The game I play is so high, one cannot contemplate the issue with cold blood. Pray for the return of my good luck."--Two days hence, the poor young Kur-Baiern, deaf to the French seductions and exertions, which were intense, had signed his "Peace of Fussen"(22d April 1745),--a finale to France on the German Field, as may be feared! The other Fragments we will give a little farther on.
Friedrich had left Berlin for Silesia March 15th; rather sooner than he counted on,--Old Leopold pleading to be let home.
At Glogau, at Breslau, there had been the due inspecting:
Friedrich got to Neisse on the 23d (Bathyani just stirring in that Bavarian Business, Vilshofen and the Hessians close ahead); and on the 27th, had dismissed Old Leopold, with thanks and sympathies,--sent him home, "to recover his health." Leopold's health is probably suffering; but his heart and spirits still more. Poor old man, he has just lost--the other week, "5th February" last--his poor old Wife, at Dessau; and is broken down with grief. The soft silk lining of his hard Existence, in all parts of it, is torn away. Apothecary Fos's Daughter, Reich's Princess, Princess of Dessau, called by whatever name, she had been the truest of Wives;"used to attend him in all his Campaigns, for above fifty years back." "Gone, now, forever gone!"--Old Leopold had wells of strange sorrow in the rugged heart of him,--sorrow, and still better things,--which he does not wear on his sleeve. Here is an incident I never can forget;--dating twelve or thirteen years ago (as is computable), middle of July, 1732.
"Louisa, Leopold's eldest Daughter, Wife of Victor Leopold, reigning Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg, lay dying of a decline."Still only twenty-three, poor Lady, though married seven years ago;--the end now evidently drawing nigh. "A few days before her death,--perhaps some attendant sorrowfully asking, 'Can we do nothing, then?'--she was heard to say, 'If I could see my Father at the head of his Regiment, yet once!'"--Halle, where the Regiment lies, is some thirty or more miles off; and King Friedrioh Wilhelm, I suppose, would have to be written to:--Leopold was ready the soonest possible; and, "at a set hour, marched, in all pomp, with banner flying, music playiug, into the SCHLOSS-HOF (Palace Court)of Bernburg; and did the due salutations and manoeuvrings,--his poor Daughter sitting at her window, till they ended;"--figure them, the last glitter of those muskets, the last wail of that band-music!--"The Regiment was then marched to the Waisenhaus (ORPHAN-HOUSE), where the common men were treated with bread and beer; all the Officers dining at the Prince's Table. All the Officers, except Leopold alone, who stole away out of the crowd;sat himself upon the balustrade of the Saale Bridge, and wept into the river." [LEBEN (12mo; not Rannft's, but Anonymous like his), p. 234 n.]--Leopold is now on the edge of seventy; ready to think all is finished with him. Perhaps not quite, my tough old friend;recover yourself a little, and we shall see!
Old Leopold is hardly home at Dessau, when new Pandour Tempests, tides of ravaging War, again come beating against the Giant Mountains, pouring through all passes; from utmost Jablunka, westward by Jagerndorf to Glatz, huge influx of wild riding hordes, each with some support of Austrian grenadiers, cannoniers;threatening to submerge Silesia. Precursors, Friedrich need not doubt, of a strenuous regular attempt that way, Hungarian Majesty's fixed intention, hope and determination is, To expel him straightway from Silesia. Her Patent circulates, these three months; calling on all men to take note of that fixed fact, especially on all Silesian men to note it well, and shift their allegiance accordingly. Silesian men, in great majority,--our friend the Mayor of Landshut, for example?--are believed to have no inclination towards change: and whoever has, had clearly better not show any till he see! [In Ranke (iii. 234), there is vestige of some intended "voluntary subscription by the common people of Glatz," for Friedrich's behoof;--contrariwise, in Orlich (ii. 380, "6th February, 1745," from the Dessau Archives), notice of one individual, suspected of stirring for Austria, whom "you are to put under lock and key;"--but he runs off, and has no successor, that Ihear of.]--Friedrich's thousand-fold preliminary orderings, movements, rearrangings in his Army matters, must not detain us here;--still less his dealings with the Pandour element, which is troublesome, rather than dangerous. Vigilance, wise swift determination, valor drilled to its work, can deal with phenomena of that nature, though never so furious and innumerable. Not a cheering service for drilled valor, but a very needful one. Continual bickerings and skirmishings fell out, sometimes rising to sharp fight on the small scale:--Austrian grenadiers with cannon are on that Height to left, and also on this to right, meaning to cut off our march;the difficult landscape furnished out, far and wide, with Pandour companies in position: you must clash in, my Burschen; seize me that cannon-battery yonder; master such and such a post,--there is the heart of all that network of armed doggery; slit asunder that, the network wholly will tumble over the Hills again. Which is always done, on the part of the Prussian Burschen; though sometimes not, without difficulty.--His Majesty is forming Magazines at Neisse, Brieg, and the principal Fortresses in those parts;driving on all manner of preparations at the rapidest rate of speed, and looking with his own eyes into everything. The regiments are about what we may call complete, arithmetically and otherwise;the cavalry show good perfection in their new mode of manoeuvring;--it is to be hoped the Fighting Apparatus generally will give fair account of itself when the time comes. Our one anchor of hope, as now more and more appears.