ONE:
FORE:During this time, in May, the king wrote a very bitter and satirical ode against Louis XV.the plaything of the Pompadour, polluted with his amours, and disgracefully surrendering the government of his realms to chance. The ode he sent to Voltaire. The unprincipled poet, apprehending that the ode might come to light, and that he might be implicated, treacherously sent it to the prime minister, the Duke De Choiseul, to be shown to the king. At the same time, he wrote to Frederick that he had burned the ode. In the account which Voltaire himself gives of this disgraceful transaction, he writes:Never mind, said the king; it is a cheap price to pay for escaping an attack from Pandours in the rear, while such a battle was raging in front.
FORE:We have been unfortunate, my dear marquis, but not by my fault. The victory was ours, and would even have been a complete one, when our infantry lost patience, and at the wrong moment abandoned the field of battle. The Russian infantry is almost totally destroyed. Of my own wrecks, all that I have been able to assemble amounts to thirty-two thousand men. With these I am pushing on to throw myself across the enemys road, and either perish or save the capital. This is not what you will call a deficiency of resolution.