loss of blood, and ready to sink under the weight of his sufferings. The noblesse was exhausted, the lower people ruined; numbers of villages burned, many towns destroyed; a complete anarchy had overturned the whole order and police of government; in a word, desolation was universal. The army was in no better situation. Seventeen pitched battles had mowed down the flower of the officers and soldiers; the regiments were broken down, and composed in part of deserters and prisoners; order had disappeared, and discipline relaxed to such a degree, that the old infantry was little better than a body of newly-raised militia."* Necessity, not less than prudence, in these circumstances, which to any other man would have seemed desperate, prescribed a cautious defensive policy; and it is doubtful whether in it his greatness did not appear more conspicuous than in the bolder parts of his for

mer career.

52.

Operations in the camp of

Bunzelwitz in 1761.

The campaign of 1761 passed in skillful marches and countermarches, without his numerous enemies being able to obtain a single advantage, where the king commanded in person. He was now, literally speaking, assailed on all sides; the immense masses of the Austrians and Russians were converging to one point; and Frederic, who could not muster forty thousand men under his banners, found himself assailed by one hundred thousand allies, whom six campaigns had trained to perfection in the military art. It seemed impossible he could escape; yet he did so, and compelled his enemies to retire without gaining the slightest advantage over him. Taking post in an intrenched camp at Bunzelwitz, fortified with the utmost skill, defended with the utmost vigilance, he succeeded in maintaining himself and providing food for his troops for two months within cannonshot of the enormous masses of the Russians and Austrians, till want of provisions obliged them to separate. "It has just come to this," said Frederic, "who will starve first?" He made his enemies do so. Burning with shame, they were * Histoire de mon Temps, par Frederic IV., p. 174.

forced to retire to their respective territories, so that he was enabled to take up his winter quarters at Breslau in Silesia. But, during this astonishing struggle, disaster had accumulated in other quarters. His camp at Bunzelwitz had only been maintained by concentrating in it nearly the whole. strength of the monarchy, and its more distant provinces suf fered severely under the drain. Schweidnitz, the capital of Silesia, was surprised by the Austrians, with its garrison of four thousand men. Prince Henry, after the loss of Dresden, had the utmost difficulty in maintaining himself in the part of Saxony which still remained to the Prussians; in Silesia they had lost all but Glogau, Breslau, and Neiss; and, to complete his misfortune, the dismissal of Lord Chatham from office in England had led to the stoppage of the wonted subsidy of £750,000 a year. The resolution of the king did not sink, but his judgment almost despaired of success under such a complication of disasters. Determined not to yield, he discovered a conspiracy at his head-quarters to seize him, and deliver him to his enemies. Dreading such a calamity more than death, he carried with him, as formerly in similar circumstances, a sure poison, intended, in the last extremity, to terminate his days.

53. The death of

"Nevertheless," as he himself said, "affairs which seemed desperate, in reality were not so; and perseverance at length surmounted every peril." in real life, as well as in romance, favors the brave.

Fortune often,

the Empress of Russia re

stores his affairs.

In the case of Frederic, however, it would be unjust to say he was favored by Fortune. On the contrary, she long proved adverse to him; and he recovered her smiles only by heroically persevering till the ordinary chances of human affairs turned in his favor. He accomplished what in serious cases is the great aim of medicine; he made the patient survive the disease. In the winter of 1761, the Empress of Russia died, and was succeeded by Peter III. That prince had long conceived the most ardent admiration for Frederic, and he manifested it in the most decisive manner on his ac

cession to the throne, by not only withdrawing from the alliance, but uniting his forces with those of Prussia against Austria. This great event speedily changed the face of affairs. The united Prussians and Russians under Frederic, seventy thousand strong, retook Schweidnitz, in the face of Daun, who had only sixty thousand men; and, although the sudden death of the Czar Peter in a few months deprived him of the aid of his powerful neighbors, yet Russia took no further part in the contest. France, exhausted and defeated in every quarter of the globe by England, could render no aid to Austria, upon whom the whole weight of the contest fell. It was soon apparent that she was overmatched by the Prussian hero. Relieved from the load which had so long oppressed him, Frederic vigorously resumed the offensive. Silesia was wholly regained by the king in person; the battle of Freyberg gave his brother, Prince Henry, the ascendant in Saxony; and the cabinet of Vienna, seeing the contest hopeless, were glad to make peace at Hubertsbourg, on the 15th of February, 1763, on terms which, besides Silesia, left entire the whole dominions of the King of Prussia.

