still retained its influence, would be held sacred to Nemesis,--a day on
which the two greatest princes of modern times were taught, by a
terrible experience, that neither skill nor valor can fix the
inconstancy of fortune. The battle began before noon; and part of the
Prussian army maintained the contest till after the midsummer sun had
gone down. But at length the King found that his troops, having been
repeatedly driven back with frightful carnage, could no longer be led to
the charge. He was with difficulty persuaded to quit the field. The
officers of his personal staff were under the necessity of expostulating
with him, and one of them took the liberty to say, "Does your Majesty
mean to storm the batteries alone?" Thirteen thousand of his bravest
followers had perished. Nothing remained for him but to retreat in good
order, to raise the siege of Prague, and to hurry his army by different
routes out of Bohemia.
This stroke seemed to be final. Frederic's situation had at best been
such that only an uninterrupted run of good luck could save him, as it
seemed, from ruin. And now, almost in the outset of the contest, he had
met with a check which, even in a war between equal powers, would have
been felt as serious. He had owed much to the opinion which all Europe
entertained of his army. Since his accession, his soldiers had in many
successive battles been victorious over the Austrians. But the glory had
departed from his arms. All whom his malevolent sarcasms had wounded
made haste to avenge themselves by scoffing at the scoffer. His soldiers
had ceased to confide in his star. In every part of his camp his
dispositions were severely criticised. Even in his own family he had
detractors. His next brother, William, heir-presumptive, or rather, in
truth, heir-apparent to the throne, and great-grandfather of the present
king, could not refrain from lamenting his own fate and that of the
House of Hohenzollern, once so great and so prosperous, but now, by the
rash ambition of its chief, made a byword to all nations. These
complaints, and some blunders which William committed during the retreat
from Bohemia, called forth the bitter displeasure of the inexorable
King. The prince's heart was broken by the cutting reproaches of his
brother; he quitted the army, retired to a country seat, and in a short
time died of shame and vexation.
It seemed that the King's distress could hardly be increased. Yet at
this moment another blow not less terrible than that of Kolin fell upon
him. The French under Marshal D'Estrees had invaded Germany. The Duke of
Cumberland had given them battle at Hastembeck, and had been defeated.
In order to save the electorate of Hanover from entire subjugation, he
had made, at Closter Seven, an arrangement with the French generals,
which left them at liberty to turn their arms against the Prussian
dominions.
That nothing might be wanting to Frederic's distress, he lost his mother
just at this time; and he appears to have felt the loss more than was to
be expected from the hardness and severity of his character. In truth,
his misfortunes had now cut to the quick. The mocker, the tyrant, the
most rigorous, the most imperious, the most cynical of men, was very
unhappy. His face was so haggard and his form so thin, that when on his
return from Bohemia he passed through Leipsic, the people hardly knew
him again. His sleep was broken; the tears, in spite of himself, often
started into his eyes; and the grave began to present itself to his
agitated mind as the best refuge from misery and dishonor. His
resolution was fixed never to be taken alive, and never to make peace on
condition of descending from his place among the powers of Europe. He
saw nothing left for him except to die; and he deliberately chose his
mode of death. He always carried about with him a sure and speedy poison
in a small glass case; and to the few in whom he placed confidence he
made no mystery of his resolution.
But we should very imperfectly describe the state of Frederic's mind, if
we left out of view the laughable peculiarities which contrasted so
singularly with the gravity, energy, and harshness of his character. It
is difficult to say whether the tragic or the comic predominated in the
strange scene which was then acting. In the midst of all the great
King's calamities, his passion for writing indifferent poetry grew
stronger and stronger. Enemies all round him, despair in his heart,
pills of corrosive sublimate hidden in his clothes, he poured forth
hundreds upon hundreds of lines, hateful to gods and men, the insipid
dregs of Voltaire's Hippocrene, the faint echo of the lyre of Chaulieu.
