fe. There
happened on that day what twice more in this war snatched victory from
him--the general had underestimated his enemy and had expected the
impossible from his own brave army. After a short period of
stupefaction Frederick arose with new strength. Instead of an
aggressive war, he had been forced to wage a desperate war of defense.
His foes attacked his little country from all sides. He entered upon a
death struggle with every great power of the Continent, master of only
four million men and a defeated army. Now his talent as general showed
itself as he escaped the enemy after defeats and again attacked in the
most unexpected quarters and beat them, faced first one army and then
another, unsurpassed in his dispositions, inexhaustible in expedients,
unequaled as leader of troops in battle. So he stood, one against
five--Austrians, Russians, French, any one of whom was his superior in
strength, and at the same time against the Swedes and the Imperial
troops. For five years he struggled thus against armies far larger
than his own--every spring in danger of being crushed merely by
numbers, every autumn free again. A loud cry of admiration and
sympathy ran through Europe; and among those who gave the loudest
praise, although reluctantly, were his most bitter enemies. Now, in
these years of changing fortune, when the King himself experienced
such bitter vicissitudes of the fortune of war, his generalship was
the astonishment of all the armies of Europe. How, always the more
rapid and skilful, he managed to establish his lines against his
opponents; how so often he outflanked in an oblique position the
weakest wing of the enemy, forced it back, and put it to rout; how his
cavalry, which, newly organized, had become the strongest in the
world, dashed in fury upon the foe, broke their ranks, scattered their
battalions: all this was celebrated everywhere as a new advance in
military art, and the invention of surpassing genius. The tactics and
the strategy of the Prussian army came to be for almost half a century
the ideal and model for all the armies of Europe. It was the unanimous
opinion that Frederick was the greatest general of his time, and that
there had been few leaders since the beginning of history who could be
compared with him. It seemed incredible that the smaller numbers so
often conquered the greater, and even when defeated, instead of being
routed, faced the enemy, who had hardly recovered from his injuries,