The king is more difficult than ever. He is content with nothing. He has no gratitude for whatever favors one can do him. As to his health, it is one day better, another worse; but the legs they are always swelled. Judge what my joy must be to get out of that turpitude; for the king will only stay a fortnight at most in camp.
To form an idea, he writes, of the general subversion, and how great were the desolation and discouragement, you must represent to yourself countries entirely ravaged, the very traces of the old habitations hardly discoverable. Of the towns some were ruined from top to bottom; others half destroyed by fire. Of thirteen thousand houses the very vestiges were gone. There was no field in seed, no grain for the food of the inhabitants. Sixty thousand horses were needed if there were to be plowing carried on. In the provinces generally there were half a million population less than in 1756; that is to say, upon four millions and a half the ninth man was wanting. Noble and peasant had been pillaged, ransomed, foraged, eaten out by so many different armies; nothing now left them but life and miserable rags.
ONE: The king is more difficult than ever. He is content with nothing. He has no gratitude for whatever favors one can do him. As to his health, it is one day better, another worse; but the legs they are always swelled. Judge what my joy must be to get out of that turpitude; for the king will only stay a fortnight at most in camp.While these scenes were transpiring the Crown Prince was habitually residing at Potsdam, a favorite royal residence about seventeen miles west from Berlin. Here he was rigidly attending to his duties in the giant regiment. We have now, in our narrative, reached the year 1727. Fritz is fifteen years of age. He is attracting attention by his vivacity, his ingenuous, agreeable manners, and his fondness for polite literature. He occasionally is summoned by his father to the Smoking Cabinet. But the delicacy of his physical organization is such that he loathes tobacco, and only pretends to smoke, with mock gravity puffing from his empty, white clay pipe. Neither has he any relish for the society which he meets there. Though faithful to the mechanical duties of the drill, they were very irksome to him. His books and his flute were his chief joy. Voltaire was just then rising to celebrity in France. His writings began to attract the attention of literary men throughout Europe. Fritz, in his youthful enthusiasm, was charmed by them. In the latter part of June, 1729, a courier brought the intelligence to Berlin that George I. had suddenly died of apoplexy. He was on a journey to Hanover when he was struck down on the road. Almost insensible, he was conveyed, on the full gallop, to Osnabrück, where his brother, who was a bishop, resided, and where medical aid could be obtained. But the shaft was fatal. At midnight his carriage reached Osnabrück. The old man, sixty-seven years of age, was heard to murmur, It is all over with me, and his spirit passed away to the judgment.
TWO:We can not afford the least narrative of G?rtz and his courses: imagination, from a few traits, will sufficiently conceive them. He had gone first to Karl Theodors minister: Dead to it, I fear; has already signed? Alas! yes. Upon which to Zweibrück, the heirs minister, whom his master had distinctly ordered to sign,554 but who, at his own peril, gallant man, delayed, remonstrated, had not yet done it; and was able to answer:The king, in utter exhaustion from hunger, sleeplessness, anxiety, and misery, for a moment lost all self-control. As with his little band of fugitives he vanished into the gloom of the night, not knowing where to go, he exclaimed, in the bitterness of his despair, O my God, my God, this is too much!
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ONE:The king was a very busy man. In addition to carrying on quite an extensive literary correspondence, he was vigorously engaged in writing his memoirs. He was also with great energy developing the wealth of his realms. In the exercise of absolute power, his government was entirely personal. He had no constitution to restrain him. Under his single control were concentrated all legislative, judicial, and executive powers. There was no senate or legislative corps to co-operate in framing laws. His ministers were merely servants to do his bidding. The courts had no powers whatever but such as he intrusted to them. He could at any time reverse their decrees, and flog the judges with his cane, or hang them.Never were the prospects of Frederick more gloomy. He had taken up his residence for the winter in a very humble cottage near the hamlet of Freiberg. He must have been very unhappy. Scenes of suffering were every where around him. It was terribly cold. His troops were poorly clothed, and fed, and housed.
TWO: You will quickly write me your mind on this. I have purchased the Von Katsch house. The field marshal, as governor of Berlin, will get that to live in. His government house I will have made new for you, and furnish it all, and give you enough to keep house yourself there.
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ONE:Compact as a wall, and with an incredible velocity, Seidlitz, in the blaze of rapid steel, is in upon them. From the first it was manifest that the destruction of the advance-guard was certain. The Prussian cavalry slashed through it again and again, throwing it into inextricable disorder. In less than half an hour this important portion of the allied troops was put to utter rout, tumbling off the ground, plunging down hill in full flight, across its own infantry, or whatever obstacle, Seidlitz on the hips of it, and galloping madly over the horizon.
