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cerned. It was an arrangement which made | rantied the integrity of the Austrian "es. Is no change in the distribution of power among it not perfectly clear that, if antiquated claims the states of Christendom. It was an arrange- are to be set up against recent treaties and ment which could be set aside only by means | long possession, the world can never be at of a general war; and, if it were set aside, the peace for a day? The laws of all nations effect would be, that the equilibrium of Europe have wisely established a time of limitation, would be deranged, that the loyal and patriotic | after which titles, however illegitimate in their feelings of millions would be cruelly outraged, origin, cannot be questioned. It is felt by and that great provinces, which had been everybody that to eject a person from his united for centuries, would be torn from each estate on the ground of some injustice comother by main force. mitted in the time of the Tudors, would proThe sovereigns of Europe were, therefore, duce all the evils which result from arbitrary bound by every obligation which those who confiscation, and would make all property inare intrusted with power over their fellow-secure. creatures ought to hold most sacred, to respect and defend the rights of the Archduchess. Her situation and her personal qualities were such as might be expected to move the mind of any generous man to pity, admiration, and chivalrous tenderness. She was in her twenty-fourth year. Her form was majestic, her features beautiful, her countenance sweet and animated, her voice musical, her deportment gracious and dignified. In all domestic relations she was without reproach. She was married to a husband whom she loved, and was on the point of giving birth to a child when death deprived her of her father. The loss of a parent and the new cares of the empire were too much for her in the delicate state of her health. Her spirits were depressed, and her cheek lost its bloom.

Yet it seemed that she had little cause for anxiety. It seemed that justice, humanity, and the faith of treaties would have their due weight, and that the settlement so solemnly guarantied would be quietly carried into effect. England, Russia, Poland, and Holland declared in form their intention to adhere to their engagements. The French ministers made a verbal declaration to the same effect. But from no quarter did the young Queen of Hungary receive stronger assurances of friendship and support than from the King of Prussia.

Yet the King of Prussia, the "Anti-Machiavel," had already fully determined to commit the great crime of violating his plighted faith, of robbing the ally whom he was bound to defend, and of plunging all Europe into a long, bloody, and desolating war, and all this for no end whatever except that he might extend his dominions and see his name in the gazettes. He determined to assemble a great army with speed and secrecy to invade Silesia before Maria Theresa should be apprized of his design, and to add that rich province to his kingdom.

It concerns the commonwealth-so runs the legal maxim-that there be an end of litigation. And surely this maxim is at least equally applicable to the great commonwealth of states, for in that commonwealth litigation means the devastation of provinces, the suspension of trade and industry, sieges like those of Badajoz and St. Sebastian, pitched fields like those of Eylau and Borodino. We hold that the transfer of Norway from Denmark to Sweden was an unjustifiable proceeding; but would the king of Denmark be therefore justified in landing, without any new provocation, in Norway, and commencing military operations there? The King of Holland thinks, no doubt, that he was unjustly deprived of the " Belgian provinces. Grant that it were so. Would he, therefore, be justified in marching with an army on Brussels? The case against Frederic was still stronger, inasmuch as the injustice of which he complained had been committed more than a century before. Nor must it be forgotten that he owed he highest personal obligations to the house of Austria. It may be doubted whether his life had not been preserved by the intercession of the prince whose daughter he was about to plunder.

To do the king justice, he pretended to no more virtue than he had. In manifestoes he might, for form's sake, insert some idle stories about his antiquated claim on Silesia; but in his conversations and Memoirs he took a very different tone. To quote his own words,—“Am bition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me, carried the day and I decided for war."

