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By the surrender of this place the whole country lay open to the French and their allies quite up to Magdeburgh; and the empress-queen immediately received two hundred thousand crowns from the revenues of Cleves and la Marcke alone. To return to the affairs more immediately relating to the king of Prussia.
Upon this check the French evacuated the country of Halberstadt for a little while, but returning again on the twenty-ninth of September, with a considerable reinforcement from mareschal Richelieu's army, which he now could easily spare, prince Ferdinand was obliged to retire to Winsleben, near the city of Magdeburgh.
His Prussian majesty affirms, that to arrive at the source of the vast plan upon which the courts of Vienna and Saxony had been employed against him ever since the peace of Dresden, we must trace it as far back as the war which preceded this peace; that the fond hopes which the two allied courts had conceived upon the success of the campaign in the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-four, gave occasion to a treaty of eventual partition, stipulating that the court of Vienna should possess the duchy of Silesia and the county of Glatz; while the king of Poland, elector of Saxony, should share the duchies of Magdeburgh and Croissen; the circles of Zullichow and Swibus, together with the Prussian part of Lusatia; that after the peace of Dresden, concluded in the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-five, there was no further room for a treaty of this nature; yet the court of Vienna proposed to that of Saxony a new alliance, in which the treaty of eventual partition should be renewed; but this last thought it necessary, in the first place, to give a greater consistency to their plan, by grounding it upon an alliance between the empress-queen and the czarina.
If any of my readers doubt this, let them turn to the impartial pages of the eminent French historian, the late M. Henri Martin; or, to take a shorter road to conviction, get up the history of the Gevaudan, or of this same little town of Mende. On a smaller scale, the horrors of the siege of Magdeburgh were here repeated, the Tilly of the campaign being the Calvinist leader Merle.
Magdeburgh, the queen of Protestant cities, the citadel of North German liberty, fell fell with Gustavus and rescue near and nameless atrocities were perpetrated by the ferocious bands of the Empire on innocents of all ages and both sexes, whose cry goes up against bloodthirsty fanaticism for ever.
He represented that a free and neutral state had been, in the midst of peace, invaded by an enemy, who disguised himself under the mask of friendship, without alleging the least complaint, or any pretension whatsoever; but founding himself solely on his own convenience, made himself master, by armed force, of all the cities and towns of the electorate, dismantling some and fortifying others; that he had disarmed the burghers; carried off the magistrates as hostages for the payment of unjust and enormous contributions of provisions and forage; seized the coffers; confiscated the revenues of the electorate; broke open the arsenals, and transported the arms and artillery to his own town of Magdeburgh; abolished the privy-council, and, instead of the lawful government, established a directory, which acknowledged no other law but his own arbitrary will.
Among the ancient Saxons at Magdeburgh, the greatest beauties were at stated times deposited in charge of the magistrates, with a sum of money as the portion of each, to be publicly fought for; and fell to the lot of those who were famous at tilting.
A body of the French, who, let loose against the king of Prussia by the ever-memorable and shameful convention of Closter-Seven, had entered the territories of Halberstadt and Magdeburgh, were worsted at Eglen by a party of six hundred men, under the command of count Horn, whom prince Ferdinand of Brunswick had detached from a body of troops with which his Prussian majesty had sent him to defend those countries.
In December, the Prussian army was distributed in winter-quarters in Moravia, after having taken Olmutz, the capital of that province; and in March his Prussian majesty formed a camp of observation in the neighbourhood of Magdeburgh. The elector of Hanover was alarmed at the success of the king of Prussia, in apprehension that he would become too formidable a neighbour.
Scarce had the French army, commanded by the prince de Soubise, set foot in the territories of Juliers and Cologn, when they found themselves in possession of the duchy of Cloves and the country of Marck, where all things were left open to them, the Prussians, who evacuated their posts, taking their route along the river Lippe, in order to join some regiments from Magdeburgh, who were sent to facilitate their retreat.
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