their consent, he ordered all the prisoners to be incorporated into the ranks of his army, and expected to make loyal Prussians of them by merely changing their uniforms. As was to be expected, they deserted immediately.
The progress of the war is out of our province. Spoiled by success, Frederick, after gaining the dearly purchased victory of Prague, attempted to reduce a city which he could not invest, and in which an army was concentrated. The Austrians advanced with 60,000 men to raise the siege; and the presumptuous king did not hesitate to rush upon them with less than half the number of Prussians; a total defeat, the first he had yet sustained, was the consequence. From this day it is allowed that the Prussian infantry had no longer any superiority over their enemies; henceforth the genius of their sovereign, the confidence he inspired, and the dread entertained of him by his adversaries, are the only advantages they have to depend upon. In the second year of the war he writes to La Motte Fouqué,—"Owing to the great losses sustained, our infantry is very much degenerated from what it formerly was, and must not be employed on difficult undertakings." In the third year he says to the same,—"Care must be taken not to render our people timid; they are too much so by nature already."
Of this battle of Collin we must here report an anecdote characteristic of what Frederick then was. The left wing of the Prussian army was obliquing in admirable order to the left, and already gaining the right of the Austrians, according to the prescribed disposition, when the king, at once losing patience in the most unaccountable manner, sent directions to Prince Maurice of Dessau, who commanded the infantry, ordering him to wheel up and advance upon the enemy. The prince told the officer that the proposed points had not yet been attained, and recommended that the oblique march should still be continued. The king immediately came up in person, and in haughty and overbearing style repeated the order, and, when the Prince of Dessau attempted to explain, drew his sword, and in a fiery and threatening tone exclaimed, "Will he (er) obey, and immediately wheel up and advance?" The officers present were terrified, fancying from his excited manner that he would be guilty of some act of violence; but the prince, of course, bowed and obeyed, and—the battle was soon lost.
Frederick, as an absolute king and commander, had, no doubt, many advantages over the ill-combined coalition by which he was assailed; but the mass of brute force was so great on the part of his adversaries, that he was more than once on the very eve of being crushed. At one time, indeed, he contemplated the commission of suicide.
The wonderful battles of Rossbach and Leuthen[1] reconciled him to life. The
- ↑ It was the evening succeeding this battle of Leuthen that Frederick, himself leading the advance after the flying Austrians, entered the little town of Lissa, where a body of the enemy, never dreaming the pursuit could reach so far, were resting for the night. Frederick was as surprised as they when, on entering a room of the principal inn, he found it filled with Austrian officers. He had but a handful of troops with him, and, had his enemies known it, was their prisoner. But with the utmost coolness he saluted them, "Good-evening, gentlemen. Is there still room for me, think you?" Whereon the frightened Austrians, thinking themselves surrounded by the whole Prussian army, decamped in wild haste, and getting their troops together as they could, fled from the dangerous neighborhood.
