The King's fame filled all the world.He had during the last year, maintained a contest, on terms of advantage, against three powers, the weakest of which had more than three times his resources.He had fought four great pitched battles against superior forces.Three of these battles he had gained: and the defeat of Kolin, repaired as it had been, rather raised than lowered his military renown.The victory of Leuthen is, to this day, the proudest on the roll of Prussian fame.Leipsic indeed, and Waterloo, produced consequences more important to mankind.
But the glory of Leipsic must be shared by the Prussians with the Austrians and Russians; and at Waterloo the British infantry bore the burden and heat of the day.The victory of Rosbach was, in a military point of view, less honourable than that of Leuthen; for it was gained over an incapable general, and a disorganised army;but the moral effect which it produced was immense.All the preceding triumphs of Frederic had been triumphs over Germans, and could excite no emotions of national pride among the German people.It was impossible that a Hessian or a Hanoverian could feel any patriotic exultation at hearing that Pomeranians had slaughtered Moravians, or that Saxon banners had been hung in the churches of Berlin.Indeed, though the military character of the Germans justly stood high throughout the world, they could boast of no great day which belonged to them as a people; of no Agincourt, of no Bannockburn.Most of their victories had been gained over each other; and their most splendid exploits against foreigners had been achieved under the command of Eugene, who was himself a foreigner.The news of the battle of Rosbach stirred the blood of the whole of the mighty population from the Alps to the Baltic, and from the borders of Courland to those of Lorraine.Westphalia and Lower Saxony had been deluged by a great host of strangers, whose speech was unintelligible, and whose petulant and licentious manners had excited the strongest feelings of disgust and hatred.That great host had been put to flight by a small band of German warriors, led by a prince of German blood on the side of father and mother, and marked by the fair hair and the clear blue eye of Germany.Never since the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne, had the Teutonic race won such a field against the French.The tidings called forth a general burst of delight and pride from the whole of the great family which spoke the various dialects of the ancient language of Arminius.The fame of Frederic began to supply, in some degree, the place of a common government and of a common capital.
It became a rallying point for all true Germans, a subject of mutual congratulation to the Bavarian and the Westphalian, to the citizen of Frankfort, and to the citizen of Nuremberg.Then first it was manifest that the Germans were truly a nation.Then first was discernible that patriotic spirit which, in 1813, achieved the great deliverance of central Europe, and which still guards, and long will guard, against foreign ambition the old ******* of the Rhine.
Nor were the effects produced by that celebrated day merely political.The greatest masters of German poetry and eloquence have admitted that, though the great King neither valued nor understood his native language, though he looked on France as the only seat of taste and philosophy, yet, in his own despite, he did much to emancipate the genius of his countrymen from the foreign yoke; and that, in the act of vanquishing Soubise, he was, unintentionally, rousing the spirit which soon began to question the literary precedence of Boileau and Voltaire.So strangely do events confound all the plans of man.A prince who read only French, who wrote only French, who aspired to rank as a French classic, became, quite unconsciously, the means of liberating half the Continent from the dominion of that French criticism of which he was himself, to the end of his life, a slave.Yet even the enthusiasm of Germany in favour of Frederic hardly equalled the enthusiasm of England.The birthday of our ally was celebrated with as much enthusiasm as that of our own sovereign; and at night the streets of London were in a blaze with illuminations.Portraits of the Hero of Rosbach, with his cocked hat and long pigtail, were in every house.An attentive observer will, at this day, find in the parlours of old-fashioned inns, and in the portfolios of print-sellers, twenty portraits of Frederic for one of George the Second.The sign-painters were everywhere employed in touching up Admiral Vernon into the King of Prussia.This enthusiasm was strong among religious people, and especially among the Methodists, who knew that the French and Austrians were Papists, and supposed Frederic to be the Joshua or Gideon of the Reformed Faith.One of Whitfield's hearers, on the day On which thanks for the battle of Leuthen were returned at the Tabernacle, made the following exquisitely ludicrous entry in a diary, part of which has come down to us: "The Lord stirred up the King of Prussia and his soldiers to pray.They kept three fast days, and spent about an hour praying and singing psalms before they engaged the enemy.O! how good it is to pray and fight!" Some young Englishmen of rank proposed to visit Germany as volunteers, for the purpose of learning the art of war under the greatest of commanders.This last proof of British attachment and admiration, Frederic politely but firmly declined.His camp was no place for ******* students of military science.The Prussian discipline was rigorous even to cruelty.The officers, while in the field, were expected to practise an abstemiousness and self-denial such as was hardly surpassed by the most rigid monastic orders.However noble their birth, however high their rank in the service, they were not permitted to eat from anything better than pewter.It was a high crime even in a count and field-marshal to have a single silver spoon among his baggage.