such a life as mine.  Have pity on me and it; believe that I still keep to myself a great many evil things, not wishing to afflict or disgust anybody with them, and that I would not counsel you to fly these unlucky countries if I had any ray of hope; Adieu, mon cher!” It was well for him and for Prussia that he had strong allies in the dissensions and delays of his enemies.  But his cup was not yet full.  Dresden was taken from him, eight of his remaining generals and twelve thousand men were defeated and captured at Maxen, and “this infernal campaign,” as he calls it, closed in thick darkness.

“I wrap myself in my stoicism as best I can,” he writes to Voltaire.  “If you saw me you would hardly know me:  I am old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled.  If this goes on there will be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous men I know.  But you will not get a peace signed by my hand except on conditions honorable to my nation.  Your people, blown up with conceit and folly, may depend on this.”

The same stubborn conflict with overmastering odds, the same intrepid resolution, the same subtle strategy, the same skill in eluding the blow and lightning-like quickness in retorting it, marked Frederic’s campaign of 1760.  At Liegnitz three armies, each equal to his own, closed round him, and he put them all to flight.  While he was fighting in Silesia, the Allies marched upon Berlin, took it, and held it three days, but withdrew on his approach.  For him there was no peace.  “Why weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?” he wrote again to his faithful D’Argens.  “My spirits have forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved noble ones to whom my heart was bound.”  He had lost his mother and his devoted sister Wilhelmina.  “You as a follower of Epicurus put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic point of view.  I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my hand sign a humiliating peace.  Finish this campaign I will, resolved to dare all, to succeed, or find a glorious end.”  Then came the victory of Torgau, the last and one of the most desperate of his battles:  a success dearly bought, and bringing neither rest nor safety.  Once more he wrote to D’Argens:  “Adieu, dear Marquis; write to me sometimes.  Don’t forget a poor devil who curses his fatal existence ten times a day.”  “I live like a military monk.  Endless business, and a little consolation from my books.  I don’t know if I shall outlive this war, but if I do I am firmly resolved to pass the rest of my life in solitude in the bosom of philosophy and friendship.  Your nation, you see, is blinder than you thought.  These fools will lose their Canada and Pondicherry to please the Queen of Hungary and the Czarina.”