It was now the twentieth of November.The cold weather suspended military operations; and the King again took up his winter quarters at Breslau.
The third of the seven terrible years were over; and Frederic still stood his ground.He had been recently tried by domestic as well as by military disasters.On the fourteenth of October, the day on which he was defeated at Hochkirchen, the day on the anniversary of which, forty-eight years later, a defeat far more tremendous laid the Prussian monarchy in the dust, died Wilhelmina, Margravine of Bareuth.From the accounts which we have of her, by her own hand, and by the hands of the most discerning of her contemporaries, we should pronounce her to have been coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings.Her mind, naturally strong and observant, had been highly cultivated; and she was, and deserved to be, Frederic's favourite sister.He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel the loss of anything but a province or a battle.
At Breslau, during the winter, he was indefatigable in his poetical labours.The most spirited lines, perhaps, that he ever wrote, are, to be found in a bitter lampoon on Lewis and Madame de Pompadour, which he composed at this time, and sent to Voltaire.The verses were, indeed, so good, that Voltaire was afraid that he might himself be suspected of having written them, or at least of having corrected them; and partly from fright, partly, we fear, from love of mischief, sent them to the Duke of Choiseul, then prime minister of France.Choiseul very wisely determined to encounter Frederic at Frederic's own weapons, and applied for assistance to Palissot, who had some skill as a versifier, and some little talent for satire.Palissot produced some very stinging lines on the moral and literary character of Frederic, and these lines the Duke sent to Voltaire.
This war of couplets, following close on the carnage of Zorndorf and the conflagration of Dresden, illustrates well the strangely compounded character of the King of Prussia.
At this moment he was assailed by a new enemy.Benedict the Fourteenth, the best and wisest of the two hundred and fifty successors of St.Peter, was no more.During the short interval between his reign and that of his disciple Ganganelli, the chief seat in the Church of Rome was filled by Rezzonico, who took the name of Clement the Thirteenth.This absurd priest determined to try what the weight of his authority could effect in favour of the orthodox Maria Theresa against a heretic king.At the high mass on Christmas-day, a sword with a rich belt and scabbard, a hat of crimson velvet lined with ermine, and a dove of pearls, the mystic symbol of the Divine Comforter, were solemnly blessed by the supreme pontiff, and were sent with great ceremony to Marshal Daun, the conqueror of Kolin and Hochkirchen.This mark of favour had more than once been bestowed by the Popes on the great champions of the faith.Similar honours had been paid, more than six centuries earlier, by Urban the Second to Godfrey of Bouillon.Similar honours had been conferred on Alba for destroying the liberties of the Low Countries, and on John Sobiesky after the deliverance of Vienna.But the presents which were received with profound reverence by the Baron of the Holy Sepulchre in the eleventh century, and which had not wholly lost their value even in the seventeenth century, appeared inexpressibly ridiculous to a generation which read Montesquieu and Voltaire.Frederic wrote sarcastic verses on the gifts, the giver, and the receiver.But the public wanted no prompter; and an universal roar of laughter from Petersburg to Lisbon reminded the Vatican that the age of crusades was over.
The fourth campaign, the most disastrous of all the campaigns of this fearful war, had now opened.The Austrians filled Saxony and menaced Berlin.The Russians defeated the King's generals on the Oder, threatened Silesia, effected a junction with Laudohn, and intrenched themselves strongly at Kunersdorf.Frederic hastened to attack them.A great battle was fought.During the earlier part of the day everything yielded to the impetuosity of the Prussians, and to the skill of their chief.The lines were forced.Half the Russian guns were taken.The King sent off a courier to Berlin with two lines, announcing a complete victory.
But, in the meantime, the stubborn Russians, defeated yet unbroken, had taken up their stand in an almost impregnable position, on an eminence where the Jews of Frankfort were wont to bury their dead.Here the battle recommenced.The Prussian infantry, exhausted by six hours of hard fighting under a sun which equalled the tropical heat, were yet brought up repeatedly to the attack, but in vain.The King led three charges in person.
Two horses were killed under him.The officers of his staff fell all round him.His coat was pierced by several bullets.All was in vain.His infantry was driven back with frightful slaughter.
Terror began to spread fast from man to man.At that moment, the fiery cavalry of Laudohn, still fresh, rushed on the wavering ranks.Then followed an universal rout.Frederic himself was on the point of falling into the hands of the conquerors, and was with difficulty saved by a gallant officer, who, at the head of a handful of Hussars, made good a diversion of a few minutes.
Shattered in body, shattered in mind, the King reached that night a village which the Cossacks had plundered; and there, in a ruined and deserted farm-house, flung himself on a heap of straw.
