13th Dec., 1740. and close at hand. "A day or two before marching," may have been this very day when Botta got his audience, the King assembled his Chief Generals, all things ready out in the FrankfurtCrossen region yonder, and spoke to them as follows, briefly and to the point:

“Gentlemen, I am undertaking a War in which I have no allies but your valor and your good-will. My cause is just; my resources are what we ourselves can do; and the issue lies in Fortune. Remember continually the glory which your Ancestors acquired in the plains of Warsaw, at Fehrbellin, and in the Expedition to Preussen" (across the Frische Haf on ice, that time). "Your lot is in your own hands; distinctions and rewards wait upon your fine actions which shall merit them.

But what need have I to excite you to glory? It is the one thing you keep before your eyes, the sole object worthy of your labors. We are going to front troops who, under Prince Eugène, had the highest reputation. Though Prince Eugène is gone, we shall have to measure our strength against brave soldiers; the greater will be the honor if we can conquer. Adieu; go forth. I will follow you straightway to the rendezvous of glory which awaits us.

16

Masked Ball at Berlin, 12th-13th December.

On the evening of Tuesday, 12th, there was, as usual, Masked (or Half-Masked) Ball at the Palace. As usual; but this time it has become mentionable in World-History. Bielfeld, personally interested, gives us a vivid glance into it, which, though pretending to be real and contemporaneous, is unfortunately mythical only, and done at a great interval of years (dates, and even slight circumstances of fact, refusing to conform), which, however, for the truth there is in it, we will give, as better than nothing. Bielfeld's pretended date is "Berlin, 15th December," should have been 14th; wrong by a day, after one's best effort!

Berlin, 15th December, 1740. As for me, dear Sister, I am like a shuttlecock whom the Kings of Prussia and of England hit with their rackets and knock to and fro. The night before last I was at the Palace Evening Party (Assemblée), which is a sort of Ball, where you go in domino, but without mask on the face. The Queen was there, and all the Court About eight o'clock the King also made his appearance. His Majesty, noticing M. de G **" (that is De Guidiken, or Guy Dickens), "English Minister, addressed him; led him into the embrasure of

16 Euvres de Frédéric, ii., 58.

13th Dec., 1740.

a window, and talked alone with him for more than an hour" (uncertain, probably apocryphal this). "I threw, from time to time, a stolen glance at this dialogue, which appeared to me to be very lively. A moment after, being just dancing with Madame the Countess de-Three-Asterisks-I felt myself twitched by the domino, and turning, was much surprised to see that it was the King, who took me aside and said, ‘Are your boots oiled (Vos bottes sont-elles graissées, Are you ready for a journey)?' I replied,' Sire, they will always be so for your Majesty's service.' 'Well, then, Truchsess and you are for England; the day after to-morrow you go. Speak to M. de Podewils!' This was said like a flash of lightning. His Majesty passed into another apartment, and I, I went to finish my minuet with the Lady, who had been not less astonished to see me disappear from her eyes in the middle of the dance than I was at what the King said to me. Next morning I—

9917

The fact is, next morning, Truchsess and I began preparation for the Court of London, and we did there, for many months afterward, strive our best to keep the Britannic Majesty in some kind of tune, amid the prevailing discord of events; fact interesting to some. And the other fact, interesting to every body, though Bielfeld has not mentioned it, is, That King Friedrich, the same next morning, punctually "at the stroke of 9,” rolled away Frankfurt-ward, into the first Silesian War! Tuesday, "13th December, this morning the King, privately quitting the Ball, has gone" (after some little snatch of sleep, we will hope) "for Frankfurt, to put himself at the head of his Troops. "18 Bellona his companion for long years henceforth, instead of Minerva and the Muses, as he had been anticipating.

