Silesia;" which the indignant Czar rejected with scorn, and at once
made his Royal Friend aware of; with what emotion on the Royal Friend's
part we have transiently seen. "Horrors and perfidies!" ejaculated he,
in our hearing lately; and regarded Bute, from that time, as a knave and
an imbecile both in one; nor ever quite forgave Bute's Nation either,
which was far from being Bute's accomplice in this unheard-of procedure.
"No more Alliances with England!" counted he: "What Alliance can there
be with that ever-fluctuating People? To-day they have a thrice-noble
Pitt; to-morrow a thrice-paltry Bute, and all goes heels-over-head on
the sudden!" [Preuss, ii. 308; Mitchell, ii. 286.]

Bute, at this rate of going, will manage to get hold of Peace before
long. To Friedrich himself, a Siege of Schweidnitz is now free;
Schweidnitz his, the Austrians will have to quit Silesia. "Their cash
is out: except prayer to the Virgin, what but Peace can they attempt
farther? In Saxony things will have gone ill, if there be not enough
left us to offer them in return for Glatz. And Peace and AS-YOU-WERE
must ensue!"

Let us go upon Schweidnitz, therefore; pausing on none of these
subsidiary things; and be brief upon Schweidnitz too.

Chapter XII.--SIEGE OF SCHWEIDNITZ: SEVENTH CAMPAIGN ENDS.

Daun being now cleared away, Friedrich instantly proceeds upon
Schweidnitz. Orders the necessary Siege Materials to get under way
from Neisse; posts his Army in the proper places, between Daun and the
Fortress,--King's head-quarter Dittmannsdorf, Army spread in fine large
crescent-shape, to southwest of Schweidnitz some ten miles, and as far
between Daun and it;--orders home to him his Upper-Silesia Detachments,
"Home, all of you, by Neisse Country, to make up for Czernichef's
departure; from Neisse onwards you can guard the Siege-Ammunition
wagons!" Naturally he has blockaded Schweidnitz, from the first; he
names Tauentzien Siege-Captain, with a 10 or 12,000 to do the Siege:
"Ahead, all of you!"--and in short, AUGUST 7th, with the due adroitness
and precautions, opens his first parallel; suffering little or nothing
hitherto by a resistance which is rather vehement. [Tempelhof, vi.
126.] He expects to have the place in a couple of weeks--"one week (HUIT
JOUR)" he sometimes counts it, but was far out in his reckoning as to
time.

The Siege of Schweidnitz occupied two most laborious, tedious
months;--and would be wearisome to every reader now,