The King, to vindicate his own measure, and indeed from the necessity of making a decisive effort, hastened with ten thousand men to the shattered remains of Wedel’s army; while Marshal Daun, who knew that the Russians wanted nothing but a body of cavalry, despatched twelve thousand horse to them under General Laudohn, who was accompanied, too, by eight thousand foot. This supply made the Russian force amount to above fourscore thousand men, already blooded with victory and barbarity. The King, with all the recruits he could collect, had not assembled above fifty thousand men—enough to sacrifice to despair! It was near the village of Cunnersdorf that he once more tried what the most intrepid rashness could perform. Even the advantage of situation was against him; yet nothing stopped his impetuosity. His Generals had no option: his troops were animated by revenge, by the dangers that threatened their country, and by the example of their King, who was so far entitled to lavish the blood of his soldiers, as he was prodigal of his own. Such motives and such fury bore down all before them. The Russian entrenchments were forced; seventy pieces of their cannon were taken; posts after posts were carried, and prodigious slaughter made of their bravest battalions. The King, confident of success, and impatient to notify it, despatched a courier to the Queen with these words: “Madam, we have beaten the Russians from their entrenchments; in two hours expect to hear of a glorious victory.” Unless he concluded that the expeditious divulging of his success could check the progress of his other enemies, or encourage his people to withstand the tempest that was ready to break upon them, this anticipation of his good fortune was childish, and more like the juvenile ardour of an unpractised hero, than of a man accustomed both to victory and reverses, and who was now fighting for dearer objects than glory.
The promised two hours never arrived. Soltikoff, the Russian General, collected the remains of his right wing, and, with supplies drawn from his centre, reinforced his left, which he observed to be the most entire, and posted it on a rising ground to advantage. The King, flushed with success, and now engaged in honour to make it complete, resolved to drive the Russians from that last post too. The fatigue of his troops, the representations of his Generals, the advantages already gained, nothing could dissuade him from pushing his fortune to the utmost. The command for attack was given, and was obeyed with alacrity by the Prussians, though almost spent by the heat of the day, and the efforts they had exerted. At that moment the Austrian cavalry, so judiciously furnished by Daun, and as ably put in motion by Laudohn, rushed upon the enfeebled victors, broke their ranks, drove them back in disorder, and ravished from them in few moments the fruit of their glorious ardour and intrepidity.
A total defeat of the Prussians ensued, notwithstanding the undaunted valour of their monarch, who could not recover by despair what he had let slip out of his hands by presumption. Yet, to that intemperance in action succeeded the coolest prudence and judgment. He had acted as in despair at the head of fifty thousand men; he took measures for re-establishing his Army, when he knew not whether he had an Army left. All his Generals were killed or wounded, all his cannon taken, the flower of his troops slaughtered or dispersed: yet, in those circumstances he made so able a retreat, so assiduously reassembled the remains of his Army, and chose his ground in so masterly a manner, that the Russians not only did not venture to make any attempt on Berlin, but drew no advantages from so complete a victory. Even Marshal Daun, who had selected the very moment for deciding the King’s ruin, improved the conjuncture with far less capacity than the vanquished Prince, who seemed to have no resource left. The Marshal, instead of being born, as men conjectured, to weary out the fertility of that monarch’s genius, seemed at last but the proper touchstone for proving the extent of his abilities. In a second note to his Queen, his Majesty ordered her to remove from Berlin with the Royal Family; the archives to be transported to Potsdam. The capital, he added, might make conditions with the enemy. This was the first thought—yet he not only saved Berlin; but though Marshal Daun joined Soltikoff, and though the King received two more defeats during the course of the campaign, yet by the dexterous manœuvres of his brother, Prince Henry, whose military talents the King professed to prefer to his own, and who drew the Marshal towards Saxony by a daring and celebrated march, by the retreat of the Russians, to which the King forced them, and by the too deliberate councils of the Austrian chief, who continued to act in a defensive style even after he had reduced the King to the last gasp, that Prince was still saved to baffle the reasonings of the speculative, and to terminate his glorious career in a manner worthy of its progress.
While the war seemed drawing towards a conclusion in the North, it looked as if fate was opening a new source of calamities to mankind. Ferdinand King of Spain died; a Prince of no abilities, and lately of disordered intellects. His want of issue had formerly been imputed to drugs administered to him by the practices of his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Farnese, the politic Queen-dowager. Men of a suspicious cast might attribute his frenzy to the same cause; but a more pregnant reason might be assigned. His father, who certainly was far from being afflicted with any bodily debility, had been equally disturbed in his understanding. Ferdinand’s Queen,[62] who had great ascendant over him, had kept his madness within bounds. On her death nobody had any influence with him. His disorder, thus left to itself, increased, and put an end to his life about a year after the decease of his Queen.
