On Monday morning, the 9th of October, 1741, the British minister, Lord Hyndford, accompanied by General Neipperg and General Lentulus from the Austrian camp, repaired to this castle, ostensibly to fix some cartel for the exchange of prisoners. Frederick rode out that morning with General Goltz, assuming that he was going to visit some of his outposts. In leaving, he said to the French minister Valori, I am afraid that I shall not be home to dinner. At the same time, to occupy the attention of M. Valori, he was invited to dine with Prince Leopold. By circuitous and unfrequented paths, the king and his companion hied to the castle.Prince Charles had married the only sister of Maria Theresa. She was young, beautiful, and amiable. While the prince was conducting his arduous campaign on the Moldau, his wife, grief-stricken, consigned her new-born babe to the tomb. The little stranger, born in the absence of his father, had but opened his eyes upon this sad world when he closed them forever. The princess sank rapidly into a decline.
ONE:Take, then, she exclaimed, the Grand Turk or the Great Mogul for your husband. Follow your own caprice. Had I known you better I would not have brought so many sorrows upon myself. You may follow the kings bidding. It is henceforth your own affair. I will no longer trouble myself about your concerns. And spare me, if you please, the sorrows of your odious presence. I can not stand it.
TWO:141 I have received a letter from the king, all agog about the princess. When his first fire of approbation is spent, you might, praising her all the while, lead him to notice her faults. Mon Dieu, has he not already seen what an ill-assorted marriage comes tomy sister of Anspach and her husband, who hate one another like the fire? He has a thousand vexations from it every day.
TWO:But behold the caprice of Fortune. After a hundred preferences of my rivals, she smiles upon me, and packs off the hero of the hat and sword, whom the pope had blessed, and who had gone on pilgrimages. He skulks out of Saxony, panting like a dog whom the cook has flogged out of the kitchen.
TWO: My dear Jordan,We are going to fight to-morrow. Thou knowest the chances of war. The life of kings is not more regarded than that of private people. I know not what will happen to me.
TWO:BATTLE OF KUNERSDORF, AUGUST 12, 1759.Still it is evident that the serpent was in this Eden. Carlyle writes: An ardent, aerial, gracefully predominant, and, in the end, somewhat termagant female, this divine Emilie. Her temper, radiant rather than bland, was none of the patientest on occasion. Nor was M. De Voltaire the least of a Job if you came athwart him in a wrong way. I have heard that their domestic symphony was liable to furious flaws; that plates, in presence of the lackeys, actual crockery or metal, have been known to fly from end to end of the dinner-table; nay, they mention knives, though only in the way of oratorical action; and Voltaire has been heard to exclaim, Dont fix those haggard, sidelong eyes on me in that way!mere shrillness of pale rage presiding over the scene.
THREE:The battle, thus commenced, continued to rage for four long312 hours, with all its demon energies, its blood, its wounds, its oaths, its shrieks, its death; on the right wing, on the left wing, in the centre; till some ten or twelve thousand, some accounts say more, of these poor peasant soldiers lay prostrate upon the plain, crushed by the hoof, torn by the bullet, gashed by the sabre. Many were dead. Many were dying. Many had received wounds which would cripple them until they should totter into their graves. At the close of these four hours of almost superhuman effort, the villages all around in flames, the Austrians slowly, sullenly retired from the contest. Prince Charles, having lost nearly seven thousand men, with his remaining forces breathless, exhausted, bleeding, retired through Czaslau, and vanished over the horizon to the southwest. Frederick, with his forces almost equally breathless, exhausted, and bleeding, and counting five thousand of his soldiers strewn over the plain, in death or wounds, remained master of the field. Such was the famous battle of Chotusitz.Again M. Jordan wrote, a week later, on the 20th of December:
THREE:196 a a. First Position of Combined Army. b b. First Position of Prussian Camp. c c. Advance of Prussian Army. d d. Second Position of Combined Army. e e. Prussians retire to Rossbach. f. French Cavalry, under St. Germain. g g. March of Combined Army to attack Prussian Rear. h. Prussian Attack led by Seidlitz. i. Position of Prussian Guns.
