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great despatch. Even the massing of Prussian troops on the Silesian frontier did not open the eyes of the Austrian cabinet to the real intentions If the philosophic king; though the ambassador

Berlin gave timely warning. An additional etry, Count Botta, however, was sent to Berlin, and peatedly told the king that the roads were shad in Silesia at that time as to make trareling there an impossibility. "The worst that ald happen would be that a man might soil his clothes," replied the imperturbable king, who perfectly understood Botta's allusion. The Aran warned him seriously of the perils of fa step he contemplated, reminding him that is troops, handsome as they appeared, had not

ben under fire. "You confess that my ps are handsome," cried the king impatiently; *y shall soon allow that they are good, too." We a sadden invasion of the province, the frst Silesian war began in the winter of 1740. The Austrian government had no army worthy of the name to oppose the Prussian forces in Flea and were not able even adequately to pon the fortresses. Some towns yielded at the first summons. "Here on the table lie the Lys of the town gates," said the politic mayor Grineberg to the officer who demanded those pments in the name of the King of Prussia. *! will not give them to you upon any con

atica; but if you choose to take them, I met prevent you." Glogau, Breslau, Ohlau, and Branzia, the most important fortresses, V soon in the king's hands. Neisse, the

st of all, was bombarded; and though it beid out, when the troops were sent into water quarters, the Prussians were masters of the province. To Jordan, one of his Rheinsberg beads, who was distinguished by his love of peace, Frederick, whom the rapid and prosperous

it had put into the best of spirits, wrote in the Allowing terms :—

*My dear Herr Jordan, my sweet Herr Jordan, my atle Herr Jordan, my good, my mild, my pre-loving, my most benevolent Herr Jordan! I have to announce to thy cheerfulness that Blesa is as good as conquered, and that Neisse ady being bombarded; I prepare thee for portant projects, and announce to thee the test good luck that ever proceeded from the ap of Fortune. Let this suffice for the present. Be t my Cicero in defending my cause; in carrying cut I will be thy Cæsar. Farewell! thou that I am, with heartiest affection, thy hithful friend."

If the letter shows too much of the exultatax of the man who goes into war "with a

light heart," the next, addressed to Jordan a few days later, is objectionable for the hardly disguised cynicism of its tone. It could not be a very good-natured or even conscientious man who could write in such a strain as the. following, concerning one of the most terrible necessities of modern warfare: "I have the honour to announce to your philanthropy that we are making preparations, in right Christian fashion, to bombard Neisse, and that if the town does not surrender willingly, we shall be compelled to batter it to the ground."

But Neisse held out bravely against the Prussians. The besieged took the trouble to keep the ice in the moat broken, and ingeniously drenched the walls with water every day, which soon made them as slippery as sheets of glass; and Frederick was fain to return to Berlin to receive the congratulations of his subjects upon what had been effected. The open country lay in the hands of the Prussians, but no victory in the field had yet laid the foundation of Frederick's military glory; and, in general, his action in challenging Austria to a trial of strength was looked upon as the temerity of a madman.

MOLLWITZ AND CHOTUSITZ.

At Mollwitz, near Brieg, on April 10th, 1741, was fought the first battle between Frederick and the Austrians; and on this day Frederick appeared in a very disadvantageous light, although the victory was won for him by the discipline and steadiness of his troops, especially the infantry, and by the knowledge and experience of the stout old Field-Marshal Schwerin, who had learned the art of war under no less a master than Charles XII. of Sweden. But the right wing, where the king commanded, was thrown into confusion; Schwerin himself counselled Frederick to retire across the Oder, and bring up reinforcements. The king not only quitted the field, but actually rode as far as Oppeln, outstripping the corps of gendarmes who accompanied him. At Oppeln, where he arrived at midnight, he found the gates shut against him, for the town was occupied by Austrian troops. It was more than twenty-four miles from the battle-field, towards which Frederick now turned back, to find that his troops had won the victory-in his absence. It is only justice to the king to say that in his memoirs he frankly confesses the faults he made before and at Mollwitz, modestly adding that he tried to avoid those faults, and to do better in future. One thing the battle of Mollwitz had plainly demonstrated, namely, that the Prussian troops