It is amusing to compare what he did during the last months of 1757 with
what he wrote during the same time. It may be doubted whether any equal
portion of the life of Hannibal, of Caesar, or of Napoleon, will bear a
comparison with that short period, the most brilliant in the history of
Prussia and of Frederic. Yet at this very time the scanty leisure of the
illustrious warrior was employed in producing odes and epistles, a
little better than Cibber's, and a little worse than Hayley's. Here and
there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose makes its
appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron,
the plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other
frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her
waiting-woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to
mediocrity. We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of
human nature so striking, and so grotesque, as the character of this
haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates
and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of
poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other.
Frederic had some time before made advances towards a reconciliation
with Voltaire; and some civil letters had passed between them. After the
battle of Kolin their epistolary intercourse became, at least in
seeming, friendly and confidential. We do not know any collection of
letters which throws so much light on the darkest and most intricate
parts of human nature as the correspondence of these strange beings
after they had exchanged forgiveness. Both felt that the quarrel had
lowered them in the public estimation. They admired each other. They
stood in need of each other. The great King wished to be handed down to
posterity by the great Writer. The great Writer felt himself exalted by
the homage of the great King. Yet the wounds which they had inflicted on
each other were too deep to be effaced, or even perfectly healed. Not
only did the scars remain; the sore places often festered and bled
afresh. The letters consisted for the most part of compliments, thanks,
offers of service, assurances of attachment. But if anything brought
back to Frederic's recollection the cunning and mischievous pranks by
which Voltaire had provoked him, some expression of contempt and
displeasure broke forth in the midst of eulogy. It was much worse when
anything recalled to the mind of Voltaire the outrages which he and his
kinswoman had suffered at Frankfort. All at once his flowing panegyric
was turned into invective. "Remember how you behaved to me. For your
sake I have lost the favor of my native king. For your sake I am an
exile from my country. I loved you. I trusted myself to you. I had no
wish but to end my life in your service. And what was my reward?
Stripped of all that you had bestowed on me, the key, the order, the
pension, I was forced to fly from your territories. I was hunted as if I
had been a deserter from your grenadiers. I was arrested, insulted,
plundered. My niece was dragged through the mud of Frankfort by your
soldiers, as if she had been some wretched follower of your camp. You
have great talents. You have good qualities. But you have one odious
vice. You delight in the abasement of your fellow creatures. You have
brought disgrace on the name of philosopher. You have given some color
to the slanders of the bigots, who say that no confidence can be placed
in the justice or humanity of those who reject the Christian faith."
Then the King answers, with less heat but equal severity: "You know that
you behaved shamefully in Prussia. It was well for you that you had to
deal with a man so indulgent to the infirmities of genius as I am. You
richly deserved to see the inside of a dungeon. Your talents are not
more widely known than your faithlessness and your malevolence. The
grave itself is no asylum from your spite. Maupertuis is dead; but you
still go on calumniating and deriding him, as if you had not made him
miserable enough while he was living. Let us have no more of this. And,
above all, let me hear no more of your niece. I am sick to death of her
name. I can bear with your faults for the sake of your merits; but she
has not written Mahomet or Merope."
An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would necessarily put
an end to all amicable communication. But it was not so. After every
outbreak of ill humor this extraordinary pair became more loving than
before, and exchanged compliments and assurances of mutual regard with a
wonderful air of sincerity.
It may well be supposed that men who wrote thus to each other were not
very guarded in what they said of each other. The English ambassador,
Mitchell, who knew that the King of Prussia was constantly writing to
Voltaire with the greatest freedom on the most important subjects, was
amazed to hear his Majesty designate this highly favored correspondent
as a bad-hearted fellow, the greatest rascal on the face of the earth.
And the language which the poet held about the King was not much more
respectful.
