From Prag onwards, here has been a delicate set of operations;perfectly executed,--thanks to Friedrich's rapidity of shift, and also to the cautious slowly puzzling mind of Daun. Had Daun used any diligence, had Daun and Prince Karl been broad awake, together or even singly! But Friedrich guessed they seldom or never were;that they would spend some days in puzzling; and that, with despatch, he would have time for everything. Daun, we could observe, stood singing TE-DEUM, greatly at leisure, in his old Camp, 20th June, while Friedrich, from the first gray of morning, and diligently all day long, was withdrawing from the trenches of Prag,--Friedrich's people, self and goods getting folded out in the finest gradation, and with perfect success; no Daun to hinder him, --Daun leisurely doing TE-DEUM, forty miles off, helping on the WRONG side by that exertion! [Cogniazzo, ii. 367.]--"Poor Browne, he is dead of his wounds, in Prag yonder," writes Westphalen, in his Leitmeritz Journal, "news came to us July 1st: men said, 'Ah, that was why they lay asleep.'"Till June 26th, Daun and Karl had not united; nor, except sending out Loudon and Croats, done anything, either of them. Sunday, June 26th, at Podschernitz on the old Field of Prag, a week and a day after Kolin, they did get together; still seemingly a little puzzled, "Shall we follow the King? Shall we follow Moritz and Bevern?"--nothing clear for some time, except to send out Pandour parties upon both. Moritz, since parting with the King in Alt-Bunzlau neighborhood, has gone northward some marches, thirty miles or so, to JUNG-Bunzlau,--meeting of Iser and Elbe, surely a good position:--Moritz, on receipt of these Pandour allowances of his, writes to the King, "Shall we retreat on Zittau, then, your Majesty? Straight upon Zittau?" Fancy Friedrich's astonishment;--who well intends to eat the Country first, perhaps to fight if there be chance, and at least to lie OUTSIDE the doors of Silesia and the Lausitz, as well as of Saxony here!--and answers, with his own hand, on the instant: "Your Dilection will not be so mad!"[In Preuss, ii. 58, the pungent little Autograph in full.] And at once recalls Moritz, and appoints the Prince of Prussia to go and take command. Who directly went;--a most important step for the King's interests and his own. Whose fortunes in that business we shall see before long!--At Leitmeritz the King continues four weeks, with his Army parted in this way; waiting how the endless hostile element, which begirdles his horizon all round, will shape itself into combinations, that he may set upon the likeliest or the needfulest of these, when once it has disclosed itself. Horizon all round is black enough: Austrians, French, Swedes, Russians, Reichs Army;closer upon him or not so close, all are rolling in: Saxony, the Lausitz and Silesia, Brandenburg itself, it is uncertain which of these may soonest require his active presence.
The very day after his arrival in Leitmeritz,--Tuesday, 28th June, while that junction with Keith was going on, and the troops were defiling along the Bridge for junction with Keith,--a heavy sorrow had befallen him, which he yet knew not of. An irreparable Domestic loss; sad complement to these Military and other Public disasters.
Queen Sophie Dorothee, about whose health he had been anxious, but had again been set quiet, died at Berlin that day. [Monbijou, 28th June, 1757; born at Hanover, 27th March, 1687.] In her seventy-first year: of no definite violent disease; worn down with chagrins and apprehensions, in this black whirlpool of Public troubles.
So far as appears, the news came on Friedrich by surprise:--"bad cough," we hear of, and of his anxieties about it, in the Spring time; then again of "improvement, recovery, in the fine weather;"--no thought, just now, of such an event: and he took it with a depth of affliction, which my less informed readers are far from expecting of him.
July 2d, the news came: King withdrew into privacy; to weep and bewail under this new pungency of grief, superadded to so many others. Mitchell says: "For two days he had no levee; only the Princes dined with him [Princes Henri and Ferdinand; Prince of Prussia is gone to Jung-Bunzlau, would get the sad message there, among his other troubles]: yesterday, July 3d, King sent for me in the afternoon,--the first time he has seen anybody since the news came:--I had the honor to remain with him some hours in his closet.
I must own to your Lordship I was most sensibly afflicted to see him indulging his grief, and giving way to the warmest filial affections; recalling to mind the many obligations he had to her late Majesty; all she had suffered, and how nobly she bore it;the good she did to everybody; the one comfort he now had, to think of having tried to make her last years more agreeable."[<italic> Papers and Memoirs, <end italic> i. 253; Despatch to Holderness, 4th July (slightly abridged);--see ib. i. 357-359(Private Journal). Westphalen, ii. 14. See <italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic> iv. 182.] In the thick of public business, this kind of mood to Mitchell seems to have lasted all the time of Leitmeritz, which is about three weeks yet: Mitchell's Note-books and Despatches, in that part, have a fine Biographic interest;the wholly human Friedrich wholly visible to us there as he seldom is. Going over his past Life to Mitchell; brief, candid, pious to both his Parents;--inexpressibly sad; like moonlight on the grave of one's Mother, silent that, while so much else is too noisy!
This Friedrich, upon whom the whole world has risen like a mad Sorcerer's-Sabbath, how safe he once lay in his cradle, like the rest of us, mother's love wrapping him soft:--and now!