could manœuvre as steadily on the battle-field as on the parade-ground, and that they were worthy to look the veterans of Prince Eugene in the face. Austria was not invincible; and accordingly the Continent was up in arms. The Austrian inheritance was now the carcass round which the eagles were gathered together. Charles Albert of Bavaria laid claim to part of the empire of Charles VI., and hoped to obtain the suffrages of the electors for the imperial crown of Germany. Frederick entered into alliance with Bavaria, and likewise with France, while the Queen of Hungary had Saxony and England as her allies. The progress of the Prussians in Silesia was rapid, and Charles Albert and the French were approaching. Obliged to fly from Vienna, Maria Theresa took refuge at Presburg among the magnates of her kingdom of Hungary, and placed herself and her little son under their protection. "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa "-We will die for our monarch, Maria Theresa-was the cry of the Diet, when the young queen appeared in the council hall with the little archduke in her arms. If she were only relieved from the Prussian invasion, there would be a chance against her other enemies; the English ambassador arrived with strong representations from George II., declaring the cession of Silesia, however bitter it might appear, to be an absolute necessity; Frederick had, moreover, received the homage of the magnates and estates of Lower Silesia at Breslau; and morcover managed to win over the heavy and stupid Elector of Saxony Augustus to his side, in spite of the opposition of the minister Brühl, who hated Frederick, and suspected his sincerity, not without reason.

A victory gained by the king at Chotusitz, under circumstances that proved how much he had profited by the experiences of Mollwitz, induced Maria Theresa, with a heavy heart, to listen to the counsels of England, and cede Silesia to Frederick. Peace between Austria and Prussia was thereupon proclaimed, to the dismay of France and Bavaria, against whom the Queen of Hungary was now able to turn her arms. She was victorious; and the Elector of Bavaria, who had been raised to the imperial throne under the title of Charles VII., was obliged to retreat from Prague, where he had established himself. The French army made a disastrous retreat towards the Rhine, during which many thousands perished; and the Queen of Hungary, strengthened by a new alliance with England, Holland, Sardinia, and Saxony, thought of nothing less important than deposing the Emperor and compelling Frederick to restore Silesia. • Madam,

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what's good to take, is good to give back," old George II. of England had writen to her.

THE SECOND SILESIAN WAR, 1774; TREATY OF
AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, 1748.

Frederick had no wish to see Austria raised to a position of paramount authority. Accordingly he renewed his alliance with France, and in 1744 the second Silesian war began. But his French allies deceived him, his two chief generals, Schwerin and the Prince of Dessau quarrelled, and the former quitted the army in disgust. Frederick himself committed some faults during this campaign, and admitted that the whole advantage was on the side of Austria. "Good fortune has often worse consequences for princes than disaster," he wrote in his memoirs; "it intoxicates them with conceit, while disaster teaches them caution and moderation."

In the next campaign he was more fortunate. After narrowly escaping capture at the hands of a band of Croats, by assuming the disguise of an ecclesiastic, when the convent of Camenz, where he was visiting the abbot, was suddenly surprised, he gained the important battles of Hohenfriedberg and Soor. "It's a pleasure to fight with you, gentlemen," said the officers of an Austrian detachment, on encountering & Prussian corps; 66 one always finds something to learn." The Prussian officers replied with equal civility, that the Austrians had been good teachers, and had by their fiery onslaught taught them how to defend themselves. In the following campaign "the old Dessauer," as the soldiers called the grim hereditary prince, won a splendid victory for Frederick over the Saxons at Kesselsdorf. The veteran, familiar with battle-fields for balf a century, was looked upon as invulnerable by the soldiers who followed him unhesitatingly wherever he chose to lead, and on this occasion performed prodigies of valour. Thereupon in Dresden, which city he entered as a conqueror. Frederick signed a new treaty of peace. It i pleasant to observe that on the evening of hi triumphal entry he found time to drive to a quiet lane, where, in an upper chamber of an unpre tentious house, his old tutor Duhan lay dying The king sat down by the bedside, and spok words of comfort and kindness to his old friend who with a light of joy and gratitude in his fail ing eyes declared that now he had seen hi beloved pupil once more, he could depart i peace." Much has been said by various unfriend biographers of the harshness of the king's cha racter that he was bitter and sarcastic, an showed in many instances a deep contempt fo

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hes fe.low-men, is not to be denied ; but it is bare justice to record of him that he never failed to ember with warm and hearty gratitude the services of those who had stood by him in misfortune, or had shown him anything like disinterested affection and regard.