Having resolved on his course, he acted with ability and vigour. It was impossible wholly to conceal his preparations, for throughout the Prussian territories regiments, guns, and bag. gage were in motion, The Austrian envoy at Berlin apprized his court of these facts, and expressed a suspicion of Frederic's designs; but the ministers of Maria Theresa refused to We will not condescend to refute at length give credit to so black an imputation on a the pleas which the compiler of the Memoirs young prince who was known chiefly by his before us has copied from Doctor Preuss. high professions of integrity and philanthropy. They amount to this-that the house of Bran-"We will not,"-they wrote-"we cannot be denburg had some ancient pretensions to Sile- lieve it." sia, and had in the previous century been compelled, by hard usage on the part of the court of Vienna, to waive those pretensions. It is certain that, whoever might originally have been in the right, Prussia had submitted. Prince after prince of the house of Brandenburg had acquiesced in the existing arrange ment. Nay, the court of Berlin had recently been allied with that of Vienna, and had gua

In the mean time the Prussian forces had been assembled. Without any declaration of war, without any demand for reparation, in the very act of pouring forth compliments and as surances of good-will, Frederic commenced hostilities. Many thousands of his troops were actually in Silesia before the Queen of Hun gary knew that he had set up any claim tu any part of her territories. At length he sent

her a message which could be regarded only as an insult. If she would but let him have Silesia, he would, he said, stand by her against any power which should try to deprive her of her other dominions: as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new promise could be of more value than the old one!

It was the depth of winter. The cold was severe, and the roads deep in mire. But the Prussians passed on. Resistance was impossible. The Austrian army was then neither numerous nor efficient. The small portion of that army which lay in Silesia was unprepared for hostilities. Glogau was blockaded; Breslau opened its gates; Ohlau was evacuated. A few scattered garrisons still held out; but the whole open country was subjugated: no enemy ventured to encounter the king in the field; and, before the end of January, 1741, he returned to receive the congratulations of his subjects at Berlin.

den. The evils produced by this wickedness were felt in lands where the name of Prussia was unknown; and, in order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.

Silesia had been occupied without a battle; but the Austrian troops were advancing to the relief of the fortresses which still held out. In the spring Frederic rejoined his army. He had seen little of war, and had never commanded any great body of men in the field. It is not, therefore, strange that his first military operations showed little of that skill which, at a later period, was the admiration of Europe. What connoisseurs say of some pictures painted by Raphael in his youth, may be said of this campaign. It was in Frederic's early bad manner. Fortunately for him, the generals to whom he was opposed were men of small capacity. The discipline of his own troops, particularly of the infantry, was unequalled in that age; and some able and experienced officers were at hand to assist him with their advice. Of these, the most distinguished was Field-Marshal Schwerin-a brave adventurer of Pomeranian extraction, who had served half the governments in Europe, had borne the commissions of the States-General of Holland and of the Duke of Mecklenburg, and fought under Marlborough at Blenheim, and had been with Charles the Twelfth at Bender.

Had the Silesian question been merely a question between Frederic and Maria Theresa it would be impossible to acquit the Prussian king of gross perfidy. But when we consider the effects which his policy produced, and could not fail to produce, on the whole community of civilized nations, we are compelled to pronounce a condemnation still more severe. Till he began the war it seemed possible, even probable, that the peace of the world would be preserved. The plunder of the great Austrian heritage was indeed a strong temptation: and in more than one cabinet ambitious Frederic's first battle was fought at Molwitz, schemes were already meditated. But the trea- and never did the career of a great commander ties by which the "Pragmatic Sauction" had open in a more inauspicious manner. His been guarantied were express and recent. To army was victorious. Not only, however, did throw all Europe into confusion for a purpose he not establish his title to the character of an clearly unjust was no light matter. England able general, but he was so unfortunate as to was true to her engagements. The voice of make it doubtful whether he possessed the Fleury had always been for peace. He had a vulgar courage of a soldier. The cavalry conscience. He was now in extreme old age, which he commanded in person, was put t and was unwilling, after a life which, when his flight. Unaccustomed to the tumult and car situation was considered, must be pronounced nage of a field of battle, he lost his self-posses singularly pure, to carry the fresh stain of a sion, and listened too readily to those who great crime before the tribunal of his God. urged him to save himself. His English gray Even the vain and unprincipled Belle-Isle, carried him many miles from the field, while whose whole life was one wild daydream of Schwerin, though wounded in two places, man conquest and spoliation, felt that France, bound fully upheld the day. The skill of the old Fieldas she was by solemn stipulations, could not Marshal and the steadiness of the Prussian ba without disgrace make a direct attack on the talions prevailed; and the Austrian army was Austrian dominions. Charles, Elector of Ba-driven from the field with the loss of eight varia, pretended that he had a right to a large thousand men. part of the inheritance which the "Pragmatic Sanction" gave to the Queen of Hungary, but he was not sufficiently powerful to move with out support. It might, therefore, not unreasonably be expected that, after a short period of restlessness, all the potentates of Christendom would acquiesce in the arrangements made by the late emperor. But the selfish rapacity of the King of Prussia gave the signal to his The battlef Molwitz was the signa. for a neighbours. His example quieted their sense general explosion throughout Europe. Bavaria of shame. His success led them to underrate took up arms. France, not yet declaring her the difficulty of dismembering the Austrian mo- self a principal in the war, took part in it as narchy. The whole world sprang to arms. On an ally of Bavaria. The two great statesmen the head of Frederic is all the blood which was to whom mankind had owed many years of sned in a war which raged during many years tranquillity, disappeared about this time from and in every quarter of the globe-the blood of the scene; but not till they had both been guilty the column of Fontenoy, the blood of the brave of the weakness of sacrificing their sense of mountaineers who were slaughtered at Cullo-justice and their love of peace in the vain hope

