Frederick himself was undeniably an unscrupulous aggressor, and some call him “a highway robber.”
The cause of Maria Theresa alone could have been called honorable. In the fourth campaign of 1759 the terrible battle of Kunersdorf was fought in August. At first the Prussians were victorious, but the Russians at length routed them with fearful loss. So great was the despair of Frederick that it is said he contemplated suicide.
For a year the struggle continued. The Prussian army left in Silesia was utterly destroyed by the Austrians. But at length the tide turned, and Frederick routed the Austrians at the battle of Liegnitz. But the position of Frederick was still most hazardous. He was in the heart of Silesia, surrounded by hostile armies, three times larger than his own. Weary weeks of marching, fighting, blood, and woe, passed on. Sieges, skirmishes, battles innumerable, ensued.
At length the allies captured Berlin; whereupon Frederick marched quickly to the rescue of his capital. At his dread approach the allies fled. Frederick followed the Austrians.
We have no space to give details of the end of the bloody war. Frederick attacked the Austrians, under Marshal Daun, at Torgan, saying to his soldiers:—
“This war has become tedious. If I beat him, all his army must be taken prisoners or drowned in the Elbe. If we are beaten we must all perish.”
After a day of hard fighting the Prussians held the field. Frederick, who was a very profane man, replied to a soldier, who inquired if they should go into winter quarters, “By all the devils I shall not till we have taken Dresden.” But Dresden he did not take at that time, and went into winter quarters at Leipsic. The fifth campaign of the Seven Years’ War closed with the winter of 1760.
EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT, ÆT. 73.
The Russians and Austrians had concentrated in Bohemia. The summer and autumn wore away with little accomplished; the allies feared to attack Frederick, and the Russians retreated for winter quarters. But the Austrians captured Schweidnitz and so could winter in Silesia. This was a terrible blow to Frederick, but no word betrayed the anguish of the hard-pressed Prussian king. Taking his weary, suffering troops to Breslau, Frederick sought shelter for the winter of 1761-62. At this dark time he wrote:—