



Produced by D.R. Thompson





HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II OF PRUSSIA,  Volume 14

by Thomas Carlyle




BOOK XIV.--THE SURROUNDING EUROPEAN WAR DOES NOT END.--August,
1742-July, 1744.




Chapter I.--FRIEDRICH RESUMES HIS PEACEABLE PURSUITS.

Friedrich's own Peace being made on such terms, his wish and hope was,
that it might soon be followed by a general European one; that, the
live-coal, which had kindled this War, being quenched, the War itself
might go out. Silesia is his; farther interest in the Controversy,
except that it would end itself in some fair manner, he has none.
"Silesia being settled," think many, thinks Friedrich for one, "what
else of real and solid is there to settle?"

The European Public, or benevolent individuals of it everywhere,
indulged also in this hope. "How glorious is my King, the youngest
of the Kings and the grandest!" exclaims Voltaire (in his Letters
to Friedrich, at this time), and re-exclaims, till Friedrich has to
interfere, and politely stop it: "A King who carries in the one hand an
all-conquering sword, but in the other a blessed olive-branch, and
is the Arbiter of Europe for Peace or War!" "Friedrich the THIRD [so
Voltaire calls him, counting ill, or misled by ignorance of German
nomenclature], Friedrich the Third, I mean Friedrich the Great (FREDERIC
LE GRAND)," will do this, and do that;--probably the first emergence of
that epithet in human speech, as yet in a quite private hypothetic way.
[Letters of Voltaire, in _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxii. 100, &c.: this
last Letter is of date "July