with pride and delight by his people. The rejoicings in England were not
less enthusiastic or less sincere. This may be selected as the point of
time at which the military glory of Frederic reached the zenith. In the
short space of three quarters of a year he had won three great battles
over the armies of three mighty and warlike monarchies, France, Austria,
and Russia.
But it was decreed that the temper of that strong mind should be tried
by both extremes of fortune in rapid succession. Close upon this series
of triumphs came a series of disasters, such as would have blighted the
fame and broken the heart of almost any other commander. Yet Frederic,
in the midst of his calamities, was still an object of admiration to his
subjects, his allies, and his enemies. Overwhelmed by adversity, sick of
life, he still maintained the contest, greater in defeat, in flight, and
in what seemed hopeless ruin, than on the fields of his proudest
victories.
Having vanquished the Russians, he hastened into Saxony to oppose the
troops of the Empress Queen, commanded by Daun, the most cautious, and
Laudohn, the most inventive and enterprising, of her generals. These two
celebrated commanders agreed on a scheme, in which the prudence of the
one and the vigor of the other seem to have been happily combined. At
dead of night they surprised the King in his camp at Hochkirchen. His
presence of mind saved his troops from destruction; but nothing could
save them from defeat and severe loss. Marshal Keith was among the
slain. The first roar of the guns roused the noble exile from his rest,
and he was instantly in the front of the battle. He received a dangerous
wound, but refused to quit the field, and was in the act of rallying his
broken troops when an Austrian bullet terminated his checkered and
eventful life.
The misfortune was serious. But of all generals Frederic understood best
how to repair defeat, and Daun understood least how to improve victory.
In a few days the Prussian army was as formidable as before the battle.
The prospect was, however, gloomy. An Austrian army under General Harsch
had invaded Silesia, and invested the fortress of Neisse. Daun, after
his success at Hochkirchen, had written to Harsch in very confident
terms: "Go on with your operations against Neisse. Be quite at ease as
to the King. I will give a good account of him." In truth, the position
of the Prussians was full of difficulties. Between them and Silesia lay
the victorious army of Daun. It was not easy for them to reach Silesia
at all. If they did reach it, they left Saxony exposed to the Austrians.
But the vigor and activity of Frederic surmounted every obstacle. He
made a circuitous march of extraordinary rapidity, passed Daun, hastened
into Silesia, raised the siege of Neisse, and drove Harsch into Bohemia.
Daun availed himself of the King's absence to attack Dresden. The
Prussians defended it desperately. The inhabitants of that wealthy and
polished capital begged in vain for mercy from the garrison within, and
from the besiegers without. The beautiful suburbs were burned to the
ground. It was clear that the town, if won at all, would be won street
by street by the bayonet. At this conjuncture came news that Frederic,
having cleared Silesia of his enemies, was returning by forced marches
into Saxony. Daun retired from before Dresden, and fell back into the
Austrian territories. The King, over heaps of ruins, made his triumphant
entry into the unhappy metropolis, which had so cruelly expiated the
weak and perfidious policy of its sovereign. It was now the twentieth of
November. The cold weather suspended military operations; and the King
again took up his winter quarters at Breslau.
The third of the seven terrible years was over; and Frederic still stood
his ground. He had been recently tried by domestic as well as by
military disasters. On the fourteenth of October, the day on which he
was defeated at Hochkirchen, the day on the anniversary of which,
forty-eight years later, a defeat far more tremendous laid the Prussian
monarchy in the dust, died Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth. From the
accounts which we have of her, by her own hand, and by the hands of the
most discerning of her contemporaries, we should pronounce her to have
been coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and
generous feelings. Her mind, naturally strong and observant, had been
highly cultivated; and she was, and deserved to be, Frederic's favorite
sister. He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel
the loss of anything but a province or a battle.
At Breslau during the winter, he was indefatigable in his poetical
labors. The most spirited lines, perhaps, that he ever wrote are to be
found in a bitter lampoon on Louis and Madame de Pompadour, which he
composed at this time, and sent to Voltaire. The verses were, indeed, so
good that Voltaire was afraid that he might himself be suspected of
having written them, or at least of having corrected them; and partly
from fright, partly, we fear, from love of mischief, sent them to the
Duke of Choiseul, then prime minister of France. Choiseul very wisely
determined to encounter Frederic at Frederic's own weapons, and applied
for assistance to Palissot, who had some skill as a versifier, and some
little talent for satire. Palissot produced some very stinging lines on
the moral and literary character of Frederic, and these lines the Duke
sent to Voltaire. This war of couplets, following close on the carnage
of Zorndorf and the conflagration of Dresden, illustrates well the
strangely compounded character of the King of Prussia.
At this moment he was assailed by a new enemy. Benedict the Fourteenth,
the best and wisest of the two hundred and fifty successors of St.
