Prussians under Marshal Lehwald was opposed. In the result, however, their own devastations, and the consequent want of supplies, proved a check to their further progress during this campaign. In Westphalia above 80,000 effective French soldiers were advancing, commanded by the Mareschal d'Estrées, a grandson of the famous Minister Louvois. The Duke of Cumberland, who had undertaken to defend his father's Electorate against them, was at the head of a motley army of scarce 50,000 men; there were no English beyond the officers of his personal staff, but, beside the native Hanoverians, he had several regiments of Prussians; he had also Hessians, Brunswickers, and many other mercenaries hired from the smaller Princes of Northern Germany. His military talents were not such as to supply his want of numbers or of combination; he allowed the French to pass the deep and rapid Weser unopposed; he gave them no disturbance when laying waste great part of the Electorate; he only fell back from position to position until at length the enemy came up with him at the village of Hastenbeck near Hameln. There, on the 26th of July, an action was fought, and the Duke was worsted with the loss of several hundred men. The only resource of His Royal Highness was a retreat across the wide Lüneburg moors, to cover the town of Stade towards the mouth of the Elbe, where the archives and other valuable effects from Hanover had been already deposited for safety. Hameln, Göttingen, Hanover itself, and soon afterwards both Bremen and Verden, were occupied without resistance by the French. These fruits of their victory were not, however, reaped by their commander in the conflict. At this very period a Court intrigue recalled D'Estrées from Germany, and shared his command between two favourites of Madame de Pompadour, -the Duke de Richelieu and the Prince de Soubise,-Richelieu to act against Cumberland, and Soubise against Frederick. Richelieu showed himself equally alert in the plunder of the conquered province and the pursuit of the defeated general. He forced the Duke of Cumberland to retire 66 "Le lendemain de la bataille d'Hastenbeck le Maréchal (d'Estrées) reçut le courrier qui lui annonçait son rappel." (Mémoires du Baron de Besenval, vol. i. p. 91.) 1757. CONVENTION OF CLOSTER-SEVEN. 117 beneath the cannon of Stade, where His Royal Highness hoped that he might maintain himself until the approach of winter put a close to this campaign. But the French having hemmed him in on all sides, though still at some distance, might next, perhaps, have invested a little fort at the mouth of the stream of Zwinga, thus cutting off the Duke's communication with the Elbe, and rendering useless to him four English men of war which had anchored in that river. Under this apprehension His Royal Highness accepted the mediation of Count Lynar, the Minister of the King of Denmark, and on the 8th of September signed at Closter-Seven a Convention with the Duke de Richelieu. The terms were that the auxiliary troops, as of Hesse and Brunswick, should be sent home, and that the Hanoverians under Cumberland should pass the Elbe, and be dispersed into different quarters of cantonments, leaving only a garrison at Stade. At a more recent period one of the greatest authorities in war has held that these terms were by no means so favourable to the French as they were entitled to claim*; but at the time itself the Convention of Closter-Seven was denounced both by English and Prussians as an ignominious capitulation. In fact it would be difficult to decide whether this Convention excited most indignation at the English Court or at the Prussian camp. Frederick, seeing the whole French force now left at liberty to pour on his dominions, exclaimed that we had undone him without mending our own situation. George the Second lost no time in recalling the Duke to England, and on his arrival treated him with the utmost coldness. When the Duke first appeared in the Royal presence, the King never addressed a word to him, but said aloud in the course of the evening: "Here is my son, who has ruined me and disgraced himself!"† The Duke was ill-disposed to brook such treatment; he had already, from the 66 * "La Convention de Closter-Seven est inexplicable. Le Duc de "Cumberland était perdu; il était obligé de mettre bas les armes et "de se rendre prisonnier ; il n'était donc possible d'admettre d'autres "termes de capitulation que ceux-là." (Napoleon, Mémoires publiés par Montholon, vol. v. p. 213.) † Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 250. letters he received and the rumours he heard, formed his resolution, and this resolution he next morning formally announced. He resigned his post of Captain General, his regiment, in short all his military employments. The King was startled, and attempted to alter his determination, but in vain. Thus did the harsh victor of Culloden surrender the darling passion and object of his life, — the army,-sooner than submit to what he deemed an unfounded aspersion on his conduct. He lived till 1765 in comparative obscurity, and died, perhaps worn out by inaction, in his forty-sixth year. It is due to this Prince to say, that, aggrieved as he thought himself by the King, he never let fall amidst all his irritation a single word inconsistent with his strictest duty as a subject or a son. It is also remarkable that of all the Ministers in England the only one disposed to afford him any countenance