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