But his cup was not
yet full. Dresden was taken from him, eight of his remaining
generals and twelve thousand men were defeated and captured
at Maxen, and "this infernal campaign," as he calls it, closed
in thick darkness.
"I wrap myself in my stoicism as best I can," he writes to
Voltaire. "If you saw me you would hardly know me: I am
old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled. If this goes on there will
be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an
inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous
men I know. But you will not get a peace signed by my hand
except on conditions honorable to my nation. Your people,
blown up with conceit and folly, may depend on this."
The same stubborn conflict with overmastering odds, the
same intrepid resolution, the same subtle strategy, the same
skill in eluding the blow and lightning-like quickness in retorting
it, marked Frederic's campaign of 1760. At Liegnitz three
armies, each equal to his own, closed round him, and he put
them all to flight. While he was fighting in Silesia, the Allies
marched upon Berlin, took it, and held it three days, but
withdrew on his approach. For him there was no peace. "Why
weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?"
he wrote again to his faithful D'Argens. "My spirits have
forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved noble ones to
whom my heart was bound." He had lost his mother and his
devoted sister Wilhelmina.
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