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Updated: June 1, 2025
One day when the mail came in, a friend of George Clerque told us he had written from France, and there was great, but, of necessity, quiet rejoicing. That night Bromley and I decided that we would volunteer for farm service, if we could get taken to Rossbach, where some of the other boys had been working, for Rossbach was eighteen miles south of Giessen on the way to Switzerland.
But it was in the Seven Years' War that his fame as a soldier was won, and that contest began when he was in his forty-fifth year. He was close upon forty-six when he gained the Battles of Rossbach and Leuthen. Whatever opinion others may entertain as to his age, it is certain that he counted himself an old man in those days.
With the bulk of his forces he marched into Bohemia, and gained a great but costly victory at Prague . For the next six months, successes and reverses alternated; but before the end of the year Frederick won two of his most famous triumphs, one at Rossbach, over the French and the Imperialists; and the other over the Austrians, at Leuthen.
Thirty years have passed since the 20th September, and the burdens of taxation and military sacrifices which Italy has borne, with the prisoner in the Vatican like a conspirator on her own hearth, can be compared only with the burdens which Prussia endured for the sake of glory and her kings before and after Rossbach.
He talked merrily save when he spoke of the war against England, and then contemptuously, for he was a bitter English partisan. And in contrast to this he would dwell for hours on a king he called Friedrich der Grosse, and a war he waged that was a war; and how this mighty king had fought a mighty queen at Rossbach and Leuthen in his own country, battles that were battles.
He told me, as we walked together in the hall, waiting for the exercise to commence, that he had been a soldier, and it so happened that among the ballads in the lesson for that day was one in honour of the Prussian troops at Rossbach.
Fortune is sometimes jealous of great reputations and fresh laurels. The success of his first speech prevented "Single-speech Hamilton" from rising again in the House of Commons; Frederick failed to repeat Rossbach, and Napoleon, Austerlitz; but the "Christian soldier" rushed on his fate, and met it at the hands of the Nez Percés.
Out of Frederick's numerous battles we may be able to present some examples sufficiently diverse from the ordinary to render them worthy of classification, under the title of the romance of history. Let us go back to the 5th of November, 1757. On that date the army of Frederick lay in the vicinity of Rossbach, on the Saale, then occupied by a powerful French army.
Prince de Soubise: frivolous, insignificant being; of whom I have no portrait that is not nearly blank, and content to be so; though Herr von Geusau would have one, with features and costume to it, when he heard of the Beating at Rossbach, long after!
"Your majesty will know how to obtain this result to break this chain and if they will not yield willingly, the hero of Rossbach and Leuthen will know how to crush them in his just rage." "God grant it!" sighed the king; "I long for peace, although my enemies say I am the evil genius that brings discord and strife into the world.
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