We will now quit the Rhine Operations, which indeed are not now of moment; Friedrich being suddenly the key of events again. I add only, what readers are vaguely aware of, that King Louis did not die; that he lay at death's door for precisely one week (8th-15th August), symptoms mending on the 15th. In the interim,--Grand-Almoner Fitz-James (Uncle of our Conte di Spinelli) insisting that a certain Cardinal, who had got the Sacraments in hand, should insist; and endless ministerial intrigue being busy,--moribund Louis had, when it came to the Sacramental point, been obliged to dismiss his Chateauroux. Poor Chateauroux; an unfortunate female;yet, one almost thinks, the best man among them: dismissed at Metz here, and like to be mobbed! That was the one issue of King Louis's death-sickness. Sublime sickness; during which all Paris wept aloud, in terror and sorrow, like a child that has lost its mother and sees a mastiff coming; wept sublimely, and did the Prayers of Forty-Hours; and called King Louis Le BIEN-AIME (The Well-beloved):--merely some obstruction in the royal bowels, it turned out;--a good cathartic, and the Prayers of Forty-Hours, quite reinstated matters. Nay reinstated even Chateauroux, some time after,--"the Devil being well again," and, as the Proverb says, quitting his monastic view. Reinstated Chateauroux: but this time, poor creature, she continued only about a day:--"Sudden fever, from excitement," said the Doctors: "Fever? Poison, you mean!"whispered others, and looked for changes in the Ministry.
Enough, oh, enough!--
Old Marshal Wade did not awaken, though bawled to by his Ligoniers and others, and much shaken about, poor old gentleman.
"No artillery to speak of," murmured he; "want baggage-wagons, too!" and lay still. "Here is artillery!" answered the Official people; "With my own money I will buy you baggage-wagons!" answered the high Maria Anna, in her own name and her Prince Karl's, who are Joint-Governors there. Possibly he would have awakened, had they given him time. But time, in War especially, is the thing that is never given. Once Friedrich HAD struck in, the moment was gone by.
Poor old Wade! Of him also enough.
Chapter II.
FRIEDRICH MARCHES UPON PRAG, CAPTURES PRAG.
It was on Saturday, "early in the morning," 15th August, 1744, that Friedrich set out, attended by his two eldest Brothers, Prince of Prussia and Prince Henri, from Potsdam, towards this new Adventure, which proved so famous since. Sudden, swift, to the world's astonishment;--actually on march here, in three Columns (two through Saxony by various routes southeastward, one from Silesia through Glatz southwestward), to invade Bohemia: rumor says 100,000strong, fact itself says upwards of 80,000, on their various routes, converging towards Prag. [ Helden-Geschichte, ii. 1165. Orlich (ii. 25, 27) enumerates the various regiments.] His Columns, especially his Saxon Columns, are already on the road; he joins one Column, this night, at Wittenberg; and is bent, through Saxony, towards the frontiers of Bohemia, at the utmost military speed he has.
Through Saxony about 60,000 go: he has got the Kaiser's Order to the Government of Saxony, "Our august Ally, requiring on our Imperial business a transit through you;"--and Winterfeld, an excellent soldier and negotiator, has gone forward to present said Order. A Document which flurries the Dresden Officials beyond measure. Their King is in Warsaw; their King, if here, could do little; and indeed has been inclining to Maria Theresa this long while. And Winterfeld insists on such despatch;--and not even the Duke of Weissenfels is in Town, Dresden Officials "send off five couriers and thirteen estafettes" to the poor old Duke;[ Helden-Geschichte, ii. 1163.] get him at last; and-- The march is already taking effect; they may as well consent to it: what can they do but consent! In the uttermost flurry, they had set to fortifying Dresden; all hands driving palisades, picking, delving, making COUPURES (trenches, or sunk barricades) in the streets;--fatally aware that it can avail nothing. Is not this the Kaiser's Order? Prussians, to the amount of 60,000, are across our Frontiers, rapidly speeding on.
"Friedrich's Manifesto--under the modest Title, 'ANZEIGE DERURSACHEN (Advertisement of the Causes which have induced his Prussian Majesty to send the Romish Kaiser's Majesty some Auxiliary Troops)'--had appeared in the Berlin Newspapers Thursday, 13th, only two days before. An astonishment to all mankind; which gave rise to endless misconceptions of Friedrich: but which, supporting itself on proofs, on punctually excerpted foot-notes, is intrinsically a modest, quiet Piece; and, what is singular in Manifestoes, has nothing, or almost nothing, in it that is not, so far as it goes, a perfect statement of the fact. 'Auxiliary troops, that is our essential character. No war with her Hungarian Majesty, or with any other, on our own score. But her Hungarian Majesty, how has she treated the Romish Kaiser, her and our and the Reich's Sovereign Head, and to what pass reduced him; refusing him Peace on any terms, except those of self-annihilation; denying that he is a Kaiser at all;'--and enumerates the various Imperial injuries, with proof given, quiet footnotes by way of proof; and concludes in these words: 'For himself his Majesty requires nothing.
The question here is not of his Majesty's own interest at all [everything his Majesty required, or requires, is by the Treaty of Berlin solemnly his, if the Reich and its Laws endure]: and he has taken up arms simply and solely in the view of restoring to the Reich its freedom, to the Kaiser his Headship of the Reich, and to all Europe the Peace which is so desirable.' [Given in Seyfarth, Beylage, i. 121-136, with date "August, 1744."]