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Schmalkaldic War; Thirty-Years War; Louis XIV.'s Wars, which brought Alsace and the other fine cuttings; late Polish-Election War, and its Lorraine; Austrian-Succession War: many are the wars kindled on poor Teutschland by neighbor France; and large is the sum of woes to Europe and to it, chargeable to that score. Which appears even yet not to be completed? Perhaps not, even yet.
What to do with such a War; how extricate the Episode, and leave the War lying? It is singular into what oblivion the huge Phenomenon called Austrian-Succession War has fallen; which, within a hundred years ago or little more, filled all mortal hearts!
Most dismal, dark, ugly, that Austrian-Succession Business, and its world-wide battlings, throttlings and intriguings: not Dismal Swamp, under a coverlid of London Fog, could be uglier! A Section of "History" so called, which human nature shrinks from; of which the extant generation already knows nothing, and is impatient of hearing anything!
The Austrian-Succession War did veritably rage for eight years, at a terrific rate, deforming the face of Earth and Heaven; the English paying the piper always, and founding their National Debt thereby: but not even that could prove mnemonic to them; and they have dropped the Austrian-Succession War, with one accord, into the general dustbin, and are content it should lie there.
And, in fact, no modern reader, not deeper in that distressing story of the Austrian-Succession War than readers are again like to be, can imagine to himself the difficulties of Friedrich at this time, as they already lay disclosed, and kept gradually disclosing themselves, for months coming; nor will ever know what perspicacity, patience of scanning, sharpness of discernment, dexterity of management, were required at Friedrich's hands; and under what imminency of peril, too; victorious deliverance, or ruin and annihilation, wavering fearfully in the balance for him, more than once, or rather all along.
Friedrich's business henceforth is not to be done by direct fighting, but rather by waiting to see how, and on what side, others will fight: nor can we describe or understand Friedrich's business, except as in connection with the immense, obsolete, and indeed delirious Phenomenon called Austrian-Succession War, upon which it is difficult to say any human word.
Undoubtedly this of June 5th is the most important Treaty in the Austrian-Succession War, and the cardinal element of Friedrich's procedure in that Adventure. I wish it could be made, even with his help, fully intelligible to the reader! For, were the Treaty never so express, surely the mode of keeping it, on both parts, was very strange; and that latter concerns us somewhat.
And in the course of the next Two Years rises to a great height indeed. Here snatched, who knows with what difficulty, from that shoreless bottomless slough of an Austrian-Succession War, deservedly forgotten, and avoided by extant mankind are some of the more essential phenomena, which Friedrich had to witness in those months.
FIRST, for his Public Character: it was an all-important fact, not to IT, but to this country in regard to it, That George II., seeing good to plunge head-foremost into German Politics, and to take Maria Theresa's side in the Austrian-Succession War of 1740-1748, needed to begin by assuring his Parliament and Newspapers, profoundly dark on the matter, that Friedrich was a robber and villain for taking the other side.
Unless perhaps the feats of prowess, virtue, valor and endurance, they might accidentally give rise to, were very great indeed. Much greater than the most were, which came out in that Austrian-Succession case!
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