TWO:Frederick deemed it of great importance to gain immediate possession of Glogau. It was bravely defended by the Austrian commander, Count Wallis, and there was hourly danger that an Austrian army might appear for its relief. Frederick, in the intensity of his anxiety, as he hurried from post to post, wrote from every stopping-place to young Leopold, whom he had left in command of the siege, urging him immediately to open the trenches, concentrate the fire of his batteries, and to carry the place by storm. I have clear intelligence, he wrote, that troops are actually on the way for the rescue of Glogau. Each note was more imperative than the succeeding one. On the 6th of March he wrote from Ohlau:Frederick so concentrated his forces as, ere long, to have about fifty thousand troops with him at Breslau. Weary weeks of marchings and fightings, blood and woe, passed on. Painful508 blows were struck upon both sides, but nothing decisive was accomplished. In the midst of these harassments, perils, and toils, the king wrote to DArgens, on the 18th of September, from Reisendorf:
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TWO:Notwithstanding the opposition, Parliament voted to continue the subsidy to Frederick of about three million four hundred thousand dollars (670,000). This sum was equal to twice or three times that amount at the present day.The next morning Frederick hastened to greet his sister. Wilhelmina was not pleased with his appearance. The cares of his new reign entirely engrossed his mind. The dignity of an absolute king did not sit gracefully upon him. Though ostentatiously demonstrative in his greeting, the delicate instincts of Wilhelmina taught her that her brothers caresses were heartless. He was just recovering from a fit of the ague, and looked emaciate and sallow. The court was in mourning. During those funereal days no festivities could be indulged in. The queen-mother was decorously melancholy; she seems to have been not only disappointed, but excessively chagrined, to find that she was excluded by her son from the slightest influence in public affairs. The distant, arrogant, and assuming airs of the young king soon rendered him unpopular.
FORE:It is evident that the king, thus surrounded with perils and threatened with utter destruction, was anxious for the termination of the war. But still this inflexible man would not listen to any suggestions for peace but on his own terms. He wrote to Voltaire, urging him to bring back peace. At the same time he said,
FORE:Soon after this, Colonel Hotham, having received a gross insult from the king, demanded his passports. The English embassador had presented the king with a document from his court. Frederick William angrily threw the paper upon the floor, exclaiming, I have had enough of those things! and, turning upon his heel, left the room. Colonel Hotham, a high-bred English gentleman, could not brook such an indignity, not only to himself, but to his sovereign. The passionate king had scarcely left the apartment before he perceived the impolicy of his conduct. He tried to make amends. But Colonel Hotham, justly regarding it as an insult to his court, persisted in demanding his passports, and returned to London. The Crown Prince in vain begged Colonel Hotham to remain. Very properly he replied that the incivility was addressed to his king, and that it was for him only to judge what satisfaction was due for the indignity offered.
FORE:But he interrupted me hastily with the word, Nothing more of kings, sirnothing more. What have we to do with them? We will spend the rest of our voyage on more agreeable and cheering objects. And now he spoke of the best of all possible worlds, and maintained that in our planet, earth, there was more evil than good. I maintained the contrary, and this discussion brought us to the end of the voyage.
FORE:Would your majesty, Lord Hyndford replied, engage to stand by his excellency Gotters original offer at Vienna on your part? That is, would you agree, in consideration of the surrender to you of Lower Silesia and Breslau, to assist the Queen of Austria, with all your troops, for the maintenance of the Pragmatic Sanction, and to vote for the Grand-duke Francis as emperor?
FORE:The king was doubtless informed of all that had occurred. They reached Manheim the next night. Keith was so terrified, fearing that his life would be the penalty, that he there threw himself upon his knees before the king, confessing all, and imploring pardon. The king, in tones of intense agitation, informed the vigilance trio that death would be their inevitable doom if they allowed the prince to escape. Thus far the prince had been nominally free. Those who occupied the carriage with himRochow, Waldau, and Buddenbrockhad assumed to be merely his traveling companions. Their office of guardship had been scrupulously concealed. But henceforth he was regarded and treated as a culprit in the custody of his jailers.
FORE:At half past three oclock on Friday morning, Frederick, with his whole army, was again upon the march. He swept quite around the eastern end of the Russian square, and approached it from the south. By this sagacious movement he could, in case of disaster, retreat to Cüstrin.It was the aim of Prince Charles to get between Fredericks encampment at Chrudim and his French allies, under Marshal Broglio, at Prague. When discovered by Frederick, the Austrian army was on the rapid march along a line about fifteen miles nearly southwest of Chrudim. It thus threatened to cut Fredericks communication with Prague, which was on the Moldau, about sixty miles west of the Prussian encampment. The310 forces now gathering for a decisive battle were nearly equal. The reader would not be interested in the description of the strategic and tactical movements of the next two days. The leaders of both parties, with great military sagacity, were accumulating and concentrating their forces for a conflict, which, under the circumstances, would doubtless prove ruinous to the one or the other. A battle upon that open plain, with equal forces, was of the nature of a duel, in which one or the other of the combatants must fall.
