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To return, after this long digression, to the portly German middle-aged business men who met weekly in Brunswick to improve their working knowledge of French and English, I must candidly say that I never detected the faintest shadow of animosity to Great Britain in them. They were not Prussians they were Hanoverians and Brunswickers.
She had some very valuable Christian virtues, such as indiscriminate charity for the poor and indiscriminate loathing for the Prussians. She was a nurse; she was also a nuisance. One day she was driving just outside the Jaffa Gate, when she saw one of those figures which make the Holy City seem like the eternal crisis of an epic.
Next day, when part of them had advanced about half way up a hill opposite to Konigstein, and the rest were entangled in a narrow plain, where there was no room to act, they perceived that the Prussians were in possession of all the passes, and found themselves surrounded on every side, fainting with hunger and fatigue, and destitute of every convenience.
Masters who had slaves, and generally Prussians, prisoners of war, were obliged to send them to the parish church to be instructed by the clergy in the Christian religion. German alone was to be spoken, and the ancient language of the country was forbidden, to prevent the people hatching conspiracies, and to do away with the old idolatry and heathen superstitions.
Some French officers could not believe such treachery, and thought that the Saxons were going to attack the Prussians; so that General Gressot, Reynier's chief-of-staff rushed towards them to moderate what he thought was an excess of zeal, only to find himself confronted by enemies!
The English minister, Lord Castlereagh, finally persuaded the Austrians, Prussians, and Russians, to allow the French diplomat, Talleyrand, to take part in their final meetings. Now Talleyrand was probably the most slippery and tricky diplomat of all Europe.
As appetites increased, their spirits fell; no inn, no wine shop could be discovered, the approach of the Prussians and the transit of the starving French troops having frightened away all business.
Both propositions were strenuously contested by Rogers. In regard to the second point in particular, he showed triumphantly, by citations from the "Polonians, Prussians, and Lithuanians," that commissions ought to be previously exhibited.
A third said, the "empress-queen, Maria Theresa, was terrified at the rapid advance of the Prussians, and had immediately commenced negotiations for peace."
For a few hours the battle blazed as if it were a strife of demons hell in high carnival. Eighteen thousand Prussians were mowed down by the Austrian batteries, before the fierce assailants could scale the ramparts. Then, with cimeter and bayonet, they took a bloody revenge. Eight thousand Austrians were speedily weltering in blood.
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