History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 16 | Page 3

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ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* BOOK XVI. THE TEN YEARS OF
PEACE. 1746-1756.
Chapter I.
SANS-SOUCI. Friedrich has now climbed the heights, and sees
himself on the upper table-land of Victory and Success; his desperate
life-and- death struggles triumphantly ended. What may be ahead,
nobody knows; but here is fair outlook that his enemies and Austria
itself have had enough of him. No wringing of his Silesia from this
"bad Man." Not to be overset, this one, by never such exertions;
oversets US, on the contrary, plunges us heels-over-head into the ditch,
so often as we like to apply to him; nothing but heavy beatings,
disastrous breaking of crowns, to be had on trying there! "Five
Victories!" as Voltaire keeps counting on his fingers, with upturned
eyes,--Mollwitz, Chotusitz, Striegau, Sohr, Kesselsdorf (the last done
by Anhalt; but omitting Hennersdorf, and that sudden slitting of the big
Saxon-Austrian Projects into a cloud of feathers, as fine a feat as
any),--"Five Victories!" counts Voltaire; calling on everybody (or
everybody but Friedrich himself, who is easily sated with that kind of
thing) to admire. In the world are many opinions about Friedrich. In
Austria, for instance, what an opinion; sinister, gloomy in the extreme:
or in England, which derives from Austria,--only with additional
dimness, and with gloomy new provocations of its own before long!
Many opinions about Friedrich, all dim enough: but this, that he is a
very demon for fighting, and the stoutest King walking the Earth just
now, may well be a universal one. A man better not be meddled with, if
he will be at peace, as he professes to wish being. Friedrich accordingly

is not meddled with, or not openly meddled with; and has, for the Ten
or Eleven Years coming, a time of perfect external Peace. He himself is
decided "not to fight with a cat," if he can get the peace kept; and for
about eight years hopes confidently that this, by good management,
will continue possible; --till, in the last three years, electric symptoms
did again disclose themselves, and such hope more and more died away.
It is well known there lay in the fates a Third Silesian War for him,
worse than both the others; which is now the main segment of his
History still lying ahead for us, were this Halcyon Period done.
Halcyon Period counts from Christmas-day, Dresden, 1745,--"from this
day, Peace to the end of my life!" had been Friedrich's fond hope. But
on the 9th day of September, 1756, Friedrich was again entering
Dresden (Saxony some twelve days before); and the Crowning Struggle
of his Life was, beyond all expectation, found to be still lying ahead for
him, awfully dubious for Seven Years thereafter!-- Friedrich's History
during this intervening Halcyon or Peace Period must, in some way, be
made known to readers: but for a great many reasons, especially at
present, it behooves to be given in compressed form; riddled down, to
an immense extent, out of those