THREE:Frederick had not grown old gracefully. He was domineering, soured, and irritable, finding fault with every body and every thing. As his troops were getting into camp at Jaromirtz on the 8th of July, the king, weary with riding, threw himself upon the ground for a little rest, his adjutants being near him. A young officer was riding by. Frederick beckoned to him, and wrote, with his pencil, an order of not the slightest importance, and said to the officer, aloud, in the hearing of all, purposely to wound their feelings,
THREE:At this time the whole disposable force of his Prussian majesty did not exceed eighty thousand men. There were marching against him combined armies of not less, in the aggregate, than four hundred thousand. A part of the Prussian army, about thirty thousand strong, under the kings eldest brother, Augustus William, Prince of Prussia, was sent north, especially to protect Zittau, a very fine town of about ten thousand inhabitants, where Frederick had gathered his chief magazines. Prince Charles, with seventy thousand Austrians, pursued this division. He outgeneraled the Prince of Prussia, drove him into wild country roads, took many prisoners, captured important fortresses, and, opening a fire of red-hot shot upon Zittau, laid the whole place, with its magazines, in ashes. The Prince of422 Prussia, who witnessed the conflagration which he could not prevent, retreated precipitately toward Lobau, and thence to Bautzen, with his army in a deplorable condition of exhaustion and destitution.
THREE:Leopold was now seventy years of age. On the 5th of February his much-loved wife died at Dessau. Leopold, infirm in health, and broken with grief, entreated the king to allow him to go home. He could not, of course, be immediately spared.
TWO:It would seem that Frederick was not very willing to receive, as his guest, the divine Emilie, who occupied so questionable a position in the household of Voltaire; for he wrote again, on the 5th of August, in reply to a letter from Voltaire, saying,Join, said he, the Austrian force under Prince Lobkowitz in Bohemia. Fall immediately and impetuously upon the French, before they can combine their forces to resist you. If you succeed in this, perhaps I will by-and-by join you; if you failwell, you know every one must look out for himself.
TWO:There are several letters still remaining which Lieutenant Katte wrote to his friends during those hours of anguish in which he was awaiting his death. No one can read them without compassionate emotion, and without execrating the memory of that implacable tyrant who so unjustly demanded his execution. The young man wrote to the king a petition containing the following pathetic plea:It turned out that the rumor of the march upon Berlin was greatly exaggerated. General Haddick, with an Austrian force of but four thousand men, by a sudden rush through the woods, seized the suburbs of Berlin. The terrified garrison, supposing that an overwhelming force of the allied army was upon them, retreated, with the royal family and effects, to Spandau. General Haddick, having extorted a ransom of about one hundred and forty thousand dollars from the city, and two dozen pair of gloves for the empress queen, and learning that a division of Fredericks army was fast approaching, fled precipitately. Hearing of this result, the king arrested his steps at Torgau, and returned to Leipsic. The Berliners asserted that the two dozen pair of gloves were all gloves for the left hand.