CHAPTER XXIV. THE QUARREL.CHAPTER XV. THE WAR IN SILESIA.They reached Milkau Tuesday night, the 20th. Here they were allowed one day of rest, and Frederick gave each soldier a gratuity of about fifteen cents. On Thursday the march was resumed, and the advance-guard of the army was rapidly gathered around Glogau, behind whose walls Count Wallis had posted his intrepid little garrison of a thousand men. Here Frederick encountered his first opposition. The works were found too strong to be carried by immediate assault, and Frederick had not yet brought forward his siege cannon. The following extracts from the correspondence which Frederick carried on at226 this time develop the state of public sentiment, and the views and character of the king. His friend Jordan, who had been left in Berlin, wrote to him as follows, under date of December 14, 1740, the day after the king left to place himself at the head of his army:
FORE:Wilhelmina gives the following account of this transaction, as communicated to her by her brother: As I entered the kings room this morning, he first seized me by the hair and then threw me on the floor, along which, after having exercised the vigor of his arm upon my unhappy person, he dragged me, in spite of all my resistance, to a neighboring window. His intention apparently was to perform the office of the mutes of the seraglio, for, seizing the cord belonging to the curtain, he placed it around my neck. I seized both of his hands, and began to cry out. A servant came to my assistance, and delivered me from his hands.In truth, when General Daun approached, and Frederick saw that there was no possibility of his taking the city, he, in the wantonness of his rage, set fire to upward of a hundred houses in the suburbs which had hitherto escaped the flames. Three hundred and fifty houses were destroyed within the walls. More than that number were half destroyed, shattered by bombs, and scorched with flames. These were terrible calamities falling upon a city already exhausted by four years of the most desolating war. The King of Poland closed his appeal by saying,
ONE:It was one of the grimmest camps in nature; the canvas roofs grown mere ice-plates, the tents mere sanctuaries of frost. Never did poor young Archenholtz see such industry in dragging wood-fuel, such boiling of biscuits in broken ice, such crowding round the embers to roast one side of you while the other was freezing. But Dauns people, on the opposite side of the Plauen Dell, did the like. Their tents also were left standing in the frozen state, guarded by alternating battalions no better off than their Prussian neighbors.142
TWO:But the ever-vigilant Frederick had smuggled a false sister into the society of the Catholic ladies, who kept him informed of every measure that was proposed. At the very hour when Frederick was dining with the two English ministers, and making282 himself so merry with jests and banter, he was aware that General Neipperg, with the whole Austrian army, was crossing the River Neisse, on the march, by a route thirty miles west of his encampment, to take Breslau by surprise. But he had already adopted effectual measures to thwart their plans.
THREE: The Palace of Wusterhausen.Wilhelmina and Fritz.Education of the Crown Prince.Rising Dislike of the Father for his Son.The Mothers Sympathy.The double Marriage.Character of George I.The King of England visits Berlin.Wilhelminas Account of the Interview.Sad Fate of the Wife of George I.The Giant Guard.Despotism of Frederick William.The Tobacco Parliament.A brutal Scene.Death of George I.The Royal Family of Prussia.Augustus, King of Poland.Corruption of his Court.Cruel Treatment of Fritz.Insane Conduct of the King.
FORE:Two days after committing this important document to Count Finck, Frederick took leave of his mother and his brother. His mother he never saw again. We have no evidence that on this visit he even called upon his irreproachable, amiable, neglected wife. In preparation for the worst, Frederick had provided poison for himself, and wore it constantly about his person. It consisted of several small pills in a glass tube. This fact is fully established.
Frederick was far from being an amiable man. He would325 often cruelly banter his companions, knowing that it was impossible for them to indulge in any retort. Baron P?llnitz was a very weak old man, who had several times changed his religion to subserve his private interests. He had been rather a petted courtier during three reigns. Now, in extreme old age, and weary of the world, he wished to renounce Protestantism, and to enter the cloisters of the convent in preparation for death. He applied to the king for permission to do so. Frederick furnished him with the following sarcastic parting testimony. It was widely circulated through many of the journals of that day, exciting peals of laughter as a capital royal joke:As Frederick received the tidings of this death, he rose, dressed himself, and his ague disappeared, to return no more. A courier was immediately dispatched, at the top of his speed, to summon to his presence General Schwerin and M. Podewils, his chief minister. Two days must elapse before they could reach him. In the mean time, the king, taking counsel of no one, was maturing his plans, and making quiet but vigorous preparations for their execution. He wrote the next day to Voltaire, in allusion to the emperors death,
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