The Herstal Affair.The Summons.Voltaires Manifesto.George II. visits Hanover.The Visit of Wilhelmina to Berlin.Unpopularity of the King.Death of the Emperor Charles VI.
The Queen of Prussia had recently given birth to another prince. She was on a bed of languor. The king was somewhat mollified, and was anxious to be relieved from these protracted difficulties. Colonel Hotham reached the palace of Charlottenburg on the 2d of April, 1730, and was graciously received by the king. The next day quite a splendid dinner was given in honor of the British envoy. All the notables who surrounded the table, the English and the Prussian, in accordance with the degrading custom of those times, drank deeply. Hotham, in his dispatch, without any apparent sense of shame, writes, We all got immoderately drunk.Our grand care, said he, will be to further the countrys well-being, and to make every one of our subjects contented and happy. If it ever chance that my particular interest and the190 general good of my country should seem to conflict, it is my wish that the latter should always be preferred.
FORE:The prince assumed to make a personal application of this. Herod meant the Crown Prince; Herodias, his boon companions; and John the Baptist was the chaplain. To punish the offender, the prince, with several brother officers, went at night, smashed the windows of the chaplain, and threw in a shower of fire-crackers upon him and his wife, who was in delicate health, driving them in dismay out into the stable-yard. The stern old king was very indignant at this conduct. Grumkow affirms, we hope falsely, that the prince threw the whole charge upon his associate officers, and that they were punished for the deed, while he escaped.I have seen it, was the reply; but it is only a scratch, which your majesty will soon heal again.
FORE:On Wednesday morning, December 15, the advance-guard of the Prussians saw before them the allied army, thirty-five thousand strong, occupying a very formidable position. Marshal Grüne and General Rutowski had advanced a few miles north from Dresden to meet the Prussians. Their troops were drawn up in battle array, extending from the River Elbe on the east, to the village of Kesselsdorf on the west. A small stream, with a craggy or broken gully or dell, extended along their whole front. The southern ridge, facing the advancing Prussians, bristled with artillery. Some of the pieces were of heavy calibre. Leopold had only light field-pieces.FREDERICK CROSSING THE ODER.
ONE:Mr. Guy Dickens may give to the prince the assurance of the deep compassion which the king feels in view of the sad condition in which the prince finds himself, and of the sincere desire of his majesty to aid, by all the means in his power, to extricate him. While waiting the result of some negotiations now on foot, his majesty is of the opinion that it would be best for the prince to defer for a time his present design; that the present critical state of affairs in Europe do not present a favorable opportunity for the execution of the contemplated plan; that the idea of retiring to France demands very careful deliberation; and that there is not time now to ascertain how such a step would be regarded by the French court, which his majesty would think to be essential before he advise a prince so dear to him to withdraw to that country.
TWO:You will have received a letter from me dated yesterday. This is the second I write to you from Berlin. I refer you to what was in the other. If it must be that Emilie accompany Apollo, I consent. But if I could see you alone, that is what I should prefer. I should be too much dazzled. I could not stand so much splendor all at once. It would overpower me. I should need the veil of Moses to temper the united radiance of your two divinities.
125 Grumkow then goes on to relate, quite in detail, that the king took up the subject of theology. He set forth the horrible results of that absolute decree notion which makes God the author of sin; and that Jesus Christ died only for some. The prince declared that he had thoroughly renounced that heresy. The king then added:The Austrians, on the careless and self-confident march toward Parchwitz, had crossed the Schweidnitz River, or Water, as it438 was called, when they learned that Frederick, with a tiger-like spring, had leaped upon Neumarkt, an important town fourteen miles from Parchwitz. Here the Austrians had a bakery, protected by a guard of a thousand men. Seven hundred of the guard were instantly sabred or taken prisoners. The rest fled wildly. Frederick gathered up eighty thousand hot bread rations, with which he feasted his hungry troops.The Queen of Hungary had purchased the co-operation of the Polish king by offering to surrender to him a generous portion of Silesia after the province should have been reconquered. Indeed, there was a great cause of apprehension that the allied army would make a rush upon Berlin itself. The aspect of his Prussian majestys affairs was now gloomy in the extreme.
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