“Not only I,” the aid replied, “but the whole army, firmly believe it of your majesty.”
“You are quite right,” responded the king. “We will manage Daun. What I lament is the number of brave men who have died this morning.”
The next day he remarked, “Daun has let us out of checkmate. The game is not lost yet. We will rest ourselves here for a few days, then we will go to Silesia and deliver Neisse. But where are all your guns?” he said, playfully, to an artilleryman, who stood, vacant, on parade.
“Your majesty,” replied the gunner, “the devil stole them all last night.”
“Ah!” said the king, gayly, “we must have them back from him again.”
The fourth day after this dreadful defeat the king received the tidings of the death of Wilhelmina. It was apparently the heaviest blow he had ever encountered. The anguish which her death caused him he did not attempt to conceal. In a business letter to Prince Henry we find this burst of feeling:
“Great God! my sister of Baireuth, my noble Wilhelmina, dead; died in the very hours while we were fighting here.”
The king, in a letter to Voltaire upon this occasion, writes:
“It will have been easy for you to conceive my grief when you reflect upon the loss I have had. There are some misfortunes which are reparable by constancy and courage, but there are others against which all the firmness with which one can arm one’s self, and all the reasonings of philosophers, are only vain and useless attempts at consolation.[121] Of the latter kind is the one with which my unhappy fate overwhelms me, at a moment the most embarrassing and the most anxious of my whole life. I have not been so sick as you have heard. My only complaints are colics, sometimes hemorrhoidal, and sometimes nephritic.
“If it had depended upon me, I would willingly have devoted myself to that death which those maladies sooner or later bring upon one, in order to save and prolong the life of her whose eyes are now closed. I beseech you never to forget her. Collect all your powers to raise a monument to her honor. You need only do her justice. Without any way abandoning the truth, she will afford you an ample and beautiful subject. I wish you more repose and happiness than falls to my lot.
Frederick.”[122]
The court at Vienna received with transports of joy the tidings of the victory of Hochkirch. The pope was greatly elated. He regarded the battle as one between the Catholic and Protestant powers. The holy father, Clement XIII., sent a letter of congratulation to Marshal Daun, together with a sword and hat, both blessed by his holiness. The occurrence excited the derision of Frederick, who was afterward accustomed to designate his opponent as “the blessed general with the papal hat.” Frederick remained at Doberschütz ten days. During this time his brother Henry joined him from Dresden with six thousand foot and horse. This raised his force to a little above thirty thousand men. General Finck was left in command of the few Prussian troops who remained for the defense of the capital of Saxony.