part?
Or, better still, Would not perhaps the Saxons, in this humiliated
state, accept Peace, and finish the matter?

Chapter XIV.--BATTLE OF KESSELSDORF.

A "Correspondence" of a certain Excellency Villiers, English Minister
at Dresden,--Sir Thomas Villiers, Grandfather of the present Earl of
Clarendon,--was very famous in those weeks; and is still worth mention,
as a trait of Friedrich's procedure in this crisis. Friedrich, not
intoxicated with his swift triumph over Prince Karl, but calculating
the perils and the chances still ahead,--miserably off for money
too,--admits to himself that not revenge or triumph, that Peace is the
one thing needful to him. November 29th, Old Leopold is entering Saxony;
and in the same hours, Podewils at Berlin, by order of Friedrich, writes
to Villiers who is in Dresden, about Peace, about mediating for Peace:
"My King ready and desirous, now as at all times, for Peace; the terms
of it known; terms not altered, not alterable, no bargaining or higgling
needed or allowable. CONVENTION OF HANOVER, let his Polish Majesty
accede honestly to that, and all these miseries are ended."
["CORRESPONDANCE DU ROI AVEC SIR THOMAS VILLIERS;" commences, on
Podewils's part, 28th November; on Friedrich's, 4th December; ends,
on Villier's, 18th December; fourteen Pieces in all, four of them
Friedrich's: Given in _OEuvres de Frederic,_ iii. 183-216 (see IB, 158),
and in many other Books.]

Villiers starts instantly on this beneficent business; "goes to Court,
on it, that very night;" Villiers shows himself really diligent,
reasonable, loyal; doing his very best now and afterwards; but has no
success at all. Polish Majesty is obstinate,--I always think, in the way
sheep are, when they feel themselves too much put upon;--and is deaf
to everybody but Bruhl. Bruhl answers: "Let his Prussian Majesty retire
from our Territory;--what is he doing in the Lausitz just now! Retire
from our Territory; THEN we will treat!" Bruhl still refuses to be
desperate of his bad game;--at any rate, Bruhl's rage is yellower
than ever. That, very evening, while talking to Villiers, he has had
preparations going on;--and next morning takes his Master, Polish
Majesty August III., with some comfortable minimum of apparatus
(cigar-boxes not forgotten), off to Prag, where they can be out of
danger till the thing decide itself. Villiers follows to Prag; desists
not from his eloquent Letters, and earnest persuasions at Prag; but