Thus with consummate skill, though at times with few scruples concerning abstract justice, d very little regard for the faith of treaties, Faderick had picked his way through the perils of the lung war he had stirred up. He had won the object for which he fought, the province of Sisia, and had astonished Europe by the display of the prowess of his troops. With far more truth than Henry VIII. in the affairs of France and Austria he could say, “Qui je défend est maître." Pravia now occupied a far higher place in the wls of Europe than she could have claimed

1740; and when in 1748 the general peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put an end to the war, a special cause guaranteed to the vigorous and unscru

King of Prussia the possession of the province for which he had risked so much.

A PERIOD OF PEACE; FREDERICK'S SYSTEM OF LULE; PERSONAL GOVERNMENT; SANS-SOUCI. Eight years of peace followed upon the treaty Aix-la-Chapelle; eight years during which the fatigable king laboured unceasingly, and in instances judiciously, for the progress and inprovement of his country. That here and tart his real was indiscreet, there is no doubttably, when he interfered with the administration of justice; sometimes when he attempted rovements, in the way of manufactures, agriaral processes, and military arrangements. Anding to his idea, the state was a body, of wach the king represented the heart whence

-tood circulated through the whole compated organization. He wished, as far as pos, to do everything himself, and therefore all have no influential cabinet, but merely

of detail around him. "Apply to me permady: I'm your Prime Minister," was the ain Lition he addressed to a deputation of the Chamber of Commerce. Even matters of tal were settled by the king personally, and Lenormous memory often enabled him to ath all around him; he seemed minutely acqanted with particulars that seldom come to the knowledge or linger in the minds of kings. One day a patent for the appointment of a · Lazzdrath,' or rural magistrate, was placed efore him for signature. On seeing the name the patent, Frederick refused, in spite of the un pronounced by the minister on the

candidate, to ratify the appointment. At his command a certain volume of the records of the superior courts was brought. "See here," said the king, with his finger on an entry in a certain page, "this man has had a long lawsuit with his own mother for a few acres of land, and she has been obliged to take an oath, on her very deathbed, about a miserable affair like that. How can I expect a fellow with such a heart will work for the good of my subjects? No, that will not do; let them choose some one else!" By dint of very early rising-his hour was some-times four o'clock in winter, and even earlier in summer-Frederick managed to get through an immense amount of business, political, military, and general, in the course of the long forenoon,. and thus to preserve a part of the day for intellectual and scientific pursuits. His flute remained for many years a favourite means of relaxation to him. In the short intervals of rest between various. tasks of business, he would walk to and fro in the room, extemporising, while his thoughts. would wander far away; and many a good idea, he would say, came to him during these musical playhours. He built a new palace at Potsdam. This building was to be the Rheinsberg of his better days, Rheinsberg itself having been transferred by him to his brother Henry; to this residence he gave the name of Sans-Souci, and 'the philosopher of Sans-Souci' was the signature he appended to many literary treatises dated from this palace. Here also it was that the sturdy countryman whose mill stood on a bit of freehold land surrounded by the royal domain,. refused, like Naboth of old, to sell the inheritance of his fathers to the king; and Frederick, not being an Ahab, let the building stand where it was-a monument of the exceeding justice of the invader of Silesia. "Ce sont-là jeux de Prince, on respecte un moulin, on vole une province," wrote a satiric poet. But there was a deeper meaning in the name. On the terrace was a square marble pedestal, surmounted by a statue of a reclining Flora. Beneath this pedestal, so privately built that very few were aware of its existence, was a vault, in which the king had determined that his ashes should one day rest. "When I am there," he said once to a friend to whom he entrusted the secret, "I shall be 'sans souci.'' He spoke the truth; for, active and diligent to the last, he was a king whose cares could end: only with his life.

FREDERICK AND HIS ASSOCIATES; A JOURNEY. INCOGNITO.

