The queen remained firm in her determination that Wilhelmina should marry the Prince of Wales. The king was equally inflexible in his resolve that she should not marry the Prince of Wales. The queen occasionally had interviews with Wilhelmina, when they wept together over their disappointments and trials. The spirited young princess had no special predilections for the English prince, but she was firm in her resolve not to have a repugnant husband forced upon her. On the night of the 27th of January, 1731, as the queen was about to leave Berlin for Potsdam, she said to her daughter,In the midst of these preparations for a new campaign against a veteran army of two hundred and eighty thousand enemies, Frederick yet found sufficient leisure for peaceable occupations. He consecrated some hours every day to reading, to music, and to the conversation of men of letters.164You have reason to curse your mother, for it is she who causes your being an ill-governed fellow. I had a preceptor, continued he, who was an honest man. I remember always a story which he told me in his youth. There was a man at Carthage who had been condemned to die for many crimes he had committed. While they were leading him to execution he desired he might speak to his mother. They brought his mother. He came near, as if to whisper something to her, and bit away a piece of her ear. I treat you thus, said he, to make you an example to all parents who take no heed to bring up their children in the practice of virtue. Make the application, continued he, always addressing my brother; and, getting no answer57 from him, he again set to abusing us till he could speak no longer.
ONE:Frederick was now in imminent danger of being assailed by a coalition of Austria, Russia, Poland, and England. Indeed, it was by no means certain that France might not also join the alliance. All this was the result of Fredericks great crime in wresting Silesia from Austria. Such was the posture of affairs when, in the summer of 1755, Frederick decided to take a trip into Holland incognito. He disguised himself with a black wig, and assumed the character of a musician of the King of Poland. At Amsterdam he embarked for Utrecht in the common passage-boat. The king mingled with the other passengers without any one suspecting his rank. There chanced to be in the boat a young Swiss gentleman, Henry de Catt, twenty-seven years of age. He was a teacher, taking a short tour for recreation. He gives the following account of his interview with the king, whom, at the time, he had no reason to suppose was other than an ordinary passenger. We give the narrative in his own words:The prince was withdrawn, and placed in a room where two sentries watched over him with fixed bayonets. The king malignantly assumed that the prince, being a colonel in the army and attempting to escape, was a deserter, whose merited doom was death. General Mosel urged the king not to see his son again, as his presence was sure to inflame his anger to so alarming a pitch. The father did not again see him for a year and three days.
TWO: The French have seized upon Friesland, and are about to pass the Weser. They have instigated the Swedes to declare war against me. The Swedes are sending seventeen thousand men into Pomerania. The Russians are besieging Memel. General Schwald has them on his front and in his rear. The troops of the empire are also about to march. All this will force me to evacuate Bohemia so soon as that crowd of enemies gets into motion.Though Frederick the First had reared and originally furnished this Berlin palace, yet the masses of solid silver wrought into its ornamentation were mainly the work of Frederick William. Conscious that his influence in Europe depended not only upon the power of his army, but also upon the fullness of his treasury, he had been striving, through all his reign, to accumulate coin. But the money, barreled up and stored away in the vaults of his palace, was of no service while thus lying idle. Banking institutions seem not then to have been in vogue in his realms. But the silver, wrought into chandeliers, mirror-frames, and music balconies, added to the imposing splendor of his court, gave him the reputation of great wealth, and could, at any time when necessary, be melted down and coined. The wealth thus hoarded by the father afterward saved the son from ruin, when involved in wars which exhausted his treasury.
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ONE:What would become of us without philosophy, without this reasonable contempt of things frivolous, transient, and fugitive, about which the greedy and ambitious make such a pother, fancying them to be solid! This is to become wise by stripes, you will tell me. Well, if one do become wise, what matters it how? I read a great deal. I devour my books, and that brings me useful alleviation. But for my books, I think hypochondria would have had me in Bedlam before now. In fine, dear marquis, we live in troublous times and in desperate situations. I have all the properties of a stage heroalways in danger, always on the point of perishing. One must hope that the conclusion will come, and if the end of the piece be lucky, we will forget the rest.169The king was accustomed to pass his leisure moments in playing with them, and the room where he sat was strewed with leather balls with which they amused themselves. As they were all much indulged, though there was always one especial favorite, they used to tear the damask covers of the chairs in the kings apartment, and gnaw and otherwise injure the furniture. This he permitted without rebuke, and used only to say,
TWO:
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ONE:Lafayette, Lord Cornwallis, and the Duke of York were his565 guests at the dinner-table that day. The king suffered from his exposure, was very feverish, and at an early hour went to bed. The next day he completed his review; and the next day wentround by Neisse, inspection not to be omitted there, though it doubles the distanceto Brieg, a drive of eighty miles, inspection work included.196
TWO:Thus ended in clouds, darkness, and woe the third campaign of the Seven Years War. The winter was employed by both parties in preparing for a renewal of the struggle. As the spring opened the allies had in the field such a military array as Europe had never seen before. Three hundred thousand men extended in a cordon of posts from the Giant Mountains, near the borders of Silesia, to the ocean. In the north, also, Russia had accumulated her vast armies for vigorous co-operation with the southern troops. All the leading Continental powersFrance, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and the states of the German Empirewere combined against Prussia. England alone was the inefficient ally of Frederick. Small sums of money were loaned him from the British cabinet; and the court of St. James, hostile in heart to the Prussian king, co-operated with him only so far as was deemed essential for the promotion of British interests.
