a a. Stages of the Prussian March. b. Daun’s Encampment. c. Prussian Batteries and Intrenchments. d d d. Prussian Camps. e e. Loudon’s March against Mosel’s Convoy. f f. Mosel’s resting Quarters. g. Convoy attacked and ruined.
His garrison consisted of about fourteen thousand infantry and six hundred dragoons. General Daun was at the distance of but two marches, with a larger Austrian force than Frederick commanded. Nothing can more clearly show the dread with which the Austrians regarded their antagonist than the fact that General Daun did not march immediately upon Olmütz, and, with the aid of a sally from the garrison, overwhelm and crush Frederick beneath their united assaults.
For seven weeks the siege of Olmütz was prosecuted with great vigor. With much skill Frederick protected his baggage trains in their long and exposed route of ninety miles through forests and mountain defiles. General Keith was intrusted with the details of the siege facing the town toward the east; Frederick, with a vigilant corps of horse and foot, was about twenty miles to the west, watching every movement of General Daun, so far as he was able through the thick cloud of Pandours, behind which the Austrian commander endeavored to conceal all his manœuvres.
While engaged in these labors the tidings reached him of the death of his brother Augustus William. He was Prince of Prussia, being, next to the childless Frederick, heir to the crown. Frederick seems to have received the news very heartlessly.
“Of what did he die?” he coldly inquired of the messenger.
“Of chagrin, your majesty,” was the reply.
Frederick turned upon his heel, and made no answer.
The unhappy Prince of Prussia, on his dying bed, wrote a very touching letter to his brother Frederick, remonstrating against his conduct, which was not only filling Europe with blood and misery, but which was also imperiling the existence of the Prussian kingdom.
“The slow fever,” he wrote, “which consumes me, has not thrown any disorder into my understanding. Condescend to listen to me, sire, now that I can not be suspected of any illusion or deceit. There is an end to the house of Prussia if you continue to brave all Europe confederated against you. You force all Europe to arm to repel your encroachments. The princes of Europe are leagued against your majesty by justice and by interest. Their subjects regard your ruin as essential to the re-establishment of peace and the safety of monarchical government. They read in your success the slavery of the human race, the annihilation of laws, the degradation of society.”
In reference to the course which the king had allowed himself to pursue in obtaining access to the archives of Saxony by bribing an officer to betray his trust, Augustus William wrote: