tune, the Hungarian general, Haddich, penetrated into Brandenburg, took and laid under contribution the city of Berlin. The royal family (with the archives of the kingdom) were forced to take refuge in Magdeburg. And as if all this was not sufficient, Frederic was put under the ban of the empire, and forty thousand French joined to the army of the German Circles were appointed to carry the sentence into execution.

The eyes of all Europe were now turned on the King of Prussia, whose fate appeared utterly desperate. As to the man himself, calm as if danger was his native element, he moved with firm steps and serene countenance towards the accomplishment of his destiny. He summoned with warmth the King of England to fulfil his engagements. He set Fortune at defiance, at the same time neglecting nothing within his power to secure success; and, amid a complication of care, anxiety, and almost extinct hope, cultivating letters, while, as he wrote to his most beloved sister, the Margravine of Anspach, meditating suicide.

Thus wore away the summer of the eventful 1757. The great monarch was left with only eighteen thousand men veterans they were, however, veterans in the highest meaning of the term, with unbounded admiration, confidence, and devotion to their general. Having received some reinforcements which raised his force to twenty-two thousand men, he joined himself to his brother Henry, and attacked the combined French and German army of the Circles, sixty thousand strong, on the 5th of November, 1757, near the village of Rosbach, and gained one of the most remarkable victories of modern ages. It was also, rationally speaking, of enduring consequence. It was said by Zimmerman, that the German allies who shared defeat with the French, the night after the battle, sang German songs in the pride of their hearts. But, if it raised German pride, the battle of Rosbach was truly humiliating to France.

"For having gained the battle of Hastenbeck, D'Estrées was recalled; Soubise, shamefully defeated at Rosbach, was named shortly after a marshal of France!!"-Paganel.

"At Kollin, Frederic lost only the victory at Rosbach, Soubise lost the victory and his honor !"-Napoleon.

Frederic was, as a monarch and a gen

eral, a man whose task was never finished, nor willfully delayed-most dangerous to his enemy when in apparent repose. The battle of Rosbach was gained by a feigned retreat, and a most rapid reaction, but it was only the first act of the drama. From Saxony he rushed as a torrent towards Silesia, carrying all before him, by marches entirely new in European warfare. His presence seemed necessary at every point, and victory attended his motions. Eighteen days after the battle of Rosbach, the Prussian army in Silesia, under the Duke of Bevern, was defeated, and its general made prisoner under the walls of Breslau, which city fell into the possession of the Austrians. Schweidnitz had already fallen, and in their confidence the Austrian generals regarded the reconquest of Silesia as secured. Posted in the former camp of the Prussians, flushed with recent victory, and confident in their immense superiority in numbers, the Austrian generals would appear to have taken the Prince of Soubise for a model. It was always with armies very inferior in number to those of his enemy that Frederic gained the most splendid of his triumphs, and he was most dangerous to his opponents after a reverse on his own part.

On the present occasion Frederic was the assailant; and at Leuthen, near Breslau, on the 5th of December, 1757, one month after the battle of Rosbach, the Austrian army, under Prince Charles of Lorraine, was utterly defeated. This was the battle complimented by Napoleon as a master-piece of military movement on the side of the Prussians; and what was the parity of means? Frederic had an army of thirty-three thousand men, part of whom were the veterans of Rosbach, but more were the wrecks of other corps, dispirited by recent defeat, and borne down by fatigue. Opposed to this, in regard to numbers, very inferior army, advanced nearly ninety thousand men, who in a few hours were dead on the field or dispersed. Such effects were produced by the presence of one man. The battle of Leuthen was still more honorable to Frederic than even that of Rosbach, and more productive of conse quences. The gates of Breslau and Liegnitz in Silesia were now open to the Prussians. Austria, in one month, lost upwards of forty thousand men, seventeen thousand of whom were taken in Breslau; and all that the Empress-queen

still retained in Silesia was the fortress of Schweidnitz.

This was the finest campaign of Frederic, nor does military history contain the record of another superior. This truly extraordinary man, with very inferior numbers, gave four pitched battles, in three of which he was victorious. When the campaign opened, and even after his defeat at Kollin, his affairs seemed desperate; but, Antæus-like, his strength was increased by his fall, and before its close he had humbled France, awed the Russians, repulsed the Swedes, and almost entirely destroyed an army of one hundred thousand Austrians, and stood erect in power and glory.

The affairs of Europe were, however, becoming more and more complex. Great Britain, the only ally of Prussia worth naming, was politically in a singular state. George II., though maternal uncle to the King of Prussia, nourished to the end of his days personal hatred to the whole Prussian family; but William Pitt, whose antipathy to France equaled at least that of the king to Prussia, having been called by the English nation to the head of the ministry, neutralized by superior talents and public confidence the royal bias. The Hanoverians were called to arms; joined by an English force, the combined army was placed under the command of Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick. At the same time a subsidy of above sixty thousand pounds sterling annually was granted to the King of Prussia.

