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The Battle of Mollwitz went off like a signal-shot among the Nations; intimating that they were, one and all, to go battling. Which they did, with a witness; making a terrible thing of it, over all the world, for above seven years to come. Foolish Nations; doomed to settle their jarring accounts in that terrible manner!
Westward, twenty miles off, are pleasant Hills; and among them, if you look well, shadowy Town-spires, which you are assured are Strehlen, a place also of interest in Friedrich's History. Your belfry itself, in Mollwitz, is old, but not unsound; and the big iron clock grunts heavily at your ear, or perhaps bursts out in a too deafening manner, while you study the topographies.
He proceeded next to Dresden, which is a main card: and where there is immense manipulation needed, and the most delicate trout-tickling; this being a skittish fish, and an important, though a foolish. Belleisle was at Dresden when the Battle of Mollwitz fell out: what a windfall into Belleisle's game! He ran across to Friedrich at Mollwitz, to congratulate, to consult, as we shall see anon.
Sixteen years before he had won the Battle of Mollwitz, one of the most decisive actions of that time, from which Frederick himself is said to have run away in sheer fright. General Ziethen, perhaps the best of all modern cavalry commanders, was in his fifty-eighth year when the Seven Years' War began, and he served through it with eminent distinction, and most usefully to his sovereign.
But Frederic, with marvellous celerity and ability, got possession of the Silesian fortresses; the bloody battle of Mollwitz secured his prey, and he returned in triumph to his capital, to abide the issue of events.
That, till the late Subsidy payable within year and day hence, was all of tangible his Majesty had yet done; truly that is all her Hungarian Majesty has yet got by hawking the world, Pragmatic Sanction in hand. And if that were the bit of generosity which enabled Neipperg to climb the Mountains and be beaten at Mollwitz, that has helped little!
Their relation to the then Sea-Powers, especially to England embarked on the Cause of Liberty, fills one with amazement, by no means of an idolatrous nature; and is difficult to understand at all, or to be patient with at all. Of disposition to comply with Prussia, Robinson finds, in spite of Mollwitz and the sad experiences, no trace at Vienna.
All these movements and arrangements are effected above a mile from Mollwitz, no enemy yet visible. Once effected, we advance again with music sounding, sixty pieces of artillery well in front, steady, steady! across the floor of snow which is soon beaten smooth enough, the stage, this day, of a great adventure.
Again: on Friedrich's birthday, 24th January, 1744, the new Academy of Sciences had, in the Schloss of Berlin, its first Session. But of this, in the absence of Maupertuis, Flattener of the Earth, who is still in France, since that Mollwitz adventure; by and for behoof of whom, when he did return, and become "Perpetual First President," many changes were made, I will not speak at present.
Carlyle the Revolution begins not in 1789 but in 1741; not with the Fall of the Bastile but with the Battle of Mollwitz. This earliest of Frederick's victories was the first sign 'that indeed a new hour had struck on the Time Horologe, that a new Epoch had arisen.
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