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TWO:The crowd heard what he said. With bursts of laughter they tore the caricature in pieces, scattered it to the winds, and greeted the king, as he rode away, with enthusiastic shouts of Our Fritz forever.
FORE:Prince Charles was en route for Berlina winters march of a hundred and fifty miles. He was not aware that the King of Prussia was near him, or that the king was conscious of his bold design. On Saturday night, November 20, the army of Prince Charles, forty thousand strong, on its line of march, suspecting no foe near, was encamped in villages, extending for twenty miles along the banks of the Queiss, one of the tributaries of the Oder. Four marches would bring them into Brandenburg. It was the design of Frederick to fall with his whole force upon the centre of this line, cut it in two, and then to annihilate the extremities. Early in the morning of Sunday, the 21st, Frederick put his troops in motion. He marched rapidly all that day, and Monday, and Tuesday. In the twilight of Tuesday evening, a dense fog enveloping the landscape, Frederick, with his concentrated force, fell impetuously upon a division of the Austrian army encamped in the village of Hennersdorf.The kings brother Henry was in command in Saxony, at the head of thirty thousand troops. Frederick wrote to him the characteristic and very judicious advice, Do as energetically as possible whatever seems wisest to you. But hold no councils of war.
FORE:Frederick, having regained Silesia, was anxious for peace. He wrote a polite letter to Maria Theresa, adroitly worded, so as to signify that desire without directly expressing it. The empress queen, disheartened by the disasters of Rossbach and Leuthen, was rather inclined to listen to such suggestions; but the Duchess448 of Pompadour verified the adage that hell has no fury like a woman scorned. She governed the wretched Louis XV., and through him governed France. In her intense personal exasperation against Frederick she would heed no terms of compromise, and infused new energy into all warlike operations. Large subsidies were paid by France to Austria, Sweden, and Russia, to prepare for the campaign of 1758.
FORE:He informed Wilhelmina that the question of her marriage with the Prince of Wales was now settled forever, and that, as she declined taking the Duke of Weissenfels for a husband, she might prepare to retire to the abbey of Hereford, a kind of Protestant nunnery for ladies of quality, who, for any reason, wished to be buried from the world. He mercilessly resolved to make her the abbess of this institution. This living burial was almost the last situation to suit the taste of Wilhelmina. The king was in the worst possible humor. He bullies and outrages his poor Crown Prince almost worse than ever. There have been rattan showers hideous to think of, descending this very week (July, 1730) on the fine head and far into the high heart of a royal young man, who can not in the name of manhood endure, and must not in the name of sonhood resist, and vainly calls to all the gods to teach him what he shall do in this intolerable, inextricable state of affairs.11
FORE:General Neipperg cautiously advanced toward him, and encamped in the vicinity of Steinauthe same Steinau which but a few weeks before had been laid in ashes as the Prussian troops284 passed through it. The two armies were now separated from each other but by an interval of about five miles. The country was flat, and it was not probable that the contest which Frederick so eagerly sought could long be avoided.
FORE:It is not known that Frederick paid any attention to this appeal. Impoverished as his realms were, large sums of money were absolutely necessary for the conduct of a new campaign. The king levied a contribution upon Leipsic of nearly a million of dollars. The leading citizens said that in their extreme destitution it was impossible to raise that sum. The king threatened to burn down the city over their heads. The combustibles were gathered. The soldiers stood with the torches in their hands to kindle the conflagration. But then the king, apparently reflecting that from the smouldering ashes of the city he could glean no gold, ordered the city to be saved, but arrested a hundred of the chief merchants and threw them into prison.The czarina had, about that time, invited Prince Henry, the warlike brother of Frederick, to visit her. They had met as children when the czarina was daughter of the commandant at Stettin. Henry was received with an extraordinary display of imperial magnificence. In the midst of this routine of feasting, balls, and masquerades, Catharine one day said to Henry, with much pique, referring to these encroachments on the part of Maria Theresa,
FORE:MAP OF THE LEUTHEN CAMPAIGN.Soon after, the king returned to Berlin and summoned his daughter to his presence. He received her very graciously. The queen, however, remained quite unreconciled, and was loud in the expression of her anger: I am disgraced, vanquished, and my enemies are triumphant! she exclaimed. Her chagrin was so great that she fell quite sick. To a few words of sympathy which her child uttered, she replied, Why do you pretend to weep? It is you who have killed me.
