AFTER THE DEFEAT.
“Raising his eyes,” says Archenholtz, “he surveyed, with speechless emotion, the small remnant of his life-guard of foot, his favorite battalion. It was one thousand strong yesterday morning, hardly four hundred now. All the soldiers of this chosen battalion were personally known to him—their names, their age, their native place, their history. In one day death had mowed them down. They had fought like heroes, and it was for him they had died. His eyes were visibly wet. Down his face rolled silent tears.”
Suddenly dashing the tears away, he issued his swift orders, and, mounting his horse, galloped to Prague, where he arrived Sunday evening. The next day the siege was raised, and the besieging troops were on the retreat north into Saxony. The whole army was soon rendezvoused at Leitmeritz, on the Elbe, about thirty miles south of Dresden. Here Frederick awaited the development of the next movement of his foes.
He had hardly arrived at Leitmeritz ere he received the tidings of the death of Sophia Dorothea, his mother. She died at Berlin on the 28th of June, 1757, in the seventy-first year of her age. This grief, coming in the train of disasters which seemed to be overwhelming his Prussian majesty, affected him very deeply. Frederick was subdued and softened by sorrow. He remembered the time when a mother’s love rocked his cradle, and wrapped him around with tender care. The reader will be surprised to learn that his grief—perhaps with some comminglings of remorse—was so great that he shut himself in his closet, and wept with sobbings like a child.
CHAPTER XXVI.
DEFEATS AND PERILS.
Grief of the King over his Mother’s Death.—Interesting Letters.—Forces in the Field.—The March upon Dresden.—Devotion of Wilhelmina.—Atheism of the King.—Wilhelmina to Voltaire.—Despair of Frederick.—Great Victory of Rossbach.—Description of the Battle.—Utter Rout of the Allies.—Elation of Frederick.—His Poem on the Occasion.—Ravages of War.
The tidings of the death of the king’s mother reached him on the 2d of July, 1757. Sir Andrew Mitchell, the English embassador in Berlin, gives the following account of an interview he had with Frederick on that occasion:
“Yesterday, July 3d, the king sent for me, in the afternoon, the first time he has seen any body since the news came. I had the honor to remain with him in his closet. I must own I was most sensibly affected to see him indulging his grief, and giving way to the warmest filial affections; recalling to mind the many obligations he had to her late majesty; all she had suffered, and how nobly she had borne it; the good she did to every body; the one comfort he now had, that he tried to make her last years more agreeable.”