FORE: My Cousin,Knowing all the assaults made by you upon my indisputable rights over my free barony of Herstal, and how the seditious ringleaders there, for several years past, have been countenanced by you in their detestable acts of disobedience against me, I have commanded my privy counselor, Rambonet, to repair to your presence, and in my name to require from you, within two days, a distinct and categorical answer to this question:
England furnished him with a subsidy of about four million dollars. He immediately melted this coin, gold and silver, and adulterated it with about half copper, thus converting his four476 millions into nominally eight millions. But a few weeks of such operations as he was engaged in would swallow up all this. The merciless conscription, grasping nearly every able-bodied man, destroyed nearly all the arts of industry. The Prussian realms, thus impoverished by wars ravages and taxation, could furnish the king with very meagre supplies. When the king invaded any portion of the territory of the allies, he wrenched from the beggared people every piece of money which violence or terror could extort. Wealthy merchants were thrown into prison, and fed upon bread and water until they yielded. The most terrible severities were practiced to extort contributions from towns which had been stripped and stripped again. Still violence could wrench but little from the skinny hand of beggary. These provinces, swept by wars surges year after year, were in the most deplorable state of destitution and misery.Think you there is any pleasure in living this dogs life, in seeing and causing the butchery of people you know nothing of, in losing daily those you do know and love, in seeing perpetually your reputation exposed to the caprices of chance, passing year after year in disquietudes and apprehensions, in risking without end your life and your fortune?At length Frederick, weary of these unavailing efforts, dashed off in rapid march toward the River Neisse, and with his vanguard, on the 11th of September, crossed the river at the little town of Woitz, a few miles above the city. The river was speedily spanned with his pontoon bridges. As the whole army hurried forward to effect the passage, Frederick, to his surprise, found the Austrian army directly before him, occupying a position from which it could not be forced, and where it could not be turned. For two days Frederick very earnestly surveyed the region, and then, recrossing the river and gathering in his pontoons, passed rapidly down the stream on the left or northern bank, and, after a brief encampment of a few days, crossed the river fifteen miles below the city. He then threw his army into the rear of Neippergs, so as to cut off his communications and his daily convoys of food. He thus got possession again of Oppeln, of the strong castle of Friedland, and of the country generally between the Oder and the Neisse rivers.
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