The next morning, in the intense cold of midwinter, Frederick set out several hours before daylight for the city of Prague, which the French and Bavarians had captured on the 25th of November. Declining all polite attentions, for business was urgent, he eagerly sought M. De Séchelles, the renowned head of the commissariat department, and made arrangements with him to perform the extremely difficult task of supplying the army with food in a winter’s campaign.
The next morning, at an early hour, he again dashed off to the east, toward Glatz, a hundred miles distant, where a portion of the Prussian troops were in cantonments, under the young Prince Leopold. Within a week he had ridden over seven hundred miles, commencing his journey every morning as early as four o’clock, and doing a vast amount of business by the way.
It will be remembered that, in the note which M. Valori accidentally dropped, and which Frederick furtively obtained, the minister was instructed by the French court not to give up Glatz to the Prussian king if he could possibly avoid it. But Frederick had now seized the city, and the region around, by force of arms, and held them with a gripe not to be relaxed. Glatz was a Catholic town. In the convent there was an image of the Virgin, whose tawdry robes had become threadbare and faded. The wife of the Austrian commandant had promised the Virgin a new dress if she would keep the Prussians out of the city. Frederick heard of this. As he took possession of the city, with grim humor he assured the Virgin that she should not lose in consequence of the favor she had shown the Prussians. New and costly garments were immediately provided for her at the expense of the Prussian king.
On the 26th of January Frederick set out from Glatz, with a strong cortége, for Olmütz, far away to the southeast. This place his troops had occupied for a month past. His route led through a chain of mountains, whose bleak and dreary defiles were clogged with drifted snow, and swept by freezing gales. It was a dreadful march, accompanied by many disasters and much suffering.
General Stille, one of the aids of Frederick on this expedition, says that the king, with his retinue, mounted and in carriages, pushed forward the first day to Landskron. “It was,” he writes, “such a march as I never witnessed before. Through the ice and through the snow, which covered that dreadful chain of mountains between Böhmen and Mähren, we did not arrive till very late. Many of our carriages were broken down, and others were overturned more than once.”[63]
Frederick, ever regardless of fatigue and exposure for himself, never spared his followers. It was after midnight of the 28th when the weary column, frostbitten, hungry, and exhausted, reached Olmütz. The king was hospitably entertained in the fine palace of the Catholic bishop, “a little, gouty man,” writes Stille, “about fifty-two years of age, with a countenance open and full of candor.”
Orders had been issued for all the Prussian troops to be rendezvoused by the 5th of February at Wischau. They were then to march immediately about seventy-five miles west, to Trebitsch, which was but a few miles south of Iglau, the point of attack. Here they were to join the French and Saxon troops. The force thus concentrated would amount to twenty-four thousand Prussian troops, twenty thousand Saxons, and five thousand French horsemen. With this army—forty-nine thousand strong—Frederick was to advance, by one short day’s march, upon Iglau, where the Austrian garrison amounted to but ten thousand men.
In the mean time, on the 24th of January, Charles Albert, King of Bavaria, through the intrigues of the French minister and the diplomacy of Frederick, was chosen Emperor of Germany. This election Frederick regarded as a great triumph on his part. It was the signal defeat of Austria. Very few of the sons of Adam have passed a more joyless and dreary earthly pilgrimage than was the fortune of Charles Albert. At the time of his election he was forty-five years of age, of moderate stature, polished manners, and merely ordinary abilities. He was suffering from a complication of the most painful disorders. His previous life had been but a series of misfortunes, and during all the rest of his days he was assailed by the storms of adversity. In death alone he found refuge from a life almost without a joy.
Charles Albert, who took the title of “the Emperor Charles VII.,” was the son of Maximilian, King of Bavaria, who was ruined at Blenheim, and who, being placed under the ban of the empire, lived for many years a pensioner upon the charity of Louis XIV. Charles was then but seven years of age, a prince by birth, yet homeless, friendless, and in poverty. With varying fortunes, he subsequently married a daughter of the Emperor Joseph. She was a cousin of Maria Theresa. Upon the death of his father in 1726, Charles Albert became King of Bavaria; but he was involved in debt beyond all hope of extrication. The intrigues of Frederick placed upon his wan and wasted brow the imperial crown of Germany. The coronation festivities took place at Frankfort, with great splendor, on the 12th of February, 1742.
Wilhelmina, who was present, gives a graphic account, with her vivacious pen, of many of the scenes, both tragic and comic, which ensued.