FORE: I suffer a thousand times more than I can tell you. Nevertheless, hope does not abandon me. I am obliged to finish. But I shall never cease to be, with the most profound respect, your
FORE:
FORE:486 Probably the reader will infer from the above letter that the king felt that the hour had come for him to die, and that he intended to resort to that most consummate act of folly and cowardicesuicide. He had always avowed this to be his intention in the last resort. He had urged his sister Wilhelmina to imitate his example in this respect, and not to survive the destruction of their house. Ruin now seemed inevitable. In the battle of Kunersdorf Frederick had lost, in killed and wounded, nineteen thousand men, including nearly all the officers of distinction, and also one hundred and sixty pieces of artillery. The remainder of his army was so dispersed that it could not be rallied to present any opposition to the foe.
THREE:In the following letter, which Frederick wrote at this time to his friend DArgens, he unbosoms his sorrows with unusual frankness. The letter was dated Breslau, March 1, 1759:
THREE:We approached, he writes, Marshal Neippergs army without being discovered by any one man living. His troops were then cantoned in three villages. But at that time I had not sufficient experience to know how to avail myself of such an opportunity. I ought immediately to have ordered two of my columns to surround the village of Mollwitz, and then to have attacked it. I ought at the same instant to have detached my dragoons with orders to have attacked the other two villages, which contained the Austrian cavalry. The infantry, which should have followed, would have prevented them from mounting. If I had proceeded in this way I am convinced that I should have totally destroyed the Austrian army.52
