CHAP. 1714. 49. battle, and victory of the Prus sians at Torgau. East Prussia, and deliver Berlin, which had been a second time occupied by his enemies. Driven to desperate measures by such an unparalleled succession of Dreadful dangers, he extricated himself from them by the terrible. battle and extraordinary victory of Torgau, on November 3, 1761, in which, after a dreadful struggle, he defeated Daun, though intrenched to the teeth, with the loss of twenty-five thousand men-an advantage dearly purchased by the loss of eighteen thousand of his own brave soldiers. But this victory saved the Prussian monarchy: Daun, severely wounded in the battle, retired to Vienna; his army withdrew into Bohemia; two-thirds of Saxony was regained by the Prussians; the Russians and Swedes retired; Berlin was delivered from the enemy; and the fifth campaign terminated with the unconquerable monarch still in possession of nearly his whole dominions. 50. state of this time. The military strength of Prussia was now all but Desperate exhausted by the unparalleled and heroic efforts she had Prussia at made. Frederick has left us the following picture of the state of his kingdom and army at this disastrous period: -"Our condition at that period can only be likened to that of a man riddled with balls, weakened by the loss of blood, and ready to sink under the weight of his sufferings. The noblesse were exhausted, the lower people ruined; numbers of villages burnt, many towns destroyed; a complete anarchy had overturned the whole order and police of government; in a word, desolation was universal. The army was in no better situation. Seventeen pitched battles had mowed down the flower 1 Histoire of the officers and soldiers; the regiments were broken Temps, par down, and composed in part of deserters and prisoners ; 1 IV., p. 174. order had disappeared, and discipline relaxed to such a degree that the old infantry was little better than a body de mon Frederick of newly-raised militia." Necessity not less than prudence, in these circumstances, which to any other man. would have seemed desperate, prescribed a cautious defensive policy; and it is doubtful whether in it his greatness did not appear more conspicuous than in the bolder parts of his former career. CHAP. XII. 1714. 51. in the camp witz in The campaign of 1761 passed in skilful marches and countermarches, without his numerous enemies being able Operations to obtain a single advantage, where the king commanded of Bunzelin person. He was now, literally speaking, assailed on 1761. all sides the immense masses of the Austrians and Russians were converging to one point; and Frederick, who could not muster forty thousand men under his banners, found himself assailed by one hundred thousand allies, whom six campaigns had trained to perfection in the military art. It seemed impossible he could escape; yet he did so, and compelled his enemies to retire without gaining the slightest advantage over him. Taking post in an intrenched camp at Bunzelwitz, fortified with the utmost skill, defended with the utmost vigilance, he succeeded in maintaining himself and providing food for his troops for two months within cannon-shot of the enormous masses of the Russians and Austrians, till want of provisions obliged them to separate. "It has just come to this," said Frederick, "who will starve first?" He made his enemies do so. Burning with shame, they were forced to retire to their respective territories, so that he was enabled to take up his winter-quarters at Breslau in Silesia. But, during this astonishing struggle, disaster had accumulated in other quarters. His camp at Bunzelwitz had only been maintained by concentrating in it nearly the whole strength of the monarchy, and its more distant provinces suffered severely under the drain. VOL. II. 2 D XII. 1714. CHAP. Schweidnitz, the capital of Silesia, was surprised by the Austrians, with its garrison of four thousand men. Prince Henry, after the loss of Dresden, had the utmost difficulty in maintaining himself in the part of Saxony which still remained to the Prussians; in Silesia they had lost all but Glogau, Breslau, and Neisse; and to complete his misfortune, the dismissal of Lord Chatham from office in England had led to the stoppage of the wonted subsidy of £750,000 a-year. The resolution of the king did not sink, but his judgment almost despaired of success under such a complication of disasters. Determined not to yield, he discovered a conspiracy at his headquarters to seize him, and deliver him to his enemies. Dreading such a calamity more than death, he carried with him, as formerly in similar circumstances, a sure poison, intended, in