or protection was Pitt, -the very man whom the Duke had always in the most marked manner thwarted and opposed. Nay, Pitt had even risked the displeasure of his Master rather than fail in justice to his enemy. When the King had told Pitt that he had given the Duke no orders for such a treaty, Pitt had answered with firmness; "But "full powers, Sir,-very full powers!" The Princess Dowager behaved on this occasion in her usual spirit of prudence and caution. When the Duke called upon her, and was beginning to mention his resolution to resign, she rang the bell, and asked him if he would not see the children! After the battle of Kolin and the Convention of ClosterSeven the position of Frederick,- hemmed in on almost every side by victorious enemies, - -was not only most dangerous but well-nigh desperate. To his own eyes it seemed so. He revolved in his thoughts, and discussed with his friends, the voluntary death of Otho as a worthy example to follow.* Fully resolved never to fall alive into the hands of his enemies, nor yet to survive any decisive overthrow, he carried about his person a sure poison in a small glass phial. Yet amidst all his growing difficulties, and with the prospect of death close before him, * See two letters from Voltaire to Frederick in October 1757. (Correspondance avec le Roi de Prusse, vol. i. p. 322-327.) 1757. BATTLE OF ROSBACH. 119 this extraordinary man never relaxed either in his poetical recreations or his warlike designs. He could still find amusement in composing an ode, feeble and profane, against the Duke of Cumberland.* He could still with indomitable skill and energy make every preparation for encountering the Prince de Soubise. He marched against the French commander at the head of only 22,000 men ; but these were veterans, trained in the strictest discipline, and full of confidence in their chief. Soubise, on the other hand, owed his appointment in part to his illustrious lineage, as head of the House of Rohan, and still more to Court-favour, as the minion of Madame de Pompadour, but in no degree to his own experience or abilities. He had under his orders nearly 40,000 of his countrymen, and nearly 20,000 troops of the Empire; for the Germanic Diet also had been induced to join the league against Frederick. On the 5th of November the two armies came to a battle at Rosbach, close to the plain of Lützen, where in the preceding century Gustavus Adolphus conquered and fell. By the skilful manœuvres of Frederick the French were brought to believe that the Prussians intended nothing but retreat, and they advanced in high spirits as if only to pursue the fugitives. Of a sudden they found themselves attacked with all the compactness of discipline, and all the courage of despair. The troops of the Empire, a motley crew, fled at the first fire; some of the French regiments showed scarcely greater steadiness; Soubise was bewildered and helpless; and the rout became universal. So rapid was the victory that the right wing of the Prussians, under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, was never engaged at all. Great numbers of the French were cut down in their flight by the Prussian cavalry, not a few perished in the waters of the Saale, and full 7,000 were made prisoners, with a large amount of baggage, artillery, and standards. * This ode seems intended as a parody" de Jérémie et du divin "Baruc." Here are four of the least hobbling lines "Et toi, Stade, l'arche où notre Salomon 66 Plaça son tabernacle et son sacré Mammon, "Helas! mes tristes yeux verront ils tes guinées "Par des brigands Français à Paris amenées." (Euvres Posthumes, vol. xv. p. 212. ed. 1789.) It has been said, with great truth and point, of our James the First, that he seemed made up of two men,— an able well-read scholar, who wrote,-and a drivelling idiot, who acted.* The exact converse of this character might be aptly applied to Frederick. On the very day after the battle of Rosbach the illustrious victor sat down in his tent to write in French rhymes a farewell to the French army. So coarse and ribald is this effusion that it could only appear in print by the aid of numerous blanks and asterisks, and the feebleness of the lines is fully equal to their ribaldry.* Alas, for human intellect to find even its glory thus blended with its shame! The battle of Rosbach was not more remarkable for its military results than for its moral influence. It was hailed throughout Germany as a triumph of the Teutonic over the Gallic race. It was a victory of their own gained by a leader of their own, not by a chief of foreign blood and lineage, a Montecuculi or a Prince Eugene. Throughout the whole of that great and noble-minded people,-from the Oder to the Rhine,-from the mouth of the Elbe to the sources of the Drave,—even in the Austrian states themselves,-the day of Rosbach was ere long considered as a common theme of national pride and national rejoicing. At this day the fame of Frederick has become nearly as dear to all true Germans as the fame of Arminius. It was a spell which even Jena could not break, and which shone forth with redoubled power after Leipsick. Nay, even on the field of Rosbach itself this feeling was already in some degree apparent. It is * Edinburgh Review, No. cxxxii. p. 31. See the Euvres Posthumes, vol. xv. p. 217. Ten of the lines (which are at least inoffensive) will be a sufficient trial of the reader's patience : "Je vous l'avoue en confidence |