The British court was frantic with rage. Frederick had a strong army on the frontiers of Hanover. The first hostile gun fired would be the signal for the invasion of that province, and it would inevitably be wrested from the British crown. The lion roared, but did not venture to use either teeth or claws. England was promptly brought to terms. It was grandly done of Frederick. There was something truly sublime in the quiet, noiseless, apparently almost indifferent air with which Frederick accomplished his purpose.
The Russians, triumphantly advancing, entered Silesia, and reached Crossen, on the Oder, within a hundred miles of Fredericks encampment.37 There seems to have been but little which was attractive about this castle. It was surrounded by a moat, which Wilhelmina describes as a black, abominable ditch. Its pets were shrieking eagles, and two black bears ugly and vicious. Its interior accommodations were at the farthest possible remove from luxurious indulgence. It was a dreadfully crowded place, says Wilhelmina, where you are stuffed into garrets and have not room to turn.
FORE:The queen remained bitterly unreconciled to the marriage of Wilhelmina with any one but the Prince of Wales. Stung by the sense of defeat, she did every thing in her power, by all sorts of intrigues, to break off the engagement with the Prince of Baireuth. When she found her efforts entirely unavailing, she even went so far as to take her daughter aside and entreat her, since the ceremony must take place, to refuse, after the marriage, to receive the Prince of Baireuth as her husband, that the queen might endeavor to obtain a divorce.Frederick, having carefully scanned the Austrian lines for an instant or two, gave the signal, and all his batteries opened their thunders. Under cover of that storm of iron, several thousand of the cavalry, led by the veteran General Bredow, deployed from behind some eminences, and first at a gentle trot, and then upon the most impetuous run, with flashing sabres, hurled themselves upon the left wing of the Austrian lines. The ground was dry and sandy, and a prodigious cloud of dust enveloped them. For a moment the tornado, vital with human energies, swept on, apparently unobstructed. The first line of the Austrian horse was met, crushed, annihilated. But the second stood as the rock breasts the waves, horse against horse, rider against rider, sabre against sabre. Nothing met the eye but one vast eddying whirlpool of dust, as if writhing in volcanic energies, while here and there the flash of fire and the gleam of steel flickered madly through it.
Frederick had hardly reached Berlin ere he was astonished to learn, from dispatches from the Old Dessauer, that the Austrians, not content with driving him out of Bohemia, had actually invaded Silesia. Amazed, or affecting amazement, at such audacity, he sent reiterated and impatient orders to his veteran general to fall immediately upon the insolent foe and crush him.This volume is intended to give a clear and correct idea of the manof his public and private character, and of his career. It would be difficult to find, in the whole range of English literature, a theme more full of the elements of entertainment and instruction.Not long ago we mentioned the Prince of Prussias marriage with Elizabeth of Brunswick. The husband, young and dissolute, given up to a profligate life, from which his relatives could not correct him, was continually committing infidelities to his wife. The princess, who was in the flower of her beauty, felt outraged by such neglect of her charms. Her vivacity and the good opinion she had of herself brought her upon the thought of avenging her wrongs by retaliation. Speedily she gave into excesses scarcely inferior to those of her husband. Family quarrels broke out, and were soon publicly known. The antipathy which ensued took away all hope of succession. The brothers of the king, Henry and Ferdinand, avowed frankly that they would never consent to have, by some accidental birth, their rights of succession to the crown carried off. In the end, there was nothing for it but proceeding to a divorce.176 Regulated differently the thing.My dialogue with the king was very lively; but the king was in such suffering, and so straitened for breath, I was myself anxious to shorten it. That same evening I traveled on.While in health and prosperity, quaffing the wines of Frederick, he was an avowed infidel, and eagerly joined the ribald companions of the king in denouncing all religion as the fanaticism of weak minds. But in these hours of pain, of loneliness, and of approaching death he could find no consolation in the teachings of philosophy. He sent for two Christian ministers to visit497 him daily, and daily had the Bible read to him. It was a death-bed repentance. Bitterly he deplored a wasted life. Sincerely he seemed to embrace the doctrines of Christianity.143 He died, after a lingering sickness, far from home and friends, on the 27th of July, 1759.
