justice, in divine Providence, I think he had not practically any: that the unfathomable Demiurgus should concern himself with such a set of paltry, ill-given animalcules as ones self and mankind570 are, this also, as we have often noticed, is in the main incredible to him.