my conditions. I will perish with my army before departing from one iota of them if the Empress does not accept them, I will rise in my demands." CHAP. XII. 1714. 37. services to during the years of peace. The peace of Dresden lasted ten years; and these were of inestimable importance to Frederick. He em- His great ployed that precious interval in consolidating his con- his kingdom quests, securing the affections by protecting the interests next ten of his subjects, and pursuing every design which could conduce to their welfare. Marshes were drained, lands were broken up and cultivated, manufactures established, the finances were put in the best order, and agriculture, as the great staple of the kingdom, was sedulously encouraged. His capital was embellished, and the fame of his exploits attracted the greatest and most celebrated men in Europe. Voltaire, among the rest, became for years his guest; but the aspiring genius and irascible temper of the military monarch could ill accord with the vanity and insatiable thirst for praise of the French author, and they parted with mutual respect but irretrievable alienation. Meanwhile, the strength of the monarchy was daily increasing under Frederick's wise and provident administration. The population nearly reached six million of souls; the cavalry mustered thirty thousand, all in the highest state of discipline and equipment; and the infantry, esteemed with reason the most perfect in Europe, numbered a hundred and twenty thousand bayonets. 38. Austria, These troops had long been accustomed to act together in large bodies--the best training, next to actual service Coalition of in the field, which an army can receive. They had need Russia, of all their skill, discipline, and courage; for Prussia Saxony, and was ere long threatened by the most formidable con- against federacy that ever yet had been directed in modern France, Sweden Prussia. CHAP. 1714. 39. Frederick invades conquers that coun try. times against a single state. Austria, Russia, France, Sweden, and Saxony, united in alliance for the purpose of partitioning the Prussian territories. These allies had ninety millions of men in their dominions, and could with ease bring four hundred thousand men into the field. Prussia had less than six millions of inhabitants, who were strained to the uttermost to array a hundred and twenty thousand combatants; and, even with the aid of England and Hanover, not more than fifty thousand auxiliaries could be relied on. Prussia had neither strong fortresses like Flanders, nor mountain chains like Spain, nor a frontier stream like France. territory, open on every side, was entirely composed of flat plains, unprotected by great rivers, and surrounded on the south, east, and north by its enemies. The contest seemed utterly desperate, and there did not seem a chance of escape for the Prussian monarchy. Its at once into the resources of the Having received Frederick began the contest by one of those strokes which demonstrated the strength of his understanding Saxony, and and the vigour of his determination. Instead of waiting to be attacked, he carried the war enemy's territories, and converted the nearest of them to his own advantage. authentic intelligence of the signature of a treaty for the partition of his kingdom by the great powers, on 9th May, 1756, he suddenly entered the Saxon territories, made himself master of Dresden, and shut up the whole forces of Saxony in the intrenched camp at Pirna. Marshal Brown having advanced at the head of sixty thousand men to relieve them, he encountered and totally defeated him at Lowositz, with the loss of fifteen thousand men. Deprived of all hope of succour, the Saxons in Pirna, after having made vain efforts to escape, were obliged to lay down their arms, still fourteen thousand strong. The whole of Saxony submitted to the victor, who thenceforward, during the whole war, turned its entire resources to his own support. CHAP. XII. 1714. 40. effects of Beyond all question, it was this masterly and successful stroke, in the very outset, and in the teeth of his Great enemies, which added above a third to his warlike this stroke. resources, and enabled him subsequently to maintain his ground against the desperate odds by which he was assailed. Most of the Saxons taken at Pirna, dazzled by the conqueror's fame, entered his service: the Saxon youth hastened in crowds to enrol themselves under the banners of the hero of the North of Germany. Frederick, at the same time, effectually vindicated the step he had taken in the eyes of all Europe, by the publication of the secret treaty of partition, which he had discovered in the archives at Dresden, in spite of the efforts of the Electress to conceal it. Whatever might have been the case in the former war, when he seized on Silesia, it was apparent to the world that he now, at least, was strictly in the right, and that his invasion of Saxony was not less justifiable on the score of public morality, than important in its consequences to the great contest in which he was engaged. 41. the Aus Prague, and at Kolin. The Allies made the utmost efforts to regain the advantages they had lost. France, instead of the He defeats twenty-four thousand men she was bound to furnish by trians at the treaty of partition, put a hundred thousand on foot; is defeated the Diet of Ratisbon placed sixty thousand troops of the Empire at the disposal of Austria; but Frederick still preserved the ascendant. Breaking into Bohemia, in March 1757, he defeated the Austrians in a great battle under the walls of Prague, shut up forty thousand of their CHAP. XII. 1714. 42. best troops in that town, and soon reduced them to such extremities that it was evident that, if not succoured, they must surrender. The cabinet of Vienna made the greatest efforts for their relief. Marshal Daun, whose cautious and scientific policy was peculiarly calculated to thwart the designs and baffle the audacity of his youthful antagonist, advanced at the head of sixty thousand men to their relief. Frederick advanced to meet them with less than twenty thousand combatants. He attacked the Imperialists in a strong position at Kolin, on the 18th July, and, for the first time in his life, met with a bloody defeat. His army, especially that division commanded by his brother, the prince-royal, sustained severe losses in the retreat, which became unavoidable, out of Bohemia; and the king confessed in his private correspondence that an honourable death alone remained to him. Disaster accumulated on every side. The English Desperate and Hanoverian army, his only allies, capitulated at the Prussian Closterseven, and left the French army, sixty thousand monarchy. strong, at liberty to follow the Prussians; the French situation of and the troops of the Empire, with the Duke of Richelieu at their head, menaced Magdeburg, where the royal family of Prussia had taken refuge, and advanced towards Dresden. The Russians, seventy thousand strong, were making serious progress on the side of Poland, and had recently defeated the Prussians opposed to them. The king was put to the ban of the Empire; and the army of the Empire, mustering forty thousand, was moving against him. Four huge armies, each stronger than his own, were advancing to crush a prince who could not collect thirty thousand men round his banners. At that period he carried a sure poison always with him, deter mined not to fall alive into the hands of his enemies. He seriously contemplated suicide, and gave vent to the mournful but yet heroic sentiments with which he was inspired, in a letter to Voltaire, terminating with the lines "Pour moi, menacé de naufrage, Je dois, en affrontant l'orage, CHAP. XII. 1714. marvellous Rosbach then. Then it was that the astonishing vigour and powers 43. of his mind shone forth with their full lustre. Collect- Frederick's ing hastily twenty-five thousand men out of his shattered victories at battalions, he marched against the Prince of Soubise, and Leuwho, at the head of an army of sixty thousand French and Imperial troops, was advancing against him through Thuringia, and totally defeated him, with the loss of eighteen thousand men, on the memorable field of Rosbach. Hardly was this triumph achieved when he was called, with his indefatigable followers, to stem the advance of the Prince of Lorraine and Marshal Daun, who were making the most alarming progress in Silesia. Schweidnitz, its capital, had fallen; a large body of Prussians, under the Duke de Bevern, had been defeated at Breslau. That rich and important province seemed on the point of falling again into the hands of the Austrians, when Frederick reinstated his affairs, which seemed wholly desperate, by one of those astonishing strokes which distinguish him, perhaps, above any general of modern times. In the depth of winter he attacked, at Leuthen, on the 5th December 1757, Marshal Daun and the Prince of Lorraine-who had sixty thousand admirable troops under their orders-and, by the skilful application of the oblique method of attack, defeated them entirely, with the loss of thirty thousand men, of |