The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol.
XVI. (of XXI.), by Thomas Carlyle

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Title: History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.)
Frederick The Great--The Ten Years of Peace.--1746-1756.

Author: Thomas Carlyle

Posting Date: June 13, 2008 [EBook #2116]
Release Date: March 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by D.R. Thompson

HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA

FREDERICK THE GREAT

By Thomas Carlyle

BOOK XVI.--THE TEN YEARS OF PEACE.--1746-1756.

Chapter I.--SANS-SOUCI.

Friedrich has now climbed the heights, and sees himself on the upper
table-land of Victory and Success; his desperate life-and-death
struggles triumphantly ended. What may be ahead, nobody knows; but here
is fair outlook that his enemies and Austria itself have had enough of
him. No wringing of his Silesia from this "bad Man." Not to be overset,
this one, by never such exertions; oversets US, on the contrary, plunges
us heels-over-head into the ditch, so often as we like to apply to him;
nothing but heavy beatings, disastrous breaking of crowns, to be had
on trying there! "Five Victories!" as Voltaire keeps counting on his
fingers, with upturned eyes,--Mollwitz, Chotusitz, Striegau, Sohr,
Kesselsdorf (the last done by Anhalt; but omitting Hennersdorf, and
that sudden slitting of the big Saxon-Austrian Projects into a cloud of
feathers, as fine a feat as any),--"Five Victories!" counts Voltaire;
calling on everybody (or everybody but Friedrich himself, who is easily
sated with that kind of thing) to admire. In the world are many opinions
about Friedrich. In Austria, for instance, what an opinion; sinister,
gloomy in the extreme: or in England, which derives from Austria,--only
with additional dimness, and with gloomy new provocations of its own
before long! Many opinions about Friedrich, all dim enough: but this,
that he is a very demon for fighting, and the stoutest King walking the
Earth just now, may well be a universal one. A man better not be meddled
with, if he will be at peace, as he professes to wish being.