THREE:Still the order was given for the assault. The Prussians plunged into the dense ranks of their foes, regardless of being outnumbered nearly three to one. A terrible battle was fought. General Wedell was overpowered and beaten. He retreated across the Oder, having lost six thousand men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. The victorious Russians did not pursue him. They marched down the river to Frankfort, where they effected a junction with other troops, giving them an effective force of ninety-six thousand fighting men.
FORE:69 The king, writes Wilhelmina, almost caused my brother and myself to die of hunger. He always acted as carver, and served every body except us. When, by chance, there remained any thing in the dish, he spit in it, to prevent our eating of it. We lived entirely upon coffee, milk, and dried cherries, which ruined our health. I was nourished with insults and invectives, and was abused all day long, in every possible manner, and before every body. The kings anger went so far against my brother and myself that he drove us from him, forbidding us to appear in his presence except at meals.
THREE:On the 8th of September Fritz returned to Potsdam from this his first military expedition, with his regiment of giants. He was then seventeen years of age. His soldierly bearing had quite rejoiced the king, and he began to think that, after all, possibly something might be made of Fritz.We have now reached the summer of 1729. George II. was a weak-minded, though a proud, conceited man, who, as King of England, assumed airs of superiority which greatly annoyed his irascible and petulant brother-in-law, Frederick William. Flushed with his new dignity, he visited his hereditary domain of Hanover. The journey led him through a portion of the Prussian territory. Courtesy required that George II. should announce that intention to the Prussian king. Courtesy also required that, as the British monarch passed over Prussian soil, Frederick William should furnish him with free post-horses. I will furnish the post-horses, said Frederick William, if the king apprise me of his intention. If he do not, I shall do nothing about it. George did not write. In affected unconsciousness that there was any such person in the world as the Prussian king, he crossed the Prussian territory, paid for his own post-horses, and did not even condescend to give Frederick William any notice of his arrival in Hanover. The King of Prussia, who could not but be conscious of the vast inferiority of Prussia to England, stung to the quick by this contemptuous treatment, growled ferociously in the Tobacco Parliament.
FORE:Under these circumstances, it was evidently impossible for Frederick to retain Silesia unless he could again rally France and other powers to his aid. It was always easy to rouse France against England, its hereditary foe. Thus influenced, Frederick, early in the spring of 1744, entered into a new alliance with France and the Emperor Charles Albert against Maria Theresa. The two marriages which he had so adroitly consummated constrained330 Russia and Sweden to neutrality. While France, by the new treaty, was engaged to assail with the utmost energy, under the leadership of Louis XV. himself, the triumphant Austrian columns upon the Rhine, Frederick, at the head of one hundred thousand troops, was to drive the Austrians out of Bohemia, and reseat Charles Albert upon his hereditary throne. For this service Frederick was to receive from the Bohemian king three important principalities, with their central fortresses near upon the borders of Silesia.307 Elsewhere, Frederick, speaking of these two winter campaigns, says: Winter campaigns are bad, and should always be avoided, except in cases of necessity. The best army in the world is liable to be ruined by them. I myself have made more winter campaigns than any general of this age. But there were reasons. In 1740 there were hardly above two Austrian regiments in Silesia, at the death of the Emperor Charles VI. Being determined to assert my right to that duchy, I had to try it at once, in winter, and carry the war, if possible, to the banks of the Neisse. Had I waited till spring, we must have begun the war between Crossen and Glogau. What was now to be gained by one march would then have cost us three or four campaigns. A sufficient reason, this, for campaigning in winter. If I did not succeed in the winter campaigns of 1742, a campaign which I made to deliver Moravia, then overrun by Austrians, it was because the French acted like fools, and the Saxons like traitors.64
THREE:The betrothed princess, bewildered, wounded, heart-broken, returned with her parents to her home, there to await the consummation of her sacrifice by being married to a man who had never addressed to her a loving word, and who, in his heart, had resolved never to receive her as his wife. The Crown Prince, unfeeling and reckless, returned to his dissolute life in garrison at Ruppin. The queen continued an active correspondence with England, still hoping to break the engagement of her son with Elizabeth, and to secure for him the Princess Amelia.
FORE:The night was very dark and cold. A wintry wind swept the bleak, frozen fields. Still the routed Austrians pressed on. Still the tireless Prussians pursued. The Prussian soldiers were Protestants.445 Many of them were well instructed in religion. As they pressed on through the gloom, sweeping the road before them with artillery discharges, their voices simultaneously burst forth into a well-known Church hymn, a sort of Protestant Te Deum