FORE:This merciless banter from her parents cut the unhappy princess to the heart. With the utmost difficulty she refrained from bursting into convulsive crying. Her husband seems to have been a kind man, inspired with true and tender affection for his wife. But much of the time he was necessarily absent on regimental duty. The old Marquis of Baireuth, her husbands father, was penurious, irascible, and an inebriate. Wilhelmina often suffered for the necessaries of life. There seemed to be no refuge for her. The home of her step-parents was unendurable, and the home of her childhood was still more so. Few and far between must have been the joys which visited her crushed heart.At half past three oclock on Friday morning, Frederick, with his whole army, was again upon the march. He swept quite around the eastern end of the Russian square, and approached it from the south. By this sagacious movement he could, in case of disaster, retreat to Cüstrin.
FORE:Early in June, the cautious but ever-vigilant General Daun succeeded in throwing into Olmütz a re-enforcement of eleven hundred Austrian troops. They were guided by peasants through by-paths in the forests. Crossing the river some miles below Olmütz, they entered the city from the east.
TWO:Wilhelmina and her husband soon left for Baireuth. Though the princess thus left the splendors of a royal palace for the far more quiet and humble state of a ducal mansion, still she was glad to escape from a home where she had experienced so many sorrows.
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TWO:413 The final and decisive struggle took place on and around two important eminences, called the Sterbohol Hill and the Homoly Hill. Both of these heights the Prussians stormed. In the following glowing words Carlyle pictures the scene:
TWO:I knew that the Duke De Choiseul would content himself with persuading the King of France that the King of Prussia was an irreconcilable enemy, whom it was therefore necessary, if possible, to annihilate.Frederick was silenced, humiliated. He returned to Berlin, having accomplished nothing, and having lost four days in his fruitless adventure. Leopold was left to accumulate his resources as rapidly as he could, and to attack the Austrians at his discretion.
TWO:In the suburbs of Glogau there was a Protestant church which Count Wallis deemed it a military necessity to order to be burned down, lest it should protect the Prussians in their attack. The Prussians, said Wallis, will make a block-house of it. The Protestants pleaded earnestly for a brief respite, and sent a delegation to Frederick to intercede for the safety of their church. The king very courteously, and with shrewd policy, replied,
His majesty commands me to inform your royal highness that he has cause to be greatly discontented with you; that you deserve to have a court-martial held over you, which would sentence you and all your generals to death; but that his majesty will not carry the matter so far, being unable to forget that in the chief general he has a brother.156 Thus Wilhelmina, upon reaching Berneck, according to appointment, did not find her brother there, and could hear nothing from him. The prince, upon his arrival at Hof, wrote as follows to his sisterOne day the father, returning home, found, to his inexpressible delight, little Fritz strutting about beating a drum, with Wilhelmina marching by his side. The king could scarcely restrain his joy. At last the military element was being developed in his child. He hastened with the tidings to his wife, whom he called30 by the pet name of Phiekina word apparently coined from Sophie. The matter was talked about all over the palace. A painter was sent for to transfer the scene to canvas. This picture, greatly admired, still hangs upon the walls of the Charlottenburg palace. Of this picture Carlyle writes: Fritz is still, if not in long-clothes, at least in longish and flowing clothes of the petticoat sort, which look as of dark blue velvet, very simple, pretty, and appropriate; in a cap of the same; has a short ravens feather in the cap, and looks up with a face and eyes full of beautiful vivacity and childs enthusiasm, one of the beautifulest little figures, while the little drum responds to his bits of drumsticks. Sister Wilhelmina, taller by some three years, looks on in pretty stooping attitude, and with a graver smile. Blackamoor and room-furniture elegant enough; and finally the figure of a grenadier on guard, seen far off through an open window, make up the background.Then addressing Grumkow, she said, in tones deliberate and76 intense, For you, sir, who are the author of my misfortunes, may my curse fall upon you and your house. You have this day killed me. But I doubt not that Heaven will hear my prayer and avenge my wrongs.
TWO:I knew that the Duke De Choiseul would content himself with persuading the King of France that the King of Prussia was an irreconcilable enemy, whom it was therefore necessary, if possible, to annihilate.Frederick was silenced, humiliated. He returned to Berlin, having accomplished nothing, and having lost four days in his fruitless adventure. Leopold was left to accumulate his resources as rapidly as he could, and to attack the Austrians at his discretion.
