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ONE:As usual, Frederick wrote a poem upon the occasion. It was vulgar and profane. Carlyle says of it, ��The author, with a wild burst of spiritual enthusiasm, sings the charms of the rearward part of certain men. He rises to the height of anti-biblical profanity, quoting Moses on the Hill of Vision; sinks to the bottomless of human or ultra-human depravity, quoting King Nicomedes��s experience on C?sar, happily known only to the learned. A most cynical, profane affair; yet we must say, by way of parenthesis, one which gives no countenance to Voltaire��s atrocities of rumor about Frederick himself in the matter.��111

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ONE:The Emperor Charles VI. left no son. He therefore promulgated a new law of succession in a decree known throughout213 Europe as the ��Pragmatic Sanction.�� By the custom of the realm the sceptre could descend only to male heirs. But by this decree the king declared that the crown of the house of Hapsburg should be transmitted to his daughter, Maria Theresa. This law had been ratified by the estates of all the kingdoms and principalities which composed the Austrian monarchy. All the leading powers of Europe��England, France, Spain, Prussia, Russia, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Germanic body��had bound themselves by treaty to maintain the ��Pragmatic Sanction.�� It was a peaceable and wise arrangement, acceptable to the people of Austria and to the dynasties of Europe as a means of averting a war of succession, which might involve all the nations of the Continent in the conflict.

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ONE:��Be firm, my child. Trust in my management. Only swear to me, on your eternal salvation, that never, on any compulsion, will you marry another than the Prince of Wales. Give me that oath.��While affairs were in this posture, the English, eager to crush their hereditary rivals, the French, were very anxious to detach the Prussians from the French alliance. The only way to do360 this was to induce Maria Theresa to offer terms of peace such as Frederick would accept. They sent Sir Thomas Robinson to Sch?nbrunn to endeavor to accomplish this purpose. He had an interview with her Hungarian majesty on the 2d of August, 1745. The queen was very dignified and reticent. Silently she listened to the proposals of Sir Thomas. She then said, with firmness which left no room for further argument,

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ONE:It was on the 11th of November, 1741, that Frederick, elated with his conquest of Silesia, had returned to Berlin. In commencing the enterprise he had said, ��Ambition, interest, and the desire to make the world speak of me, vanquished all, and war was determined on.�� He had, indeed, succeeded in making the ��world speak�� of him. He had suddenly become the most prominent man in Europe. Some extolled his exploits. Some expressed amazement at his perfidy. Many, recognizing his sagacity296 and his tremendous energy, sought his alliance. Embassadors from the various courts of Europe crowded his capital. Fourteen sovereign princes, with many foreigners of the highest rank, were counted among the number. The king was in high spirits. While studiously maturing his plans for the future, he assumed the air of a thoughtless man of fashion, and dazzled the eyes and bewildered the minds of his guests with feasts and pageants.443 He did not order the exhausted troops to pursue the foe. Still, as he rode along the line after dark, he inquired,

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ONE:Early in November he came to Berlin, languid, crippled, and wretched. The death-chamber in the palace is attended with all the humiliations and sufferings which are encountered in the poor man��s hut. The king, through all his life, had indulged his irritable disposition, and now, imprisoned by infirmities and tortured with pain, his petulance and abuse became almost unendurable. Miserable himself, he made every one wretched around him. He was ever restless��now in his bed, now out of it, now in his wheel-chair, continually finding fault, and often dealing cruel blows to those who came within his reach. He was unwilling to be left for a moment alone. The old generals were gathered in his room, and sat around his bed talking and smoking. He could not sleep at night, and allowed his attendants no repose. Restlessly he tried to divert his mind by whittling, painting, and small carpentry. The Crown Prince dared not visit him too often, lest his solicitude should be interpreted into impatience for the king to die, that he might grasp the crown. In the grossest terms the king insulted his physicians, attributing all his sufferings to their wickedness or their ignorance. Fortunately the miserable old man was too weak to attempt to cane them. A celebrated physician, by the name of Hoffman, was sent for to prescribe for the king. He was a man of much intellectual distinction, and occupied an important position in the university. As his prescriptions failed to give relief to his majesty, he was assailed, like the rest, in the vilest language of vituperation. With great dignity Professor Hoffman replied:CHAPTER XXXIII. THE END OF THE SEVEN YEARS�� WAR.

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ONE:While on the retreat, one of his aids approached him, and the king, with a smile, said, ��Daun has played me a slippery trick to-day.��His withdrawal from the French alliance removed the menace from the English Hanoverian possession. George II. eagerly sent an army of sixty thousand men to the aid of Maria Theresa against France, and freely opened to her his purse. The French were defeated every where. They were driven from Prague in one of the most disastrous wintry retreats of blood and misery over which the demon of war ever gloated. The powerless, penniless emperor, the creature of France, who had neither purse nor army, was driven, a fugitive and a vagabond, from his petty realm of Bavaria, and was exposed to humiliation, want, and insult.