
FORE:To the surprise of General Loudon, there was opened upon his advance-guard of five thousand men, as it was pressing forward on its stealthy march, in the darkness ascending an eminence, the most destructive discharge of artillery and musketry. The division was hurled back with great slaughter. Gathering re-enforcements, it advanced the second and the third time with the same results. Cavalry, infantry, artillery, were brought forward,505 but all in vain. Frederick brought into action but fifteen thousand men. He utterly routed the hostile army of thirty-five thousand men, killing four thousand, and taking six thousand prisoners. He also captured eighty-two cannon, twenty-eight flags, and five thousand muskets. His own loss was eighteen hundred men. The battle commenced at three oclock in the morning, and was over at five oclock.The unhappy Prince of Prussia, on his dying bed, wrote a very touching letter to his brother Frederick, remonstrating against his conduct, which was not only filling Europe with blood and misery, but which was also imperiling the existence of the Prussian kingdom.

FORE:The king, upon his return from Charlottenburg to Berlin, made no allusion whatever in his family to the matter. In the court, however, it was generally considered that the question, so far as Wilhelmina was concerned, was settled. Hotham held daily interviews with the king, and received frequent communications from the Prince of Wales, who appears to have been very eager for the consummation of the marriage. Many of these letters were shown to Wilhelmina. She was much gratified with the fervor they manifested on the part of a lover who had never yet seen her. In one of these letters the prince says: I conjure you, my dear Hotham, get these negotiations finished. I am madly in love (amoureux comme un fou), and my impatience is unequaled.At Oppeln there was a bridge across the Oder by which the king hoped to escape with his regiment to the free country beyond. There he intended to summon to his aid the army of thirty-six thousand men which he had sent to G?tten under the Old Dessauer. The discharge of the musketry of the Austrians blasted even this dismal hope. It seemed as though Frederick259 were doomed to drain the cup of misery to its dregs; and his anguish must have been intensified by the consciousness that he deserved it all. But a few leagues behind him, the bleak, snow-clad plains, swept by the night-winds, were strewed with the bodies of eight or nine thousand men, the dying and the dead, innocent peasant-boys torn from their homes, whose butchery had been caused by his own selfish ambition.

FORE:After briefly alluding to the many quarrels in which Voltaire had been involved, the king adds:Sire, affairs which I can not neglect, and, above all, the state of my health, oblige me to it.

FORE:On the 20th of April, Frederick, having secretly placed his army in the best possible condition, commenced a rapid march upon Prague, thus plunging into the very heart of Bohemia. He advanced in three great columns up the valley of the Elbe and the Moldau. His movements were so rapid and unexpected that he seized several Austrian magazines which they had not even time to burn. Three months provisions were thus obtained for412 his whole army. The first column, under the king, was sixty thousand strong. The second column, led by General Bevern, numbered twenty-three thousand, horse and foot. The third, under Marshal Schwerin, counted thirty-two thousand foot and twelve thousand horse. On the 2d of May the banners of Frederick were seen from the steeples of Prague. They appeared floating from the heights of the Weissenberg, a few miles west of the city. At the same time, the other two columns, which had united under Marshal Schwerin, appeared on the east side of the Moldau, upon both banks of which the city is built.
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