Justice, meanwhile, had taken the wretched murderer in hand. Robert Damiens was a lackey out of place, a native of Artois, of weak mind, and sometimes appearing to be deranged. In his vague and frequently incoherent depositions, he appeared animated by a desire to avenge the wrongs of the Parliament; he burst out against the Archbishop of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont, a virtuous prelate of narrow mind and austere character. “The Archbishop of Paris,” he said, “is the cause of all this trouble through ordering refusal of the sacraments.” No investigation could discover any conspiracy or accomplices; with less coolness and fanatical resolution than Ravaillac, Damiens, like the assassin of Henry IV., was an isolated criminal, prompted to murder by the derangement of his own mind; he died, like Ravaillac, amidst fearful tortures which were no longer in accord with public sentiment and caused more horror than awe. France had ceased to tremble for the life of King Louis XV.
For one instant the power of Madame de Pompadour had appeared to be shaken; the king, in his terror, would not see her; M. de Machault, but lately her protege, had even brought her orders to quit the palace. Together with the salutary terrors of death, Louis XV.‘s repentance soon disappeared; the queen and the dauphin went back again to the modest and pious retirement in which they passed their life; the marchioness returned in triumph to Versailles. MM. de Machault and D’Argenson were exiled; the latter, who had always been hostile to the favorite, was dismissed with extreme harshness. The king had himself written the sealed letter “Your services are no longer required. I command you to send me your resignation of the secretaryship of state for war, and of all that appertains to the posts connected therewith, and to retire to your estate of Ormes.” Madame de Pompadour was avenged.
The war, meanwhile, continued; the King of Prussia, who had at first won a splendid victory over the Austrians in front of Prague, had been beaten at Kolin, and forced to fall back on Saxony. Marshal d’Estrees, slowly occupying Westphalia, had got the Duke of Cumberland into a corner on the Weser.
On the morning of July 23, 1757, the marshal summoned all his lieutenant-generals. “Gentlemen,” he said to them, “I do not assemble you to-day to ask whether we should attack M. de Cumberland and invest Hamlin. The honor of the king’s arms, his wishes, his express orders, the interest of the common cause, all call for the strongest measures. I only seek, therefore, to profit by your lights, and to combine with your assistance the means most proper for attacking with advantage.” A day or two after, July 26, the Duke of Cumberland, who had fallen back on the village of Hastenbeck, had his intrenchments forced; he succeeded in beating a retreat without being pursued; an able movement of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, and a perhaps intentional mistake on the part of M. de Maillebois had caused a momentary confusion in the French army. Marshal d’Estrees, however, was not destined to enjoy for long the pleasure of his victory. Even before he had given battle the Duke of Richelieu had set out from Versailles to supersede him in his command.
The conquest of Port Mahon had thrown around Richelieu a halo of glory; in Germany, he reaped the fruits of Marshal d’Estrees’ successes; the Electorate of Hanover was entirely occupied; all the towns opened their gates; Hesse Cassel, Brunswick, the duchies of Verden and of Bremen met with the same fate. The marshal levied on all the conquered countries heavy contributions, of which he pocketed a considerable portion. His soldiers called him “Father La Maraude.” The pavilion of Hanover at Paris was built out of the spoils of Germany. Meanwhile, the Duke of Cumberland, who had taken refuge in the marshes at the mouth of the Elbe, under the protection of English vessels, was demanding to capitulate; his offers were lightly accepted. On the 8th of September, through the agency of Count Lynar, minister of the King of Denmark, the Duke of Cumberland and the marshal signed at the advanced posts of the French army the famous convention of Closter-Severn. The king’s troops kept all the conquered country; those of Hesse, Brunswick, and Saxe-Gotha returned to their homes; the Hanoverians were to be cantoned in the neighborhood of Stade. The marshal had not taken the precaution of disarming them.
Incomplete as the convention was, it nevertheless excited great emotion in Europe. The Duke of Cumberland had lost the military reputation acquired at Fontenoy; the King of Prussia remained alone on the Continent, exposed to all the efforts of the allies; every day fresh reverses came down upon him; the Russian army had invaded the Prussian provinces and beaten Marshal Schwald near Memel; twenty-five thousand Swedes had just landed in Pomerania. Desertion prevailed amongst the troops of Frederick, recruited as they often were from amongst the vanquished; it was in vain that the king, in his despair, shouted out on the battle-field of Kolin, “D’ye expect to live forever, pray?” Many Saxon or Silesian soldiers secretly left the army. One day Frederick himself kept his eye on a grenadier whom he had seen skulking to the rear of the camp. “Whither goest thou?” he cried. “Faith, sir,” was the answer, “I am deserting; I’m getting tired of being always beaten.” “Stay once more,” replied the king, without showing the slightest anger; “I promise that, if we are beaten, we will both desert together.” In the ensuing battle the grenadier got himself killed.
For a moment, indeed, Frederick had conceived the idea of deserting simultaneously from the field of battle and from life. “My dear sister,” he wrote to the Margravine of Baireuth, “there is no port or asylum for me any more save in the arms of death.” A letter in verse to the Marquis of Argens pointed clearly to the notion of suicide. A firmer purpose, before long, animated that soul, that strange mixture of heroism and corruption. The King of Prussia wrote to Voltaire,—
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“Threatened with shipwreck though I be, I, facing storms that frown on me, Must king-like think, and live, and die.” |
Fortune, moreover, seemed to be relaxing her severities. Under the influence of the hereditary grand-duke, a passionate admirer of Frederick II., the Russians had omitted to profit by their victories; they were by this time wintering in Poland, which was abandoned to all their exactions. The Swedes had been repulsed in the Island of Rugen, Marshal Richelieu received from Versailles orders to remain at Halberstadt, and to send re-enforcements to the army of the Prince of Soubise; it was for this latter that Madame de Pompadour was reserving the honor of crushing the Great Frederick. More occupied in pillage than in vigorously pushing forward the war, the marshal tolerated a fatal license amongst his troops. “Brigandage is more prevalent in the hearts of the superior officers than in the conduct of the private soldier, who is full of good will to go and get shot, but not at all to submit to discipline. I’m afraid that they do not see at court the alarming state of things to their full extent,” says a letter from Paris-Duverney to the Marquis of Cremille, “but I have heard so much of it, and perhaps seen so much since I have been within eyeshot of this army, that I cannot give a glance at the future without being transfixed with grief and dread. I dare to say that I am not scared more than another at sight of abuses and disorder, but it is time to apply to an evil which is at its height other remedies than palliatives, which, for the most part, merely aggravate it and render it incurable as long as war lasts. I have not seen and do not see here anything but what overwhelms me, and I feel still more wretched for having been the witness of it.”
Whilst the plunder of Hanover was serving the purpose of feeding the insensate extravagance of Richelieu and of the army, Frederick II. had entered Saxony, hurling back into Thuringia the troops of Soubise and of the Prince of Hildburghausen. By this time the allies had endured several reverses; the boldness of the King of Prussia’s movements bewildered and disquieted officers as well as soldiers. “Might I ask your Highness what you think of his Prussian majesty’s manoeuvring?” says a letter to Count Clermont, from an officer serving in the army of Germany; “this prince, with eighteen or twenty thousand men at most, marches upon an army of fifty thousand men, forces it to recross a river, cuts off its rear guard, crosses this same river before its very eyes, offers battle, retires, encamps leisurely, and loses not a man. What calculation, what audacity in this fashion of covering a country!” On the 3d of November the Prussian army was all in order of battle on the left bank of the Saale, near Rosbach.