Frederick had been three days and nights at work upon his fortress before the allies ventured forward to look into it. It was then a Gibraltar. Still for eight days more the spade was not intermitted. Cogniazo, an Austrian, writes: "It is a master-piece of art, in which the principles of tactics are combined with those of field fortifications as never before." "And twenty-five thousand spades and picks | intrenched knolls; twenty-four big batteries are at work, under such a field engineer as there capable of playing beautifully, all like pieces in is not in the world when he takes to that ema concert." ployment. At all hours, night and day, twenty-five thousand of them: half the army asleep, other half digging, wheeling, shoveling; plying their utmost, and constant as Time himself: these, in three days, will do a great deal of spadework. Batteries, redoubts, big and little; spare not for digging. Here is ground for cavalry, too. Post them here, there, to bivouac in readiness, should our batteries be unfortunate. Long trenches there are, and also short; batteries commanding every ingate, and under them are mines." Many of the trenches were sixteen feet broad by sixteen feet deep. Under each battery there were two mines. In case of capture the mines and the victors could be blown high into the air. Knowing that the batteries were all mined, the Russian and Austrian soldiers would be slow to make charges in which victory would be certain death. The small villages around were all strongly fortified. "Würben, in the centre, is like a citadel, looking down upon Striegau Water. Heavy cannon, plenty of them, we have brought from Schweidnitz. We have four hundred and eighty cannon in all, and one hundred and eighty-two mines. Würben, our citadel and centre, is about five miles from Schweidnitz. Before our lines are palisades and chevaux-de-frise. Woods we have in abundance in our circuit, and axes for carpentries of that kind. There are four The Austrians took position upon the south, at the distance of about six miles. The Russians were at the same distance on the west, with their head-quarters at Hohenfriedberg. Frederick was It would seem that Frederick's troops must have had iron sinews, and that they needed as little repose as did their master. Those not at work with the spade were under arms to repel an assault. Two or three times there was an alarm, when the whole fifty thousand, in an hour, were in battle-array. fully aware of the crisis he had encountered. To be beaten there was irretrievable ruin. No one in the army performed more exhausting labor than the king himself. He seemed to be omnipresent, by day and by night. Near the chief battery, in a clump of trees, there was a small tent, and a bundle of straw in the corner. Here the king occasionally sought a few moments of repose. But his nervous excitement rendered him so restless, that most of the time ARCHENHOLTZ, ii. 262. he was strolling about among the guard parties, | ful face; and every body thought to himself, and warming himself by their fires. 'Ha, the world will still roll on, then.'" Frederick's treatment of the unfortunate general Zastrow, who was in command at Schweidnitz, was quite peculiar. Very generously he wrote to him: "One evening," writes Carlyle, "among the orders is heard this item: And remember a lock of straw, will you, that I may not have to sleep upon the ground, as last night!' Many anecdotes are current to this day about his pleasant, homely ways, and affabilities with the "MY DEAR General Von ZasTROW,-The sentry people, and the rugged hospitalities they misfortune which has befallen me is very grievwould show him at their watch-fires. 'Good-ous. But what consoles me in it is, to see by evening, children.' 'The same to thee, Fritz.' 'What is that you are cooking?'-and would try a spoonful of it, in such company; while the rough fellows would forbid smoking. 'Don't you know he dislikes it?' 'No! smoke away,' the king would insist." General Loudon was in command of the Austrians, and general Butturlin of the Russians, who were arrayed against Frederick. your letter that you have behaved like a brave officer, and that neither you nor your garrison have brought disgrace or reproach upon yourselves. I am your well-affectioned king. "FREDERICK. "P.S.-You may, in this occurrence, say what Francis I., after the battle of Pavia, wrote to his mother: All is lost except honThey or.' As I do not yet completely understand could not agree upon a plan of attack. Neither the affair, I forbear to judge of it; for it is altocommander was willing to expose his troops together extraordinary.” the brunt of a battle in which the carnage would necessarily be dreadful. Thus the weeks wore away. Frederick could not be safely attacked, and winter was approaching. At ten o'clock at night, on the 9th of September, the Russian camp went up in flame. The next morning not a Russian was to be seen. The whole army had disappeared over the hills far away to the north. Frederick immediately dispatched eight thousand men under general Platen to attack the flank of the retreating foe, and destroy his baggage wagons. The feat was brilliantly accomplished. On the 15th of September, before the dawn of the morning, general Platen fell upon the long train, took nearly two thousand prisoners, seven cannon, and destroyed