It would probably have puzzled Voltaire himself to say what was his real
feeling towards Frederic. It was compounded of all sentiments, from
enmity to friendship, and from scorn to admiration; and the proportions
in which these elements were mixed changed every moment. The old
patriarch resembled the spoiled child who screams, stamps, cuffs,
laughs, kisses, and cuddles within one quarter of an hour. His
resentment was not extinguished; yet he was not without sympathy for his
old friend. As a Frenchman, he wished success to the arms, of his
country. As a philosopher, he was anxious for the stability of a throne
on which a philosopher sat. He longed both to save and to humble
Frederic. There was one way, and only one, in which all his conflicting
feelings could at once be gratified. If Frederic were preserved by the
interference of France, if it were known that for that interference he
was indebted to the mediation of Voltaire, this would indeed be
delicious revenge; this would indeed be to heap coals of fire on that
haughty head. Nor did the vain and restless poet think it impossible
that he might, from his hermitage near the Alps, dictate peace to
Europe. D'Estrees had quitted Hanover, and the command of the French
army had been entrusted to the Duke of Richelieu, a man whose chief
distinction was derived from his success in gallantry. Richelieu was in
truth the most eminent of that race of seducers by profession, who
furnished Crebillon the younger and La Clos with models for their
heroes. In his earlier days the royal house itself had not been secure
from his presumptuous love. He was believed to have carried his
conquests into the family of Orleans; and some suspected that he was not
unconcerned in the mysterious remorse which embittered the last hours of
the charming mother of Louis the Fifteenth. But the Duke was now sixty
years old. With a heart deeply corrupted by vice, a head long accustomed
to think only on trifles, an impaired constitution, an impaired fortune,
and, worst of all, a very red nose, he was entering on a dull,
frivolous, and unrespected old age. Without one qualification for
military command, except that personal courage which was common between
him and the whole nobility of France, he had been placed at the head of
the army of Hanover; and in that situation he did his best to repair, by
extortion and corruption, the injury which he had done to his property
by a life of dissolute profusion.
The Duke of Richelieu to the end of his life hated the philosophers as a
sect, not for those parts of their system which a good and wise man
would have condemned, but for their virtues, for their spirit of free
inquiry, and for their hatred of those social abuses of which he was
himself the personification. But he, like many of those who thought with
him, excepted Voltaire from the list of proscribed writers. He
frequently sent flattering letters to Ferney. He did the patriarch the
honor to borrow money of him, and even carried this condescending
friendship so far as to forget to pay the interest. Voltaire thought
that it might be in his power to bring the Duke and the King of Prussia
into communication with each other. He wrote earnestly to both; and he
so far succeeded that a correspondence between them was commenced.
But it was to very different means that Frederic was to owe his
deliverance. At the beginning of November, the net seemed to have closed
completely round him. The Russians were in the field, and were spreading
devastation through his eastern provinces. Silesia was overrun by the
Austrians. A great French army was advancing from the West under the
command of Marshal Soubise, a prince of the great Armorican House of
Rohan. Berlin itself had been taken and plundered by the Croatians. Such
was the situation from which Frederic extricated himself, with dazzling
glory, in the short space of thirty days.
He marched first against Soubise. On the fifth of November the armies
met at Rosbach. The French were two to one; but they were ill
disciplined, and their general was a dunce. The tactics of Frederic, and
the well-regulated valor of the Prussian troops, obtained a complete
victory. Seven thousand of the invaders were made prisoners. Their guns,
their colors, their baggage, fell into the hands of the conquerors.
Those who escaped fled as confusedly as a mob scattered by cavalry.
Victorious in the West, the King turned his arms towards Silesia. In
that quarter everything seemed to be lost. Breslau had fallen; and
Charles of Lorraine, with a mighty power, held the whole province. On
the fifth of December, exactly one month after the battle of Rosbach,
Frederic, with forty thousand men, and Prince Charles, at the head of
not less than sixty thousand, met at Leuthen, hard by Breslau. The King,
who was, in general, perhaps too much inclined to consider the common
soldier as a mere machine, resorted, on this great day, to means
resembling those which Bonaparte afterwards employed with such signal
success for the purpose of stimulating military enthusiasm. The
principal officers were convoked. Frederic addressed them with great
force and pathos; and directed them to speak to their men as he had
spoken to them. When the armies were set in battle array, the Prussian
troops were in a state of fierce excitement; but their excitement showed
itself after the fashion of a grave people. The columns advanced to the
attack chanting, to the sound of drums and fifes, the rude hymns of the
old Saxon Sternholds. They had never fought so well; nor had the genius
of their chief ever been so conspicuous. "That battle," said Napoleon,
"was a masterpiece. Of itself it is sufficient to entitle Frederic to a
place in the first rank among generals." The victory was complete.
