The next morning the Prussian troops, led by their indomitable king, were early on the march, groping through the thick mist to find more of the foe. But the blow already given was decisive. The Austrian army was shattered, demoralized, ruined. The king could find nothing but broken tumbrils, abandoned wagons, and the dbris of an utterly routed army. Prince Charles, bewildered by the disaster, had wheeled his columns around, and fled through the passes of the mountains back to Bohemia. Five thousand of his troops he left behind in killed or prisoners.
When I am dead, he said, petulantly, you will see Berlin full of madmen and freethinkers, and the sort of people who walk about the streets.To the summons which Frederick sent to Maria Theresa, demanding the surrender of Silesia, no response could be returned, consistent with the dignity of the crown, but a peremptory refusal. The reply was unanswerable in its logic. Though it was, in general, couched in courteous terms, one sentence crept into it of rather scornful defiance.
TWO:The seventh campaign of the Seven Years War commenced on the 1st of July, 1762. Peter III. had sent an army of twenty thousand men to the support of Frederick. Aided by these troops, united with his own army, Frederick had emerged from532 his winter quarters, and was just about to attack the Austrian army, which was intrenched upon the heights of Burkersdorf, a little south of Schweidnitz, which fortress the Austrians then held. The evening before the contemplated attack the Russian General Czernichef entered the tent of Frederick with the following appalling tidings:
Frederick was, with great energy, gathering all his resources for a decisive conflict in his fortresses along the banks of the Neisse. By almost superhuman exertions he had collected an army there of about seventy thousand men. The united army of Austria and Saxony marching upon him amounted to one hundred thousand regulars, together with uncounted swarms of349 Pandours sweeping around him in all directions, interrupting his communications and cutting off his supplies.
荣誉榜
THREE: I hope to speak to you with open heart at Berlin. You may think, too, how I shall be embarrassed in having to act the lover without being it, and to feign a passion for mute ugliness; for I have not much faith in Count Seckendorfs taste in this article. Monsieur, once more get this princess to learn by heart the Ecole des Maris and the Ecole des Femmes. That will do her much more good than True Christianity by the late Arndt. If, beside, she would learn steadiness of humor, learn music, become rather too free than too virtuousah! then, my dear general, then I should feel some liking for her; and a Colin marrying a Phillis, the couple would be in accordance. But if she is stupid, naturally I renounce the devil and her.
THREE:The king smiled, and immediately entered very vigorously upon business. It was not possible, under these circumstances, for him deeply to mourn over the death of so tyrannical a father. Frederick was twenty-eight years of age. He is described as a handsome young man, five feet seven inches in stature, and of graceful presence. The funeral ceremonies of the deceased monarch were conducted essentially according to the programme already given. The body of the king mouldered to dust in the sepulchre of his fathers. His spirit returned to the God who gave it.
