The French, advancing from the Rhine on the west, were sweeping all opposition before them. They had overrun Hanover, and compelled the Duke of Brunswick, brother of George II., to withdraw, with his Hanoverian troops, from the alliance with the King of Prussia. This was a terrible blow to Frederick. It left him entirely alone to encounter his swarming enemies.
It seems that the Crown Prince had an inquiring mind. He was interested in metaphysical speculations. He had adopted, perhaps, as some excuse for his conduct, the doctrine of predestination, that God hath foreordained whatsoever cometh to pass. The idea that there is a power, which Hume calls philosophical necessity, which Napoleon calls destiny, which Calvin calls predestination, by which all events are controlled, and that this necessity is not inconsistent with free agency, is a doctrine which ever has commanded the assent, and probably ever will, of many of the strongest thinkers in the world. Mais le ciel, qui de tout dispose,
FORE:Both father and son had become by this time fully satisfied that their tastes and characters were so different that it was not best for them to live near each other. The prince spent much of his time with his flute. He also engaged in quite a wide range of reading to occupy the listless hours. Works of the most elevated and instructive character especially interested him, such as history, biography, moral and intellectual philosophy, and polite literature in its higher branches of poetry and the drama. What mankind have done and been in this world, writes Carlyle, and what the wisest men, poetical or other, have thought about mankind and their world, this is what he evidently146 had the appetite forappetite insatiable, which lasted him to the very end of his days.
Accordingly, he made proposals to the Marquise of Schwedt that Wilhelmina should marry her son. The lady replied, in terms very creditable both to her head and her heart, Such a union, your majesty, would be in accordance with the supreme wish of my life. But how can I accept such happiness against the will of the princess herself? This I can positively never do. Here she remained firm. The raging king returned to the bedside of his wife, as rough and determined as ever. He declared that the question was now settled that Wilhelmina was to marry the old Duke of Weissenfels.Of these three women who then held the destinies of Europe in their hands, one only, Maria Theresa, in the estimation of the public, had good cause for war. Frederick was undeniably a highway robber, seeking to plunder her. She was heroically, nobly struggling in self-defense. The guilty Duchess of Pompadour, who, having the entire control of the infamous king, Louis XV., was virtually the Empress of France, stung by an insult from Frederick, did not hesitate to deluge Europe in blood, that she might take the vengeance of a woman scorned upon her foe. Catharine II., Empress of Russia, who in moral pollution rivaled the most profligate of kingswhom Carlyle satirizes as a kind of she Louis XIV.also stung by one of Fredericks witty and bitter epigrams, was mainly impelled by personal pique to push forth her armies into the bloody field.Twelve days after the battle of Liegnitz Frederick wrote as follows to his friend, the Marquis DArgens, who was at Berlin. The letter was dated Hermannsdorf, near Breslau, 27th of August, 1760:Then came another strain of verse. Thus the prose and the doggerel were interspersed through the long narrative. Though very truthful in character, it was a school-boy performancea very singular document indeed to be sent to the most brilliant genius of that age, by one who soon proved himself to be the ablest sovereign in Europe.My situation changes every moment. Sometimes I am in favor, sometimes in disgrace. My chief happiness consists in my being absent from him. I lead a quiet and tranquil life with my regiment at Ruppin. Study and music are my principal occupations. I have built me a house there, and laid out a garden where I can read and walk about.