The news was carried late at night to a mili in which the king had taken shelter. It gave him a bitter pang. He was successful; but he owed his success to dispositions which others had made, and to the valour of men who had fought while he was flying. So unpromising was the first appearance of the greatest warrior of that age!

of preserving their power. Fleury, sinking under age and infirmity, was borne down by the impetuosity of Belle-Isle. Walpole retired from the service of his ungrateful country to his woods and paintings at Houghton; and his power devolved on the daring and eccentric Carteret. As were the ministers, so were the nations. Thirty years during which Europe had, with few interruptions, enjoyed repose, had prepared the public mind for great military efforts. A new generation had grown up, which could not remember the siege of Turin or the slaughter of Malplaquet; which knew war by nothing but its trophies; and which, while it looked with pride on the tapestries at Blenheim, or the statue in the "Place of Victories," little thought by what privations, by what waste of private fortunes, by how many bitter tears, conquests must be purchased.

For a time fortune seemed adverse to the Queen of Hungary. Frederic invaded Moravia. The French and Bavarians penetrated into Bohemia, and were there joined by the Saxons. Prague was taken. The Elector of Bavaria was raised by the suffrages of his colleagues to the Imperial throne-a throne which the practice of centuries had almost entitled the house of Austria to regard as a hereditary possession.

France to supreme power on the continent, a the expense of the house of Hapsburg. His first object was, to rob the Queen of Hungary. His second was, that, if possible, nobody should rob her but himself. He had entered into en gagements with the powers leagued against Austria; but these engagements were in his estimation of no more force than the guarantee formerly given to the "Pragmatic Sanction." His game was now to secure his snare of the plunder by betraying his accomplices. Maria Theresa was little inclined to listen to any such compromise; but the English government represented to her so strongly the necessity of buying off so formidable an enemy as Frederic, that she agreed to negotiate. The negotiation would not, however, have ended in a treaty, had not the arms of Frederic been crowned with a second victory. Prince Charles of Lor raine, brother-in-law to Maria Theresa, a bold and active, though unfortunate general, gave battle to the Prussians at Chotusitz, and was defeated. The king was still only a learner of the military art. He acknowledged, at a later period, that his success on this occasion was to be attributed, not at all to his own general. ship, but solely to the valour and steadiness of his troops. He completely effaced, however, by his courage and energy, the stain which Molwitz had left on his reputation.

A peace, concluded under the English media tion, was the fruit of this battle. Maria Theresa ceded Silesia; Frederic abandoned his allies: Saxony followed his example; and the queen was left at liberty to turn her whole force against France and Bavaria. She was every where triumphant. The French were com pelled to evacuate Bohemia, and with difficulty effected their escape. The whole line of their retreat might be tracked by the corpses of thousands who died of cold, fatigue and hunger Many of those who reached their country car. ried with them seeds of death. Bavaria was overrun by bands of ferocious warriors from that bloody "debatable land,” which lies on the frontier between Christendom and Islam. The terrible names of the Pandoor, the Croat, and the Hussar, then first became familiar to west.