five thousand heavily laden wagons. Frederick remained at Bunzelwitz a fortnight after the retreat of the Russians. In the mean time the French and English were fighting each other with varying success upon the banks of the Rhine. It is not necessary to enter into the details of their struggles. Frederick's magazines at Schweidnitz were getting low. On the 26th of September he broke up his camp at Bunzelwitz, and in a three days' march to the southeast reached Neisse. The Austrians did not venture to annoy him. Frederick had scarcely reached Neisse when he learned, to his amazement and horror, that general Loudon, with a panther-like spring, had captured Schweidnitz, with its garrison and all its supplies. It was a terrible blow to the king. The Austrians could now winter in Silesia. The anguish of Frederick must have been great. But he gave no utterance to his gloomy forebodings. Notwithstanding this letter, Frederick refused to give general Zastrow any further employment, but left him to neglect, obscurity, and poverty. Zastrow wrote to the king imploring a court-martial. He received the following laconic reply: "It is of no use. I impute nothing of crime to you. But after such a mishap it would be dangerous to trust you with any post or command." The freezing gales of winter soon came, when neither army could keep the open field. Frederick established his winter-quarters at Breslau. General Loudon, with his Austrians, was about thirty miles southwest of him at Kunzendorf. Thus ended the sixth campaign. The winter was long, cold, and dreary. Fierce storms swept the fields, piling up the snow in enormous drifts. But for this cruel war the Prussian, Russian, and Austrian peasants, who had been dragged into the armies to slaughter each other, might have been in their humble but pleasant homes, by the bright fireside, in the enjoyment of all comforts. "The snow lies ell-deep," writes Archenholtz; "snow-tempests, sleet, frost. The soldiers' bread is a block of ice, impracticable to human teeth till you thaw it." It was on the 9th of December that the king, after incredible exposure to hunger and cold and night-marchings, established himself for the winter in the shattered apartments of his ruined palace at Breslau. He tried to assume a cheerful aspect in public, but spent most of his hours alone, brooding over the ruin which now seemed inevitable. He withdrew from all society, scarcely spoke to any body except upon business. One day general Lentulus dined with him, and not one word was spoken at the table. On the 18th of January, 1762, the king wrote in the following desponding tones to D'Argens : "The king," writes Küster, "fell ill of the gout, saw almost nobody, never came out. It was whispered that his inflexible heart was at last breaking. And for certain there never was in his camp and over his dominions such a gloom as in this October, 1761, till at length "The school of patience I am at is hard, he appeared on horseback again, with a cheer-long-continued, cruel, nay, barbarous. I have not been able to escape my lot. man foresight could suggest has been employed, and nothing has succeeded. If Fortune continues to pursue me, doubtless I shall sink. It is only she that can extricate me from the situation I am in. I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the great scale, like an observer from some distant planet. All then seems to me so infinitely small; and I could almost pity my enemies for giving themselves such trouble about so very little. All that hu- Peter III. had been left an orphan, and titular duke of Schleswig-Holstein, when eleven years of age. His mother was a daughter of Peter the Great. His aunt, the czarina Elizabeth, who had determined not to marry, adopted the child, and pronounced him to be her heir to the throne. Being at that time on friendly terms with Frederick, the empress Elizabeth had consulted him in reference to a wife for the future czar. It will be remembered that the king effected a marriage between Peter and Sophia, the beautiful daughter of a Prussian general, prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, and at that time commandant of Stettin. His wife was sister to the heir-apparent of Sweden. Carlyle, speaking of this couple, says: "What would become of us without philosophy, without this reasonable contempt of things frivolous, transient, and fugitive, about which the greedy and ambitious make such a pother, fancying them to be solid! This is to become wise by stripes, you will tell me. Well, if one do become wise, what matters it how? I read a great deal. I devour my books, and that brings me useful alleviation. But for my books, I think hypochondria would have had me in bedlam before now. In fine, dear marquis, we live in troublous times and in desperate situations. I have all the properties of a stage hero-always in danger, always on the point of perishing. One must hope that the conclusion will come, and if the end of the piece be lucky, we will forget the rest. ניי "The darkest hour is often nearest the dawn." The next day after Frederick had written the above letter he received news of the death of his most inveterate enemy, Elizabeth, the empress of Russia. As we have mentioned, she was intensely exasperated against him in consequence of some sarcasms in which he had indulged in reference to her