FORE:These were terrible tidings for Frederick. The news reached him at Gorlitz when on the rapid march toward Silesia. Prince Charles had between eighty and ninety thousand Austrian troops in the reconquered province. Frederick seemed to be marching to certain and utter destruction, as, with a feeble band of but about twenty thousand men, he pressed forward, declaring, I will attack them if they stand on the steeples of Breslau.
FORE:Hurl them out, he wrote. Gather twenty, thirty thousand men, if need be. Let there be no delay. I will as soon be pitched out of Brandenburg as out of Silesia.
FORE: Frederick. 139 I beg you labor at this affair. When one hates romantic heroines as heartily as I do, one dreads those timid virtues; and I had rather marry the greatest profligate21 in Berlin than a devotee with half a dozen bigots at her beck. If it were still possible to make her a Calvinist! But I doubt that. I will insist, however, that her grandmother have the training of her. What you can do to help me in this, my dear friend, I am persuaded you will do.
THREE:
THREE:81 The object of Colonel Hothams mission was well known. The cordial reception he had met from the king indicated that his message was not an unwelcome one to his Prussian majesty. In the indecent hilarity of the hour, it was assumed that the marriage contract between Wilhelmina and the Prince of Wales was settled. Brains addled with wine gave birth to stupid jokes upon the subject. A German ducat was to be exchanged for an English half guinea. At last, in the semi-delirium of their intoxication, one proposed as a toast, To the health of Wilhelmina, Princess of Wales. The sentiment was received with uproarious jollity. Though all the company were in the same state of silly inebriation, neither the king nor the British ministers, Hotham and Dubourgay, for a moment lost sight of their settled policy. The king remained firm in his silent resolve to consent only to the marriage of Wilhelmina and the Prince of Wales. Hotham and Dubourgay could not swerve from the positive instructions which they had received, to insist upon both marriages or neither. Thus, notwithstanding this bacchanal jollification, neither party was disposed to swerve a hairs breadth from its fixed resolve, and the question was no nearer a settlement than before.