Yet was the spirit of the haughty daughter of the Cæsars unbroken. Hungary was still hers by an unquestionable title; and although her ancestors had found Hungary the most mutinous of all their kingdoms, she resolved to trust herself to the fidelity of a people, rude indeed, turbulent, and impatient of oppression, but brave, generous, and simple-hearted. In the midst of distress and peril she had given birth to a son, afterwards the Emperor Joseph the Second. Scarcely had she risen from her Couch, when she hastened to Presburg. There, in the sight of an innumerable multitude, she was crowned with the crown and robed with the robe of St. Stephen. No spectator could refrain his tears when the beautiful young mother, still weak from child-bearing, rode, a fter the fashion of her fathers, up the Mount of Defiance, unsheathed the ancient sword of state, shook it towards north and south, eastern Europe. The unfortunate Charles of Baand west, and, with a glow on her pale face, challenged the four corners of the world to dispute her rights and those of her boy. At the first sitting of the Diet she appeared clad in deep mourning for her father, and in pathetic and dignified words implored her people to support her just cause. Magnates and deputies sprang up, half drew their sabres, and with eager voices vowed to stand by her with their. lives and fortunes. Till then, her firmness had never once forsaken her before the public eye, but at that shout she sank down upon her throne, and wept aloud. Still more touching was the sight when, a few days later, she came before the Estates of her realm, and held up before them the little Archduke in her arms. Then it was that the enthusiasm of Hungary broke forth into that war-cry which soon resounded throughout Europe, "Let us die for our King, Maria Theresa!"

In the mean time, Frederic was meditating a change of policy. He had no wish to raise

varia, vanquished by Austria, betrayed by. Prussia, driven from his hereditary states, and neglected by his allies, was hurried by shame and remorse to an untimely end. An English army appeared in the heart of Germany, and defeated the French at Dettingen. The Aus trian captains already began to talk of com pleting the work of Marlborough and Eugene, and of compelling France to relinquish Alsace and the Three Bishoprics.

The Court of Versailles, in this peril, looked to Frederic for help. He had been guilty of two great treasons, perhaps he might be induced to commit a third. The Dutchess of Chateauroux then held the chief influence over the feeble Louis. She determined to send an agent to Berlin, and Voltaire was selected for the mission. He eagerly undertook the task. for, while his literary fame filled all Europe, he was troubled with a childish craving for politi cal distinction. He was vain, and not withou reason, of his address, and of his insinuating • 2 v2

and in Flanders; and even England, after man, years of profound internal quiet, saw, for the last time, hostile armies set in battle array against each other. This year is memorable in the life of Frederic, as the date at which his noviciate in the art of war may be said to have terminated. There have been great cap

eloquence; and he flattered himself that he possessed boundless influence over the King of Prussia. The truth was, that he knew, as yet, only one corner of Frederic's character. He was well acquainted with all the petty vanities and affectations of the poetaster; but was not aware that these foibles were united with all the talents and vices which lead to success intains whose precocious and self-taught military active life; and that the unlucky versifier who bored him with reams of middling Alexandrians, was the most vigilant, suspicious, and severe of politicians.

Voltaire was received with every mark of respect and friendship, was lodged in the palace, and had a seat daily at the royal table. The negotiation was of an extraordinary description. Nothing can be conceived more whimsical than the conferences which took place between the first literary man and the first practical man of the age, whom a strange weakness had induced to exchange their parts. The great poet would talk of nothing but treaties and guarantees, and the great king of nothing but metaphors and rhymes. On one occasion Voltaire put into his Majesty's hand a paper on the state of Europe, and received it back with verses scrawled on the margin. In secret they both laughed at each other. Vol- taire did not spare the king's poems; and the king has left on record his opinion of Voltaire's diplomacy. "He had no credentials," says Frederic, and the whole mission was a joke, a mere farce."

skill resembled intuition. Condé, Clive, and Napoleon are examples. But Frederic was not one of these brilliant portents. His profi ciency in military science was simply the proficiency which a man of vigorous faculties makes in any science to which he applies his mind with earnestness and industry. It was at Hohenfreidberg that he first proved how much he had profited by his errors, and by their consequences. His victory on that day was chiefly due to his skilful dispositions, and convinced Europe that the prince who, a few years before, had stood aghast in the rout of Molwitz, had attained in the military art a mastery equalled by none of his contemporaries, or equalled by Saxe alone. The victory of Hohenfreidberg was speedily followed by that of Sorr.

