sures;
it cuts me to the quick. Ill-luck, which persecutes my old age, has
followed me from the Mark [Kunersdorf, in the Mark of Brandenburg]
to Saxony. I will still strive what I can. The little ODE I sent you,
addressed TO FORTUNE, had been written too soon! One should not sing
victory till the battle is over. I am so crushed down by these incessant
reverses and disasters, that I wish a thousand times I were dead;
and from day to day I grow wearier of dwelling in a body worn out and
condemned to suffer. I am writing to you in the first moment of my
grief. Astonishment, sorrow, indignation, scorn, all blended together,
lacerate my soul. Let us get to the end, then, of this execrable
Campaign; I will then write to you what is to become of me; and we will
arrange the rest. Pity me;--ad make no noise about me; bad news go fast
enough of themselves. Adieu, dear Marquis." [_OEuvres de Frederic, _
xix. 107.]

All this, of course, under such pressing call of actualities, had
very soon to transform itself into silence; into new resolution, and
determinate despatch of business. But the King retained a bitter memory
of it all his days. To Finck he was inexorable:--ordered him, the first
thing on his return from Austrian Captivity, Trial by Court-Martial;
which (Ziethen presiding, June, 1763) censured Finck in various
points, and gave him, in supplement to the Austrian detention, a
Year's Imprisonment in Spandau. No ray of pity visible for him, then
or afterwards, in the Royal mind. So that the poor man had to beg
his dismissal; get it, and go to Denmark for new promotion and
appreciation.--"Far too severe!" grumbled the Opposition voices, with
secret counter-severity. And truly it would have been more beautiful to
everybody, for the moment, to have made matters soft to poor Finck,--had
Friedrich ever gone on that score with his Generals and Delegates;
which, though the reverse of a cruel man, he never did. And truly, as
we often observe, the Laws of Fact are still severer than Friedrich
was:--so that, in the long-run, perhaps it is beautifulest of all for a
King, who is just, to be rhadamanthine in important cases.

Exulting Daun, instead of Bohemia for winter-quarters, pushes out now
for the prize of Saxony itself. Daun orders Beck to attack suddenly
another Outpost of Friedrich's, which stands rearward of him at Meissen,
under a General Dierecke,--the same whom, as Colonel Dierecke, we
saw march out of flamy Zittau, summer g