Had the Russian power been, at the time before us, under the undivided will of the Empress of Russia and her minister Bestuchef, no talent could have saved Prussia. The female monarch and her minister were made political enemies from mortal personal hatred to Frederic. The Grand Duke, afterwards Peter III., on the other side, was an enthusiastic admirer of Frederic, and though unable to so far influence public affairs as to produce peace between Russia and Prussia, he had sufficient credit to render the Russian operations inert and irregular― of consequence to weaken their effect.

The campaign of 1756 opened the aspect of affairs complex in the extreme. Frederic had profited by the winter to recruit his armies. His masterly conduct during the year 1757 had inspired the Prussians with an enthusiasm for their king, which brought them to the field burning with ardor. A few months

of exercise enabled the youthful warriors thus mentally inspired to vie with the oldest veterans.

On the Lower Rhine, Prince Ferdinand chased the French from Hanover, Hesse, Brunswick and East Friesland. He took Minden, pursued the enemy to Keyserwerth, which he took on the 31st of May, and defeated them in the battle of Creveldt on the 23d of June. On his part, the King of Prussia had retaken Schweidnitz on the 16th of April, and for once paying tribute to human nature, turned his arms towards Vienna, entered Moravia, and laid seige to Olmutz, its most important fortress on the side of Silesia. To seriously affect the power of Austria so near its centre was beyond the means and even genius of Frederic. The attempt, in itself rash, was unfortunate. A new element had also now entered into the Austrian armies, in the person of Marshal Laudon. The able dispositions of this officer, and the vigorous defence of Olmutz, foiled Frederic. There, as on all other occasions in his whole military career, extreme danger brought into activity the never-failing resources of his genius; and by a retreat into Bohemia, he saved his army-a retreat spoken of with high admiration by Napoleon.

Environed by enemies, there was no repose to Frederic. General Fermor, at the head of a large_Russian army, after having swept over Prussia, carrying fire and ruin with him, advanced towards the Oder, menacing equally Silesia and the Marches of Brandenburg. Every license of a most barbarous and ferocious soldiery was let loose on the inhabitants. Women, aged men and children, were indiscriminately massacred. The danger became hourly more urgent and terrible. The city of Custrin, on the Oder, was laid in ashes, though the brave garrison refused all summons to surrender. An avenger was advancing with rapid marches. Leaving the Margrave Charles in Silesia to check the Austrians, Frederic, with twenty thousand men, set out from Landshut in Silesia on the 11th of August, joined the army under Dohna on the 22d, and encamped on the west bank of the Oder, opposite Custrin. Here the terrified and wretched inhabitants flocked round their king, calling him their father and deliverer. Generous and humane as were Frederic and his troops, the spectatcles which were presented to them now, and cries of distress, transported them to fury. Men, women and children,

mutilated, or perishing with nakedness and hunger, were received with the utmost kindness by Frederic, who comforted them with the promise of driving these ferocious hordes from their country; and he performed his promise.

Passing the Oder below Custrin, and reaching the Russians on the morning of the 25th of August, one of the most sanguinary battles of modern ages ensued at the village of Zorndorf. The Prussians were compelled to retaliate on their enemies; all quarter was forgotten, and for twelve hours the dreadful conflict continued. The admirable order and discipline of the Prussians prevailed, and the Russian army was rather annihilated. than defeated. At Zorndorf the Russians left upwards of eighteen thousand men on the field, and, what proves the peculiar character of the battle, only about two thousand prisoners. The Prussians lost ten thousand men killed or desperately wounded, and fifteen hundred prisoners. Such carnage admits no parallel in modern history, if, in particular, we advert to the numbers engaged. The Prussian army amounted to about thirty-two thousand men, and the Russian to about twice that number; and of the whole, near one-third were killed or wounded. The veterans of Prague, Rosbach and Leuthen, forced a victory by efforts, we might almost say, superhuman. No nation, however, could long sustain such victories. In the present case, it was only an act in the terrible drama. While Frederic checked the Russians on one side, the Austrians advanced on the other. The most defective point in the military character of Frederic was, an over selfconfidence. Almost in every instance the assailant, he more than once had to pay the penalty of presumption. After the battle of Zorndorf, leaving Dohna to watch the Russians, Frederic flew to resist the Austrians on the side of Saxony; and after marches and counter-marches on both sides, Frederic, who had during the whole war never been attacked, was, on the night of the 13th and 14th October, surprised in his camp at Hochkirchen, on the border of Silesia, and defeated with the loss of eight thousand men, and two of his best generals, Marshal Keith and Prince Francis of Bevern.