In the mean time, the arms of France had been victorious in the Low Countries. Frederic had no longer reason to fear that Maria Theresa would be able to give law to Europe, and he began to meditate a fourth breach of his engagements. The court of Versailles was alarmed and mortified. A letter of earnest expostulation, in the handwriting of Louis, was sent to Berlin; but in vain. In the autumn of 1745, Frederic made peace with England, and, before the close of the year, with Austria also. The pretensions of Charles of Bavaria could present no obstacle to an accommodation. That unhappy prince was no more; and Francis of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, was raised, with the general consent of the Germanic body, to the Imperial throne.

But what the influence of Voltaire could not effect, the rapid progress of the Austrian arms effected. If it should be in the power of Maria Theresa and George the Second to dictate terms of peace to France, what chance was there that Prussia would long retain Silesia? Frederic's conscience told him that he had acted perfidiously and inhumanly towards the Queen of Hungary. That her resentment was strong she had given ample proof; and of her respect for treaties he judged by his own. Guarantees, he said, were mere filigree, Prussia was again at peace; but the Eupretty to look at, but too brittle to bear the ropean war lasted till, in the year 1748, it was slightest pressure. He thought it his safest terminated by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. course to ally himself closely to France, and Of all the powers that had taken part in it, the again to attack the Empress Queen. Accord-only gainer was Frederic. Not only had he ingly, in the autumn of 1744, without notice, without any decent pretext, he recommenced hostilities, marched through the electorate of Saxony without troubling himself about the permission of the Elector, invaded Bohemia, took Prague, and even menaced Vienna.

It was now that, for the first time, he experienced the inconstancy of fortune. An Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine threatened his communications with Silesia. Saxony was all in arms behind him. He found it necessary to save himself by a retreat. He afterwards owned that his failure was the natural effect of his own blunders. No general, he said, had ever committed greater faults. It must be added, that to the reverses of this campaign he always ascribed his subsequent successes.

It was in the midst of difficulty and disgrace that he caught the first clear glimpse of the principles of the military art.

The memorable year of 1745 followed. The war raged by sea and land, in Italy, in Germany,

added to his patrimony the fine province of Silesia; he had, by his unprincipled dexterity, succeeded so well in alternately depressing the scale of Austria and that of France, that he was generally regarded as holding the balance of Europe-a high dignity for one who ranked lowest among kings, and whose great-grandfather had been no more than a margrave. By the public, the King of Prussia was considered as a politician destitute alike of morality and decency, insatiably rapacious, and shamelessly false; nor was the public much in the wrong. He was at the same time allowed to be a man of parts,-a rising general, a shrewd negotiator and administrator. Those qualities wherein he surpassed all mankind, were as yet unknown to others or to himself; for they were qualities which shine out only on a dark ground. His career had hitherto, with little interruption, been prosperous; and it was only in adversity, in adversity which seemed without hope or resource, in adversity that would

have overwhelmed even men celebrated for strength of mind, that his real greatness could be shown.

some fraud might be practised on him. Then he read the letters, divided them into several packets, and signified his pleasure, generally by a mark, often by two or three words, now and then by some cutting epigram. By eight he had generally finished this part of his task. The adjutant-general was then in attendance, and received instructions for the day as to all the military arrangements of the kingdom. Then the king went to review his guards, not as kings ordinarily review their guards, but with the minute attention and severity of an old drill-sergeant. In the mean time the four cabinet secretaries had been employed in an swering the letters on which the king had that morning signified his will. These unhappy men were forced to work all the year round They never had a holiday. They never knew what it was to dine. It was necessary that, before they stirred, they should finish the whole of their work. The king, always on his guard against treachery, took from the heap a handful at random, and looked into them to see whether his instructions had been exactly followed. This was no bad security against foul play on the part of the secretaries; for if one of them were detected in a trick, he might think himself fortunate if he escaped with five years imprisonment in a dungeon. Frederic then signed the replies, and all were sent off the same evening.

