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1757.

DAMIENS STABS THE KING.

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and obliged the entire Saxon army to surrender to him as prisoners of war. Thus gallantly opened, on the part of Frederick, the celebrated Seven Years' War.

Early in January, 1757, as Louis XV. was proceeding to enter his carriage from the palace of Versailles, a man advanced and stabbed him in the side with a penknife. "There is the man who struck me," said Louis: "take him, and dc nim no harm." The wound was slight; but as the knife might be poisoned, the whole court was in alarm, and Louis himself not least. The madman, who had made this foolish attempt, was named Damiens. The keeper of the seals seized him, conveyed him to a chamber of the palace, and there causing a pair of pincers to be heated, the chief officer of justice began by torturing the criminal. What was to be supposed the death-bed of the monarch, was immediately surrounded by intrigue. Machault and D'Argenson, though mutual enemies, united in working on the king's conscience, with a view to exile madame de Pompadour. An order was sent her to retire from court. But the wound was no sooner found to be insignificant, than the mistress was recalled, and_the_two ministers sacrificed to her. Both were exiled. As to Damiens, his crime seems to have proceeded from no deeper cause than that itch for action and notoriety, the extreme of which the sane find it so difficult to comprehend. In the choice of a victim he was, however, guided by the popular odium against the monarch, which was great. The Parisian populace, who had offered up prayers for his recovery at Metz, were not long since persuaded that children were stolen and slain to afford baths of blood, calculated to renovate the exhausted frame of the royal debauchee. Louis never showed himself in his capital. Damiens muttered and scribbled several names; and, with a glimmering instinct, sought to give reason and respectability to his crime by associating it with the cause of the parliament and Jansenism. The incoherent ravings and confessions of this crazy being, extracted from him partly by torture, filled the court and kingdom with suspicions, and greatly increased the animosities on both sides.

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The accommodation brought about between parliament and clergy did not produce peace. The archbishop De Beaumont took the first opportunity to renew his refusal of the sacraments. The king sent the duc de Richelieu to him to remon strate upon his absurd zeal. My conscience,” replied the bishop, "can allow of no accommodation." "Your conscience. retorted the witty duke, "is a dark lantern, that enlightens no one save yourself." The archbishop was exiled to his country seat by the king's order. The parliament condemned aza

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fined the bishop of Orleans for refusing the sacraments, and even sold his furniture to pay the fine. The old scandal was renewed throughout the kingdom. The clergy were, however, obliged to find some less extreme mode of acting against the Jansenists. They did away with the necessity of billets ɔf confession, but demanded preliminaries tantamount, such as the name of each person's confessor, and the right of each curate to make domiciliary visits to learn this. The court consented to the plan. The parliament was inexorable as ever: and the Jesuits again succeeded in kindling a quarrel between king and parliament, during which the clergy were forgotten, or left in possession of their prerogatives. Louis, in order to subdue the magistracy, had recourse to a scheme which Francis I. had before attempted without success. This was to attribute to the great council of state the same privilege and authority as that wielded by the parliament. The latter summoned the peers to join them in an assembly. The king forbade them to attend. In the midst of those differences arose the necessity of new taxes to support the war. The monarch came to register them in a bed of justice. The morrow brought remonstrances from the parliament against the clergy and against the taxes. Louis in anger imprisoned the refractory members. The struggle between the legists and the Jesuits seemed to be, which should first wear out the patience of the monarch. The legists vanquished, through the support of madame de Pompadour, and of one of her counsellors, the count de Stainville, afterwards duc de Choiseul.

Notwithstanding her conquest of Minorca, France was aware that her colonies must fall before the maritime superiority of England: it therefore behoved her to occupy the continental dominions of the king of that country. An army was sent against Hanover, commanded by the mareschal D'Etrées. The duke of Cumberland levied a German force to oppose it; but being far inferior in numbers, he retired step by step before the French, allowing them to cross the Rhine, and even the Weser, which river forms the natural defence of Hanover. The king of Prussia, England's ally, had begun the campaign with the invasion of Bohemia, where he at first established himself by winning the celebrated and sanguinary battle of Prague over the Austrians under prince Charles of Lorraine; but seeking to follow up his advantage, Frederick experienced in the following month a severe check, being defeated by mareschal Daun at Kolin. At the same time D'Etrées was pressing the duke of Cumberland, who at length made a stand, strongly posted, however, and intrenched be tween Hameln and Hastenbach, near the Weser. It was the

1757.

CONFEDERACY AGAINST FREDERICK

187 lieutenants rather than the generals of both armies that were destined to distinguish themselves. Chevert attacked the duke's left, drove it from its intrenchments and cannon, and pushed on; Maillebois, who was to support him, hesitated: prince Ferdinand of Brunswick seized the opportunity, marched his division between Chevert and the French, and charged the latter, so as to put them in disorder. Chevert, however, had precisely the same success against the duke, who was the first to sound a retreat. D'Etrées was about to issue the same order to his troops, when he observed the enemy retiring, and became thus informed of Chevert's success. Theduke of Cumberland, after this affair, was obliged to abandon Hanover. The mareschal de Richelieu arrived on the following day to supersede D'Etrées, and under him the French continued their pursuit of the Hanoverian army, plundering and levying merciless contributions on the unfortunate electorate. Richelieu was called father Maraude by his soldiers. The duke sought to retire to Stade: he hoped, late in the season as it then was, to be able to hold out in that marshy country near the mouth of the Elbe, which is impracticable for military operations: but Richelieu's activity deprived him of this resource. The duke of Cumberland was obliged to sign the capitulation of Kloster-Seven, called from a convent of that name, which was the head-quarters of the French..

