Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/572

 558 vengeance of offended woman was brought into play-Madame Pompadour, Louis XV.'s all-powerful mistress, had sent flattering compliments to Frederick by Voltaire; but the Prussian king only repaid them with sneers. On the other hand, the virtuous Maria Theresa did not blush to write, with her own hand, the most flattering epistles to the Pompadour. By these means, the thirst of revenge raised in the heart of the French mistress, worked successfully the breach with Prussia and the alliance with Austria. The same stimulus was tried, and with equal effect, on the czarina Elizabeth, on whose amorous license the cynical Prussian monarch had been equally jocose.



Kaunitz knew how to make the sting of these ungallant sallies felt at both Paris and St. Petersburg, and the winter of 1755-6 saw the Russian alliance with Prussia and England renounced, the English subsidy, with far more than German probity, renounced too, and Prussia pledged to support Austria and France. The elector of Saxony, Augustus, king of Poland, who amused himself with low, pot-house companions, and tame bears, and left his affairs to his minister, count Bruhl, was also drawn, by the promise of Prussian territory, to join the league; and even Sweden, whose queen, Ulrica, was sister to Frederick, was drawn over to take side against him, in the hope of recovering its ancient province of Pomerania. This confederation of ninety millions of people, leagued against five millions, was pronounced by Pitt "one of the most powerful and malignant ones that ever yet threatened the independence of mankind." The confederates endeavoured to keep their plans profoundly secret till they were ready to burst at once on the devoted king of Prussia; but Frederick was the last man alive to be taken by surprise. The secret was soon betrayed to him, and, at once waving his dislike of the king of England, he concluded a convention with him in January, 1756, and bound himself, during the disturbances in America, not to allow any foreign troops to pass through any part of Germany to those colonies, where he could prevent it.

Having his treasury well supplied, he put his army in order, and in August of that year sent a peremptory demand to Vienna, as to the designs of Austria, stating, at the same time, that he would not accept any evasive reply; but the reply being evasive, he at once rushed into Saxony at the head of sixty thousand men, blockaded the king of Saxony in Pirna, and secured the queen in Dresden. By this decisive action, Frederick commenced what the Germans style "The Seven Years' War."' In the palace of Dresden, Frederick made himself master of the secret correspondence and treaties with France, Russia, and Austria, detailing all their designs, which he immediately published, and thus fully justified his proceedings to the world.

The Austrians advanced under marshal Brown, an officer of English extraction, against Frederick, but after a hard-fought battle at Lowositz, on the 1st of October, Frederick beat them, and soon after compelled the Saxon army, seventeen thousand strong, to surrender at Pirna.