Soubise hesitated to attack; being a man of honesty and sense, he took into account the disposition of his army, as well as the bad composition of the allied forces, very superior in number to the French contingent. The command belonged to the Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen, who had no doubt of success. Orders were given to turn the little Prussian army, so as to cut off its retreat. All at once, as the allied troops were effecting their movement to scale the heights, the King of Prussia, suddenly changing front by one of those rapid evolutions to which he had accustomed his men, unexpectedly attacked the French in flank, without giving them time to form in order of battle. The batteries placed on the hills were at the same time unmasked, and mowed down the infantry. The German troops at once broke up. Soubise sought to restore the battle by cavalry charges, but he was crushed in his turn. The rout became general; the French did not rally till they reached Erfurt; they had left eight thousand prisoners and three thousand dead on the field.

The news of the defeat at Rosbach came bursting on France like a clap of thunder; the wrath, which first of all blazed out against Soubise, at whose expense all the rhymesters were busy, was reflected upon the king and Madame de Pompadour.

“With lamp in hand, Soubise is heard to say
‘Why, where the devil can my army be?
I saw it hereabouts but yesterday:
Has it been taken? has it strayed from me?
I’m always losing-head and all, I know:
But wait till daylight, twelve o’clock or so!
What do I see? O, heavens, my heart’s aglow:
Prodigious luck! Why, there it is, it is!
Eh! ventrebleu, what in the world is this?
I must have been mistaken—it’s the foe.’”

Frederick II. had renovated affairs and spirits in Germany; the day after Rosbach, he led his troops into Silesia against Prince Charles of Lorraine, who had just beaten the Duke of Bevern; the King of Prussia’s lieutenants were displeased and disquieted at such audacity. He assembled a council of war, and then, when he had expounded his plans, “Farewell, gentlemen,” said be; “we shall soon have beaten the enemy, or we shall have looked on one another for the last time.” On the 3d of December the Austrians were beaten at Lissa, as the French had been at Rosbach, and Frederick II. became the national hero of Germany; the Protestant powers, but lately engaged, to their sorrow, against him, made up to the conqueror; admiration for him permeated even the French army. “At Paris,” wrote D’Alembert to Voltaire, “everybody’s head is turned about the King of Prussia; five months ago he was trailed in the mire.”

“Cabinet-generals,” says Duclos, “greedy of money, inexperienced and presumptuous; ignorant, jealous, or ill-disposed ministers; subalterns lavish of their blood on the battle-field and crawling at court before the distributors of favors—such are the instruments we employed. The small number of those who had not approved of the treaty of Versailles declared loudly against it; after the campaign of 1757, those who had regarded it as a masterpiece of policy, forgot or disavowed their eulogies, and the bulk of the public, who cannot be decided by anything but the event, looked upon it as the source of all our woes.” The counsels of Abbe de Bernis had for some time past been pacific; from a court-abbe, elegant and glib, he had become, on the 25th of June, minister of foreign affairs. But Madame de Pompadour remained faithful to the empress. In the month of January, 1758, Count Clermont was appointed general-in-chief of the army of Germany. In disregard of the convention of Closter-Severn, the Hanoverian troops had just taken the field again under the orders of the Grand-Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick; he had already recovered possession of the districts of Luneberg, Zell, a part of Brunswick and of Bremen. In England, Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, had again come into office; the King of Prussia could henceforth rely upon the firmest support from Great Britain.

He had need of it. A fresh invasion of Russians, aided by the savage hordes of the Zaporoguian Cossacks, was devastating Prussia; the sanguinary battle of Zorndorf, forcing them to fall back on Poland, permitted Frederick to hurry into Saxony, which was attacked by the Austrians. General Daun surprised and defeated him at Hochkirch; in spite of his inflexible resolution, the King of Prussia was obliged to abandon Saxony. His ally and rival, Ferdinand of Brunswick, had just beaten Count Clermont at Crevelt.

