ouse Karl will walk. And so, three weeks
after that remarkable battle of Fontenoy, in another quarter, very
hard-won victory of Marechal Saxe over Britannic Majesty's Martial Boy,
comes battle of Hohenfriedberg. A most decisive battle, "most decisive
since Blenheim," wrote Frederick, whose one desire now is peace.
Britannic Majesty makes peace for himself with Frederick, being like to
have his hands full with a rising in the Scotch Highlands; Austria will
not, being still resolute to recover Silesia--rejects bait of Prussian
support in imperial election for Wainz, Kaiser Karl being now dead. What
is kaisership without Silesia? Prussia has no insulted kaiser to defend,
desires no more than peace on the old Breslau terms properly ratified;
but finances are low. Grand Duke Franz is duly elected; but the empress
queen will have Silesia. Battle of Sohr does not convince her. There
must be another surprising last attempt by Saxony and Austria; settled
by battles of Hennensdorf and Kesselsdorf.
So at last Frederick got the Peace of Dresden--security, it is to be
hoped, in Silesia, the thing for which he had really gone to war;
leaving the rest of the European imbroglio to get itself settled in its
own fashion after another two years of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Frederick now has ten years of peace before him, during which his
actions and salutary conquests over difficulties were many, profitable
to Prussia and himself. Frederick has now, by his second Silesian war,
achieved greatness; "Frederick the Great," expressly so denominated by
his people and others. However, there are still new difficulties, new
perils and adventures ahead.
For the present, then, Frederick declines the career of conquering hero;
goes into law reform; gets ready a country cottage for himself, since
become celebrated under the name of Sans-Souci. General war being at
last ended, he receives a visit from Marechal Saxe, brilliant French
field-marshal, most dissipated man of his time, one of the 354 children
of Augustus the Physically Strong.
But the ten years are passing--there is like to be another war. Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle, made in a hurry, had left some questions open in
America, answered in one way by the French, quite otherwise by English
colonists. Canada and Louisiana mean all America west of the
Alleghanies? Why then? Whomsoever America does belong to, it surely is
not France. Braddock disasters, Frenchmen who understand war--thes
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