FORE: ��Monsieur, there is nothing I wish so much as to possess all your writings. Pray do communicate them to me without reserve. If there be among your manuscripts any that you wish to conceal from the eyes of the public, I engage to keep them in profoundest secrecy.��To form an idea,�� he writes, ��of the general subversion, and how great were the desolation and discouragement, you must represent to yourself countries entirely ravaged, the very traces of the old habitations hardly discoverable. Of the towns some were ruined from top to bottom; others half destroyed by fire. Of thirteen thousand houses the very vestiges were gone. There was no field in seed, no grain for the food of the inhabitants. Sixty thousand horses were needed if there were to be plowing carried on. In the provinces generally there were half a million population less than in 1756; that is to say, upon four millions and a half the ninth man was wanting. Noble and peasant had been pillaged, ransomed, foraged, eaten out by so many different armies; nothing now left them but life and miserable rags.

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FORE:a a. Prussian Army about to cross the Mützel. b b b. Russian Army ranked for Battle. c. Russian Baggage. d d. Prussian Infantry. e e. Prussian Cavalry. f. Prussian Baggage.The Prussians remained at Lobositz nearly a fortnight, to see if Marshal Browne would again attempt to force the defiles. The Saxon troops, for whose relief the Austrians were advancing, were about thirty miles farther north, on the south, or left408 bank of the Elbe. The news of the repulse of Marshal Browne at Lobositz fell disastrously upon their starving ranks. Maria Theresa was much distressed. She sent a messenger to her Austrian general to relieve the Saxons at whatever cost. A confidential messenger was dispatched through the mountains to the Saxon camp, which he reached in safety. He informed his Polish majesty that Marshal Browne, with a picked force of eight thousand, horse and foot, would march by a circuitous route of sixty miles, so as to approach Pirna from the northeast, where but a small Prussian force was stationed. He would be there without fail on the 11th of August.

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FORE:In May the King of Poland returned the visit of Frederick William. He came with a numerous retinue and in great splendor. During the past year his unhappy wife had died; and he, then fifty-five years of age, was seeking to bargain for the hand of Wilhelmina, hoping, by an alliance with Prussia, to promote53 some of his political schemes. The wicked old Polish king was much broken by age and his ��terrible debaucheries.�� He had recently suffered the amputation of two toes from an ulcerated foot, which no medical skill could cure. He was brought into the palace at Berlin in a sedan, covered with red velvet embroidered with gold. Wilhelmina had no suspicion of the object of his visit, and was somewhat surprised by the intensity of his gaze and his glowing compliments. Diplomatic obstacles arose which silenced the question of the marriage before Wilhelmina knew that it had been contemplated.At Frankfort-on-the-Main the party were to take boats to descend the river. The prince was informed that the king had given express orders that he should not be permitted to enter the town, but that he should be conducted immediately to one of the royal yachts. Here the king received an intercepted letter from the Crown Prince to Lieutenant Katte. Boiling with indignation, he stalked on board the yacht, and assailed his captive son in the coarsest and most violent language of abuse. In the frenzy of his passion he seized Fritz by the collar, shook him, hustled him about, tore out handfuls of hair, and thrust his cane into his face, causing the blood to gush from his nose. ��Never before,�� exclaimed the unhappy prince, pathetically, ��did a Brandenburg face suffer the like of this.��

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