THREE:On the 16th the battered, smouldering, blood-stained city was surrendered, with its garrison of sixteen thousand men. The prisoners of war were marched off to Fredericks strong places in the north. Prague was compelled to take the oath of allegiance to the emperor, and to pay a ransom of a million of dollars. Abundant stores of provision and ammunition were found in the city. It was a brilliant opening of the campaign.
THREE:Charles Albert, who took the title of the Emperor Charles VII., was the son of Maximilian, King of Bavaria, who was ruined at Blenheim, and who, being placed under the ban of the empire, lived for many years a pensioner upon the charity of Louis XIV. Charles was then but seven years of age, a prince by birth, yet homeless, friendless, and in poverty. With varying fortunes, he subsequently married a daughter of the Emperor Joseph. She was a cousin of Maria Theresa. Upon the death of his father in 1726, Charles Albert became King of Bavaria; but he was involved in debt beyond all hope of extrication. The intrigues of Frederick placed upon his wan and wasted brow the imperial crown of Germany. The coronation festivities took place at Frankfort, with great splendor, on the 12th of February, 1742.
THREE:Saturday night was very dark. A thick mist mantled the landscape. About midnight, the Russians, feigning an artillery attack upon a portion of the Prussian lines, commenced a retreat. Groping their way through the woods south of Zorndorf, they reached the great road to Landsberg, and retreated so rapidly that Frederick could annoy them but little. The case is this: I am treated in an unheard of manner by the king; and I know that there are terrible things in preparation against me touching certain letters which I wrote last winter, of which I believe you are informed. In a word, to speak frankly to you, the real, secret reason why the king will not consent to this marriage is, that he wishes to keep me on a low footing85 constantly, and to have the power of driving me mad whenever the whim takes him, throughout his life. Thus he will never give his consent.
TWO:The young prince had also become dissolute in life. The sacred110 volume denounced such a career as offensive to God, as sure to bring down upon the guilty prince the divine displeasure in this life, and, if unrepented of, in the life to come. No man who believes the Bible to be true can, with any comfort whatever, indulge in sin. The prince wished to indulge his passions without restraint. He therefore, thus living, found it to be a necessity to renounce that religion which arrayed against his sinful life all the terrors of the final judgment. A wicked life and true Christian faith can not live in peace together. The one or the other must be abandoned. Frederick chose to abandon Christian faith.
TWO:Others have made roads for us. We make them for posterity. But Christ has opened for us all a road to heaven.46