One thing was remarkable in that long war of seven years, which strained every nerve and taxed every energy of Prussia:  it was carried on by Frederic in hard cash.  He did not run in debt; he’ always had enough on hand in coin to pay for all expenses.  But then his subjects were most severely taxed, and the soldiers were poorly paid.  If the same economy he used in that war of seven years had been exercised by our Government in its late war, we should not have had any national debt at all at the close of the war, although we probably should have suspended specie payments.

It would not be easy or interesting to attempt to compress the details of a long war of seven years in a single lecture.  The records of war have great uniformity,—­devastation, taxes, suffering, loss of life and of property (except by the speculators and government agents), the flight of literature, general demoralization, the lowering of the tone of moral feeling, the ascendency of unscrupulous men, the exaltation of military talents, general grief at the loss of friends, fiendish exultation over victories alternated with depressing despondency in view of defeats, the impoverishment of a nation on the whole, and the sickening conviction, which fastens on the mind after the first excitement is over, of a great waste of life and property for which there is no return, and which sometimes a whole generation cannot restore.  Nothing is so dearly purchased as the laurels of the battlefield; nothing is so great a delusion and folly as military glory to the eye of a Christian or philosopher.  It is purchased by the tears and blood of millions, and is rebuked by all that is grand in human progress.  Only degraded and demoralized peoples can ever rejoice in war; and when it is not undertaken for a great necessity, it fills the world with bitter imprecations.  It is cruel and hard and unjust in its nature, and utterly antagonistic to civilization.  Its greater evils are indeed overruled; Satan is ever rebuked and baffled by a benevolent Providence.  But war is always a curse and a calamity in its immediate results,—­and in its ultimate results also, unless waged in defence of some immortal cause.

It must be confessed, war is terribly exciting.  The eyes of the civilized world were concentrated on Frederic II. during this memorable period; and most people anticipated his overthrow.  They read everywhere of his marchings and counter-marchings, his sieges and battles, his hair-breadth escapes, and his renewed exertions, from the occupation of Saxony to the battle of Torgau.  In this war he was sometimes beaten, as at Kolin; but he gained three memorable victories,—­one over the French, at Rossbach; the second, over the Austrians, at Luthen; and the third, over the Russians, at Zorndorf, the most bloody of all his battles.  And he gained these victories by outflanking, his attack being the form of a wedge,—­learned by the example of Epaminondas,—­a device which led to new