A large portion of the train was utterly destroyed. The remainder was driven back to Troppau. The disaster was irreparable. The tidings were conveyed to Frederick the next day, July 1. They must have fallen upon him with crushing weight. It was the annihilation of all his hopes for the campaign, and454 rendered it necessary immediately to raise the siege and retreat. This extraordinary man did not allow himself to manifest the slightest despondency. He assembled his officers, and, with a smiling face, and hopeful, cheering words, announced his decision.
About the middle of October Wilhelmina came to Berlin to see her brothers again. Nine years had passed since her marriage, and seven since her last sad visit to the home of her childhood, in which inauspicious visit the wretchedness of her early years had been renewed by the cruelty of her reception. In211 Wilhelminas journal we find the following allusion to this her second return to Berlin:
ONE:Even Gustavus Adolphus never did such great things. One must, indeed, pardon Frederick his verses, his sarcasms, and his little malices. All the faults of the man disappear before the glory of the hero. a a. Prussian Army. b. Prussian Detachment, under Wunsch. c c. Austrian Attack, under Daun. d d. Attack of Brentano and Sincere. e e e. Reichs Army.
TWO: Unless one day the tumult of business and the wickedness of men alter so divine a character, you will be worshiped by your people and loved by the whole world. Philosophers, worthy of the name, will flock to your states. The illustrious Queen Christina quitted her kingdom to go in search of the arts. Reign you, Monseigneur, and the arts will come to seek you.Voltaire fell sick. He had already quarreled with many persons, and had constrained the king in many cases, very reluctantly, to take his part. He now wrote to Frederick, begging permission to join him in the quietude of Sans Souci. The following extracts from the reply of his majesty will be read with interest:
THREE:Frederick therefore decided to march down the river twenty miles farther, to Lowen, where there was a good bridge. To favor the operation, Prince Leopold, with large divisions of the army and much of the baggage, was to cross the Neisse on pontoons at Michelau, a few miles above Lowen. Both passages were successfully accomplished, and the two columns effected a junction on the west side of the river on the 8th of April. The blockade of Brieg was abandoned, and its blockading force united with the general army.
FORE:Frederick, not willing utterly to destroy the city, which he wished to preserve for himself, and perhaps, though no word of his indicates it, influenced by some sympathy for the seven thousand unoffending inhabitants of the place, men, women, and children, very many of whom were Protestants, who were suffering far more from the missiles of war than the Austrian garrison, arrested the fire of his batteries, and decided to convert the siege into a blockade. His own troops were suffering much in the bleak fields swept by the gales of winter. The whole of Silesia was in his hands excepting the small towns of Brieg, Glogau, and Neisse. These were so closely invested that neither food nor re-enforcements could be introduced to them. Should they hold out until spring, Frederick could easily then, aided by the warm weather, break open their gates.
My complaint increases so much that I no longer even hope to recover from it. I feel strongly, in the situation in which I at present find myself, the necessity of an enlightened religion arising from conviction. Without that, we are the beings on earth most to be pitied. Your majesty will, after my death, do me the justice to testify that if I have combated superstition with vehemence, I have always supported the interests of the Christian religion, though differing from the ideas of some theologians. As it is only possible when in danger to discover the169 necessity of bravery, so no one can really have the consoling advantage of religion except through sufferings.When the king, after the Seven Years War, now and then in carnival season dined with the queen in her apartments, he usually said not a word to her. He merely, on entering, on sitting down at table, and leaving it, made the customary bows, and sat opposite to her. Once the queen was ill of gout. The table was in her apartments, but she was not there. She sat in an easy-chair in the drawing-room. On this occasion the king stepped up to the queen and inquired about her health. The circumstance occasioned among the company present, and all over the town, as the news spread, great wonder and sympathy. This is probably the last time he ever spoke to her.193 I am, for the rest, your well-affectioned king,The king could be very courteous. He gave a dinner-party, at which General Loudon, one of the most efficient of the Austrian generals, and who had often been successfully opposed to Frederick, was a guest. As he entered the king said,What! cried the queen, have you had the barbarity to kill him?
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