CHAPTER XXXI.
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED.
Winter Encampment.—Death of Maupertuis.—Infamous Conduct of Voltaire.—Reproof by the King.—Voltaire’s Insincerity.—Correspondence.—The King publishes his Poems.—Dishonorable Conduct of the King.—New Encampment near Dresden.—Destruction of Frederick’s Army in Silesia.—Atrocities perpetrated by the Austrians.—Astonishing March.—The Austrians outwitted.—Dresden bombarded and almost destroyed by Frederick.—Battle of Liegnitz.—Utter Rout of the Austrians.—Undiminished Peril of Frederick.—Letter to D’Argens.
It was early in January, 1760, that the two hostile armies went into winter quarters. General Daun, with his seventy-two thousand triumphant troops, held Dresden. He encamped his army in an arc of a circle, bending toward the southwest from the city, and occupying a line about thirty miles in extent. Frederick, with thirty-two thousand troops depressed by defeat, defiantly faced his foe in a concave arc concentric to that of Daun. The two antagonistic encampments were almost within cannon-shot of each other.
Never were the prospects of Frederick more gloomy. He had taken up his residence for the winter in a very humble cottage near the hamlet of Freiberg. He must have been very unhappy. Scenes of suffering were every where around him. It was terribly cold. His troops were poorly clothed, and fed, and housed.
“It was one of the grimmest camps in nature; the canvas roofs grown mere ice-plates, the tents mere sanctuaries of frost. Never did poor young Archenholtz see such industry in dragging wood-fuel, such boiling of biscuits in broken ice, such crowding round the embers to roast one side of you while the other was freezing. But Daun’s people, on the opposite side of the Plauen Dell, did the like. Their tents also were left standing in the frozen state, guarded by alternating battalions no better off than their Prussian neighbors.”[142]
Thus affairs continued through the winter. There were two frostbitten armies facing each other on the bleak plains. With apparently not much to be gained in presenting this front of defiance, each party breasted the storms and the freezing gales, alike refusing to yield one inch of ground.
THE WINTER CAMP.
During the previous summer, the philosopher Maupertuis, after weary wanderings in the languor of consumption, and in great dejection of spirits, had been stricken by convulsions while in his carriage at Basel. He had lost favor with the king, and was poor, friendless, and dying. His latter years had been imbittered by the venomous assaults of Voltaire.
While in health and prosperity, quaffing the wines of Frederick, he was an avowed infidel, and eagerly joined the ribald companions of the king in denouncing all religion as the fanaticism of weak minds. But in these hours of pain, of loneliness, and of approaching death he could find no consolation in the teachings of philosophy. He sent for two Christian ministers to visit him daily, and daily had the Bible read to him. It was a death-bed repentance. Bitterly he deplored a wasted life. Sincerely he seemed to embrace the doctrines of Christianity.[143] He died, after a lingering sickness, far from home and friends, on the 27th of July, 1759.