DESTROYING THE LETTERS.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.
ONE:DORIS RITTERS PUNISHMENT.Now thank God, one and all, With heart, with voice, with hands, Who wonders great hath done To us and to all lands.115
ONE:It was there that I saw one of the most amiable men in the world, who forms the charm of society, who would be every where sought after if he were not a king; a philosopher without austerity, full of sweetness, complaisance, and obliging waysnot remembering that he is king when he meets his friends; indeed, so completely forgetting it that he made me too almost forget it, and I needed an effort of memory to recollect that I here saw, sitting at the foot of my bed, a sovereign who had an army of a hundred thousand men.
THREE: My dearest Sister,I find no other consolation but in your precious letters. May Heaven108 reward so much virtue and such427 heroic sentiments! Since I wrote you last my misfortunes have but gone on accumulating. It seems as though destiny would discharge all its wrath and fury upon the poor country which I had to rule over. I have advanced this way to fall upon a corps of the allied army, which has run off and intrenched itself among hills, whither to follow, still more to attack them, all rules of war forbid. The moment I retire toward Saxony this whole swarm will be upon my heels. Happen what may, I am determined, at all risks, to fall upon whatever corps of the enemy approaches me nearest. I shall even bless Heaven for its mercy if it grant me the favor to die sword in hand.
THREE:Not long ago we mentioned the Prince of Prussias marriage with Elizabeth of Brunswick. The husband, young and dissolute, given up to a profligate life, from which his relatives could not correct him, was continually committing infidelities to his wife. The princess, who was in the flower of her beauty, felt outraged by such neglect of her charms. Her vivacity and the good opinion she had of herself brought her upon the thought of avenging her wrongs by retaliation. Speedily she gave into excesses scarcely inferior to those of her husband. Family quarrels broke out, and were soon publicly known. The antipathy which ensued took away all hope of succession. The brothers of the king, Henry and Ferdinand, avowed frankly that they would never consent to have, by some accidental birth, their rights of succession to the crown carried off. In the end, there was nothing for it but proceeding to a divorce.176
Deceptive Measures of Frederick.Plans for the Invasion of Silesia.Avowed Reasons for the Invasion.The Ball in Berlin.The March of the Army.Hardships and Successes.Letter to Voltaire.Capture of Glogau.Capture of Brieg.Bombardment of Neisse.The king respects his mother, the same writer adds. She is the only female to whom he pays any sort of attention. She is a good, fat woman, who moves about in her own way.Take it down, said the king, and hang it lower, that the people may not hurt their necks in looking at it.