He had from the commencement of his reign applied himself to public business after a fashion unknown among kings. Louis XIV., indeed, had been his own prime minister, and had exercised a general superintendence over all the departments of the government; but this was not sufficient for Frederic. He was not content with being his own prime minister-he would be his own sole minister. Under him there was no room, not merely for a Richelieu or a Mazarin, but for a Colbert, a Louvois, or a Torcy. A love of labour for its own sake, a restless and insatiable longing to dictate, to intermeddle, to make his power felt, a profound scorn and distrust of his fellow-creatures, in-like negro slaves in the time of the sugar-crop. disposed him to ask counsel, to confide important secrets, to delegate ample powers. The highest functionaries under his government were mere clerks, and were not so much trusted by him as valuable clerks are often trusted by the heads of departments. He was his own treasurer, his own commander-inchief, his own intendant of public works; his own minister for trade and justice, for home affairs and foreign affairs; his own master of the horse, steward and chamberlain. Matters of which no chief of an office in any other government would ever hear, were, in this singular monarchy, decided by the king in person. If a traveller wished for a good place to see a The general principles on which this strange review, he had to write to Frederic, and re- government was conducted, deserve attention. ceived next day, from a royal messenger, Fre- The policy of Frederic was essentially the same deric's answer signed by Frederic's own hand. as his father's; but Frederic, while he carried This was an extravagant, a morbid activity. that policy to lengths to which his father never The public business would assuredly have thought of carrying it, cleared it at the same been better done if each department had been time from the absurdities with which his father put under a man of talents and integrity, and had encumbered it. The king's first object if the king had contented himself with a gene- was to have a great, efficient, and well-trained ral control. In this manner the advantages army. He had a kingdom which in extent which belong to unity of design, and the ad- and population was hardly in the second rank vantages which belong to the division of labour, of European powers; and yet he aspired to a would have been to a great extent combined. place not inferior to that of the sovereigns of But such a system would not have suited the England, France, and Austria. For that end peculiar temper of Frederic. He could tole- it was necessary that Prussia should be all rate no will, no reason in the state, save his sting. Louis XV., with five times as many own. He wished for no abler assistance than subjects as Frederic, and more than five times that of penmen who had just understanding as large a revenue, had not a more formidable enough to translate, to transcribe, to make out army. The proportion which the soldiers in his scrawls, and to put his concise Yes and No Prussia bore to the people, seems hardly cre into an official form. Of the higher intellec-dible. Of the males in the vigour of life, a tual faculties, there is as much in a copying machine, or a lithographic press, as he required from a secretary of the cabinet.

seventh part were probably under arms; and this great force had, by drilling, by reviewing, and by the unsparing use of cane and scourge, His own exertions were such as were hard- been taught to perform all evolutions with a ly to be expected from a human body, or a rapidity and a precision which would have human mind. At Potsdam, his ordinary resi- astonished Villars or Eugene. The elevated dence, he rose at three in summer and four in feelings which are necessary to the best kind winter. A page soon appeared, with a large of army were then wanting to the Prussian basketful of all the letters which had arrived service. In those ranks were not found the for the king by the last courier-despatches religious and political enthusiasm which infrom ambassadors, reports from officers of spired the pikemen of Cromwell-the patriotic revenue, plans of buildings, proposals for ardour, the thirst of glory, the devotion to a draining marshes, complaints from persons great leader, which inflamed the Old Guard of who thought themselves aggrieved, applica- Napoleon. But in all the mechanical par's tions from persons who wanted titles, military of the military cailing, the Prussians were as commissions, and civil situations. He ex-superior to the English and French troops of amined the seals with a keen eye; for he was that day, as the English and French troops to never for a moment free from the suspicion that a rustic militia.

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