Under cover of these festivities important political matters were discussed. The question of the partition of Poland arose, and arrangements were made for another interview. Soon after this, Frederick sent to Catharine a sketch of a plan for partitioning several provinces in PolandRussia, Prussia, and Austria each taking a share. To which Petersburg, intoxicated with its own outlooks on Turkey, paid not the least attention.179 The second interview, of five days, commenced on the 3d of September, 1770, at Neustadt, near Austerlitz, which has since become so famous.
When you sent me, inclosed in your letter, those verses for our Marcus Aurelius of the North, I fully intended to pay my court to him with them. He was at that time to have come to Brussels incognito. But the quartan fever, which unhappily he still has, deranged all his projects. He has sent me a courier to Brussels, and so I set out to find him in the neighborhood of Cleves.Whole provinces had been laid waste. Even in those which had not been thus destroyed, internal commerce and industry were almost at an end. A great part of Pomerania and Brandenburg was changed into a desert. There were provinces where hardly any men were to be found, and where the women were therefore obliged to guide the plow. In others women were as much wanting as men. The most fertile plains of Germany, on the banks of the Oder and the Wesel, presented only the arid and sterile appearance of a desert. An officer has stated that he had passed through seven villages without meeting a single person excepting a curate.174
ONE:Guarantees! exclaimed the king, scornfully. Who minds or keeps guarantees in this age? Has not France guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction? Has not England? Why do you not all fly to the queens succor?
Saturday night was very dark. A thick mist mantled the landscape. About midnight, the Russians, feigning an artillery attack upon a portion of the Prussian lines, commenced a retreat. Groping their way through the woods south of Zorndorf, they reached the great road to Landsberg, and retreated so rapidly that Frederick could annoy them but little.Your effrontery astonishes me. What you have done is clear as the day; and yet, instead of confessing your culpability, you persist in denying it. Do you think you can make people believe that black is white? All shall be made public. Then it will be seen whether, if your words deserve statues, your conduct does not deserve chains.I find no fault with you; the blame is entirely my own in having appointed you to such a post.