INHABITANTS OF SAXONY OPPRESSED.

The variety of fortune which the king of Prussia experienced in the course of this campaign was very remarkable; but the spirit of his conduct, and the rapidity of his motions, were altogether without example. In the former campaign we were dazzled with the lustre of his victories; in this we admire his fortitude and skill in stemming the different torrents of adversity, and rising superior to his evil fortune. One can hardly without astonishment recollect, that in the course of a few months he invaded Moravia, invested Olmutz, and was obliged to relinquish that design, that he marched through an enemy’s country, in the face of a great army, which, though it harassed him in his retreat, could not, in a route of an hundred miles, obtain any advantage over him; that in spite of his disaster at Olmutz, and the difficulties of such a march, he penetrated into Bohemia, drove the enemy from Koningsgratz, executed another dangerous and fatiguing march to the Oder, defeated a great army of Russians, and returned by the way of Saxony, from whence he drove the Austrian and Imperial armies; that after his defeat at Hochkirchen, where he lost two of his best generals, and was obliged to leave his tents standing, he baffled the vigilance and superior number of the victorious army, rushed like a whirlwind to the relief of Silesia, invaded by an Austrian army, which he compelled to retire with precipitation from that province; that, with the same rapidity of motion, he wheeled about to Saxony, and once more rescued it from the hands of his adversaries; that in one campaign he made twice the circuit of his dominions, relieved them all in their turns, and kept all his possessions entire against the united efforts of numerous armies, conducted by generals of consummate skill and undaunted resolution. His character would have been still more complete, if his moderation had been equal to his courage; but in this particular we cannot applaud his conduct. Incensed by the persecuting spirit of his enemies, he wrecked his vengeance on those who had done him no injury; and the cruelties which the Russians had committed in his dominions were retaliated upon the unfortunate inhabitants of Saxony. In the latter end of September, the president of the Prussian military directory sent a letter to the magistrates of Leipsic, requiring them, in the king’s name, to pay a new contribution of six hundred thousand crowns, and to begin immediately with the payment of one-third part, on pain of military execution. In answer to this demand, the magistrates represented that the city having been exhausted by the enormous contributions already raised, was absolutely incapable of furnishing further supplies; that the trade was stagnated and ruined, and the inhabitants so impoverished, that they could no longer pay the ordinary taxes. This remonstrance made no impression. At five in the morning the Prussian soldiers assembled, and were posted in all the streets, squares, market-places, cemeteries, towers, and steeples; then the gates being shut, in order to exclude the populace of the suburbs from the city, the senators were brought into the town-hall, and accosted by general Hauss, who told them, the king his master would have money; and, if they refused to part with it, the city should be plundered. To this peremptory address they replied to this effect:—“We have no more money,—we have nothing left but life; and we recommend ourselves to the king’s mercy.” In consequence of this declaration, dispositions were made for giving up the city to be plundered. Cannon were planted in all the streets, the inhabitants were ordered to remain within doors, and every house resounded with dismal cries and lamentations. The dreaded pillage, however, was converted into a regular exaction. A party of soldiers, commanded by a subaltern, went from house to house, signifying to every burgher, that he should produce all his specie, on pain of immediate pillage and massacre; and every inhabitant delivered up his all without further hesitation. About six in the evening, the soldiers returned to their quarters; but the magistrates were detained in confinement, and all the citizens were overwhelmed with grief and consternation. Happy Britain, who knowest such grievances only by report! When the king of Prussia first entered Saxony, at the beginning of the war, he declared he had no design to make a conquest of that electorate, but only to keep it as a depositum for the security of his own dominions, until he could oblige his enemies to acquiesce in reasonable terms of peace; but upon his last arrival at Dresden he adopted a new resolution. In the beginning of December, the Prussian directory of war issued a decree to the deputies of the states of the electorate, demanding a certain quantity of flour and forage, according to the convention formerly settled; at the same time signifying, that though the king of Prussia had hitherto treated the electorate as a country taken under his special protection, the face of affairs was now changed in such a manner, that for the future he would consider it in no other light than that of a conquered country. The Russians had seized in Prussia all the estates and effects belonging to the king’s officers: a retaliation was now made upon the effects of the Saxon officers, who served in the Russian army. Seals were put on all the cabinets containing papers belonging to the privy-counsellors of his Polish majesty, and they themselves ordered to depart for Warsaw at a very short warning. Though the city had been impoverished by former exactions, and very lately subjected to military execution, the king of Prussia demanded fresh contributions, and even extorted them by dint of severities that shock humanity. He surrounded the exchange with soldiers, and confining the merchants to straw beds and naked apartments, obliged them to draw bills for very large sums on their foreign correspondents: a method of proceeding much more suitable to the despotism of a Persian sophi towards a conquered people who professed a different faith, than reconcileable to the character of a protestant prince towards a peaceable nation of brethren, with whom he was connected by the common ties of neighbourhood and religion. Even if they had acted as declared enemies, and been subdued with arms in their hands, the excesses of war on the side of the conqueror ought to have ceased with the hostilities of the conquered, who, by submitting to his sway, would have become his subjects, and in that capacity had a claim to his protection. To retaliate upon the Saxons, who had espoused no quarrel, the barbarities committed by the Russians, with whom he was actually at war; and to treat as a conquered province a neutral country, which his enemies had entered by violence, and been obliged to evacuate by force of arms, was a species of conduct founded on pretences which overturn all right, and confound all reason.