On the morning of the 17th of May Fredericks army was drawn out in battle array, facing south, near the village of Chotusitz, about fifteen miles west of Chrudim. Almost within cannon-shot of him, upon the same plain, near the village of Czaslau, facing north, was the army of Prince Charles. The field was like a rolling western prairie, with one or two sluggish streams running through it; and here and there marshes, which neither infantry nor cavalry could traverse. The accompanying map will give the reader an idea of the nature of the ground and the position of the hostile forces.
On the 7th of May, three days after the capture of Brieg, Lord Hyndford, the English embassador, arrived at the camp of Frederick, and obtained an audience with his majesty. It was eleven oclock in the forenoon. He gave his government a very minute narrative of the interview. The following particulars, gleaned from that narrative, will interest the reader. It will be remembered that Frederick cherished a strong antipathy against his uncle, George II. of England.The sage Maupertuis, for example, had climbed some tree, or place of impregnability, hoping to see the battle there. And he did see it much too clearly at last! In such a tide of charging and chasing on that Right Wing, and round all the field in the Prussian rear; in such wide bickering and boiling of Horse-currents, which fling out round all the Prussian rear-quarters such a spray of Austrian Hussars for one element, Maupertuis, I have no doubt, wishes much he were at home doing his sines and tangents. An Austrian Hussar party gets sight of him on his tree or other stand-point (Voltaire says elsewhere he was mounted on an ass, the malicious spirit!)too certain the Austrian Hussars got sight of him; his purse, gold watch, all he has of movable, is given frankly; all will not do. There are frills about the man, fine laces, cloth; a goodish yellow wig on him for one thing. Their Slavonic dialect, too fatally intelligible by the pantomime accompanying it, forces sage Maupertuis from his tree or stand-point; the big red face flurried into scarlet, I can fancy, or scarlet and ashy-white mixed; andLet us draw a veil over it. He is next seen shirtless, the once very haughty, blustery, and now much humiliated man; still conscious of supreme acumen, insight, and pure science; and, though an Austrian prisoner and a monster of rags, struggling to believe that he is a genius, and the Trismegistus of mankind. What a pickle!
Lord Hyndford, evidently embarrassed, for the facts were strongly against him, endeavored, in some additional remarks, to assume ignorance of any unfriendly action on the part of the British government. The king again, in a loud and angry tone, replied,
