to battle obscurely with a hydra-coil of enemies and
impediments; and to do heroisms which make no noise in the Gazettes.
And, alas, which cannot figure in History either,--what is more a
sorrow to me here!
Friedrich, say all judges of soldiership and human character who have
studied Friedrich sufficiently, "is greater than ever," in these four Years
now coming. [Berenhorst, in
Kriegskunst; Retzow;
&c.] And this, I have found more and more to be a true thing; verifiable
and demonstrable in time and place,-- though, unluckily for us, hardly
in this time or this place at all! A thing which cannot, by any method,
be made manifest to the general reader; who delights in shining
summary feats, and is impatient of tedious preliminaries and
investigations,--especially of MAPS, which are the indispensablest
requisite of all. A thing, in short, that belongs peculiarly to
soldier-students; who can undergo the dull preliminaries, most dull but
most inexorably needed; and can follow out, with watchful intelligence,
and with a patience not to be wearied, the multifarious topographies,
details of movements and manoeuvrings, year after year, on such a
Theatre of War. What is to be done with it here! If we could, by
significant strokes, indicate, under features true so far as they went, the
great wide fire-flood that was raging round the world; if we could,
carefully omitting very many things, omit of the things intelligible and
decipherable that concern Friedrich himself, nothing that had meaning:
IF indeed--! But it is idle preluding. Forward again, brave reader, under
such conditions as there are!
Friedrich's Winter in Breslau was of secluded, silent, sombre character,
this time; nothing of stir in it but from work only: in marked contrast
with the last, and its kindly visitors and gayeties. A Friedrich given up
to his manifold businesses, to his silent sorrows. "I have passed my
winter like a Carthusian monk," he writes to D'Argens: "I dine alone; I
spend my life in reading and writing; and I do not sup. When one is sad,
it becomes at last too burdensome to hide one's grief continually; and it
is better to give way to it by oneself, than to carry one's gloom into
society. Nothing solaces me but the vigorous application required in
steady and continuous labor. This distraction does force one to put
away painful ideas, while it lasts: but, alas, no sooner is the work done,
than these fatal companions present themselves again, as if livelier than
ever. Maupertuis was right: the sum of evil does certainly surpass that
of good:--but to me it is all one; I have almost nothing more to lose;
and my few remaining days, what matters it much of what complexion
they be?" ["Breslau, 1st March, 1759," To D'Argens ( OEuvres
de Frederic, xix. 56).]
The loss of his Wilhelmina, had there been no other grief, has darkened
all his life to Friedrich. Readers are not prepared for the details of grief
we could give, and the settled gloom of mind they indicate. A loss
irreparable and immeasurable; the light of life, the one loved heart that
loved him, gone. His passionate appeals to Voltaire to celebrate for him
in verse his lost treasure, and at least make her virtues immortal, are
perhaps known to readers: [ODE SUR LA MORT DE S. A. S.
MADAME LA PRINCESSE DE BAREITH (in OEuvres de
Voltaire, xviii. 79-86): see Friedrich's Letter to him (6th
November, 1758); with Voltaire's VERSES in Answer (next month);
Friedrich's new Letter (Breslau, 23d January 1759), demanding
something more,-- followed by the ODE just cited (Ib. lxxii. 402;
lxxviii. 82, 92; or OEuvres de Frederic, xxiii.
20-24: &c.] alas, this is a very feeble kind of immortality, and Friedrich
too well feels it such. All Winter he dwells internally on the sad matter,
though soon falling silent on it to others.
The War is ever more dark and dismal to him; a wearing, harassing,
nearly disgusting task; on which, however, depends life or death. This
Year, he "expects to have 300,000 enemies upon him;" and "is, with his
utmost effort, getting up 150,000 to set against them." Of business, in
its many kinds, there can be no lack! In the intervals he also wrote
considerably: one of his Pieces is a SERMON ON THE LAST
JUDGMENT; handed to Reader De Catt, one evening:--to De Catt's
surprise, and to ours; the Voiceless in a dark Friedrich trying to give
itself some voice in this way! [ OEuvres de Frederic,
italic> xv. 1-10 (see Preuss's PREFACE there; Formey,
SOUVENIRS, i. 37; &c. &c.] Another Piece, altogether
practical, and done with excellent insight, brevity, modesty, is ON
TACTICS; [REFLEXIONS SUR LA TACTIQUE: in OEuvres
de Frederic,
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