Twenty-seven thousand Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken; fifty
stand of colors, a hundred guns, four thousand wagons, fell into the
hands of the Prussians. Breslau opened its gates; Silesia was
reconquered; Charles of Lorraine retired to hide his shame and sorrow at
Brussels; and Frederic allowed his troops to take some repose in winter
quarters, after a campaign to the vicissitudes of which it will be
difficult to find any parallel in ancient or modern history.
The King's fame filled all the world. He had, during the last year,
maintained a contest, on terms of advantage, against three powers, the
weakest of which had more than three times his resources. He had fought
four great pitched battles against superior forces. Three of these
battles he had gained; and the defeat of Kolin, repaired as it had been,
rather raised than lowered his military renown. The victory of Leuthen
is, to this day, the proudest on the roll of Prussian fame. Leipsic,
indeed, and Waterloo, produced consequences more important to mankind.
But the glory of Leipsic must be shared by the Prussians with the
Austrians and Russians; and at Waterloo the British infantry bore the
burden and heat of the day. The victory of Rosbach was, in a military
point of view, less honorable than that of Leuthen; for it was gained
over an incapable general and a disorganized army; but the moral effect
which it produced was immense. All the preceding triumphs of Frederic
had been triumphs over Germans, and could excite no emotions of national
pride among the German people. It was impossible that a Hessian or a
Hanoverian could feel any patriotic exultation at hearing that
Pomeranians had slaughtered Moravians, or that Saxon banners had been
hung in the churches of Berlin. Indeed, though the military character of
the Germans justly stood high throughout the world, they could boast of
no great day which belonged to them as a people; of no Agincourt, of no
Bannockburn. Most of their victories had been gained over each other;
and their most splendid exploits against foreigners had been achieved
under the command of Eugene, who was himself a foreigner. The news of
the battle of Rosbach stirred the blood of the whole of the mighty
population from the Alps to the Baltic, and from the borders of Courland
to those of Lorraine. Westphalia and Lower Saxony had been deluged by a
great host of strangers, whose speech was unintelligible, and whose
petulant and licentious manners had excited the strongest feelings of
disgust and hatred. That great host had been put to flight by a small
band of German warriors, led by a prince of German blood on the side of
father and mother, and marked by the fair hair and the clear blue eye
of Germany. Never since the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne had
the Teutonic race won such a field against the French. The tidings
called forth a general burst of delight and pride from the whole of the
great family which spoke the various dialects of the ancient language of
Arminius. The fame of Frederic began to supply, in some degree, the
place of a common government and of a common capital. It became a
rallying point for all true Germans, a subject of mutual congratulation
to the Bavarian and the Westphalian, to the citizen of Frankfort and the
citizen of Nuremberg. Then first it was manifest that the Germans were
truly a nation. Then first was discernible that patriotic spirit which,
in 1813, achieved the great deliverance of central Europe, and which
still guards, and long will guard, against foreign ambition the old
freedom of the Rhine.
Nor were the effects produced by that celebrated day merely political.
