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Part of the defeated army was shut up in Prague. Part fled to join the troops
which, under the command of Daun, were now close at hand. Frederic determined to
play over the same game which had succeeded at Lowositz. He left a large force
to besiege Prague, and at the head of thirty thousand men he marched against
Daun. The cautious Marshal, though he had a great superiority in numbers, would
risk nothing. He occupied at Kolin a position almost impregnable, and awaited
the attack of the King.
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 valor 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 down. But at length the King found that his troops,
having been repeatedly driven back with frightful carnage, could no longer be
led to the charge. He was with difficulty persuaded to quit the field. The
officers of his personal staff were under the necessity of 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 of
Prague, and to hurry his army by different routes out of Bohemia.
This stroke seemed to be final. Frederic's situation had at best been such, that
only an uninterrupted run of good luck could save him, as it seemed, from ruin.
And now, almost in the outset of the contest he had met with a check which, even
in a war between equal powers, would have been felt as serious. He had owed much
to the opinion which all Europe entertained of his army. Since his accession,
his soldiers had in many successive battles been victorious over the Austrians.
But the glory had departed from his arms. All whom his malevolent sarcasms had
wounded, made haste to avenge themselves by scoffing at the scoffer. His
soldiers had ceased to confide in his star. In every part of his camp his
dispositions were severely criticized. Even in his own family he had detractors.
His next brother, William, heir-presumptive, or rather, in truth, heir-apparent
to the throne, and great-grandfather of the present King, could not refrain from
lamenting his own fate and that of the House of Hohenzollern, once so great and
so prosperous, 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 seemed that the King's distress could hardly be increased. Yet at this moment
another blow not less terrible than that of Kolin fell upon him. The French
under Marshal D'Estrees had invaded Germany. The Duke of Cumberland had given
them battle at Hastembeck, and had been defeated. In 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.
That nothing might be wanting to Frederic's distress, he lost his mother just at
this time; and he appears to have felt the loss more than was to be expected
from the hardness and severity of his character. In truth, his misfortunes had
now cut to the quick. The mocker, the tyrant, the most rigorous, the most
imperious, the most cynical of men, was very unhappy. His face was so haggard,
and his form so thin, that when on his return from Bohemia he passed through
Leipsic, the people hardly knew him again. His sleep was broken; the tears, in
spite of himself, often started into his eyes; and the grave began to present
itself to his agitated mind as the best refuge from misery and dishonor. His
resolution was fixed never to be taken alive, and never to make peace on
condition of descending from his place among the powers of Europe. He saw
nothing left for him except to die; and he deliberately chose his 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 Caesar, 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
producing odes and epistles, a little better than Cibber's, and a little worse
than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose
makes its appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and
Acheron, the Plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other
frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting woman, has
long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to mediocrity. We hardly know any
instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking, and so
grotesque, as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious
blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world
in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the
other.
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 or 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 anything 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 anything recalled to the mind of Voltaire the
outrages which he and his kinswoman had suffered at Frankfort. All at once his
flowing panegyric was turned into invective. "Remember how you behaved to me.
For your sake I have lost the favor of my native King. For your sake I am an
exile from my country. I loved you. I trusted myself to you. I had no wish but
to end my life in your service. And what was my reward? Stripped of all that you
had bestowed on me, the key, the order, the pension, I was forced to fly from
your territories. I was hunted as if I had been a deserter from your grenadiers.
I was arrested, insulted, plundered. My niece was dragged through the mud of
Frankfort by your soldiers, as if she had been some wretched follower of your
camp. You have great talents. You have good qualities. But you have one odious
vice. You delight in the abasement of your fellow-creatures. You have brought
disgrace on the name of philosopher. You have given some color to the slanders
of the bigots, who say that no confidence can be placed in the justice or
humanity of those who reject the Christian faith." Then the King answers, with
less heat but equal severity--"You know that you behaved shamefully in Prussia.
It was well for you that you had to deal with a man so indulgent to the
infirmities of genius as I am. You richly deserved to see the inside of a
dungeon. Your talents are not more widely known than your faithlessness and your
malevolence. The grave itself is no asylum from your spite. Maupertuis is dead;
but you still go on calumniating and deriding him, as if you had not made him
miserable enough while he was living. Let us have no more of this. And, above
all, let me hear no more of your niece. I am sick to death of her name. I can
bear with your faults for the sake of your merits; but she has not written
Mahomet or Merope."