Hereby is like to be fulfilled (except that Friedrich himself is perhaps this "little stone") what Friedrich prophesied to his Voltaire the day after hearing of the Kaiser's Death: "I believe there will, by June next, be more talk of cannon, soldiers, trenches, than of actresses, and dancers for the ballet. This small Event changes the entire system of Europe. It is the little stone which Nebuchadnezzar saw, in his dream, loosening itself, and rolling down on the Image made of Four Metals, which it shivers to ruin."19

17 Bielfeld, i., 167, 168.

18 Dickens (in State-Paper Office), 13th December, 1740; see also Helden-Geschichte, i., 452; &c., &c.

19 Friedrich to Voltaire, busy gathering actors at that time, 26th Oct., 1740 (Euvres de Frédéric, xxii., 49).

FIRST SILESIAN WAR, AWAKENING A GENERAL EUROPEAN ONE, BEGINS.

December, 1740-May, 1741.

CHAPTER I.

OF SCHLESIEN, OR SILESIA.

SCHLESIEN, what we call Silesia, lies in elliptic shape, spread on the top of Europe, partly girt with mountains, like the crown or crest to that part of the Earth-highest table-land of Germany or of the Cisalpine Countries, and sending rivers into all the seas. The summit or highest level of it is in the southwest; longest diameter is from northwest to southeast. From Crossen, whither Friedrich is now driving, to the Jablunka Pass, which issues upon Hungary, is above 250 miles; the axis, therefore, or longest diameter, of our Ellipse we may call 250 English miles; its shortest, or conjugate diameter, from Friedland in Bohemia (Wallenstein's old Friedland), by Breslau, across the Oder to the Polish Frontier, is about 100. The total area of Schlesien is counted to be some 20,000 square miles, nearly the third of England Proper.

Schlesien-will the reader learn to call it by that name on occasion? for in these sad Manuscripts of ours the names alternate —is a fine, fertile, useful, and beautiful Country. It leans sloping, as we hinted, to the East and to the North; a long curved buttress of Mountains (“Riesengebirge, Giant Mountains,” is their best-known name in foreign countries) holding it up on the South and West sides. This Giant-Mountain Range—which is a kind of continuation of the Saxon-Bohemian “Metal Mountains (Erzgebirge)," and of the straggling Lausitz Mountains, to westward of these-shapes itself like a bill-hook (or elliptically, as was said): handle and hook together may be some 200 miles in length. The precipitous side of this is, in general, turned outward, toward

13th-16th Dec., 1740.

Böhmen, Mähren, Ungarn (Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, in our dialects); and Schlesien lies inside, irregularly sloping down toward the Baltic and toward the utmost East. From the Bohemian side of these Mountains there rise Two Rivers-Elbe, tending for the West; Morawa for the South; Morawa, crossing Moravia, gets into the Donau, and thence into the Black-Sea; while Elbe, after intricate adventures among the mountains, and then prosperously across the plains, is out, with its many ships, into the Atlantic. Two rivers, we say, from the Bohemian or steep side; and again, from the Silesian side, there rise other Two, the Oder and the Weichsel (Vistula), which start pretty near one another in the Southeast, and, after wide windings, get both into the Baltic, at a good distance apart.

For the first thirty, or in parts, fifty miles from the Mountains, Silesia slopes somewhat rapidly, and is still to be called a Hillcountry, rugged extensive elevations diversifying it; but after that, the slope is gentle, and at length insensible, or noticeable only by the way the waters run. From the central part of it, Schlesien pictures itself to you as a plain, growing ever flatter, ever sandier as it abuts on the monotonous endless sand-flats of Poland and the Brandenburg territories; nothing but BoundaryStones with their brass inscriptions marking where the transition is, and only some Fortified Town, not far off, keeping the door of the Country secure in that quarter.

On the other hand, the Mountain part of Schlesien is very picturesque; not of Alpine height any where (the Schnee-Koppe itself is under 5000 feet), so that verdure and forest wood fail almost nowhere among the Mountains; and multiplex industry, besung by rushing torrents and the swift young rivers, nestles itself high up; and from wheat-husbandry, madder and maize husbandry, to damask-weaving, metallurgy, charcoal-burning, tardistillery, Schlesien has many trades, and has long been expert and busy at them to a high degree. A very pretty Ellipsis, or irregular Oval, on the summit of the European Continent, "like the palm of a left-hand well stretched-out, with the Riesengebirge for thumb!" said a certain Herr to me, stretching out his arm in that fashion toward the northwest-Palm well stretchedout, measuring 250 miles, and the cross way 100.

There are