away from his allies after this, and
concluded a truce with the Queen of Hungary
at Breslau, she ceding to him both Upper
and Lower Silesia. The French generals,
Belleisle and Broglie, thus deserted, and
refused all honourable terms by the elated
queen, shut themselves up in Prague.
Belleisle, however, was equal to the
emergency, and, under pretence of a general
forage, marched out with eleven thousand
foot, and three thousand horse, and made
for the mountains, though twelve thousand
infantry and eight thousand cavalry were
on his track. After a march through the
snow of twelve days, and the loss of one
thousand men from the climate, he entered
Alsace without the loss of a single prisoner
to the enemy.

In 1767, when France prepared to invade
Hanover and humble Prussia, Austria and
Russia had united to crush Frederick,
whose recent conquest of Saxony had
rendered him hateful and yet terrible to all his
enemies. Austria, greedy for her old
territory, was to have Silesia, Saxony,
Magdeburg, and Halle; the Swedes Pomerania,
Russia the Konigsberg Memel country,
and France the Wesel Cleve region.
Four invasions at once poured down, on
the grim old Prussian, and the Duke of
Cumberland, who guarded Hanover, a
deluge of four hundred and thirty thousand
men. To meet these enemies Frederick
had but fifteen hundred men in the field,
and forty thousand in garrison, up and
down what Mr. Carlyle calls the least
defensible of all countries. In March the
French crossed the Rhine at Cologne, with
one hundred and ten thousand men, only
to find the Wesel Cleve countries
abandoned, the artillery and stores withdrawn,
and the works blown up. They took
Emden, and then followed the Duke of
Cumberland beyond the Wesel, eventually
driving him and his thirty-eight thousand
Hanoverians and Hessians to disarm
and remain neutral. Frederick struck
hard and fast at his enemies. At Prague
he lost twelve thousand five hundred, and
the Austrians thirteen thousand five hundred
men. At Kolin he lost thirteen thousand
seven hundred and seventy- three,
and the Austrians eight thousand one
hundred and fourteen, but at Rossbach he
won a great victory, the French and Austrians
losing about eight thousand men to
the Prussian one hundred and sixty-five
killed, and three hundred and seventy-six
wounded. The French, under Broglie
and Soubise, suffered dreadfully in this
great battle from the rapid platoon firing
of the Prussians, "five shots a minute."
Soubise, who had threatened to drag
Frederick as a show to Versailles, fled fifty-five
miles in two days. Frederick had no
more fighting with the French after that.

Some time after Jena, Napoleon, "filled
with astonishment and shame" at a battle
gained by but seven battalions and thirty-
eight squadrons over such a multitude of
French, tore down the rude monument
recording the engagement.

Soon after Rossbach, Duke Ferdinand of
Brunswick drove Richelieu and the French
over the Aller, and then over the Rhine.
When peace came, in 1763, for Europe
was weary of fighting, Frederick determined
to renew the war unless the French
surrendered the Rhine provinces, and all
his strong places, especially Wesel. The
peace of Hubertsberg closed the Seven
Years' War, in which it is asserted that
eight hundred and fifty-three thousand
Prussians perished. From that fire-baptism,
says Mr. Carlyle truly, Prussia emerged a
nation. These seven years of war, however
, left all things as they were, except
that Prussia retained Silesia; and, with
extraordinary elasticity, the young nation
righted itself after its troubles. In one
year alone the king rebuilt eight thousand
houses in Silesia, and six thousand five
hundred in Pomerania.

It was Frederick who made the Prussians
a nation of soldiers. No item of military
matters seems to have been too minute for
his observation. It was he who first made
his men use iron ramrods, as lasting longer
and being more serviceable than wooden.
The following anecdote of "old Fritz" will
show how carefully he attended to the
smallest matters that could increase the
efficiency of his army. At a certain
review, seeing the soldiers were slow in
getting out their cartridges, he said to the
colonel, "Don't you see the cause of this,
dear colonel? The cartridge-boxes have
thirty-two holes; into these the fellows
pack their cartridges without caring how,
and so the poor devils fumble and grope
about, and can't get hold of any. But,
now, if the officers would just look to it,
that they placed them all well together in
the centre of the boxes, they would never
make a false grasp, and the loading would
go on as quick again. Only tell your officers
I made this observation, and I am sure
they will gladly attend to it."

During the French Revolution, a Prussian
army, under the Duke of Brunswick,