This disgraceful capitulation, which abandoned Hanover to the French, and left the Prussian dominions exposed to their inroad, would have reduced any prince except the great Frederick, to despair. Deserted by his only ally, all Europe was in arms against him. Russia advanced from the east, Austria, Poland, Saxony, united their forces; whilst a German army, called that of the Circles, headed by Soubise and strengthened by 30,000 French, menaced him from the southwest. The enemy occupied his capital, Berlin, from which the royal family had escaped to Magdeburg. In this extremity Frederick endeavored to negotiate with Richelieu: he flattered the duke; upbraided him for counteracting the policy of his great-uncle, the celebrated cardinal, by raising up the power of Austria; and besought him, in covert terms, to oppose La Pompadour in her fatal obsequiousness to the empress. These attempts had the good effect of amusing Richelieu and paralyzing his activity. Frederick was not blind to the critical state of his affairs: full of classic studies, and recurring, unfortunately, to those rather than to religion for consolation, he contemp.ated the necessity of perishing by

nis own hand, if not in the battle-field. To die with dignity was his thought, his Roman thought—

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"to think, to live, and die like a king," was his noble determination. Twenty thousand men were all that he could muster: with these Frederick resolved to fight the united army of French and Germans commanded by the prince of Soubise and the prince of Hilburghausen: they numbered upwards of 50,000 men. Despite of this inferiority they dreaded Frederick, and retreated from Leipzig at his approach, crossing the Saale: he passed it after them, and, coming in sight, hesitated: the opportunity was not favorable. The Prussian monarch kept his army hidden, as it were, in the low village of Rosbach, the heights around which, covered with batteries, served at once to defend his position and conceal his movements. The Germans and French, gathering audacity from the king's inaction, hovered round him, marching along his flank, and menacing an attack. It was the morning of the 5th of November: Frederick spent it in reconnoitring the enemy. It was not till the afternoon that he gave his orders; gathering the greater part of his troops on one point, on his left, and concealing the movement by the inequality of the ground, as well as by his tents, which he left pitched. Ere Soubise or Hilburghausen could make a corresponding movement, the Prussians broke through all before them on the point of attack; and the rest of the confederate army, seeing its flank laid bare, turned and fled. So simple was the decisive battle of Rosbach,* that retrieved the fortunes of Prussia. On the same day, the 5th of the following month, Frederick, who had marched into Silesia, defeated the Austrians at Lissa, and recovered his ancient superiority in despite of his numerous enemies.

In the mean time the duke of Richelieu, having broken so far through the terms of capitulation at Kloster-Seven as to seek to disarm the Hanoverian troops, which by that agreement were to remain quiet, indeed, but not to lose their arms, found those vanquished enemies start up afresh. Their new leader, prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, far surpassing the duke of Cumberland in military talent, was now able to hold Richelieu in check. The English ministry, roused by the spirit of the elder Pitt, made every effort to second her gal

* The field of Rosbach is near those of Jena, of Lutzen, and of Leipzig The banks of the Saale are fully immortalized by carnage.

758.

DEFEAT OF THE FRENCH.

189

lant ally: a body of English troops reinforced the Hanoverian army, and the next campaign seemed to promise revenge for the duke of Cumberland's defeat.

In the beginning of the year 1758, Richelieu was superseded in his command by the prince de Clermont, who being at the same time abbot of St. Germain des Près, was called the general of the Benedictines. Under him the French commenced, their retreat from Hanover. Prince Ferdinand precipitated this retrograde movement by anticipating their arrival on the Weser: he attacked and took Minden. In May, the French were already behind the Rhine, shamefully routed without even the honor of fighting, and leaving upwards of 10,000 prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Prince Ferdi nand soon passed that river. The French general purposed to continue his retreat towards France, when the indignation and wounded pride of his officers obliged him to await the attack of the prince at Crevelt in the duchy of Cleves. There the count of St. Germain offered a gallant resistance to the enemy; it might have been a successful one, when the comte de Clermont gave abrupt orders to retreat, and abandoned his lieutenant. The French left 7000 dead on the field, and with them all hopes of retrieving the disasters of the campaign.

It was at this time that the dauphin, touched by the reverses of the French armies, demanded to put himself at the head of one of them. This being refused, he recommended peace, as a fitting measure. He was a pious prince, and of an exemplary life, but priest-ridden. The Jesuits placed great hopes in him, and considered him as the head of their party. Louis XV. was not a little jealous of the dauphin; and madame de Pompadour shared in this sentiment. Both felt themselves tacitly censured by the almost puritanic strictness of the prince's court. The dauphin being now for peace, and opposed to the Austrian alliance, La Pompadour held firm in her friendship to the empress and in hatred to the king of Prussia. Yet at this juncture, the very diplomatist who had counselled and concluded the treaty with Maria Theresa; the cardinal de Bernis, a creature too of the mistress, thought fit to oppose his conviction to her obstinacy, and speak in opposition to the war. La Pompadour was positive. Bernis was disgraced; and Choiseul became secretary of state in his stead. The new minister, though too sage not to perceive the folly of persisting in a war from whence so little was to be gained, paid, nevertheless, the price of his elevation by renewing the treaty with Austria, and making fresh preparations for carrying on the war.

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Whilst the king of Prussia, with unchanged courage and

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