"
_SCENES FROM THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR._
[Illustration: SANS SOUCI, PALACE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.]
The story of Frederick the Great is a story of incessant wars, wars
against frightful odds, for all Europe was combined against him, and for
seven years the Austrians, the French, the Russians, and the Swedes
surrounded his realm, with the bitter determination to crush him, if not
to annihilate the Prussian kingdom. England alone was on his side.
Russia had joined the coalition through anger of the Empress Elizabeth
at Frederick's satire upon her licentious life; France had joined it
through hostility to England; Austria had organized it from indignation
at Frederick's lawless seizure of Silesia; the army raised to operate
against Prussia numbered several hundred thousand men.
For years Frederick fought them all single-handed, with a persistence,
an energy, and a resolute rising under the weight of defeat that
compelled the admiration even of his enemies, and in the end gave him
victory over them all. To the rigid discipline of his troops, his own
military genius, and his indomitable perseverance, he owed his final
success and his well-earned epithet of "The Great.
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