Peter, was no more. During the short interval between his reign and that
of his disciple Ganganelli, the chief seat in the Church of Rome was
filled by Rezzonico, who took the name of Clement the Thirteenth. This
absurd priest determined to try what the weight of his authority could
effect in favor of the orthodox Maria Theresa against a heretic king. At
the high mass on Christmas Day, a sword with a rich belt and scabbard, a
hat of crimson velvet lined with ermine, and a dove of pearls, the
mystic symbol of the Divine Comforter, were solemnly blessed by the
supreme pontiff, and were sent with great ceremony to Marshal Daun, the
conqueror of Kolin and Hochkirchen. This mark of favor had more than
once been bestowed by the Popes on the great champions of the faith.
Similar honors had been paid, more than six centuries earlier, by Urban
the Second to Godfrey of Bouillon. Similar honors had been conferred on
Alba for destroying the liberties of the Low Countries, and on John
Sobiesky after the deliverance of Vienna. But the presents which were
received with profound reverence by the Baron of the Holy Sepulchre in
the eleventh century, and which had not wholly lost their value even in
the seventeenth century, appeared inexpressibly ridiculous to a
generation which read Montesquieu and Voltaire. Frederic wrote sarcastic
verses on the gifts, the giver, and the receiver. But the public wanted
no prompter; and a universal roar of laughter from Petersburg to Lisbon
reminded the Vatican that the age of crusades was over.
The fourth campaign, the most disastrous of all the campaigns of this
fearful war, had now opened. The Austrians filled Saxony and menaced
Berlin. The Russians defeated the King's generals on the Oder,
threatened Silesia, effected a junction with Laudohn, and entrenched
themselves strongly at Kunersdorf. Frederic hastened to attack them. A
great battle was fought. During the earlier part of the day everything
yielded to the impetuosity of the Prussians, and to the skill of their
chief. The lines were forced. Half the Russian guns were taken. The
King sent off a courier to Berlin with two lines, announcing a complete
victory. But in the meantime, the stubborn Russians, defeated yet
unbroken, had taken up their stand in an almost impregnable position, on
an eminence where the Jews of Frankfort were wont to bury their dead.
Here the battle recommenced. The Prussian infantry, exhausted by six
hours of hard fighting under a sun which equalled the tropical heat,
were yet brought up repeatedly to the attack, but in vain. The King led
three charges in person. Two horses were killed under him. The officers
of his staff fell all round him. His coat was pierced by several
bullets. All was in vain. His infantry was driven back with frightful
slaughter. Terror began to spread fast from man to man. At that moment
the fiery cavalry of Laudohn, still fresh, rushed on the wavering ranks.
Then followed a universal rout. Frederic himself was on the point of
falling into the hands of the conquerors, and was with difficulty saved
by a gallant officer, who, at the head of a handful of Hussars, made
good a diversion of a few minutes. Shattered in body, shattered in mind,
the King reached that night a village which the Cossacks had plundered;
and there, in a ruined and deserted farmhouse, flung himself on a heap
of straw. He had sent to Berlin a second dispatch very different from
his first: "Let the royal family leave Berlin. Send the archives to
Potsdam. The town may make terms with the enemy."
The defeat was, in truth, overwhelming. Of fifty thousand men who had
that morning marched under the black eagles, not three thousand remained
together. The King bethought him again of his corrosive sublimate, and
wrote to bid adieu to his friends, and to give directions as to the
measures to be taken in the event of his death. "I have no resource
left"--such is the language of one of his letters--"all is lost. I will
not survive the ruin of my country. Farewell forever."
But the mutual jealousies of the confederates prevented them from
following up their victory. They lost a few days in loitering and
squabbling; and a few days, improved by Frederic, were worth more than
the years of other men. On the morning after the battle he had got
together eighteen thousand of his troops. Very soon his force amounted
to thirty thousand. Guns were procured from the neighboring fortresses;
and there was again an army. Berlin was for the present safe; but
calamities came pouring on the King in uninterrupted succession. One of
his generals, with a large body of troops, was taken at Maxen; another
was defeated at Meissen; and when at length the campaign of 1759 closed,
in the midst of a rigorous winter, the situation of Prussia appeared
desperate. The only consoling circumstance was that, in the West,
Ferdinand of Brunswick had been more fortunate than his master; and by a
series of exploits, of which the battle of Minden was the most glorious,
had removed all apprehension of danger on the side of France.
The fifth year was now about to commence. It seemed impossible that the
Prussian territories, repeatedly devastated by hundreds of thousands of
invaders, could longer support the contest. But the King carried on war
as no European power has ever carried on war, except the Committee of
Public Safety during the great agony of the French Revolution. He
governed his kingdom as he would have governed a besieged town, not
caring to what extent property was destroyed, or the pursuits of civil
life suspended, so that he did but make head against the enemy. As long
as there was a man left in Prussia, that man might carry a musket; as
long as there was a horse left, that horse might draw artillery. The
coin was debased, the civil functionaries were left unpaid; in some
provinces civil government altogether ceased to exist. But there were
still rye-bread and potatoes; there were still lead and gunpowder; and,
while the means of sustaining and destroying life remained, Frederic was
determined to fight it out to the very last.