The brilliant company who assembled around

the royal table at Sans-Souci-consisting of poets like D'Argens and Baculard d'Arnaud, men of the world, and supple courtiers like the Abbé la Metrie, men of science like Maupertius, the president of the Academy of Berlin-contributed to make the king's parties brilliant and intellectual. Dargens, Frederick's literary secretary, was also a welcome guest. Algarotti and Bastiani, the ingenious Italians, contributed to the meetings the charms of their somewhat servile wit and ingenuity. Then there was the ingenious Baron Pöllnitz, a most convivial and jovial character, but much given to quarrelling, and debt, and irregular living-insomuch that it was forbidden in Berlin, by public mandate, under a penalty of a hundred ducats, to lend him any sum of money whatever, and the king laid down formal rules for the eccentric baron's behaviour, to which Pöllnitz had to subscribe. He was especially to keep clear of the ambassadors, and behave himself at table. A very different kind of guest was Colonel Forçade, bravest of officers, to whom the king himself brought a chair when the veteran, who had been wounded in the foot at Soor, leaned for support against a window in the presence chamber. The two Keiths-James, whom Frederick advanced to the dignity of a field-marshal, and his elder brother George, Lord Mareschal of Scotland, both fugitives from their country ever since the rebellion of 1715-found a home at Berlin and Potsdam, and were always treated with special confidence and honour by the king. The field-marshal met a soldier's death at Hochkirchen. His brother George, the Earl Mareschal, lived to be eighty-eight years old, and used to declare that the king, had he lived some centuries earlier, would have been burnt by the Inquisition, for that Frederick's power of fascination in attracting people to him amounted to sorcery.

Stout old Field-Marshal Schwerin, too, who had left Frederick's service somewhat in dudgeon, was won back by the politic king. At Frederick's summons, Schwerin came to Potsdam, and had a private interview with his master. The attendant hussar in the ante-chamber heard the voices of the king and his visitor raised in anger during the interview. But presently the storm abated; the old field-marshal came forth with a satisfied smile on his bronzed face, and the king called out, "Your Excellency will dine with me." The reconciliation was complete-greatly to the advantage of Frederick, who never had a braver or more efficient officer in his army than Schwerin. But the man whom the king looked upon as the great and especial "lion" in the

brilliant society of Potsdam was Voltaire, whom disappointments and annoyances in France, coupled with warm invitations from Frederick, induced to take up his residence for a time at Potsdam;-infinitely to his sorrow, for he had faults of which the king was impatient, and at the same time was little disposed to conform to the military strictness of the rules which the king, punctilious in all things, laid down even in his friendships. They quarrelled; and Voltaire quitted Potsdam in disgust, to be afterwards subjected to insult and arrest at Frankfort, at the secret command, it is said, of Frederick, and at last to establish himself as the 'philosopher of Ferney,' on the banks of the lake of Geneva. In their actual quarrel Voltaire appears to have been in the wrong; but Frederick was not free from blame. In fact, he seems to have been considerably disenchanted by closer intercourse with the man whom in his earlier days he had idolized as the prince of poets and philosophers.

I shall not want him more than a year," he once said, in confidential talk to a courtier; "we squeeze an orange, and then throw away the rind." And this was at a time when he had completely turned Voltaire's head with honeyed words of welcome. But Voltaire deserved it; he himself was extravagantly lauding the king's poems in public, while in private he sneeringly described the royal manuscripts submitted for his revision and correction as "the king's dirty linen sent to him to wash."

One of the most agreeable events of this period was a journey the king made incognito to Holland. His chief object was to visit the art collections, with a view to a gallery at Potsdam. Dressed in a plain cinnamon-coloured coat, with gold buttons and a black wig, and accompanied by a single officer, Colonel Balbi, and by a page, he assumed the character of a travelling fluteplayer. In the hotel at Amsterdam, where he ordered a certain costly kind of pâté, the hostess, judging the strangers by appearances, asked if her guests could afford to pay for so expensive a dish. The king, entering into the joke, played a sonata on his flute, to convince mine hostess that he was no ordinary musician. "Very good sir," she observed; "I see you can pipe very well, and I suppose you can pay your way. You shall have the pâté."

THE GREAT COALITION AGAINST FREDERICK.

