With Frederick the Great: A Story of the Seven Years' War

by G. A. Henty

On the 2nd of July came news which, on the top of his other troubles, almost prostrated Frederick. This was of the death of his mother, to whom he was most fondly attached. He retired from public view for some days; for although he was as iron in the hour of battle, he was a man of very sensitive disposition, and fondly attached to his family.

His chief confidant during this sad time was the English ambassador, Mitchell; a bluff, shrewd, hearty man, for whom the king had conceived a close friendship. He had accompanied Frederick from the time he left Berlin, and had even been near him on the battlefields; and it was in no small degree due to his despatches and correspondence that we have obtained so close a view of Frederick, the man, as distinct from Frederick the king and general.

The Prince of Prussia, however, did no better than Prince Maurice. The main Austrian army, after much hesitation, at last crossed the Elbe and moved against him; thinking, doubtless, that he was a less formidable antagonist than the king. The prince fell back, but in such hesitating and blundering fashion that he allowed the Austrians to get between him and his base, the town of Zittau, where his magazines had been established.

Zittau stood at the foot of the mountain, and was a Saxon town. The Austrians had come to deliver Saxony, and they began the work by firing red-hot balls into Zittau, thereby laying the whole town in ashes, rendering 10,000 people homeless, and doing no injury whatever to the Prussian garrison or magazines.

The heat, however, from the ruins was so terrible that the five battalions in garrison there were unable to support it and, evacuating the town, joined the prince's army; which immediately retired to Bautzen on the other side of the mountains, leaving the defiles to Saxony and Silesia both unguarded.

As messenger after messenger arrived at Leitmeritz, with reports of the movements of the troops, the astonishment and indignation of Frederick rose higher and higher. The whole fruits of the campaign were lost, by this astounding succession of blunders; and on hearing that Zittau had been destroyed, and that the army had arrived at Bautzen in the condition of a beaten and disheartened force, he at once started, with the bulk of the army, by the Elbe passes for that town; leaving Maurice of Dessau, with 10,000 men, to secure the passes; and Keith to follow more slowly with the baggage train and magazines.

On his arrival at Bautzen Frederick refused to speak to his brother, but sent him a message saying that he deserved to be brought before a court martial, which would sentence him and all his generals to death; but that he should not carry the matter so far, being unable to forget that the chief offender was his brother. The prince resigned his command, and the king, in answer to his letter to that effect, said that, in the situation created by him, nothing was left but to try the last extremity.

"I must go and give battle," he wrote, "and if we cannot conquer, we must all of us get ourselves killed."

Frederick, indeed, as his letters show, had fully made up his mind that he would die in battle, rather than live beaten. The animosity of his enemies was, to a large extent, personal to himself; and he believed that they would, after his death, be inclined to give better terms to Prussia than they would ever grant, while he lived. For three weeks the king vainly tried to get the Austrians to give battle, but Prince Karl and Daun remained on the hill from which they had bombarded Zittau, and which they had now strongly fortified.

Their barbarous and most useless bombardment of Zittau had done their cause harm; for it roused a fierce cry of indignation throughout Europe, even among their allies; excited public feeling in England to the highest point in favour of Frederick; and created a strong feeling of hostility to the Austrians throughout Saxony.