An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would necessarily put an end to
all amicable communication. But it was not so. After every outbreak of ill humor
this extraordinary pair became more loving than before, and exchanged
compliments and assurances 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 favored correspondent as a bad-hearted 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'Estrees had quitted Hanover, and the command of the French army had
been entrusted to the Duke of Richelieu, a man whose chief distinction was
derived from his success in gallantry. Richelieu was in truth the most eminent
of that race of seducers by profession, who furnished Crebillon the younger and
La Clos with models for their heroes. In his earlier days the royal house itself
had not been secure from his presumptuous love. He was believed to have carried
his conquests into the family of Orleans; and some suspected that he was not
unconcerned in the mysterious remorse which embittered the last hours of the
charming mother of Lewis the Fifteenth. But the Duke was now sixty years old.
With a heart deeply corrupted by vice, a head long accustomed to think only on
trifles, an impaired constitution, an impaired fortune, and, worst of all, a
very red nose, he was entering on a dull, frivolous, and unrespected old age.
Without one qualification for military command, except that personal courage
which was common between him and the whole nobility of France, he had been
placed at the head of the army of Hanover; and in that situation he did his best
to repair, by extortion and corruption, the injury which he had done to his
property by a life of dissolute 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 honor 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.
But it was to very different means that Frederic was to owe his deliverance. At
the beginning of November, the net seemed to have closed completely round him.
The Russians were in the field, and were spreading devastation through his
eastern provinces. Silesia was overrun by the Austrians. A great French army was
advancing from the west under the command of Marshal Soubise, a prince of the
great Armorican house of Rohan. Berlin itself had been taken and plundered by
the Croatians. Such was the situation from which Frederic extricated himself,
with dazzling glory, in the short space of thirty days.
He marched first against Soubise. On the fifth of November the armies met at
Rosbach. The French were two to one; but they were ill-disciplined, and their
general was a dunce. The tactics of Frederic, and the well-regulated valor of
the Prussian troops obtained a complete victory. Seven thousand of the invaders
were made prisoners. Their guns, their colors, their baggage, fell into the
hands of the conquerors. Those who escaped fled as confusedly as a mob scattered
by cavalry. Victorious in the West, the King turned his arms towards Silesia. In
that quarter everything seemed to be lost. Breslau had fallen; and Charles of
Lorraine, 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 their excitement showed itself after the fashion of a
grave people. The columns advanced to the attack chanting, to the sound of drums
and fifes, the rude hymns of the old Saxon Sternholds. They had never fought so
well; nor had the genius of their chief ever been so conspicuous. "That battle,"
said Napoleon, "was a masterpiece. 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
colors, a hundred guns, four thousand wagons, fell into the hands of the
Prussians. Breslau opened its gates; Silesia was reconquered; Charles of
Lorraine 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.
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
honorable 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
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 Lorraine. 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 to the citizen of
Nuremberg. 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.
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 countrymen from the foreign yoke; and
that, 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 favor of Frederic
hardly equaled 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 Rosbach, with his cocked hat and long pigtail, were in every house. An
attentive observer will, at this day, find in the parlors 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 everywhere 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 military science. The Prussian discipline was
rigorous even to cruelty. The officers, while in the field, were expected to
practice 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 anything better than pewter.
It was a high crime even in a count and field-marshal to have a single silver
spoon among his baggage. Gay young Englishmen of twenty thousand a year,
accustomed to liberty and 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 refractory Howards and Cavendishes. On the other hand, the
example of a few fine gentlemen, attended by chariots and livery servants,
eating in plates, 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.
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 army, 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 the spring of 1758 he was again ready for the conflict. Prince
Ferdinand kept the French in check. The King in the meantime, after attempting
against the Austrians some operations which led to no very important result,
marched to encounter the Russians, who, slaying, burning, and wasting wherever
they turned, had penetrated into the heart of his realm. He gave them battle at
Zorndorf, near Frankfort on the Oder. The fight was long and bloody. Quarter was
neither given nor taken; for the Germans and Scythians 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, 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 Niesse, 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.
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