y duties and to the few virtuous
men I know. But you will not get a peace signed by my hand
except on conditions honorable to my nation. Your people,
blown up with conceit and folly, may depend on this."

The same stubborn conflict with overmastering odds, the
same intrepid resolution, the same subtle strategy, the same
skill in eluding the blow and lightning-like quickness in retorting
it, marked Frederic's campaign of 1760. At Liegnitz three
armies, each equal to his own, closed round him, and he put
them all to flight. While he was fighting in Silesia, the Allies
marched upon Berlin, took it, and held it three days, but
withdrew on his approach. For him there was no peace. "Why
weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?"
he wrote again to his faithful D'Argens. "My spirits have
forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved noble ones to
whom my heart was bound." He had lost his mother and his
devoted sister Wilhelmina. "You as a follower of Epicurus
put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic
point of view. I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my
hand sign a humiliating peace. Finish this campaign I will,
resolved to dare all, to succeed, or find a glorious end." Then
came the victory of Torgau, the last and one of the most
desperate of his battles: a success dearly bought, and bringing
neither rest nor safety. Once more he wrote to D'Argens:
"Adieu, dear Marquis; write to me sometimes. Don't forget a
poor devil who curses his fatal existence ten times a day."
"I live like a military monk. Endless business, and a little consolation
from my books. I don't know if I shall outlive this war, but if I do
I am firmly resolved to pass the rest of my life in solitude in the
bosom of philosophy and friendship. Your nation, you see, is blinder
than you thought. These fools will lose their Canada and Pondicherry
to please the Queen of Hungary and the Czarina."

The campaign of 1761 was mainly defensive on the part of
Frederic. In the exhaustion of his resources he could see no
means of continuing the struggle. "It is only Fortune," says
the royal sceptic, "that can extricate me from the situation
I am in. I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the
great scale like an observer from some distant planet. All then
seems to be so infinitely small that I could almost pity my
enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about so very
little. I read a great deal, I devour my