men from the foreign yoke; and that, | 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 any thing better than pewter. It was a high crime even in a count and fieldmarshal 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 re

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 refused to admit such dangerous companions among his troops.

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 favour 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 Ros-fractory Howards and Cavendishes. bach, with his cocked hat and long pigtail, were in every house. An attentive observer will, at this day, find in the parlours 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 every where 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. O! 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

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 arıny, 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 and Laudohn, the most inventive and the spring of 1758 he was again ready enterprising of her generals. These for the conflict. Prince Ferdinand two celebrated commanders agreed on kept the French in check. The King a scheme, in which the prudence of in the mean time, after attempting the one and the vigour of the other against the Austrians some operations seem to have been happily combined. which led to no very important result, At dead of night they surprised the marched to encounter the Russians, King in his camp at Hochkirchen. who, slaying, burning, and wasting His presence of mind saved his troops wherever they turned, had penetrated from destruction; but nothing could into the heart of his realm. He gave save them from defeat and severe loss. them battle at Zorndorf, near Frank- Marshal Keith was among the slain. fort on the Oder. The fight was long The first roar of the guns roused the and bloody. Quarter was neither given noble exile from his rest, and he was nor taken; for the Germans and Scy-instantly in the front of the battle. thians 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.

A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed by the King, and was celebrated 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,

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 chequered and eventful life.

But of

An

In

The misfortune was serious. 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. 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." 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 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 strect by the bayonet. seul very wisely determined to encounAt this conjuncture came news, that ter Frederic at Frederic's own weapons, Frederic, having cleared Silesia of his and applied for assistance to Palissot, enemies, was returning by forced who had some skill as a versifier, and marches into Saxony. Daun retired some little talent for satire. Palissot from before Dresden, and fell back produced some very stinging lines on into the Austrian territories. The the moral and literary character of King, over heaps of ruins, made his Frederic, and these lines the Dake sent triumphant entry into the unhappy to Voltaire. This war of couplets, folmetropolis, which had so cruelly ex-lowing close on the carnage of Zornpiated the weak and perfidious policy dorf and the conflagration of Dresden, of its sovereign. It was now the twen- illustrates well the strangely comtieth of November. The cold weather pounded character of the King of suspended military operations; and the Prussia. King again took up his winter quarters at Breslau.

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 velvet lined with ermine, and

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 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, indeli-a dove of pearls, the mystic symbol of cate, 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 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.

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 Choi-gifts, the giver, and the receiver. But

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.

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.

despatch very different from the 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 for ever."

Guns

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 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 But the mutual jealousies of the conthe skill of their chief. The lines were federates prevented them from followforced. Half the Russian guns were ing up their victory. They lost a few taken. The King sent off a courier to days in loitering and squabbling; and Berlin with two lines, announcing a a few days, improved by Frederic, were complete victory. But, in the mean worth more than the years of other time, the stubborn Russians, defeated men. On the morning after the battle, yet unbroken, had taken up their stand he had got together eighteen thousand in an almost impregnable position, on of his troops. Very soon his force an eminence where the Jews of Frank-amounted to thirty thousand. fort were wont to bury their dead. were procured from the neighbouring Here the battle recommenced. The fortresses; and there was again an Prussian infantry, exhausted by six army. Berlin was for the present safe; hours of hard fighting under a sun but calamities came pouring on the which equalled the tropical heat, were King in uninterrupted succession. One yet brought up repeatedly to the attack, of his generals, with a large body of but in vain. The King led three troops, was taken at Maxen; another charges in person. Two horses were was defeated at Meissen; and when at killed under him. The officers of his length the campaign of 1759 closed, in staff fell all round him. the midst of a rigorous winter, the pierced by several bullets. All was in situation of Prussia appeared desperate. vain. His infantry was driven back The only consoling circumstance was, with frightful slaughter. Terror began that, in the West, Ferdinand of Brunsto spread fast from man to man. At wick had been more fortunate than his that moment, the fiery cavalry of Lau-master; and by a series of exploits, of dohn, still fresh, rushed on the waver- which the battle of Minden was the ing ranks. Then followed an universal most glorious, had removed all apprerout. Frederic himself was on the hension of danger on the side of France. 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

His coat was

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 ex-great battle was gained by the enemy;

tent 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 func-mountains, had been transferred to the tionaries were left unpaid; in some Austrians. The Russians had overprovinces civil government altogether powered the King's generals in Pomeceased to exist. But there were still rania. The country was so completely rye-bread and potatoes; there were desolated that he began, by his own still lead and gunpowder; and, while confession, to look round him with the means of sustaining and destroying blank despair, unable to imagine where life remained, Frederic was determined recruits, horses, or provisions were to to fight it out to the very last. be found.