"MARQUIS, QUEL CHANGEMENT, what a change! I, a poor heretic creature, never blessed by the Holy Father; indeed, little frequenting Church, nor serving either Baal or the God of Israel; held down these many months, and reported by more than one shaven scoundrel [priest-pamphleteer at Vienna] to be quite extinct, and gone vagabond over the world,—see how capricious Fortune, after all her hundred preferences of my rivals, lifts me with helpful hand from the deep, and packs this Hero of the Hat and Sword,—whom Popes have blessed what they could, and who has walked in Pilgrimage before now [to Marienzell once, I believe, publicly at Vienna],—out of Saxony; panting, harassed goes he, like a stranger dog from some kitchen where the cook had flogged him out!" [Ib. xix. 103-106.]... (A very exultant Lilt, and with a good deal more of the chanticleer in it than we are used to in this King!)
2. AFTER MAXEN.
TO D'ARGENS (Wilsdruf, 22d November). "Do with that [some small piece of business] whatever you like, my dear Marquis. I am so stupefied (E'TOURDI) with the misfortune which has befallen General Finck, that I cannot recover from my astonishment. It deranges all my measures; it cuts me to the quick. Ill-luck, which persecutes my old age, has followed me from the Mark [Kunersdorf, in the Mark of Brandenburg] to Saxony. I will still strive what I can. The little ODE I sent you, addressed TO FORTUNE, had been written too soon! One should not sing victory till the battle is over. I am so crushed down by these incessant reverses and disasters, that I wish a thousand times I were dead; and from day to day I grow wearier of dwelling in a body worn out and condemned to suffer. I am writing to you in the first moment of my grief. Astonishment, sorrow, indignation, scorn, all blended together, lacerate my soul. Let us get to the end, then, of this execrable Campaign; I will then write to you what is to become of me; and we will arrange the rest. Pity me;—ad make no noise about me; bad news go fast enough of themselves. Adieu, dear Marquis." [OEuvres de Frederic, xix. 107.]
All this, of course, under such pressing call of actualities, had very soon to transform itself into silence; into new resolution, and determinate despatch of business. But the King retained a bitter memory of it all his days. To Finck he was inexorable:—ordered him, the first thing on his return from Austrian Captivity, Trial by Court-Martial; which (Ziethen presiding, June, 1763) censured Finck in various points, and gave him, in supplement to the Austrian detention, a Year's Imprisonment in Spandau. No ray of pity visible for him, then or afterwards, in the Royal mind. So that the poor man had to beg his dismissal; get it, and go to Denmark for new promotion and appreciation.—"Far too severe!" grumbled the Opposition voices, with secret counter-severity. And truly it would have been more beautiful to everybody, for the moment, to have made matters soft to poor Finck,—had Friedrich ever gone on that score with his Generals and Delegates; which, though the reverse of a cruel man, he never did. And truly, as we often observe, the Laws of Fact are still severer than Friedrich was:—so that, in the long-run, perhaps it is beautifulest of all for a King, who is just, to be rhadamanthine in important cases.
Exulting Daun, instead of Bohemia for winter-quarters, pushes out now for the prize of Saxony itself. Daun orders Beck to attack suddenly another Outpost of Friedrich's, which stands rearward of him at Meissen, under a General Dierecke,—the same whom, as Colonel Dierecke, we saw march out of flamy Zittau, summer gone two years. Beck goes in accordingly, 3d December; attacks Dierecke, not by surprise, but with overwhelming superiority; no reinforcement possible: Dierecke is on the wrong side of the Elbe, no retreat or reinforcement for him; has to fight fiercely all day, Meissen Bridge being in a broken state; then, at night, to ship his people across in Elbe boats, which are much delayed by the floating ice, so that daylight found 1,500 of them still on that northern side; all of whom, with General Dierecke himself, were made prisoners by Beck. [Tempelhof, iii. 321: "3d-4th December, 1759.">[ A comfortable supplement to Maxen, though not of the same magnificence.
After which, Daun himself issued minatory from the Plauen Chasm; expecting, as all the world did, that Friedrich, who is 36,000 of Unfortunate against, say, 72,000 of Triumphant, will, under penalty, take himself away. But it proved otherwise. "If you beat us, Excellency Feldmarschall, yes; but till then—!" Friedrich draws out in battalia; Leo in wild ragged state and temper, VERSUS Bos in the reverse: "Come on; then!" Rhinoceros Bos, though in a high frame of mind, dare not, on cool survey; but retires behind the Plauen Chasm again. Will at least protect Dresden from recapture; and wait here, in the interim; carting his provision out of Bohemia,—which is a rough business, with Elbe frozen, and the passes in such a choked wintry state. Upon whom Friedrich, too, has to wait under arms, in grim neighborhood, for six weeks to come: such a time as poor young Archenholtz never had before or after. [Archenholtz, ii. 11-13.] It was well beyond New-year's day before Friedrich could report of himself, and then only in a sense, as will be seen: "We retired to this poor cottage [cottage still standing, in the little Town of Freyberg]; Daun did the like; and this unfortunate Campaign, as all things do, came actually to an end."
Daun holds Dresden and the Dell of Plauen; but Saxony, to the world's amazement, he is as far as ever from holding. "Daun's front is a small arc of a circle, bending round from Dresden to Dippoldiswalde; Friedrich is at Freyberg in a bigger concave arc, concentric to Daun, well overlapping Daun on that southward or landward side, and ready for him, should he stir out; Kesselsdorf is his nearest post to Daun; and the Plauen Chasm for boundary, which was not overpassed by either." In Dresden, and the patch of hill-country to the southeastward of it by Elbe side, which is instep or glacis of the Pirna rock-country, seventy square miles or so, there rules Daun; and this—with its heights of Gahmig, valuable as a defence for Dresden against Austria, but not otherwise of considerable value—was all that Daun this year, or pretty much in any coming year, could realize of conquest in Saxony.
Fabius Cunctator has not succeeded, as the public expected. In fact, ever since that of Hochkirch and the Papal Hat, he has been a waning man, more and more questionable to the undiscerning public. Maxen was his last gleam upwards; a round of applause rose again on Maxen, feeble in comparison with Hochkirch, but still arguing hope,—which, after this, more and more died out; so that in two years more, poor Madam Daun, going to Imperial Levee, "had her state-carriage half filled with nightcaps, thrown into it by the Vienna people, in token of her husband's great talent for sleep." [Archenholtz (Anno 1762, "last Siege of Schweidnitz").]