It is the privilege of genius in general, and particularly in a most extraordinary manner in the case of Frederic, that it was after a reverse his enemies seemed to stand most in awe of the resources which

he seemed to create when most necessary. Rallying at a few miles distant from Hochkirchen, the Austrians dared not attempt a pursuit of their advantages.

The court of Vienna could not have complimented more warmly than it did the genius of their adversary. Daun was crowned with favors. The Empress wrote to him an autograph letter. A statue was raised to his honor. The estate of Ladendorf, alienated by his father, was repurchased and restored to the marshal. The Empress of Russia expressed her joy and admiration by the present of a rich sword. But to determine to whom most honor was due, let us hear Jomini, in his treatise on great military operations:

"This campaign (1758) was not rendered so remarkable for battles or other splendid events, as was that of the previous year. The changes of fortune were less sudden and less striking in that of 1758, but much more skillful. The marches were better combined and more rapid, and positions better chosen. The King of Prussia, forced to retire from Moravia, gave to his retreat all the advantages and activity of an invasion, and effecting these masterly manœuvres in face of an enemy superior in numbers, and over excessively difficult groundreaching the frontiers of his own dominions, and rushing to encounter the Russians, defeating them so completely as to deprive them of the power to ravage those parts of his country. During this march, Daun, more wise and able than during the former campaign, felt the advantage and seized the chance of invading Saxony; but before gaining any serious footing in that country, the presence of Frederic deranged and neutralized the whole plan. Here, again, the scene changes; the king himself is defeated at Hochkirchen, and his communication with Silesia cut off. This defea was the effect of one of the instances in which Frederic suffered presumption to prevail over prudence. The fruits of the error was a restoration of all that power and balance of mind which, during his whole military career, rendered this man so extremely formidable after disaster. He at once perceived the realities of his position and that of his enemy; deceived Daun by able movements, and gained several marches on his right flank; reopened his communication with Silesia, and repulsed into Moravia the Austrian army which menaced that province

held the Russians and Swedes in check, and forced Daun to retreat into Bohemia. Frederic thus gave activity and efficiency to the élite of his forces on every point of his frontiers, and alternately defended all successfully. At this time, indeed, the Prussians had become almost superhuman. They were the men of Rosbach, Leuthen, Olmutz, and wherever else they were placed. If their king was a prodigy, his subjects were worthy of him. Now at Olmutz, in Moravia; next, as if by supernatural means, in Bohemia; then in Saxony, Brandenburg, Silesia; again in Saxony, then in Lusatia, and again in Silesia, Colberg, Kosel, Neiss, Dresden, Torgau, Leipsic-all relieved; and Silesia, Saxony and Pomerania again in the power of the Prussians. Prince Henry, who through the whole seven years was at once the powerful second of his brother and the second hope of Prussia, was, at the close of the campaign of 1758, left in command of the army in Saxony; and the king, on the 10th of December, left Dresden and took up his winter residence in Breslau."

But all the heroism and genius displayed by the King of Prussia and his people, astonishing and unequaled as they were, seemed destined to give only a more brilliant eclat to their common ruin.

At the same time, in many respects, the Austrian armies had become much more formidable than at the beginning of the war; the troops better disciplined, and the financial department better arranged. At their head these improved troops had three men who, at any time or place, would have stood in the first rank of generals-Daun, Lascy and Laudon.

To the embarrassment of Prussia and advantage of Austria, one of those revolutions of the palace, so common in France at that age, took place on the first of November, 1758. The Duke de Choiseul, a native of Lorraine, and devoted to the imperial family of Austria, was placed at the head of the French ministry. The increased activity of the alliance against Prussia was the immediate consequence. To this formidable combination Russia, as we have seen, being added, Prussia was left to meet the most unequal force which ever was met by the weaker party with final success. With a heart that never quailed, and an eye that clearly scanned the dangers of his position, the King of Prussia passed the

winter of 1758-9 at Breslau, calmly forming his plans; and certainly, in the whole course of his astonishing career, there was no other year in which he encountered so much of disaster, or during which the title of great was more justly sustained by Frederic, than 1759.

On the 13th of April, the French, under the Duke de Broglio, defeated at Bergen, near Frankfort, on the Maine, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. A Prussian army under General Wedel was most disastrously defeated by the Russians, at Zullichau, in the Duchy Crossen, on the 23d of July, 1759.

On the 12th of August of the same year, was fought and lost by the Prussians, at Cunersdorf, near Frankfort on the Oder, perhaps, if compared with numbers engaged, one of the most sanguinary battles of modern ages. On one side the combined army of Austrians and Russians amounted to about one hundred and five thousand men, and the Prussians to fifty-three thousand. Of these fell on the field, twenty thousand Prussians, sixteen thousand Russians, and three thousand Austrians; or nearly forty thousand men, exceeding the one-fourth of the number engaged.