FORE: a a. Prussian Camp at Schilda. b b b. Austrian Army. c c c. Rear-guard, under Lacy. d. Prussian Detachment, under Ziethen. e. Fredericks Division beginning the Attack. f. Hülsens Infantry. g. Holsteins Cavalry.
FORE:At the bridges Frederick found but three thousand men of his late army. The huts around were filled with the wounded and the dying, presenting an aspect of misery which, in these hours of terrible defeat, appalled his majesty. In one of these huts, surrounded by mutilated bodies, groans, and death, Frederick wrote the following dispatch to his minister (Finckenstein) at Berlin. It was dated Oetscher, August 12, 1759:
TWO:Fritz had now attained eighteen years of age, and Wilhelmina twenty-one. Fritz was very fond of music, particularly of his flute, upon which he played exquisitely, being, however, careful never to sound its notes within hearing of his father. A celebrated music-master from Dresden, by the name of Quantz, was his teacher. He came occasionally from Dresden and spent a week or two at Potsdam, secretly teaching the young prince.67 The mother of Fritz was in warm sympathy with her son, and aided him in all ways in her power in this gratification. Still it was a very hazardous measure. The fierce old king was quite uncertain in his movements. He might at any hour appear at Potsdam, and no one could tell to what lengths, in case of a discovery, he might go in the intensity of his rage. Fritz had an intimate friend in the army, a young man of about his own age, one Lieutenant Katte, who, when Fritz was with his music-teacher, was stationed on the look-out, that he might give instant warning in case there were any indications of the kings approach. His mother also was prepared, when Quantz was at Potsdam, promptly to dispatch a messenger to her son in case she suspected his father of being about to turn his steps in that direction.Yes, the Crown Prince replied; and I promise you that she will drive away your demon as well as mine.
TWO:Frederick so concentrated his forces as, ere long, to have about fifty thousand troops with him at Breslau. Weary weeks of marchings and fightings, blood and woe, passed on. Painful508 blows were struck upon both sides, but nothing decisive was accomplished. In the midst of these harassments, perils, and toils, the king wrote to DArgens, on the 18th of September, from Reisendorf:
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TWO:He passed through Hirschberg on the 18th of August. A concourse of many thousands had been waiting for him several hours. Outriders came at last; then he himself, the unique; and, with the liveliest expression of reverence and love, all eyes were directed on one point. I can not describe to you my feelings, which, of course, were those of every body, to see him, the aged king; in his weak hand the hat; in those grand eyes such a fatherly benignity of look over the vast crowd that encircled his carriage, and rolled tide-like, accompanying it. Looking round, I saw in various eyes a tear trembling.
TWO:And what does the court of Cüstrin do? It orders the mill to be sold, that the nobleman may have his rent! Go you, sir, addressing the grand chancellor, about your business, this instant. Your successor is appointed; with you I have nothing more to do. The other three were assailed in the same way, but still more vehemently, as the kings wrath flamed higher and higher. Out of my sight, he exclaimed at last; I will make an example of you which shall be remembered.
TWO:The reader will bear in mind that the camp at G?ttin, menacing Hanover, was acting in co-operation with Fredericks ally, France, and that forty thousand men had been sent from France to the aid of those Prussian troops. Frederick now, entering into secret treaty with the enemy, while still feigning to be true to his ally, was perfidiously withdrawing his troops so as to leave the French unsupported. His treachery went even farther than this. In the presence of Lord Hyndford, the representative of England, he informed the Austrian general minutely how he could, to the greatest advantage, attack the French.
On the 26th of June this vast train commenced its movement from Troppau. A convoy of about seven thousand infantry and eleven hundred cavalry guarded the wagons. They were in three bodies, on the front, in the centre, and on the rear. The king also sent forward about six thousand horse and foot from Olmütz to meet the train.CHAPTER XVII. THE CAMPAIGN OF MORAVIA.In July of this year the Crown Prince took another journey with his father through extensive portions of the Prussian territory. The following extract from one of his letters to Voltaire reflects pleasing light upon the heart of Frederick, and upon the administrative ability of his father:
TWO:And what does the court of Cüstrin do? It orders the mill to be sold, that the nobleman may have his rent! Go you, sir, addressing the grand chancellor, about your business, this instant. Your successor is appointed; with you I have nothing more to do. The other three were assailed in the same way, but still more vehemently, as the kings wrath flamed higher and higher. Out of my sight, he exclaimed at last; I will make an example of you which shall be remembered.
