The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

A terrible havoc ensued; the battle raged with various fortune during the whole of the day, and, notwithstanding the most heroic attempts, the position was still uncarried at fall of night. The confusion had become so general that Prussian fought with Prussian, whole regiments had disbanded, and the King was wounded when Zieten, the gallant hussar general, who had during the night cut his way through the Austrians, who were in an equal state of disorder and had taken the heights, rushed into his presence. Zieten had often excited the King's ridicule by his practice of brandishing his sabre over his head in sign of the cross, as an invocation for the aid of Heaven before making battle; but now, deeply moved, he embraced his deliverer, whose work was seen at break of day. The Austrians were in full retreat. This bloody action, by which the Prussian monarchy was saved, took place on November 3, 1760.

George II, King of England, expired during this year. His grandson, George III, the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had preceded his father to the tomb, at first declared in favor of Prussia, and fresh subsidies were voted to her monarch by the English Parliament, which at the same time expressed "its deep admiration of his unshaken fortitude and of the inexhaustible resources of his genius." Female influence, however, erelong placed Lord Bute in Pitt's stead at the helm of state, and the subsidies so urgently demanded by Prussia were withdrawn.

The Duke of Brunswick was, meanwhile, again victorious at Billinghausen over the French, and covered the King on that side. On the other hand, the junction of the Austrians with the Russians was effected in 1761; the allied army amounted in all to one hundred thirty thousand men, and Frederick's army, solely consisting of fifty thousand, would in all probability have again been annihilated had he not secured himself behind the fortress of Schweidnitz, in the strong position at Bunzelwitz. Butterlin, the Russian general, was moreover little inclined to come to an engagement on account of the illness of the Empress and the favor with which Frederick was beheld by the successor to the throne. It was in vain that Laudon exerted all the powers of eloquence; the Russians remained in a state of inactivity and finally withdrew.

Laudon avenged himself by unexpectedly taking Schweidnitz under the eyes of the King by a clever coup-de-main, and had not a heroic Prussian artilleryman set fire to a powder-magazine, observing as he did so, "All of ye shall not get into the town!" and blown himself with an immense number of Austrians into the air, he would have made himself master of this important stronghold almost without losing a man. Frederick retreated upon Breslau.

The Empress Elizabeth expired in the ensuing year, 1762, and was succeeded by Peter III, who instantly ranged himself on the side of Prussia. Six months afterward he was assassinated, and his widow seized the reins of government under the title of Catharine II. Frederick was on the eve of giving battle to the Austrians at Reichenbach in Silesia, and the Russians under Czernichef were under his command, when the news arrived of the death of his friend and of the inimical disposition of the new Empress, who sent Czernichef instant orders to abandon the Prussian banner. Such was, however, Frederick's influence over the Russian general that he preferred hazarding his head rather than abandon the King at this critical conjuncture, and, deferring the publication of the Empress' orders for three days, remained quietly within the camp. Frederick meanwhile was not idle, and gained a complete victory over the Austrians (July 21, 1762).

The attempt made by a Silesian nobleman, Baron Warkotsch, together with a priest named Schmidt, secretly to carry off the King from his quarters at Strehlen, failed. In the autumn Frederick besieged and took Schweidnitz. The two most celebrated French engineers put their new theories into practice on this occasion: Lefévre, for the Prussians against the fortress; Griboval, for the Austrians engaged in its defence. Frederick's good-fortune was shared by Prince Henry, who defeated the Imperial troops at Freiburg in Saxony, and by Ferdinand of Brunswick, who gained several petty advantages over the French, defeating Soubise at Wilhelmsthal and the Saxons on the Lutterbach. The spiritless war on this side was finally terminated during the course of this year (1762) by a peace between England and France.

Goltz had at the same time instigated the Tartars in Southern Russia to revolt, and was on the point of creating a diversion with fifty thousand of them in Frederick's favor. Frederick, with a view of striking the empire with terror, also despatched General Kleist into Franconia, with a flying corps, which no sooner made its appearance in Nuremberg and Bamberg than the whole of the South was seized with a general panic, Charles, Duke of Wurtemberg, for instance, preparing for instant flight from Stuttgard. Sturzebecher, a bold cornet of the Prussian hussars, accompanied by a trumpeter and by five-and-twenty men, advanced as far as Rothenburg on the Tauber, where, forcing his way through the city gate, he demanded a contribution of eighty thousand dollars from the town council. The citizens of this town, which had once so heroically opposed the whole of Tilly's forces, were chased by a handful of hussars into the Bockshorn, and were actually compelled to pay a fine of forty thousand florins, with which the cornet scoffingly withdrew, carrying off with him two of the town councillors as hostages. So deeply had the citizens of the free towns of the empire at that time degenerated.