His Prussian majesty, justly foreseeing the great enormities that were to be expected from these savage enemies, who were unaccustomed to make war, except upon nations as barbarous as themselves, who looked upon war only as an opportunity for plunder, and every country through which they happened to march as theirs by right of conquest, published the following declaration: “It is sufficiently known, that the king of Prussia, after the example of his glorious predecessors, has, ever since his accession to the crown, laid it down as a maxim to seek the friendship of the imperial court of Russia, and cultivate it by every method. His Prussian majesty hath had the satisfaction to live, for several successive years, in the strictest harmony with the reigning empress: and this happy union would be still subsisting, if evil-minded potentates had not broke it by their secret machinations, and carried things to such a height, that the ministers on both sides have been recalled, and the correspondence broken off. However melancholy these circumstances might be for the king, his majesty was nevertheless most attentive to prevent any thing that might increase the alienation of the Russian court. He hath been particularly careful, during the disturbances of the war that now unhappily rages, to avoid whatever might involve him in a difference with that court, notwithstanding the great grievances he hath to allege against it; and that it was publicly known the court of Vienna had at last drawn that of Russia into its destructive views, and made it serve as an instrument for favouring the schemes of Austria. His majesty hath given the whole world incontestible proofs, that he was under an indispensable necessity of having recourse to the measures he hath taken against the courts of Vienna and Saxony, who forced him by their conduct to take up arms for his defence. Yet, even since things have been brought to this extremity, the king hath offered to lay down his arms, if proper securities should be granted to him. His majesty hath not neglected to expose the artifices by which the imperial court of Russia hath been drawn into measures so opposite to the empress’s sentiments, and which would excite the utmost indignation of that great princess, if the truth could be placed before her without disguise. The king did more: he suggested to her imperial majesty sufficient means either to excuse her not taking any part in the present war, or to avoid, upon the justest grounds, the execution of those engagements which the court of Vienna claimed by a manifest abuse of obligations, which they employed to palliate their unlawful views. It wholly depended upon the empress of Russia to extinguish the flames of the war, without unsheathing the sword, by pursuing the measures suggested by the king. This conduct would have immortalized her reign throughout all Europe. It would have gained her more lasting glory than can be acquired by the greatest triumphs. The king finds with regret, that all his precautions and care to maintain peace with the Russian empire are fruitless, and that the intrigues of his enemies have prevailed. His majesty sees all the considerations of friendship and good neighbourhood set aside by the imperial court of Russia, as well as the observance of its engagements with his majesty. He sees that court marching its troops through the territories of a foreign power, and, contrary to the tenor of treaties, in order to attack the king in his dominions; and thus taking part in a war, in which his enemies have involved the Russian empire. In such circumstances, the king hath no other part to take, but to employ the power which God hath intrusted to him in defending himself, protecting his subjects, and repelling every unjust attack. His majesty will never lose sight of the rules which are observed, even in the midst of war, among civilized nations. But if, contrary to all hope and expectation, these rules should be violated by the troops of Russia, if they commit in the king’s territories disorders and excesses disallowed by the law of arms, his majesty must not be blamed if he makes reprisals in Saxony; and if, instead of that good order and rigorous discipline which have hitherto been observed by his army, avoiding all sorts of violence, he finds himself forced, contrary to his inclination, to suffer the provinces and subjects of Saxony to be treated in the same manner as his own territories shall be treated. As to the rest, the king will soon publish to the whole world the futility of the reasons alleged by the imperial court of Russia to justify its aggression; and as his majesty is forced upon making his defence, he has room to hope, with confidence, that the Lord of Hosts will bless his righteous arms: that he will disappoint the unjust enterprises of his enemies, and grant him his powerful assistance to enable him to make head against them.”
ARMY OF THE EMPIRE RAISED.
When the king of Prussia was put under the ban of the empire, the several princes who compose that body were required, by the decree of the Aulic council, as we observed before, to furnish their respective contingents against him. Those who feared him looked upon this as a fair opportunity of reducing him; and those who stood in awe of the house of Austria were, through necessity, compelled to support that power which they dreaded. Besides, they were accustomed to the influence of a family in which the empire had, for a long time, been in a manner hereditary; and were also intimidated by the appearance of a confederacy the most formidable, perhaps, that the world had ever seen. Yet, notwithstanding all this, the contingents, both of men and money, were collected slowly; the troops were badly composed; and many of those, not only of the protestant princes, but also of the catholics, showed the utmost reluctance to act against his Prussian majesty, which, indeed, none of them would have been able to do had it not been for the assistance of the French under the prince de Soubise. The elector palatine lost above a thousand men by desertion. Four thousand of the troops belonging to the duke of Wirtemberg being delivered to the French commissary on the twenty-fourth of June, were immediately reviewed; but the review was scarcely finished, when they began to cry aloud that they were sold. Next morning thirty of them deserted at once, and were soon followed by parties of twenty and thirty each, who forced their way through the detachments that guarded the gates of Stutgard, and in the evening the mutiny became general. They fired upon the officers in their barracks, and let their general know that if he did not immediately withdraw, they would put him to death. Meanwhile, some of the officers having pursued the deserters, brought back a part of them prisoners, when the rest of the soldiers declared, that if they were not immediately released, they would set fire to the stadthouse and barracks; upon which the prisoners were set at liberty late in the evening. Next morning the soldiers assembled, and having seized some of the officers, three or four hundred of them marched out of the town at that time, with the music of the regiments playing before them; and in this manner near-three thousand of them filed off, and the remainder were afterwards discharged.