The new commander-in-chief of the king’s armies, prince of the blood, brother of the late Monsieur le Duc, abbot commendatory of St. Germain-des-Pres, “general of the Benedictines,”, as the soldiers said, had brought into Germany, together with the favor of Madame de Pompadour, upright intentions, a sincere desire to restore discipline, and some great illusions about himself. “I am very impatient, I do assure you, to be on the other side of the Rhine,” wrote Count Clermont to Marshal Belle-Isle; “all the country about here is infested by runaway soldiers, convalescents, camp-followers, all sorts of understrappers, who commit fearful crimes. Not a single officer does his duty; they are the first to pillage; all the army ought to be put under escort and in detachments, and then there would have to be escorts for those escorts. I hang, I imprison; but, as we march by cantonments and the regimental (particuliers) officers are the first to show a bad example, the punishments are neither sufficiently known nor sufficiently seen. Everything smacks of indiscipline, of disgust at the king’s service, and of asperity towards one’s self. I see with pain that it will be indispensable to put in practice the most violent and the harshest measures.” The king’s army, meanwhile, was continuing to fall back; a general outcry arose at Paris against the general’s supineness. On the 23d of June he was surprised by Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in the strong position of Crevelt, which he had occupied for two days past; the reserves did not advance in time, orders to retreat were given too soon, the battle was lost without disaster and without any rout; the general was lost as well as the battle. “It is certain,” says the Marquis of Vogel, in his narrative of the affair, “that Count Clermont was at table in his headquarters of Weschelen at one o’clock, that he had lost the battle before six, arrived at Reuss at half past ten, and went to bed at midnight; that is doing a great deal in a short time.” The Count of Gisors, son of Marshal Belle-Isle, a young officer of the greatest promise, had been killed at Crevelt; Count Clermont was superseded by the Marquis of Contades. The army murmured; they had no confidence in their leaders. At Versailles, Abbe de Bernis, who had lately become a cardinal, paid by his disgrace for the persistency he had shown in advising peace. He was chatting with M. de Stahrenberg, the Austrian ambassador, when he received a letter from the king, sending him off to his abbey of St. Medard de Soissons. He continued the conversation without changing countenance, and then, breaking off the conversation just as the ambassador was beginning to speak of business. “It is no longer to me, sir,” he said, “that you must explain yourself on these great topics; I have just received my dismissal from his Majesty.” With the same coolness he quitted the court and returned, pending his embassy to Rome, to those elegant intellectual pleasures which suited him better than the crushing weight of a ministry in disastrous times, under an indolent and vain-minded monarch, who was governed by a woman as headstrong as she was frivolous and depraved.

Madame de Pompadour had just procured for herself a support in her obstinate bellicosity. Cardinal Bernis was superseded in the ministry of foreign affairs by Count Stainville, who was created Duke of Choiseul. After the death of Marshal Belle-Isle he exchanged the office for that of minister of war; with it he combined the ministry of the marine. The foreign affairs were intrusted to the Duke of Praslin, his cousin. The power rested almost entirely in the hands of the Duke of Choiseul. Of high birth, clever, bold, ambitious, he had but lately aspired to couple the splendor of successes in the fashionable world with the serious preoccupations of politics; his marriage with Mdlle. Crozat, a wealthy heiress, amiable and very much smitten with him, had strengthened his position. Elevated to the ministry by Madame de Pompadour, and as yet promoting her views, he nevertheless gave signs of an independent spirit and a proud character, capable of exercising authority firmly in the presence and the teeth of all obstacles. France hoped to find once more in M. de Choiseul a great minister; nor were her hopes destined to be completely deceived.

A new and secret treaty had just riveted the alliance between France and Austria. M. de Choiseul was at the same time dreaming of attacking England in her own very home, thus dealing her the most formidable of blows. The preparations were considerable. M. de Soubise was recalled from Germany to direct the army of invasion. He was to be seconded in his command by the Duke of Aiguillon, to whom, rightly or wrongly, was attributed the honor of having repulsed in the preceding year an attempt of the English at a descent upon the coasts of Brittany. The expedition was ready, there was nothing to wait for save the moment to go out of port, but Admiral Hawke was cruising before Brest; it was only in the month of November, 1759, that the marquis of Conflans, who commanded the fleet, could put to sea with twenty-one vessels. Finding himself at once pursued by the English squadron, he sought shelter in the difficult channels at the mouth of the Vilaine. The English dashed in after him. A partial engagement, which ensued, was unfavorable; and the commander of the French rear-guard, M. St. Andre du Verger, allowed himself to be knocked to pieces by the enemy’s guns in order to cover the retreat. The admiral ran ashore in the Bay of Le Croisic and burned his own vessel; seven ships remained blockaded in the Vilaine. M. de Conflans’ job, as the sailors called it at the time, was equivalent to a battle lost without the chances and the honor of the struggle. The English navy was triumphant on every sea, and even in French waters.

The commencement of the campaign of 1759 had been brilliant in Germany; the Duke of Broglie had successfully repulsed the attack made by Ferdinand of Brunswick on his positions at Bergen; the prince had been obliged to retire. The two armies, united under M. de Contades, invaded Hesse and moved upon the Weser; they were occupying Minden when Duke Ferdinand threw himself upon them on the 1st of August. The action of the two French generals was badly combined, and the rout was complete. It was the moment of Canada’s last efforts, and the echo of that glorious death-rattle reached even to Versailles. The Duke of Choiseul had, on the 19th of February, replied to a desperate appeal from Montcalm, “I am very sorry to have to send you word that you must not expect any re-enforcements. To say nothing of their increasing the dearth of provisions of which you have had only too much experience hitherto, there would be great fear of their being intercepted by the English on the passage, and, as the king could never send you aid proportionate to the forces which the English are in a position to oppose to you, the efforts made here to procure it for you would have no other effect than to rouse the ministry in London to make still more considerable ones in order to preserve the superiority it has acquired in that part of the continent.” The necessity for peace was, beginning to be admitted even, in Madame de Pompadour’s little cabinets.