CHAPTER I. THE KING’S RETURN.
Berlin was glittering in festal adornment! This was a great, a joyous day; the first gleam of sunshine, after many long years of sorrow, suffering, and absolute want. For the last seven years the king had been absent from his capital-to-day he would return to Berlin.
After seven years of bloody strife, the powers at Hubertsburg had declared peace. No nation had enlarged its boundaries by this war. Not one of the cities or fortresses of the King of Prussia had been taken from him, and he was forced to content himself with his former conquest. There had been no successful results! Losses only were to be calculated.
During these seven years, Russia had lost one hundred and eighty thousand men, the French two hundred thousand, the Prussians a hundred and twenty thousand, the English and confederate Germans a hundred and sixty thousand, and the Saxons ninety thousand—lastly, the Swedes and the States sixty thousand. This seven years’ war cost Europe nearly a million of men. Their blood fertilized the German soil, and their bones lay mouldering beneath her green sods.
Throughout all Europe, weeping mothers, wives, and children turned their sorrowful faces toward the land which had robbed them of their dear loved ones; they were even deprived the painfully sweet consolation of weeping over these lonely and neglected graves.
Losses were not only to be counted in myriads of men, whose blood had been shed in vain, but uncounted millions had been lavished upon the useless strife.
During this war, the debt of England had increased to seventy million pounds sterling; the yearly interest on the debt was four and a half million crowns. The Austrians calculated their debt at five hundred million guldens; France at two thousand million livres; Sweden was almost bankrupt, and unfortunate Saxony had to pay to Prussia during the war over seven million crowns.
In the strict meaning of the term, Prussia had made no debt, but she was, in fact, as much impoverished as her adversaries. The Prussian money which was circulated during the war was worthless.
At the close of the war, all those who carried these promissory notes shared the fate of the rich man in the fairy tale. The money collected at night turned to ashes before morning. This was the fatal fruit of the war which for seven years had scourged Europe. Prussia, however, had reason to be satisfied and even grateful. Although bleeding from a thousand wounds, exhausted and faint unto death, she promised a speedy recovery; she was full of youthful power and energy—had grown, morally, during this seven years’ struggle—had become great under the pressure of hardship and self-denial, and now ranked with the most powerful nations of Europe.