A very different time was approaching-a time when the very existence of the king's throne was to be threatened, and when utter ruin was to stare him in the face for years; a time that

tated to the utmost every resource of his acute

nd and iron resolution. Maria Theresa had Lever forgiven him for depriving her of Silesia; and now, as Empress of Germany and Queen of Hungary, and with undisputed and despotic acthority over the warlike resources of vast Ammons, she resolved to organize a great mation against Frederick, to recover Silesia, and to reduce the kingdom of Prussia once more the Marquisate of Brandenburg. To form ha coalition, at a time when Europe was at frand peace, for a purely personal object, ht appear almost impossible; but at that the chief authority in the great Continental Sates was in the hands of women whom Frede

had offended by his bitter satire and his mptuous jests. The Czarina, Elizabeth of Lia, was the first to join the Empress-queen;

followed Saxony, where the Electress-queen ww Frederick's bitter enemy. France, nominally ir the sway of the slothful and debauched

XV., was so entirely ruled by the female arcarites of that worthless monarch, that Faderick was accustomed sarcastically to designate the different periods as the reign of Pettirats First, Second, and Third. Madame de Impadour now ruled the unhappy country and The miserable king. Frederick had sarcastically ~ad, I don't know her," when she sent greetings to him at Berlin. Maria Theresa, on the ther hand, had condescended to address her ➡princess," "cousin," "dearest sister." On ** grounds as these France was brought into the coalition organized by a vindictive woman

st a hated foe. At length Austria, Russia, Fe, the Germanic body, Saxony, and Sweden od anted together against Prussia, which, but a promise of help from England, could not zin a single ally; and the princes and ders in the French camp at Agincourt did not

mure confidently on the defeat of the foe the eve of that memorable battle, than did tarted powers on the annihilation of Prussia

ommencement of the great Seven Years'

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR, 1756.

They little knew the man with whom they at deal. Frederick had been aware, from 12, of the intrigues that were being carried en against him. A traitorous secretary in the Sun Privy Council office had for a long time

copies of the documents and state exchanged between the Austrian, Russian, and faxon courts. From France, too, he had

intelligence of the intended attack; and had secretly and swiftly prepared his plan of defence. The Allies intended to surprise him by a sudden attack; but he was ready first for the fight, and after peremptorily demanding explanations of the intentions of Austria, and being refused, he suddenly, in August, 1756, poured his army into Saxony, and marched straight upon Dresden. Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, a monarch after the fashion of Louis XV., at once fled to Poland with his favourite, Count Brühl. Frederick seized the originals of the state papers relating to the coalition, and by their publication set himself right in the opinion of Europe. Whatever he might have done formerly, in the way of aggression, this time he was evidently acting in self-defence, and was the injured party. The Saxon army was entrenched in a strong but ill-chosen position at Pirna, near the Bohemian frontier; Frederick left a sufficient force to watch the camp of the enemy, and with the rest of his army marched into Bohemia, and defeated Marshal Browne and a great Austrian army at Lowositz, thus gaining the first battle of the contest. And it was under very honourable conditions; for the triumph had been gained by a tremendous charge with the bayonet after the Prussians had fired away all their ammunition.

By this victory Frederick prevented the junction of the Saxon and Austrian armies. He had done more. The Saxon army was so completely surrounded, that it could not move. In an attempt to break out of the trap, the commissariat and baggage fell into the hands of the enemy; and the whole Saxon force, after remaining for three days and nights without food or shelter, exposed to the pitiless rains of a cold October, vainly hoping for relief from Marshal Browne, was obliged to surrender at discretion. The troops who thus laid down their arms were compelled to swear fealty to the Prussian flag; but Frederick gained little by this augmentation of his army. Reluctant soldiers were useless in a life and death struggle; in time they nearly all found their way back to their former comrades, deserting by hundreds. Saxony remained in the hands of Frederick, as a vast storehouse of provisions and warlike material; while the unhappy people, first taxed to maintain the war against their enemies, were now compelled to contribute funds for fighting their friends. All Europe, meanwhile, was astonished at the turn affairs had taken; and began to comprehend that the "Marquis of Brandenburg," as Frederick's enemies affected to call him, would not be conquered so quickly as his foes had been willing

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