These were terrible tidings for Frederick. The news reached him at Gorlitz when on the rapid march toward Silesia. Prince Charles had between eighty and ninety thousand Austrian troops in the reconquered province. Frederick seemed to be marching to certain and utter destruction, as, with a feeble band of but about twenty thousand men, he pressed forward, declaring, I will attack them if they stand on the steeples of Breslau.
In the mean time the Austrians had turned in upon us a rivulet, and by midnight we found our horses in the water up to their bellies. We were really incapable of defending ourselves.
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem
accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa
quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta
sunt explicabo accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa
quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae.
ONE:The sun rose clear and cloudless over the plain, soon to be crimsoned with blood and darkened by the smoke of battle. The Prussians took position in accordance with very minute directions given to the young Prince Leopold by Frederick. It was manifest to the most unskilled observer that the storm of311 battle would rage over many miles, as the infantry charged to and fro; as squadrons of strongly-mounted cavalry swept the field; as bullets, balls, and shells were hurled in all directions from the potent enginery of war.The next morning, at an early hour, he again dashed off to the east, toward Glatz, a hundred miles distant, where a portion of the Prussian troops were in cantonments, under the young Prince Leopold. Within a week he had ridden over seven hundred miles, commencing his journey every morning as early as four oclock, and doing a vast amount of business by the way.
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem
accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa
quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta
sunt explicabo accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa
quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae.
ONE:466 General Keith, as he looked upon the long and compact lines of General Daun, and saw how apparently easy it would be for him, from his commanding position, to annihilate the Prussian army, said to the king, sadly,Voltaire seems to have formed a very different estimate of his329 own diplomatic abilities from those expressed by the King of Prussia. Voltaire writes:
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem
accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa
quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta
sunt explicabo accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa
quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae.
THREE:Frederick was in very weak health in these months; still considered by the gazetteers to be dying. But it appears he is not yet too weak for taking, on the instant necessary, a world-important resolution; and of being on the road with it, to this issue or to that, at full speed before the day closed. Desist, good neighbor, I beseech you. You must desist, and even you shall: this resolution was entirely his own, as were the equally prompt arrangements he contrived for executing it, should hard come to hard, and Austria prefer war to doing justice.191THE RETREAT OF THE AUSTRIANS.
FORE:
At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus
qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti
quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati
cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui officia
deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga.
FORE:A court-martial was convened to pronounce sentence upon the105 Crown Prince and his confederates. The court was appointed by the king, and consisted of three major generals, three colonels, three lieutenant colonels, three majors, three captains, and three belonging to the civil courts, called auditors. The court, thus composed of eighteen members, met on the 20th of October, 1730, in the little town of Copenick, a few miles from Berlin. Grumkow, well aware that these proceedings would attract the attention of every court in Europe, had persuaded the king to submit to the formality of a court-martial. Frederick.
At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus
qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti
quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati
cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui officia
deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga.
FORE:The winter was long, cold, and dreary. Fierce storms swept the fields, piling up the snow in enormous drifts. But for this cruel war, the Prussian, Russian, and Austrian peasants, who had been dragged into the armies to slaughter each other, might have been in their humble but pleasant homes, by the bright fireside, in the enjoyment of all comforts.
164 On the fourth day after the arrival of the Crown Prince at Baireuth, a courier came with a letter from the queen conjuring him to return immediately, as the king was growing worse and worse. Frederick immediately hastened to Potsdam, and on the 12th of October entered the sick-chamber of his father in the palace there. He seems to have thought nothing of his wife, who was at Berlin. We have no evidence that he wrote to her during his absence, or that he visited her upon his return. For four months the king remained a great sufferer in Potsdam, trembling between life and death. It was often with great difficulty that he could breathe. He was impatient and irritable in the extreme. As he was rolled about in his Bath chair, he would petulantly cry out, Air! air! as if his attendants were to blame for his shortness of breath. The distress from the dropsy was very great. If you roll the king a little fast, writes an attendant, you hear the water jumble in his body. The Crown Prince was deeply affected in view of the deplorable condition of his father, and wept convulsively. The stern old king was stern to the end. He said one day to Frederick, If you begin at the wrong end with things, and all go topsy-turvy after I am gone, I will laugh at you out of my grave.There was nothing left for his Prussian majesty but to abandon Silesia, and retire within his own original borders, defeated and humiliated, the object of the contempt and ridicule of Europe, or to press forward in the conflict, summoning to his aid all the energies of despair.