The greatest masters of German poetry and eloquence have admitted that,
though the great King neither valued nor understood his native language,
though he looked on France as the only seat of taste and philosophy,
yet, in his own despite, he did much to emancipate the genius of his
countrymen from the foreign yoke; and that, in the act of vanquishing
Soubise, he was, unintentionally, rousing the spirit which soon began to
question the literary precedence of Boileau and Voltaire. So strangely
do events confound all the plans of man. A prince who read only French,
who wrote only French, who aspired to rank as a French classic, became,
quite unconsciously, the means of liberating half the Continent from the
dominion of that French criticism of which he was himself, to the end of
his life, a slave. Yet even the enthusiasm of Germany in favor of
Frederic hardly equalled the enthusiasm of England. The birthday of our
ally was celebrated with as much enthusiasm as that of our own
sovereign; and at night the streets of London were in a blaze with
illuminations. Portraits of the Hero of Rosbach, with his cocked hat
and long pigtail, were in every house. An attentive observer will, at
this day, find in the parlors of old-fashioned inns, and in the
portfolios of print-sellers, twenty portraits of Frederic for one of
George the Second. The sign-painters were everywhere employed in
touching up Admiral Vernon into the King of Prussia. This enthusiasm was
strong among religious people, and especially among the Methodists, who
knew that the French and Austrians were Papists, and supposed Frederic
to be the Joshua or Gideon of the Reformed Faith. One of Whitfield's
hearers, on the day on which thanks for the battle of Leuthen were
returned at the Tabernacle, made the following exquisitely ludicrous
entry in a diary, part of which has come down to us: "The Lord stirred
up the King of Prussia and his soldiers to pray. They kept three fast
days, and spent about an hour praying and singing psalms before they
engaged the enemy. Oh, how good it is to pray and fight!" Some young
Englishmen of rank proposed to visit Germany as volunteers, for the
purpose of learning the art of war under the greatest of commanders.
This last proof of British attachment and admiration, Frederic politely
but firmly declined. His camp was no place for amateur students of
military science. The Prussian discipline was rigorous even to cruelty.
The officers, while in the field, were expected to practise an
abstemiousness and self-denial such as was hardly surpassed by the most
rigid monastic orders. However noble their birth, however high their
rank in the service, they were not permitted to eat from anything better
than pewter. It was a high crime even in a count and field-marshal to
have a single silver spoon among his baggage. Gay young Englishmen of
twenty thousand a year, accustomed to liberty and to luxury, would not
easily submit to these Spartan restraints. The King could not venture to
keep them in order as he kept his own subjects in order. Situated as he
was with respect to England, he could not well imprison or shoot
refractory Howards and Cavendishes. On the other hand, the example of a
few fine gentlemen, attended by chariots and livery servants, eating in
plate, and drinking champagne and tokay, was enough to corrupt his whole
army. He thought it best to make a stand at first, and civilly refuse to
admit such dangerous companions among his troops.
The help of England was bestowed in a manner far more useful and more
acceptable. An annual subsidy of near seven hundred thousand pounds
enabled the King to add probably more than fifty thousand men to his
army. Pitt, now at the height of power and popularity, undertook the
task of defending Western Germany against France, and asked Frederic
only for the loan of a general. The general selected was Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick, who had attained high distinction in the
Prussian service. He was put at the head of an army, partly English,
partly Hanoverian, partly composed of mercenaries hired from the petty
princes of the empire. He soon vindicated the choice of the two allied
courts, and proved himself the second general of the age.
Frederic passed the winter at Breslau, in reading, writing, and
preparing for the next campaign. The havoc which the war had made among
his troops was rapidly repaired; and in the spring of 1758 he was again
ready for the conflict. Prince Ferdinand kept the French in check. The
King in the meantime, after attempting against the Austrians some
operations which led to no very important result, marched to encounter
the Russians, who, slaying, burning, and wasting wherever they turned,
had penetrated into the heart of his realm. He gave them battle at
Zorndorf, near Frankfort on the Oder. The fight was long and bloody.
Quarter was neither given nor taken; for the Germans and Scythians
regarded each other with bitter aversion, and the sight of the ravages
committed by the half-savage invaders had incensed the King and his
army. The Russians were overthrown with great slaughter; and for a few
months no further danger was to be apprehended from the East.