private life. Elizabeth was the daughter of Peter the Great, and had inherited many of her father's imperial traits of character. She was a very formidable foe. "Russia may be counted as the bigger half of all he had to strive with; the bigger, or at least the far uglier, more ruinous, and incendiary; and, if this were at once taken away, think what a daybreak when the night was at the blackest."2 The nephew of Elizabeth, and her successor, Peter III., was a very warm admirer of Frederick. One of his first acts was to send to the Prussian king the assurance of his esteem and friendship. Peter immediately released all the Prussian prisoners in his dominions, entered into an armistice with Frederick, which was soon followed by a treaty of alliance. The two sovereigns commenced a very friendly correspondence. Frederick returned all the Russian prisoners, well clothed and fed, to their homes. The change was almost as sudden and striking as the transformations in the kaleidoscope. On the 23d Peter issued a decree that there was peace with Prussia, that he had surrendered to his Prussian majesty all the territorial conquests thus far made, and had recalled the Russian armies. "They have a daughter, Sophie-Frederike, now near fifteen, and very forward for her age; comely to look upon, wise to listen to. 'Is not she the suitable one?' thinks Frederick in regard to this matter. 'Her kindred is of the oldest-old as Albert the Bear. She has been frugally brought up, Spartan-like, though as a princess by birth. Let her cease skipping ropes on the ramparts yonder with her young Stettin playmates, and prepare for being a czarina of the Russias, thinks he. And communicates his mind to the czarina, who answers, 'Excellent! How did I never think of that myself!'" This was in January, 1744. The young lady, with her mother, by express invitation, and with this object in view, visited the Russian court. Sophia embraced the Greek religion, received in baptism the new name of Catherine, and on the 1st of September, 1745, was married to her second-cousin Peter. "And with invocation of the Russian heaven and Russian earth they were declared to be one flesh, though at last they turned out to be two fleshes, as my reader well knows." About a year before this, on the 17th of July, 1744, Frederick's sister Ulrique had been married to Adolf Frederick, the heir-apparent to the throne of Sweden. Eighteen years of this weary world's history, with its wars and its woes, had since passed away. On the 5th of April, 1751, the old king of Sweden died. Thus Adolf became king and Frederick's sister Ulrique queen of Sweden. And now, on the 5th of January, 1762, the empress of Russia died, and Peter III., with his wife Catherine, ascended the throne of that majestic empire. The withdrawal of Russia from the alliance against Frederick, though hailed by him with great joy, still left him, with wasted armies and exhausted finances, to struggle single-handed against Austria and France united, each of which kingdoms was far more powerful than Prussia. The winter passed rapidly away without any marked events, each party preparing for the opening of the campaign in the ensuing spring. On the 8th of June, 1762, Frederick wrote to D'Argens : "In fine, my dear marquis, the job ahead of 1 CARLYLE THE EMPRESS CATHERINE me is hard and difficult, and nobody can say positively how it will all go. Pray for us; and don't forget a poor devil who kicks about strangely in his harness, who leads the life of one damned." Peter III. was a drunken, brutal, half-crazed debauchee. Catherine was a beautiful, graceful, intellectual, and dissolute woman. They hated each other. They did not even pretend to be faithful to each other. Catherine formed a successful conspiracy, dethroned her husband, and was proclaimed by the army sole empress. After a series of the wildest scenes of intrigue, corruption, and crime, the imbecile Peter III., who had fled to the remote palace of Ropscha, was murdered, being first compelled to drink of poison, and then, while writhing in pain, he was strangled with a napkin. Whether Catherine were a party to this assassination is a question which can now probably never be decided. It is certain that she must have rejoiced over the event, and that she richly rewarded the murderers. The seventh campaign of the Seven Years' War commenced on the 1st of July, 1762. Peter III. had sent an army of twenty thousand men to the support of Frederick. Aided by these troops, united with his own army, Frederick had emerged from his winter-quarters, and was just about to attack the Austrian army, which was intrenched upon the heights of Burkersdorf, a little south of Schweidnitz, which fortress the Austrians then held. The evening before the contemplated attack the Russian general Czernichef entered the tent of Frederick with the following appalling tidings: "There has been a revolution in St. Petersburg. The czar Peter III., your majesty's devoted friend, has been deposed, and probably assassinated. The czarina Catherine, influenced by the enemies of your majesty, and unwilling to become embroiled in a conflict with Austria and France, has ordered me to return instantly homeward with the twenty thousand troops under my command." For a moment the king was quite stunned by the blow. The withdrawal of these troops would