FORE:The Battle of Rosbach raised the fame of Frederick wonderfully all over Europe. He soon roused himself, however, for fresh efforts. Whilst he had been thus engaged on the Saale, the Austrians had again overrun Silesia, defeating the Prussians under the Duke of Bevern, storming the great fortress of Schweidnitz, and making themselves masters of Breslau, the capital. In spite of his reduced numbers and the advancing winter, Frederick immediately directed his march towards Silesia, gathering reinforcements as he went, so that by the 5th of December, just one month from the Battle of Rosbach, he came up with Prince Charles of Lorraine and Marshal Daun at Lissa, a small village near Breslau, and with forty thousand men encountered and defeated nearly seventy thousand Austrians, killing and wounding twenty-seven thousand of them, taking above fifty standards, one hundred cannon, four thousand waggons, and much other spoil. This battle at once freed Silesia from the Austrians, who trooped over the mountains in all haste, and left the victorious king to close this unexampled campaign.The spring of 1720 was a period of remarkable national prosperity. But "the grand money schemes projected of late," which appeared to the Jacobite Atterbury and others calculated to cement the royal peace and strengthen the foundation[46] of the Government and nation, were destined to produce a very different effect. For the South Sea Bubble was about to burst. In 1711, Harley, being at his wits' end to maintain the public credit, established a fund to provide for the National Debt, which amounted to ten millions of pounds. To defray the interest he made permanent the duties on wine, vinegar, and tobacco, etc. To induce the purchase of the Government stock, he gave to the shareholders the exclusive privilege of trading to the Spanish settlements in South America, and procured them an Act of Parliament and a royal charter, under the name of the South Sea Company. The idea, hollow and groundless as it was, seized on the imagination of the most staid and experienced traders. All the dreams of boundless gold which haunted the heads of the followers of Drake and Raleigh were revived. The mania spread through the nation, and was industriously encouraged by the partisans of Harley. But this stupendous dream of wealth was based on the promises of Ministers, who at the Peace of Utrecht were to secure from the Government of Spain this right to trade to its colonies. The right was never granted by that haughty and jealous Power, further than for the settlement of some few factories, and the sending of one small ship annually of less than five hundred tons. This, and the Assiento, or privilege of supplying those colonies with African slaves, were the sole advantages obtained, and these were soon disturbed by the war with Spain, which broke out under Alberoni. The South Sea Company, however, from its general resources, remained a flourishing corporation, and was deemed the rival of the Bank of England.