rtress of Neisse. Daun, after
his success at Hochkirchen, had written to Harsch in very confident
terms: "Go on with your operations against Neisse. Be quite at ease as
to the King. I will give a good account of him." In truth, the position
of the Prussians was full of difficulties. Between them and Silesia lay
the victorious army of Daun. It was not easy for them to reach Silesia
at all. If they did reach it, they left Saxony exposed to the Austrians.
But the vigor and activity of Frederic surmounted every obstacle. He
made a circuitous march of extraordinary rapidity, passed Daun, hastened
into Silesia, raised the siege of Neisse, and drove Harsch into Bohemia.
Daun availed himself of the King's absence to attack Dresden. The
Prussians defended it desperately. The inhabitants of that wealthy and
polished capital begged in vain for mercy from the garrison within, and
from the besiegers without. The beautiful suburbs were burned to the
ground. It was clear that the town, if won at all, would be won street
by street by the bayonet. At this conjuncture came news that Frederic,
having cleared Silesia of his enemies, was returning by forced marches
into Saxony. Daun retired from before Dresden, and fell back into the
Austrian territories. The King, over heaps of ruins, made his triumphant
entry into the unhappy metropolis, which had so cruelly expiated the
weak and perfidious policy of its sovereign. It was now the twentieth of
November. The cold weather suspended military operations; and the King
again took up his winter quarters at Breslau.

The third of the seven terrible years was over; and Frederic still stood
his ground. He had been recently tried by domestic as well as by
military disasters. On the fourteenth of October, the day on which he
was defeated at Hochkirchen, the day on the anniversary of which,
forty-eight years later, a defeat far more tremendous laid the Prussian
monarchy in the dust, died Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth. From the
accounts which we have of her, by her own hand, and by the hands of the
most discerning of her contemporaries, we should pronounce her to have
been coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and
generous feelings. Her mind, naturally strong and observant, had been
highly cultivated; and she was, and deserved to be, Frederic's favorite
sister. He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel
the loss of anything but a province or a battle.