expose him to be speedily overwhelmed by the Austrians. By earnest entreaty Frederick persuaded Czernichef to remain with him three days longer. "I will require of you no service whatever. The Austrians know nothing of this change. They will think that you are still my ally. Your presence simply will thus aid me greatly in the battle." General Czernichef, though at the risk of his head from the displeasure of Catherine, generously consented so far to disobey the orders of his empress. The next day, July 2, 1762, Frederick, with his remaining troops, attacked the foe, under general Daun, at Burkersdorf. From four o'clock in the morning until five in the afternoon the antagonistic hosts hurled themselves against each other. Frederick was the victor. "On fall of night, Daun, every body having had his orders, and been making his preparations for six hours past, ebbed totally away, in perfect order, bag and baggage; well away to southward, and left Frederick quit of him." Early the next morning, Czernichef, greatly admiring the exploit Frederick had performed, commenced his march home. Just before this there was a change in the British ministry, and In the following curious proclamation the empress, Catherine II., announced to her sub-the new cabinet clamored for peace. England jects the death of her husband: entered into a treaty with France, and retired "The seventh day after our accession to the from the conflict. Frederick, vehemently upthrone of all the Russias we received informa- braiding the English with treachery-the same tion that the late emperor, Peter III., was at- kind of treachery of which he had repeatedly tacked with a violent, colic. That we might been guilty-marched upon Schweidnitz. Aftnot be wanting in Christian duty, or disobedi-er a vigorous siege of two months he captured ent to the divine command by which we are the place. enjoined to preserve the life of our neighbor, we immediately ordered that the said Peter should be furnished with every thing that might be judged necessary to restore his health by the aids of medicine. But, to our great regret and affliction, we were yesterday evening apprised that, by permission of the Almighty, the late emperor departed this life." Nearly all of Silesia was again in the hands of Frederick. He seems to have paid no regard to the ordinary principles of honor in the accomplishment of his plans. Indeed, he seems to have had no delicate perceptions of right and wrong, no instinctive appreciation of what was 1 CARLYLE to Frederick. Upon receiving the glad tidings he wrote to Henry: honorable or dishonorable in human conduct. | stances, it was a victory of immense importance He coined adulterated money, which he compelled the people to take, but which he refused to receive in taxes. In his Military Instructions, drawn up by his own hand, he writes: "When you find it very necessary, yet very difficult, to gain any intelligence of the enemy, there is another expedient, though a cruel one. You take a rich burgher, possessed of rich lands, a wife, and children. You oblige him to go to the enemy's camp, as if to complain of hard treatment, and to take along with him, as his servant, a spy who speaks the language of the country; assuring him at the same time that, in case he does not bring the spy back with him, after having remained a sufficient time in the enemy's camp, you will set fire to his house, and massacre his wife and children. I was forced to have recourse to this cruel expedient. It answered my purpose." A man's moral nature must be indeed obtuse who could thus recommend the compulsion of a peaceable citizen to act the part of a traitor to his own country, under the alternative of having his house fired and his wife and children massacred. "Your letter, my dear brother, has made me twenty years younger. Yesterday I was sixty, to-day hardly eighteen. I bless Heaven for preserving your health, and that things have passed so happily. It is a service so important rendered by you to the state that I can not enough express my gratitude, and will wait to do it in person." On the 24th of November the belligerents entered into an armistice until the 1st of March. All were exhausted. It was manifest that peace would soon be declared. Commissioners to arrange the terms of peace met at the castle of Hubertsburg, near Dresden. On the 15th of February, 1763, peace was concluded. Frederick retained Silesia. That was the result of the war. According to Frederick's computation he had succeeded in wresting this province from Maria Theresa at an expense of eight hundred and fifty-three thousand lives, actual fighters, who had perished upon the field of battle. Of these one hundred and eighty thousand were PrusWinter was now approaching. The Austri- sians. Of the hundreds of thousands of men, ans in Saxony made a desperate attack upon women, and children who, in consequence of prince Henry, and were routed with much loss. the war, had perished of exposure, famine, and The shattered Austrian army retired to Bohe-pestilence, no note is taken. The population mia for winter-quarters. Under the circum- of Prussia had diminished, during the seven years, five hundred thousand. 1 Military Instructions, written by the King of Prussia, p. 176. The day in which the treaty was signed Frederick wrote to the marquis D'Argens as follows: |