I am delighted, my dear Wilhelmina, that you are so submissive to the wishes of your father. The good God will bless you for it; and I will never abandon you. I will take care of you all my life, and will endeavor to prove to you that I am your very affectionate father.
An extraordinary Interview.Carlyles Sympathy.Trifling Demeanor of Frederick.Conspiracy in Breslau.Guile of Frederick.The successful Stratagem.Crossing the Neisse.The Co-operation of France.Anguish of Maria Theresa.Inflexible Will of Frederick.Duplicity of the King.The Surrender of Neisse. Battle of Hohenfriedberg.Religious Antagonism.Anecdote of the King.Retreat of the Austrians.Horrors of War.A slight Pleasantry.Sufferings of the Prussian Army.The Victory of Fontenoy.Fredericks Pecuniary Embarrassments.Executive Abilities of Maria Theresa.Inflexibility of the Austrian Queen.The Retreat to Silesia.The Surprise at Sohr.Military Genius of Frederick.Great Victory of Sohr.
FORE:In the ranks all of the army were equally entitled to distinction. Promotion was conferred upon merit, not upon the accident of birth. This principle, which was entirely ignored in the other European despotisms, probably contributed to the success of Fredericks armies. A Hanoverian count wrote to him, soliciting a high position in the army for his son, in favor of his exalted birth. Frederick dictated the following reply:It is not strange that Frederick, being destitute of religious principle, should have ever contemplated suicide as his last resort. On the 2d of November the king came in sight of the encampment of General Daun at Torgau, on the Elbe, some score of leagues north of Dresden. The king was at the head of forty-four thousand troops. Marshal Daun had eighty thousand, strongly intrenched upon heights west of the city, in the midst of a labyrinth of ponds, hills, ravines, and forests. We shall not attempt to enter into a detail of the battle. The following plan of the battle will give the military reader an idea of the disposal of the forces.
A miserable Bishop of Liege thought it a proud thing to insult the late king. Some subjects of Herstal, which belongs to Prussia, had revolted. The bishop gave them his protection. Colonel Kreutzen was sent to Liege to compose the thing by treaty, with credentials and full power. Imagine it; the bishop would not receive him! Three days, day after day, he saw this envoy apply at his palace, and always denied him entrance. These things had grown past endurance.His Polish majesty had placed his feeble band of troops in the vicinity of Pirna, on the Elbe, amidst the defiles of a mountainous country, where they could easily defend themselves against superior numbers. Winter was rapidly approaching. In those high latitudes and among those bleak hills the storms of winter ever raged with terrible severity. The Austrians were energetically accumulating their forces in Bohemia to act against the Prussians. The invasion of Saxony by Frederick, without any apparent provocation, roused all Europe to intensity of hatred and of action.Let the parsons who make for themselves a cruel and barbarous God be eternally damned, as they desire and deserve; and let those parsons who conceive God gentle and merciful enjoy the plenitude of his mercy.There were other abodes of the king, the Berlin and Potsdam palaces, which retained much of the splendor with which they had been embellished by the splendor-loving monarch, Frederick I. There were but few regal mansions in the world which then surpassed them. And though the king furnished his own apartments with Spartan simplicity and rudeness, there were other portions of these royal residences, as also their surroundings in general, which were magnificent in the highest degree. The health of little Fritz was rather frail, and at times he found it hard to devote himself to his sturdy tasks with the energy which his father required.