The earlier part of the campaign of 1760 was unfavorable to him. Berlin
was again occupied by the enemy. Great contributions were levied on the
inhabitants, and the royal palace was plundered. But at length, after
two years of calamity, victory came back to his arms. At Lignitz he
gained a great battle over Laudohn; at Torgau, after a day of horrible
carnage, he triumphed over Daun. The fifth year closed, and still the
event was in suspense. In the countries where the war had raged, the
misery and exhaustion were more appalling than ever; but still there
were left men and beasts, arms and food, and still Frederic fought on.
In truth, he had now been baited into savageness. His heart was
ulcerated with hatred. The implacable resentment with which his enemies
persecuted him, though originally provoked by his own unprincipled
ambition, excited in him a thirst for vengeance which he did not even
attempt to conceal. "It is hard," he says in one of his letters, "for
man to bear what I bear. I begin to feel that, as the Italians say,
revenge is a pleasure for the gods. My philosophy is worn out by
suffering. I am no saint, like those of whom we read in the legends; and
I will own that I should die content if only I could first inflict a
portion of the misery which I endure."
Borne up by such feelings, he struggled with various success, but
constant glory, through the campaign of 1761. On the whole, the result
of this campaign was disastrous to Prussia. No great battle was gained
by the enemy; but, in spite of the desperate bounds of the hunted tiger,
the circle of pursuers was fast closing round him. Laudohn had surprised
the important fortress of Schweidnitz. With that fortress, half of
Silesia, and the command of the most important defiles through the
mountains, had been transferred to the Austrians. The Russians had
overpowered the King's generals in Pomerania. The country was so
completely desolated that he began, by his own confession, to look round
him with blank despair, unable to imagine where recruits, horses, or
provisions were to be found.
Just at this time two great events brought on a complete change in the
relations of almost all the powers of Europe. One of those events was
the retirement of Mr. Pitt from office; the other was the death of the
Empress Elizabeth of Russia.
The retirement of Pitt seemed to be an omen of utter ruin to the House
of Brandenburg. His proud and vehement nature was incapable of anything
that looked like either fear or treachery. He had often declared that,
while he was in power, England should never make a peace of Utrecht,
should never, for any selfish object, abandon an ally even in the last
extremity of distress. The Continental war was his own war. He had been
bold enough, he who in former times had attacked, with irresistible
powers of oratory, the Hanoverian policy of Carteret, and the German
subsidies of Newcastle, to declare that Hanover ought to be as dear to
us as Hampshire, and that he would conquer America in Germany. He had
fallen; and the power which he had exercised, not always with
discretion, but always with vigor and genius, had devolved on a favorite
who was the representative of the Tory party, of the party which had
thwarted William, which had persecuted Marlborough, and which had given
up the Catalans to the vengeance of Philip of Anjou. To make peace with
France, to shake off, with all, or more than all, the speed compatible
with decency, every Continental connection, these were among the chief
objects of the new Minister. The policy then followed inspired Frederic
with an unjust, but deep and bitter aversion to the English name, and
produced effects which are still felt throughout the civilized world. To
that policy it was owing that, some years later, England could not find
on the whole Continent a single ally to stand by her, in her extreme
need, against the House of Bourbon. To that policy it was owing that
Frederic, alienated from England, was compelled to connect himself
closely, during his later years, with Russia, and was induced to assist
in that great crime, the fruitful parent of other great crimes, the
first partition of Poland.
Scarcely had the retreat of Mr. Pitt deprived Prussia of her only
friend, when the death of Elizabeth produced an entire revolution in the
politics of the North. The Grand Duke Peter, her nephew, who now
ascended the Russian throne, was not merely free from the prejudices
which his aunt had entertained against Frederic, but was a worshipper, a
servile imitator of the great King. The days of the new Czar's
government were few and evil, but sufficient to produce a change in the
whole state of Christendom. He set the Prussian prisoners at liberty,
fitted them out decently, and sent them back to their master; he
withdrew his troops from the provinces which Elizabeth had decided on
incorporating with her dominions; and he absolved all those Prussian
subjects, who had been compelled to swear fealty to Russia, from their
engagements.