No other man and nation but Frederic and the Prussians would ever, under all the then existing circumstances, have raised an arm after such a defeat as that of Cunersdorf. The next day after the battle, Frederic could scarce rally six thousand men; but, as in many other instances, the real success was far from equaling the apparent. No real cordiality reigned among the combined commanders; nor could the Germans remain blind to the consequences of Prussia falling utterly under the power of Russia. Both the Russian and Prussian armies had suffered severely, and their pause in action left Frederic to breathe; who, true to his character, never relaxed a moment, and in less than two months appeared as formidable as at the opening of the campaign. His trials were not, however, ended. One of his favorite generals, Finck, was surrounded in the defiles of Bohemia, at Maxen, and forced to surrender to the Austrian general; Daun, sixteen thousand men, with all their artillery and munitions of war.

Yet with all these and some minor reverses, Frederic, powerful in his own genius, and in the unbounded and justlyfounded confidence of his people, closed this remarkable campaign as a superior

in the contest. The struggle had continued through four years; thousands and tens of thousands of men had fallen, and no real advantage gained on either side, unless Prussia might be considered as having obtained it substantially by having sustained her existence, through four campaigns, against a disparity of force, which in all ordinary cases had ever been irresistible.

Austria, confident of ultimate success, resisted all overtures for peace, which such a man as Frederic would accept. Both Great Britain and Prussia anxiously desired honorable peace, and made their offers through France; but the Austrian Cabinet paralyzed all their efforts. Some fatality seemed to have blinded France, and led her as a sacrifice to Austrian policy; and the same deleterious influence extended to Russia, and both those powers augmented their armies in Germany. Casting a retrospect on the history of the age immediately preceding the French Revolution, may we not regard Frederic and his Prussians as the champions of human right?

Our necessary brevity will not permit a connected detail of the events of the campaign of 1760. We may only observe that Frederic, finding but one route to safety, and attended on that route by the only two allies upon which he could depend, Bravery and Perseverance, sternly met the storm. After encountering much of reverse with alternate success, on the 14th of August the king was encamped at Liegnitz in Silesia, with an army at most fifty thousand strong, and environed by four other armies, each commanded by able generals, and each superior in numbers to his own. Daun in front, Laudon on his left, Beck on his right, and Lascy on his rear-who, beside his own troops, was sustained by thirty-five thousand Russians. Acting in full concert, the enemy were to inclose and utterly destroy him and his army next day; they considered the stag secure in the toils, but found a lion.

In this emergency retreat was impossible, and all the energies of Frederic were called into action. But one means of safety was visible, and that was adopt ed. This was to instantly throw himself with his whole mass on one of the opposing armies. In the night between the 14th and 15th of August, the peasants, by his orders, kept up the camp fires, and the patrols and camp-guards

performed their customary duties, while the king and his army marched through Liegnitz, gained the heights of Pfaffendorf, without the enemy having the least suspicion of the movement. Ziethen, one of the most able of the Prussian Generals, was intrusted to watch the motions of Daun, Beck, and Lascy, while the king, with his main force, fell on Laudon, and gained a complete victory, with very little comparative loss on his own side, but repaid by six thousand prisoners, with their colors, and eighty-six pieces of heavy cannon.

This victory may be safely placed among the most remarkable military achievements recorded in history. It relieved the King of Prussia from the utmost peril, and rendered him victor, opening to him the route to Breslau. Some very insulting expressions were made by the Austrians before the battle of Pfaf fendorf against the king and his troops. "I'll forgive them," replied Frederic, "for all the folly of their words, in consideration of the still greater folly of

their acts."

Equally active to improve victory as to repair defeat, Frederic marched on the very day of the battle of Pfaffendorf, in hopes of crushing the Russians, passed over the small river Katzbach, arrived on the 16th at Newmarck, and joined his own army to that of his brother Henry. The Russian general abandoned Lissa and repassed the Oder. It was, however, a war of the most singular vicissitude. In October, 1760, Berlin was taken by a combined Austrian and Russian force, under Lascy for the Austrians and Tottleben for the Russians; who, gaining nothing of real military import, and unable to maintain their position, soon retreated, leaving behind them what most armies have ever left, who have taken an open indefensible capital-the reputation of being compared to Attila.

Daun, with his Austrians, had taken up his intended winter quarters in Torgau, an important town on the Elbe, in Upper Saxony. Frederic, knowing thatthe Russians once encamped between the Wartha and Oder with a determination to pass the winter in the very heart of the Prussian states-Daun and the Austrians could maintain their position in Torgau, hesitated not a moment to make disposition to attack Daun in his formidable post. The address of Frederic to his generals, the night before the battle