54.

Wonderful

He entered Berlin in triumph after six years' absence, in an open chariot, with Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick result of the seated by his side. No words can paint the enthustruggle. siasm of the spectators at the august spectacle, or the admiration with which they regarded the hero who had filled the world with his renown. It was no wonder they were proud of their sovereign. His like had never been seen since the fall of the Roman empire. He had founded and saved a kingdom. He had conquered Europe in arms. With six millions of subjects he had vanquished powers possessing ninety millions. He had created a new era in the art of war. His people were exhausted, pillaged, ruined; their numbers had declined a tenth during the contest. But what then? They had come victorious out of a struggle unparalleled in modern times: the halo of Leuthen and Rosbach, of Zorndorf and Torgau, played round their bayonets; they were inspired

His character

with the energy which so speedily repairs any disaster. Frederic wisely and magnanimously laid aside the sword when he resumed the pacific scepter. His subsequent reign was almost entirely spent in tranquillity; all the wounds of war were speedily healed under his sage and beneficent administration. Before his death, his subjects had been doubled, the national wealth had been made triple of what it had been at the commencement of his reign, and Prussia now boasts of sixteen millions of inhabitants, and a population increasing faster in numbers and resources than that of any other state in Europe. No labored character, no studied eulogium, can paint Frederic like this brief and simple narrative of his ex- 55. ploits. It places him at once at the head of mod- as a general. ern generals; if Hannibal be excepted, perhaps of ancient and modern. He was not uniformly successful; on the contrary, he sustained several dreadful defeats. But that arose from the enormous superiority of force by which he was assailed, and the desperate state of his affairs, which were generally so pressing, that even a respite in one quarter could be obtained only by a victory instantly gained, under whatever circumstances, in another. What appears rashness was often in him the height of wisdom. He had no Parliament or coalition to consider, no adverse faction was on the watch to convert casual disaster into the means of ruin. He was at liberty to take counsel only from his own heroic breast. He could protract the struggle, however, by no other means but strong and vigorous strokes, and the luster of instant success, and they could not be dealt out without the risk of receiving as many. fact of his maintaining the struggle against such desperate odds proves the general wisdom of his policy. No man ever made more skillful use of an interior line of communication, or flew with such rapidity from one threatened part of his dominions to another. None ever, by the force of skill in tactics and sagacity in strategy, gained such astonishing successes with forces so inferior. And if some generals have committed fewer faults, none were impelled by such desperate cir

The

cumstances to a hazardous course,

and none had ever greater

magnanimity in confessing and explaining them for the benefit of future times.

56.

The only general in modern times who can bear a comparison with Frederic, if the difficulties of his situaComparison of tion are considered, is Napoleon. It is a part only Frederic and Napoleon. of his campaigns, however, which sustains the analogy. There is no resemblance between the mighty conqueror pouring down the valley of the Danube, at the head of one hundred and eighty thousand men, invading Russia with five hundred thousand, or overrunning Spain with three hundred thousand, and Frederic the Great, with thirty thousand or forty thousand, turning every way against quadruple the number of Austrians, French, Swedes, and Russians. Yet a part, and the most brilliant part of Napoleon's career, bears a close resemblance to that of the Prussian hero. In Lombardy in 1796, in Saxony in 1813, and in the plain of Champagne in 1814, he was, upon the whole, inferior in force to his opponents, and owed the superiority which he generally enjoyed on the point of attack to the rapidity of his movements, and the skill with which, like Frederic, he availed himself of an interior line of communication. His immortal campaign in France in 1814, in particular, where he bore up with seventy thousand men against two hundred and fifty thousand enemies, bears the closest resemblance to those which Frederic sustained for six years against the forces of the coalition. Both were often to appearance rash, because the affairs of each were so desperate that nothing could save them but an audacious policy. Both were indomitable in resolution, and preferred ruin and death to sitting down on a dishonored throne. Both were from the outset of the struggle placed in circumstances apparently hopeless, and each succeeded in protracting it solely by his astonishing talent and resolution. The fate of the two was widely different: the one transmitted an honored and aggrandized throne to his successors; the other, overthrown and discrowned, terminated his