THE AUSTRIANS TAKE GABEL.
The king of Prussia, upon his leaving Bohemia after the battle of Kolin, retired towards Saxony, as we observed before; and having sent his heavy artillery and mortars up the Elbe to Dresden, fixed his camp on the banks of the river, at Leitmeritz, where his main army was strongly intrenched, whilst mareschal Keith, with the troops under his command, encamped on the opposite shore; a free communication being kept open by means of a bridge. At the same time detachments were ordered to secure the passes into Saxony. As this position of the king of Prussia prevented the Austrians from being able to penetrate into Saxony by the way of the Elbe, they moved, by slow marches, into the circle of Buntzla, and, at last, with a detachment commanded by the duke d’Aremberg and M. Macguire, on the eighteenth! of June fell suddenly upon, and took the important post at Gabel, situated between Boemish Leypa and Zittau, after an obstinate defence made by the Prussian garrison, under major-general Putkammer, consisting of four battalions, who were obliged to surrender prisoners of war. The Austrians having by this motion gained a march towards Lusatia, upon a corps which had been detached under the command of the prince of Prussia to watch them, his Prussian majesty thought proper to leave Leitmeritz on the twentieth in the morning, and lay that night at Lickowitz, a village opposite to Leitmeritz, of which a battalion of his troops still kept possession, while the rest of his army remained encamped in the plain before that place. Next morning, at break of day, prince Henry decamped, and made so good a disposition for his retreat, that he did not lose a single man, though he marched in sight of the whole body of Austrian irregulars. He passed the bridge at Leitmeritz, after withdrawing the battalion that was in the town, and having burnt the bridge, the whole army united, and made a small movement towards the passes of the mountains; the king then lying at Sulowitz, near the field where the battle of Lowoschutz was fought on the first of October of the preceding year. The heavy baggage was sent on in the afternoon, with a proper escort; and in the morning of the twenty-second the army marched in two columns, and encamped on the high grounds at Lusechitz, a little beyond Lenai, where it halted on the twenty-third. No attack was made upon the rear-guard, though great numbers of Austrian hussars, and other irregulars, had appeared the evening before within cannon-shot of the Prussian camp. On the twenty-fourth the army marched to Nellendorf; on the twenty-fifth, it encamped near Cotta, on the twenty-sixth near Pirna, where it halted the next day; and on the twenty-eighth it crossed the river near that place, and entered Lusatia, where, by the end of the month, it encamped at Bautzen.
The king’s army made this retreat with all the success that could be wished; but the corps under the prince of Prussia had not the same good fortune. For the Austrians, immediately after their taking Gabel, sent a strong detachment against Zittau, a trading town in the circle of Upper Saxony, where the Prussians had large magazines, and a garrison of six battalions, and, in his sight, attacked it with uncommon rage. Paying no regard to the inhabitants as being friends or allies, but determined to reduce the place before the king of Prussia could have time to march to its relief, they no sooner arrived before it, than they bombarded and cannonaded it with such fury, that most of the garrison, finding themselves unable to resist, made their escape, and carried off as much as they could of the magazines, leaving only three or four hundred men in the town, under colonel Diricke, to hold it out as long as possible; which he accordingly did, till the whole place was almost destroyed. The cannonading began on the twenty-third of July, at eleven in the morning, and lasted till five in the evening. In this space of time four thousand balls, many of them red hot, were fired into this unfortunate city, with so little intermission, that it was soon set on fire in several places. In the confusion which the conflagration produced, the Austrians entered the town, and the inhabitants imagined that they had then nothing further to fear; and that their friends the Austrians would assist them in extinguishing the flames, and saving the place; but in this particular their expectations were disappointed. The pan-dours and Sclavonians, who rushed in with regular troops, made no distinction between the Prussians and the inhabitants of Zittau: instead of helping to quench the flames, they began to plunder the warehouses which the fire had not readied: so that all the valuable merchandise they contained was either carried off, or reduced to ashes. Upwards of six hundred houses, and almost all the public buildings, the cathedrals of St. John and St. James, the orphan house, eight parsonage-houses, eight schools, the town-house and every thing contained in it, the public weigh-house, the prison, the archives, and all the other documents of the town-council, the plate and other things of value presented to the town, from time to time, by the emperors, kings, and other princes and noblemen, were entirely destroyed, and more than four hundred citizens were killed in this assault. Of the whole town there was left standing only one hundred and thirty-eight houses, two churches, the council, library, and the salt-work. The queen of Poland was so affected by this melancholy account, that she is said to have fainted away upon hearing it. As this city belonged to their friend the king of Poland, the Austrians thought proper to publish an excuse for their conduct, ascribing it entirely to the necessity they were under, and the obstinate defence made by the Prussian garrison. But what excuses can atone for such barbarity?
GEORGE II. 1727-1760