Not content with concluding peace on terms favorable to Prussia, he
solicited rank in the Prussian service, dressed himself in a Prussian
uniform, wore the Black Eagle of Prussia on his breast, made
preparations for visiting Prussia, in order to have an interview with
the object of his idolatry, and actually sent fifteen thousand excellent
troops to reinforce the shattered army of Frederic. Thus strengthened,
the King speedily repaired the losses of the preceding year, reconquered
Silesia, defeated Daun at Buckersdorf, invested and retook Schweidnitz,
and, at the close of the year, presented to the forces of Maria Theresa
a front as formidable as before the great reverses of 1759. Before the
end of the campaign, his friend the Emperor Peter, having, by a series
of absurd insults to the institutions, manners, and feelings of his
people, united them in hostility to his person and government, was
deposed and murdered. The Empress, who, under the title of Catherine
the Second, now assumed the supreme power, was, at the commencement of
her administration, by no means partial to Frederic, and refused to
permit her troops to remain under his command. But she observed the
peace made by her husband; and Prussia was no longer threatened by
danger from the East.
England and France at the same time paired off together. They concluded
a treaty, by which they bound themselves to observe neutrality with
respect to the German war. Thus the coalitions on both sides were
dissolved; and the original enemies, Austria and Prussia, remained alone
confronting each other.
Austria had undoubtedly far greater means than Prussia, and was less
exhausted by hostilities; yet it seemed hardly possible that Austria
could effect alone what she had in vain attempted to effect when
supported by France on the one side, and by Russia on the other. Danger
also began to menace the Imperial house from another quarter. The
Ottoman Porte held threatening language, and a hundred thousand Turks
were mustered on the frontiers of Hungary. The proud and revengeful
spirit of the Empress Queen at length gave way; and, in February, 1763,
the peace of Hubertsburg put an end to the conflict which had, during
seven years, devastated Germany. The King ceded nothing. The whole
Continent in arms had proved unable to tear Silesia from that iron
grasp.
The war was over. Frederic was safe. His glory was beyond the reach of
envy. If he had not made conquests as vast as those of Alexander, of
Caesar, and of Napoleon, if he had not, on fields of battle, enjoyed the
constant success of Marlborough and Wellington, he had yet given an
example unrivalled in history of what capacity and resolution can effect
against the greatest superiority of power and the utmost spite of
fortune. He entered Berlin in triumph, after an absence of more than
six years. The streets were brilliantly lighted up; and, as he passed
along in an open carriage, with Ferdinand of Brunswick at his side, the
multitude saluted him with loud praises and blessings. He was moved by
those marks of attachment, and repeatedly exclaimed, "Long live my dear
people! Long live my children!" Yet, even in the midst of that gay
spectacle, he could not but perceive everywhere the traces of
destruction and decay. The city had been more than once plundered. The
population had considerably diminished. Berlin, however, had suffered
little when compared with most parts of the kingdom. The ruin of private
fortunes, the distress of all ranks, was such as might appall the
firmest mind. Almost every province had been the seat of war, and of war
conducted with merciless ferocity. Clouds of Croatians had descended on
Silesia. Tens of thousands of Cossacks had been let loose on Pomerania
and Brandenburg. The mere contributions levied by the invaders amounted,
it was said, to more than a hundred millions of dollars; and the value
of what they extorted was probably much less than the value of what they
destroyed. The fields lay uncultivated. The very seed corn had been
devoured in the madness of hunger. Famine, and contagious maladies
produced by famine, had swept away the herds and flocks; and there was
reason to fear that a great pestilence among the human race was likely
to follow in the train of that tremendous war. Near fifteen thousand
houses had been burned to the ground. The population of the kingdom had
in seven years decreased to the frightful extent of ten per cent. A
sixth of the males capable of bearing arms had actually perished on the
field of battle. In some districts, no laborers, except women, were seen
in the fields at harvest time. In others, the traveller passed
shuddering through a succession of silent villages, in which not a
single inhabitant remained. The currency had been debased; the authority
of laws and magistrates had been suspended; the whole social system was
deranged. For, during that convulsive struggle, everything that was not
military violence was anarchy. Even the army was disorganized. Some
great generals and a crowd of excellent officers had fallen, and it had
been impossible to supply their place. The difficulty of finding
recruits had, towards the close of the war, been so great, that
selection and rejection were impossible. Whole battalions were composed
of deserters or of prisoners. It was hardly to be hoped that thirty
years of repose and industry would repair the ruin produced by seven
years of havoc. One consolatory circumstance, indeed, there was. No debt
had been incurred. The burdens of the war had been terrible, almost
insupportable; but no arrear was left to embarrass the finances in time
of peace.
Here, for the present, we must pause. We have accompanied Frederic to
the close of his career as a warrior. Possibly, when these Memoirs are
completed, we may resume the consideration of his character, and give
some account of his domestic and foreign policy, and of his private
habits, during the many years of tranquillity which followed the Seven
Years' War.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Frederic the Great and his Times. Edited, with an Introduction by
Thomas Campbell, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1842.
DIARY AND LETTERS OF MADAME D'ARBLAY[7]
_The Edinburgh Review_, January, 1843