the last extremity, to terminate his days. 52. of the Em press of Russia re affairs. "Nevertheless," as he himself said, "affairs which The death seemed desperate, in reality were not so; and perseverance at length surmounted every peril." Fortune often, stores his in real life, as well as in romance, favours the brave. In the case of Frederick, however, it would be unjust to say he was favoured by Fortune. On the contrary, she long proved adverse to him; and he recovered her smiles only by heroically persevering till the ordinary chances of human affairs turned in his favour. He accomplished what in serious cases is the great aim of medicine-he made the patient survive the disease. In the winter of 1761, the Empress of Russia died, and was succeeded by Peter III. That prince had long conceived the most ardent admiration for Frederick, and he manifested it in the most decisive manner on his accession to the throne, by not only withdrawing from the alliance, but uniting his forces with those of Prussia against Austria. This XII. 1714. great event speedily changed the face of affairs. The CHAP. united Prussians and Russians, under Frederick, seventy thousand strong, retook Schweidnitz in the face of Daun, who had only sixty thousand men; and although the sudden death of the Czar Peter in a few months deprived him of the aid of his powerful neighbours, yet Russia took no further part in the contest. France, exhausted and defeated in every quarter of the globe by England, could render no aid to Austria, upon whom the whole weight of the contest fell. It was soon apparent that she was overmatched by the Prussian hero. Relieved from the load which had so long oppressed him, Frederick vigorously resumed the offensive. Silesia was wholly regained by the king in person; the battle of Freyberg gave his brother, Prince Henry, the ascendant in Saxony; and the cabinet of Vienna, seeing the contest hopeless, were glad to make peace at Hubertsburg, on 15th February 1763, on terms which, besides confirming to him Silesia, left entire the whole dominions of the King of Prussia. 53. struggle. He entered Berlin in triumph, after six years' absence, in an open chariot, with Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick Wonderful seated by his side. No words can paint the enthusiasm result of the of the spectators at the august spectacle, or the admiration with which they regarded the hero who had filled the world with his renown. It was no wonder they were proud of their sovereign. His like had never been seen since the fall of the Roman empire. He had founded and saved a kingdom. He had conquered Europe in arms. With six millions of subjects he had vanquished powers possessing ninety millions. He had created a new era in the art of war. His people were exhausted, pillaged, ruined; their numbers had declined a tenth during the CHAP. XII. 1714. 54. ter as a general. contest. But what then? They had come victorious out of a struggle unparalleled in modern times: the halo of Leuthen and Rosbach, of Zorndorf and Torgau, played round their bayonets; they were inspired with the energy which so speedily repairs any disaster. Frederick wisely and magnanimously laid aside the sword when he resumed the pacific sceptre. His subsequent reign was almost entirely spent in tranquillity: all the wounds of war were speedily healed under his sage and beneficent administration. Before his death, his subjects had been doubled, the national wealth had been made triple of what it had been at the commencement of his reign; and Prussia now boasts of sixteen millions of inhabitants, and a population increasing faster in numbers and resources than that of any other state in Europe. No laboured character, no studied eulogium, can His charac- paint Frederick like this brief and simple narrative of his exploits. It places him at once at the head of modern generals-if Hannibal be excepted, perhaps of ancient and modern. He was not uniformly successful : on the contrary, he sustained several dreadful defeats. But that arose from the enormous superiority of force by which he was assailed, and the desperate state of his affairs, which were generally so pressing that even a respite in one quarter could be obtained only by a victory instantly gained, under whatever circumstances, in another. What appears rashness was often in him the height of wisdom. He had no parliament or coalition to consider; no adverse faction was on the watch to convert casual disaster into the means of ruin. He was at liberty to take counsel only from his own heroic breast. He could protract the struggle, however, by no other means but strong and vigorous strokes and the lustre of |