The Queen-dowager, though not absolute directress of affairs during the life of her son-in-law, had yet, from her intrigues, bribes, and dependents, and still more from the visible and approaching prospect of her own son’s succession, acquired much authority, though not enough to throw the kingdom, as she wished, into direct connexion with France. The probability of the weight she would have with her son Don Carlos; the power his own Queen, who was a daughter of Saxony, was known to have with him; and the subjection in which we had held him while only King of Naples—all these motives concurred to lead him into French measures. Naples, by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, had been destined to his brother the Duke of Parma. Don Carlos, indeed, had never given his consent to that disposition: he was less inclined to conform to it when the forces of Spain enabled him to dispute it. Accordingly, on obtaining the Spanish Crown, he destined that of Naples to one of his younger sons. The eldest, called Duke of Calabria, and heir-apparent of Spain, inherited the weakness of mind of his grandfather and uncle. Him, therefore, it was determined totally to set aside. Solemnity was used in proceeding to that rejection. The young Prince, then thirteen, was formally examined by physicians. One[63] of them was so honest as to refuse to sign his persuasion of the Prince’s incapacity, though at length he too yielded. The case was novel and striking. Just, undoubtedly, to the people who were to be governed: but many favourers of hereditary right—that is, men who think that no want of talents or virtues ought to exclude a Prince from exercising that office which requires the noblest share of both, and hold that mankind, like land, ought to be the property of birth—will not be pleased with the reasons which the Neapolitan physicians were of opinion disqualified the Prince for the throne of Spain.
“He was short, his joints were contracted, he stooped, looked down, squinted, was sometimes indifferent to things convenient for him, at others too warm and impetuous. His passions not restrained by reason; he had an obstinate aversion to sweetmeats; was disturbed by all sorts of noise; pain or pleasure made no lasting impressions on him; he was utterly unacquainted with good-breeding; had not the least idea of the mysteries of their holy religion; loved childish amusements, the most boisterous the best; and was continually shifting from one thing to another.”
If these defects were disqualifications, hard would be the fate of most sovereigns! how seldom would an eldest son succeed his father! Would not one think that the faculty of physic at Naples had rather been describing a Monarch than dispossessing him? One thing is evident—it must have been a King who selected such criterions for judging whether his son was capable of governing a great nation. “Ask him,” we must suppose, said his Neapolitan Majesty, “whether he loves sweetmeats! if he does not, he is unworthy of filling the Throne of his ancestors.” The Prince’s ignorance of good-breeding and of his religion seems rather imputable to his parents and preceptors than to him. If it were the mysteries of the Roman Catholic faith which he was incapable of comprehending, I should suspect the Prince was a sensible lad. Perhaps the honest physician thought as I do—at least, I do not doubt but, if permitted, he would have asked the Prince other questions.
Voltaire, who, I do not know why, thinks Princes are always to be mentioned with strict decorum, could hardly persuade any man to refrain from laughing at this absurd catalogue of royal deficiencies. The Prince really was an idiot; nor was it likely that a father would wish to disinherit his own child, especially who was not old enough to have given him jealousy, unless the incapacity had been glaring and hopeless—but one would think the whole Cabinet of Naples had been idiots likewise, when they could find no better colours to dress up a notorious fact. Indeed, the Spanish as well as Portuguese statesmen have been wofully defective in composition in this age, as often as they have attempted to lay the grounds of their proceedings before the rest of Europe. The most barbarous periods of monkish ignorance and despotism produced nothing more despicable than several manifestos of those Crowns.
The Prince was set aside in consequence of the decision of the physicians.[64] The second son was carried to Spain and declared Prince of Asturias. To the third was actually resigned the Crown of Naples, though too young to have it known whether he was more fit to reign than his eldest brother—but a baby is never thought disqualified. The tranquillity, however, of that child’s reign depended so much on preserving the friendship of England, that the new King of Spain was not impatient to hurry into French councils. His wife too had prepossessed him with apprehensions of being governed by his mother. The Crown of Naples, which he had owed entirely to her intrigues, could not induce him to put that of Spain under her direction. She could not even obtain to see him alone—a mortifying return from a darling son, who had been absent from her thirty years! But if the new Queen in that instance showed her influence, she lost it in every other. The King was extremely weak, but unmeasurably obstinate. The Crown of Spain, or probably some Spanish Minister, infused into him higher thoughts of himself. He grew jealous of his wife’s ascendant, sent away a Neapolitan Duchess who governed her, and took a resolution of deciding everything by his own judgment. He could not have chosen a worse counsellor.[66] The disgraces that soon attended his measures made the true Spaniards wish that the Neapolitan doctors had been consulted on more cases than one.