Frederick therefore decided to march down the river twenty miles farther, to Lowen, where there was a good bridge. To favor the operation, Prince Leopold, with large divisions of the army and much of the baggage, was to cross the Neisse on pontoons at Michelau, a few miles above Lowen. Both passages were successfully accomplished, and the two columns effected a junction on the west side of the river on the 8th of April. The blockade of Brieg was abandoned, and its blockading force united with the general army. Voltaire and the Jew.Letter from Frederick to DArget.Letter to Wilhelmina.Caustic Letters to Voltaire.Partial Reconciliation.Fredericks brilliant Conversational Powers.His Neglect of his Wife.All Females excluded from his Court.Maupertuis and the Academy.Voltaires Malignity.Fredericks Anger.Correspondence between Voltaire and Maupertuis.Menaces of War.Catt and the King.
FORE:I am permitted, the embassador said, to offer your majesty the whole of Austrian Guelderland. It lies contiguous to your majestys possessions in the Rhine country. It will be a very important addition to those possessions. I am permitted to say the whole of Austrian Guelderland.
Frederick was accustomed to cover his deep designs of diplomacy322 by the promotion of the utmost gayety in his capital. Never did Berlin exhibit such spectacles of festivity and pleasure as during the winter of 1742 and 1743. There was a continued succession of operas, balls, ftes, and sleigh-parties. Fredericks two younger sisters were at that time brilliant ornaments of his court. They were both remarkably beautiful and vivacious. The Princess Louise Ulrique was in her twenty-third year. The following letter to Frederick from these two princesses will be keenly appreciated by many of our young lady readers whose expenses have exceeded their allowance. It shows very conclusively that there may be the same pecuniary annoyances in the palaces of kings as in more humble homes.In broken bands the Prussians retreated down by the way of Oetscher to the bridges at G?ritz, where they had crossed the Oder, and where their heavy baggage was stationed. Frederick was among the last to quit the fatal field. As a swarm of Cossacks approached the spot where he stood, a party of his friends charged them fiercely, cutting to the right and left, and held them for a moment at bay. One of Fredericks adjutants seized the bridle of his horse, and galloped off with the unresisting monarch.It is unquestionable that the mental discipline acquired by this elevated course, to which he consecrated so diligently his hours, prepared him for the wonderful career upon which he soon entered, and enabled him to act with efficiency which filled Europe with his renown.Though Prince Charles was nominally commander-in-chief of the Austrian forces, Marshal Traun, as we have mentioned, was its military head. He was, at that time, far Fredericks superior in the art of war. Frederick had sufficient intelligence and candor to recognize that superiority. When he heard of this adroit movement of his foes, he exclaimed, Old Traun understands his trade.278 That is your interpretation, said Frederick. But the French assert that it was an arrangement made in their favor.
