Calamity was, however, as impotent as success to teach Frederick good faith towards his allies. Mitchell had reported on June 30, 1757, that “he renewed to me on this occasion his firm resolution to hearken to no terms of peace without His Majesty’s privity and approbation.” On July 9th he describes a further interview in which “His Prussian Majesty said that, as he resolved to continue firmly united with His Majesty, it would be for their mutual interests to think of terms of peace, honourable and safe for both, and to concert together what terms they would adopt, if a favourable opportunity occurred to propose them.” Yet between these assurances of fidelity to England Frederick accepted with enthusiasm an offer made by Wilhelmina to send an envoy to procure peace with France by bribing the Pompadour.
“I will willingly charge myself with his expenses,” he writes on July 7th. “He may offer the favourite anything up to 500,000 crowns for peace, and he may raise his offers far higher if at the same time they would promise to procure us some advantages. You see all the nicety of which I have need in this affair and how little I must be seen in it. If England should have the least wind of it all would be lost.”
Job’s tidings continued to pour in upon the King. In the sunshine of Kolin the crop sown by Kaunitz was ripening fast. Before July was half over Frederick learned that the French had seized East Frisia and were striking east, that the Swedes were sending 17,000 men into Pomerania, and that the Russians were likely to destroy Lehwaldt in Ost-Preussen. Thus all his northern frontier was on fire and the army of the Empire was about to join the Austrians in kindling new conflagrations in the south. Bohemia, of course, must soon be abandoned, and how would it be possible to hold Saxony, Silesia, or even Brandenburg against such a host of foes? Men said that in Voltaire the King of Prussia had lost his pen and in Schwerin his sword.
In the latter half of the month the situation altered still further for the worse. While Frederick lay motionless at Leitmeritz on the Elbe, intent on devouring Bohemia till the last moment, but keeping open his retreat into Saxony, his eldest brother, Augustus William, was out-manœuvred by the Austrians further east. Prince Charles, with inferior numbers, seized one of his posts, outpaced him to Zittau, burnt the magazine there, and finally compelled him to flee far into Saxony. Nothing remained but for the indignant King to rescue the heir to the throne, who had thus opened to the enemy the Lusatian door into both Saxony and Silesia. On his way Frederick paused to garrison Pirna, and there, on July 27, 1757, he received what Mitchell terms “a draught of comfort to one who has not had a single drop since the 18th June.”
So serious was the crisis that the King had sent orders to Berlin that at the first news of further disaster in Lusatia the archives and treasure should be removed to Cüstrin. That very day he had written a plain account of the situation to convince his ally of England how desperate was his plight. “If I except Spain, Denmark, Holland, and the King of Sardinia, I have all Europe against me. Even so, I fear not for the places where I can set armies against them, but for those where he who comes will find no one to oppose him.”
Such was the King’s mood when his friend, the ambassador of England, laid before him with delight the contents of as considerate a despatch as was ever penned in Whitehall. Sympathy for Kolin, approval of the new plan of campaign, “entire reliance upon the King of Prussia’s great military abilities,” a cheerful review of the forces still at his disposal—all this might be expected from the ministers of George II. But what followed might well have heaped coals of fire upon Frederick’s head. His ally, little suspecting the overtures to the Pompadour, persisted in treating him as a man of honour.
“The hint his Prussian Majesty threw out to you, of an inclination to peace, is agreeable to the language that Prince has held from the very beginning of the present troubles in Germany.... The King will at all times be glad to contribute to a general pacification, whenever equitable conditions can be had for himself, the King of Prussia, and their allies ... the King being determined to take no steps in an affair of this consequence without his Prussian Majesty’s concurrence and approbation.”
Then follow solid offers of co-operation with ships and above all with gold, the latter “only meant as the convenient and proper contingent of England to her allies.”
Frederick, by Mitchell’s account, received the message
“with a flow of gratitude not to be described. After a short pause, he said, ‘I am deeply sensible of the King’s and your nation’s generosity, but I do not wish to be a burden to my allies; I would have you delay answering this letter till affairs are ended in Lusatia; if I succeed, I will then consult with you upon the different points suggested in the letter and give my opinion freely upon them. If I am beat, there will be no occasion to answer it at all; it will be out of your power to save me, and I would not willingly abuse the generosity of my allies by drawing them into unnecessary and expensive engagements that can answer no valuable purpose.’ I was pleased, but not surprised,” the report continues, “with the noble dignity of this answer, for I have seen the King of Prussia great in prosperity but greater still in adversity.”