Till you decide for this resolution, you have nothing but chicanes and provocations to expect there. As to Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, I don't imagine that his Orders [from England] would permit him what you propose [for relief of yourself]: at any rate, you will have to write at least thrice to him,--that is to say, waste three weeks, before he will answer No or Yes. You yourself are in force enough for those fellows: but so long as you keep on the defensive alone, the enemy gains time, and things will always go a bad road." Henri's patience is already out; this same day he is writing to the King.
HENRI (30th March). ... "You have hitherto received proofs enough of my ways of thinking and acting to know that if in reality I was mistaken about those eight regiments, it can only have been a piece of ignorance on the part of my spy: meanwhile you are pleased to make me responsible for what misfortune may come of it. I think Ihave my hands full with the task laid on me of guarding 4,000square miles of country with fewer troops than you have, and of being opposite an enemy whose posts touch upon ours, and who is superior in force. Your preceding Letters [from March 16th hitherto], on which I have wished to be silent, and this last proof of want of affection, show me too clearly to what fortune I have sacrificed these Six Years of Campaigning."KING (3d April: Official Orders given in Teutsch; at the tail of which). "Spare your wrath and indignation at your servant, Monseigneur! You, who preach indulgence, have a little of it for persons who have no intention of offending you, or of failing in respect for you; and deign to receive with more benignity the humble representations which the conjunctures sometimes force from me. F."--Which relieves Eichel of his difficulties, and quenches this sputter. [Plucked up from the waste imbroglios of SCHONING(iii. 296-311), by arranging and omitting.]
Prince Henri, for all his complaining, did beautifully this Season again (though to us it must be silent, being small-war merely);--and in particular, MAY 12th) early in the morning, simultaneously in many different parts, burst across the Mulda, ten or twenty miles long (or BROAD rather, from his right hand to his left), sudden as lightning, upon the supine Serbelloni and his Austrians and Reichsfolk. And hurled them back, one and all, almost to the Plauen Chasm and their old haunts; widening his quarters notably.
[ Bericht von dem Uebergang uber die Mulde, den der Prinz Heinrich den 12ten May 1762 glucklich ausgefuhrt (in Seyfarth, Beylagen, iii, 280-291).] A really brilliant thing, testifies everybody, though not to be dwelt on here. Seidlitz was of it (much fine cutting and careering, from the Seidlitz and others, we have to omit in these two Saxon Campaigns!)--Seidlitz was of it; he and another still more special acquaintance of ours, the learned Quintus Icilius; who also did his best in it, but lost his "AMUSETTE" (small bit of cannon, "Plaything," so called by Marechal de Saxe, inventor of the article), and did not shine like Seidlitz.
Henri's quarters being notably widened in this way, and nothing but torpid Serbellonis and Prince Stollbergs on the opposite part, Henri "drew himself out thirty-five miles long;" and stood there, almost looking into Plauen region as formerly. And with his fiery Seidlitzes, Kleists, made a handsome Summer of it. And beat the Austrians and Reichsfolk at Freyberg (OCTOBER 29th) a fine Battle, and his sole one),--on the Horse which afterwards carried Gellert, as is pleasantly known.
But we are omitting the news from Petersburg,--which came the very day after that gloomy LETTER TO D'ARGENS; months before the TIFF OFQUARREL with Henri, and the brilliant better destinies of that Gentleman in his Campaign.
BRIGHT NEWS FROM PETERSBURG (certain, Jan. 19th); WHICH GROWEVER BRIGHTER; AND BECOME A STAR-OF-DAY FOR FRIEDRICH.
To Friedrich, long before all this of Henri, indeed almost on the very day while he was writing so despondently to D'Argens, a new phasis had arisen. Hardly had he been five weeks at Breslau, in those gloomy circumstances, when,--about the middle of January, 1762 (day not given, though it is forever notable),--there arrive rumors, arrive news,--news from Petersburg; such as this King never had before! "Among the thousand ill strokes of Fortune, does there at length come one pre-eminently good? The unspeakable Sovereign Woman, is she verily dead, then, and become peaceable to me forevermore?" We promised Friedrich a wonderful star-of-day; and this is it,--though it is long before he dare quite regard it as such. Peter, the Successor, he knows to be secretly his friend and admirer; if only, in the new Czarish capacity and its chaotic environments and conditions, Peter dare and can assert these feelings? What a hope to Friedrich, from this time onward!
Russia may be counted as the bigger half of all he had to strive with; the bigger, or at least the far uglier, more ruinous and incendiary;--and if this were at once taken away, think what a daybreak when the night was at the blackest!
Pious people say, The darkest hour is often nearest the dawn. And a dawn this proved to be for Friedrich. And the fact grew always the longer the brighter;--and before Campaign time, had ripened into real daylight and sunrise. The dates should have been precise;but are not to be had so: here is the nearest we could come.