"OF WHOM THE WORLD WAS NOT WORTHY"
-290-
DECEMBER
In France, Massillon had hinted that kings are
chosen for the welfare of the people, and Voltaire had marshaled the men
of letters against priestcraft. The Bourbons had risen to the throne
through the frank and generous Henry IV who in the sports of childhood,
played barefoot and bareheaded with the peasant boys on the mountains of
Bearn. The cradle of Louis XV was rocked in the pestilent atmosphere of
the regency; his tutor when from the palace-windows he pointed out the
multitudes, had said to the royal child: "Sire, this people is yours;"
and as he grew old in profligate sensuality, he joined the mechanism of
superstition with the maxims of absolutism, mitigating his dread of Hell
by the belief that Heaven is indulgent to the licentiousness of kings
who maintain the church by the sword. Whereas the Reformation was an
expression of the right of the human intellect to freedom, in France,
there was no alliance between the government and liberal opinion; and
that opinion migrated from Versailles to the court of Prussia. Thus
Prussia lay in the struggle with the conspiracy of European prejudice
and legitimacy of priestcraft and despotism.
The center of that conspiracy
was the empress of Austria with the apostate elector of Saxony, who was
king of Poland. Aware of the forming combination, Frederic resolved to
attack his enemies before they were prepared, and in August, 1756 he
invaded Saxony, took Dresden, blockaded the elector's army at Pirna,
gained a victory over the Imperial forces that were advancing for its
relief, and closed the campaign in the middle of October, by compelling
it to capitulate. In the following winter, the alliances against him
were completed; and not Saxony only, and Austria, with Hungary, but the
German empire, half the German states; Russia, not from motives of
public policy, but from a woman's caprice; Sweden, subservient to the
Catholic powers through the degrading ascendancy of its nobility;
France, as the ally of Austria, --more than half the continent, --took
up arms against Frederic, who had no allies in the south, or east or
north, and in the west none but Hanover with Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick.
And as for Spain, not even the offer from Pitt of the conditional
restitution of Gibraltar, and the evacuation of all English
establishments on the Mosquito Shore and in the Bay of Honduras, nor any
consideration whatever, could move the Catholic monarch "to draw the
sword in favor of heretics."
As spring opened, Frederic hastened to meet the
Austrian army in Bohemia. They retired the command of Charles of
Lorraine, abandoning well-stored magazines; and in May 1757, for the
preservation of Prague, risked a battle under its walls. After terrible
carnage, the victory remained with Frederic, who at once framed the most
colossal design that ever entered the mind of a soldier: to execute
against Austria a series of measures like those against Saxony at Pirna,
to besiege Prague and compel the army of Charles of Lorraine to
surrender. But the cautious Daun, a man of high birth, esteemed by the
empress queen and beloved by the Catholic Church, pressed slowly forward
to raise the siege. Leaving a part of his army before Prague, Frederic
went forth with the rest to attack the Austrian commander; and, on the
eighteenth of June, attempted to storm his entrenchments on the heights
of Colin. His brave battalions were repelled with disastrous loss, and
left him almost unattended. "Will you carry the battery alone?" demanded
one of his lieutenants; on which the hero rode calmly toward the left
wing and ordered a retreat.
The refined but feeble August William, prince of
Prussia, had remained at Prague. "All men are children of one father;"
thus Frederic had once reproved his pride of birth; "all are members of
one family, and, for all your pride, are of equal birth and of the same
blood. Would you stand above them? Then excel them in humanity,
gentleness, and virtue." At heart opposed to the cause of mankind, the
prince had, from the first, urged his brother to avoid the war; and at
this time, when drops of bitterness were falling thickly into the hero's
cup, he broke out into pusillanimous complaints, advising a shameful
peace by concession to Austria. But Frederic's power was now first to
appear: as victory fell away from him, he stood alone before his
fellowmen, in unconquerable greatness.
Raising the siege of Prague, he conducted the retreat
of one division of his army into Saxony, without loss; the other the
prince of Prussia led, in a manner contrary to the rules of war and to
common sense, and more disastrous than the loss of a pitched battle.
Frederic censured the dereliction harshly; in that day of disaster, he
would not tolerate a failure of duty, even in the heir to the throne.
The increasing dangers became terrible. "I am
resolved," wrote Frederic in July, "to save my country or perish." Colin
became the war-cry of French and Russians, of Swedes and Imperialists;
Russians invaded his dominions on the east; Swedes from the north
threatened Pomerania and Berlin; a vast army of the French was
concentrating itself at Erfurt for the recovery of Saxony; while
Austria, recruited by Bavaria and Wurtemberg, was conquering Silesia.
"The Prussians will win no more victories," wrote the Queen of Poland.
Death at this moment took from Frederic his mother, whom he loved most
tenderly. A few friends remained faithful to him, cheering him by their
correspondence. "Oh that Heaven had heaped all ills on me alone!" said
his affectionate sister; "I would have borne them with firmness." To the
king of England he confessed his difficulties, and that he had nearly
all Europe in arms against him. "I can furnish you no help," answered
George II, and sought neutrality for Hanover.
In August, having vainly attempted to engage the enemy
in Silesia in a pitched battle, Frederic repaired to the west, to
encounter the united army of the Imperialists and French. "I can leave
you no large garrison," was his message to Pink at Dresden; "but be of
good cheer; to keep the city will do you vast honor." On his way, he
learns that the Austrians have won a victory over Winterfeld and Bevern,
his generals in Silesia; that Winterfeld had fallen; that Bevern had
retreated to the lake near Breslau, and was opposed by the Austrians at
Lissa. On the eighth of September, the day after the great disaster in
Silesia, the Duke of Cumberland, having been defeated and compelled to
retire, signed for his army and for Hanover a convention of Neutrality.
Voltaire advised Frederic to imitate Cumberland. "If every string
breaks," wrote Frederic to Ferdinand of Brunswick, "throw yourself into
Magdeburg. Situated as we are, we must persuade ourselves that one of us
is worth four others." Morning dawned on new miseries; night came
without a respite to his cares. He spoke serenely of the path to eternal
rest, and his own resolve to live and die free. "0 my beloved people,"
he exclaimed, "my wishes live but for you; to you belongs every drop of
my blood, and from my heart I would gladly give my life for my country."
After reproving the meanness of spirit of Voltaire, "I am a man," he
wrote in October, in the moment of intensest danger; "born, therefore,
to suffer; to the rigor of destiny I oppose my own constancy; menaced
with shipwreck, I will breast the tempest and think and live and die as
a sovereign." In a week Berlin was in the hands of his enemies.