I know right well the value of tranquillity, the sweets of society, the charms of life. I love to be happy as much as any one whatever. But, much as I desire these blessings, I will not purchase them by baseness and infamies. Philosophy enjoins us to do our duty faithfully, to serve our country at the price of our blood, of our repose, and of every sacrifice which can be required of us.130The public affairs in France, writes Voltaire, continued in as bad a state after the death of Cardinal De Fleury as during the last two years of his administration. The house of Austria rose again from its ashes. France was cruelly pressed upon by that power and by England. No other resource remained to us but the chance of regaining the King of Prussia, who, having drawn us into the war, had abandoned us as soon as it was convenient to himself so to do. It was thought advisable, under these circumstances, that I should be sent to that monarch to sound his intentions, and, if possible, persuade him to avert the storm which, after it had first fallen on us, would be sure, sooner or later, to fall from Vienna upon him. We also wished to secure from him the loan of a hundred thousand men, with the assurance that he could thus better secure to himself Silesia.
THREE:Let the parsons who make for themselves a cruel and barbarous God be eternally damned, as they desire and deserve; and let those parsons who conceive God gentle and merciful enjoy the plenitude of his mercy.As the prince was anxious to come up with his majesty again, and knew not where he would meet him, we had to be very swift in the business. We found the king, with Anhalt and Winterfeld, by-and-by, sitting in a village in front of a barn, eating a cold pie there which the Marquis of Anhalt chanced to180 have with him. His majesty, owing to what he had seen on the parade-ground, was in the utmost ill-humor. Next day, Saturday, he went a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, and arrived in Berlin at ten oclock at night, not expected there till the morrow, so that his rooms were locked, her majesty being over in Monbijou giving her children a ball.
Alas! your majesty, the man replied, we are so few, and the Austrians are so many, that defeat is certain.564 The sure fact, and the forever memorable, is that on Wednesday, the third day of it, from four in the morning, when the man?uvres began, till well after ten oclock, when they ended, there was rain like Noahs; rain falling as from buckets and water-spouts; and that Frederick, so intent upon his business, paid not the slightest regard to it, but rode about, intensely inspecting, in lynx-eyed watchfulness of every thing, as if no rain had been there. Was not at the pains even to put on his cloak. Six hours of such down-pour; and a weakly old man of seventy-three past! Of course he was wetted to the bone. On returning to head-quarters, his boots were found full of water; when pulled off, it came pouring from them like a pair of pails.195From the schedule which Frederick has given of his resources, it seems impossible that he could have raised more than about fifteen million dollars annually, even counting his adulterated coin at the full value. How, with this sum, he could have successfully confronted all combined Europe, is a mystery which has never yet been solved. It was the great object of both parties in this terrible conflict to destroy every thing in the enemys country which could by any possibility add to military power. All the claims of humanity were ignored. The starvation of hundreds of thousands of peasantsmen, women, and childrenwas a matter not to be taken into consideration. The French minister, in Paris, wrote to Marshal De Contades on the 5th of October, 1758,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:I have hardly strength enough to trace these lines. My state is altogether worthy of pity. It is not through any menaces, however violent they may have been, that I have yielded my consent to the kings wishes. An interest still more dear to me has determined me to this sacrifice. I have been till now the innocent cause of all the unhappiness which your majesty has endured. My too sensible heart has been penetrated by the touching details you have latterly made of them.Frederick, who was then in the zenith of his admiration for Voltaire, describes as follows, in a letter to his friend M. Jordan, his impressions of the interview:CHAPTER XXI. BATTLES AND VICTORIES.
