wavered, the stout old marshal snatched | deric's situation had at best been such, the colours from an ensign, and, waving that only an uninterrupted run of good them in the air, led back his regiment luck could save him, as it seemed, from to the charge. Thus at seventy-two ruin. And now, almost in the outset years of age he fell in the thickest of the contest, he had met with a check battle, still grasping the standard which which, even in a war between equal bears the black eagle on the field ar- powers, would have been felt as serious. gent. The victory remained with the He had owed much to the opinion King; but it had been dearly pur- which all Europe entertained of his chased. Whole columns of his bravest army. Since his accession, his soldiers warriors had fallen. He admitted that had in many successive battles been he had lost eighteen thousand men. victorious over the Austrians. But Of the enemy, twenty-four thousand the glory had departed from his arms. had been killed, wounded, or taken. All whom his malevolent sarcasms had Part of the defeated army was shut wounded, made haste to avenge themup in Prague. Part fled to join the selves by scoffing at the scoffer. His troops which, under the command of soldiers had ceased to confide in his Daun, were now close at hand. Fre- star. In every part of his camp his deric determined to play over the same dispositions were severely criticised. game which had succeeded at Lowo- Even in his own family he had detracsitz. He left a large force to besiege tors. His next brother, William, heirPrague, and at the head of thirty presumptive, or rather, in truth, heirthousand men he marched against apparent to the throne, and greatDaun. The cautious Marshal, though grandfather of the present king, could he had a great superiority in numbers, not refrain from lamenting his own would risk nothing. He occupied at fate and that of the house of HohenKolin a position almost impregnable, zollern, once so great and so prosperand awaited the attack of the King. ous, but now, by the rash ambition of its chief, made a by-word 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 was the eighteenth of June, a day which, if the Greek superstition 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 valour 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 It seemed that the King's distress down. But at length the King found could hardly be increased. Yet at this that his troops, having been repeatedly moment another blow not less terrible driven back with frightful carnage, than that of Kolin fell upon him. The could no longer be led to the charge. French under Marshal D'Estrées had He was with difficulty persuaded to invaded Germany. The Duke of Cumquit the field. The officers of his per-berland had given them battle at Hassonal staff were under the necessity of tembeck, and had been defeated. In 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 That nothing might be wanting to of Prague, and to hurry his army by Frederic's distress, he lost his mother different routes out of Bohemia. just at this time; and he appears to This stroke seemed to be final. Fre- have felt the loss more than was to be 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. expected from the hardness and severity | producing odes and epistles, a little of his character. In truth, his mis- better than Cibber's, and a little worse fortunes had now cut to the quick. than Hayley's. Here and there a The mocker, the tyrant, the most rigor- manly sentiment which deserves to be ous, the most imperious, the most in prose makes its appearance in comcynical of men, was very unhappy. pany with Prometheus and Orpheus, His face was so haggard, and his form Elysium and Acheron, the plaintive so thin, that when on his return from Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and Bohemia he passed through Leipsic, all the other frippery which, like a robe the people hardly knew him again. tossed by a proud beauty to her waitHis sleep was broken; the tears, in ing woman, has long been contemptuspite of himself, often started into his ously abandoned by genius to medieyes; and the grave began to present ocrity. We hardly know any instance itself to his agitated mind as the best of the strength and weakness of human refuge from misery and dishonour. nature so striking, and so grotesque, His resolution was fixed never to be as the character of this haughty, vigitaken alive, and never to make peace lant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, on condition of descending from his half Mithridates and half Trissotin, place among the powers of Europe. bearing up against a world in arms, He saw nothing left for him except to with an ounce of poison in one pocket die; and he deliberately chose his and a quire of bad verses in the other. 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 Cæsar, 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 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 any thing 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 any thing recalled to the mind of Voltaire the outrages which he and his kinswoman had suffered at ances 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 favoured correspondent as a badhearted 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'Estrées had quitted Hanover, and the command of the French army had An explosion of this kind, it might been intrusted to the Duke of Richelieu, be supposed, would necessarily put an a man whose chief distinction was deend to all amicable communication. rived from his success in gallantry. But it was not so. After every out- Richelieu was in truth the most emibreak of ill humour this extraordinary nent of that race of seducers by propair became more loving than before, fession, who furnished Crébillon the and exchanged compliments and assur-younger and La Clos with models for their heroes. In his earlier days the | A great French army was advancing royal house itself had not been secure from the west under the command of from his presumptuous love. He was Marshal Soubise, a prince of the great believed to have carried his conquests Armorican house of Rohan. Berlin into the family of Orleans; and some itself had been taken and plundered suspected that he was not unconcerned by the Croatians. Such was the situain the mysterious remorse which em- tion from which Frederic extricated bittered the last hours of the charming himself, with dazzling glory, in the mother of Lewis the Fifteenth. But short space of thirty days. the Duke was now sixty years old. He marched first against Soubise. With a heart deeply corrupted by vice, On the fifth of November the armies a head long accustomed to think only met at Rosbach. The French were on trifles, an impaired constitution, an two to one; but they were ill-disciimpaired fortune, and, worst of all, a plined, and their general was a dunce. very red nose, he was entering on a The tactics of Frederic, and the welldull, frivolous, and unrespected old age. regulated valour of the Prussian troops Without one qualification for military obtained a complete victory. Seven command, except that personal courage thousand of the invaders were made which was common between him and the prisoners. Their guns, their colours, whole nobility of France, he had been their baggage, fell into the hands of placed at the head of the army of the conquerors. Those who escaped Hanover; and in that situation he did fled as confusedly as a mob scattered his best to repair, by extortion and by cavalry. Victorious in the West, corruption, the injury which he had the King turned his arms towards Sidone to his property by a life of disso-lesia. lute 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 honour 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. In that quarter everything seemed to be lost. Breslau had fallen; and Charles of Loraine, 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 But it was to very different means their excitement showed itself after the that Frederic was to owe his deliver- fashion of a grave people. The coance. At the beginning of November, lumns advanced to the attack chantthe net seemed to have closed com-ing, to the sound of drums and fifes, pletely round him. The Russians were the rude hymns of the old Saxon in the field, and were spreading devas-Sternholds. They had never fought tation through his eastern provinces. so well; nor had the genius of their Silesia was overrun by the Austrians. chief ever been so conspicuous. "That piece. 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 colours, a hundred guns, four thousand waggons, fell into the hands of the Prussians. Breslau opened its gates; Silesia was reconquered; Charles of Loraine 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. battle," said Napoleon, "was a master- 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 Loraine. 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 Nuremburg. 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. 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 honourable 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 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 country |