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 vigour and activity of Frederic surmounted every obstacle. He
made a circuitous march of extraordinary {236}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 Hoehkirchen, 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 Bareuth. 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, {237}and deserved to be, Frederic’s
favourite sister. He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature
to feel the loss of any thing but a province or a battle.
At Breslau, during the winter, he was indefatigable in his poetical
labours. The most spirited lines, perhaps, that he ever wrote, are to
be found in a bitter lampoon on Lewis 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 favour 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 {238}velvet lined with ermine, and a dove of
pearl, 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 favour had
more than once been bestowed by the Popes on the great champions of the
faith. Similar honours had been paid, more than six centuries earlier,
by Urban the Second to Godfrey of Bouillon. Similar honours 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 an 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 Laudolm, and intrenched
themselves strongly at Kunersdorf.
Frederic hastened to attack them. A great battle was fought. During the
earlier part of the day every thing 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 mean time, the
stubborn {239}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 Laudolm, still fresh,
rushed on the wavering ranks. Then followed an 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
farm-house, flung himself on a heap of straw. He had sent to Berlin a
second despatch 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 {240}the language of one of his letters--“all is lost. I
will not survive the ruin of my country. Farewell for ever.”
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 neighbouring 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 1709 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
{241}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 unfavourable 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 sav, 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.” {242}Borne up by such feelings He struggled with
various success, but constant glory, through the campaign of 1701. 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. Laudolm had surprised the important fortress of Sehweidnitz.
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 any thing
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 {243}he had exercised, not always with
discretion, but always with vigour and genius, had devolved on a
favourite 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 civilised
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
{244}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 favourable 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 Catharine 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 {245}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
Cæsar, 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 {246}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 appal 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 labourers, 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, every thing that was not
military violence was anarchy. Even the army was disorganized.
{247}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.
MADAME D’ARBLAY. (1)
(_Edinburgh Review_, January, 1843.)
Though {248}the world saw and heard little of Madame D’Arblay during
the last forty years of her life, and though that little did not add to
her fame, there were thousands, we believe, who felt a singular emotion
when they learned that she was no longer among us. The news of her death
carried the minds of men back at one leap over two generations, to the
time when her first literary triumphs were won. All those whom we had
been accustomed to revere as intellectual patriarchs seemed children
when compared with her; for Burke had sate up all night to read her
writings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding, when
Rogers was still a schoolboy, and Southey still in petticoats. Yet more
strange did it seem that we should just have lost one whose name had
been widely celebrated before anybody had heard of some illustrious men
who, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and splendid
career, borne with honour to the grave. Yet so it was. Francis Burney
was at the height of fame and popularity before Cowper had published his
first volume, before Porson had gone up to college, before Pitt had
(1) _Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay_. Five vols. 8vo.
London: 1842.
{249}taken his seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine
had been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since the appearance of her
first work, sixty-two years had passed; and this interval had
been crowded, not only with political, but also with intellectual
revolutions. Thousands of reputations had, during that period, sprung
up, bloomed, withered, and disappeared. New kinds of composition had
come into fashion, had got ont of fashion, had been derided, had been
forgotten. The fooleries of Della Crusca, and the fooleries of Kotzebue,
had for a time bewitched the multitude, but had left no trace behind
them; nor had misdirected genius been able to save from decay the once
flourishing schools of Godwin, of Darwin, and of Radcliffe. Many books,
written for temporary effect, had run through six or seven editions, and
had then been gathered to the novels of Afra Behn, and the epic poems of
Sir Richard Blackmore. Yet the early works of Madame D’Arblay, in spite
of the lapse of years, in spite of the change of manners, in spite of
the popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, continued to
hold a high place in the public esteem. She lived to be a classic. Time
set on her fame, before she went hence, that seal which is seldom set
except on the fame of the departed. Like Sir Condy Rackrent in the tale,
she survived her own wake, and overheard the judgment of posterity.