Five generals, by the common consent of men, stand forth pre-eminent in modern times for the magnitude of the achievements they have effected, and the splendour of the talents they have displayed—Eugene, Marlborough, Frederick, Napoleon, and Wellington. It is hard to say which appears the greatest, whether we regard the services they have rendered to their respective countries, or the durable impress their deeds have left on human affairs. All had difficulties the most serious to contend with, obstacles apparently insurmountable to overcome, and all proved in the end victorious over them. All have immortalized their names by exploits far exceeding those recorded of other men. All have left their effects durably imprinted in the subsequent fate of nations. The relative position of the European states, the preservation of public rights, the maintenance of the balance of power, the salvation of the weak from the grasp of the strong, has been mainly owing to their exertions. To their biography is attached not merely the fortune of the countries to which they belonged, but the general destinies of Europe, and through it of the human race.

To give a faithful picture, in a few pages, of such men, may seem a hopeless, and to their merits an invidious task. A brief summary of the chief actions of those of them to ordinary readers least known, is, however, indispensable to lay a foundation for their comparison with those whose deeds are as household words. It is not impossible to convey to those who are familiar with their exploits, a pleasing resumÈ of their leading features, and salient points of difference; to those who are not, to give some idea of the pleasure which their study is calculated to afford. Generals, like poets or painters, have certain leading characteristics which may be traced through all their achievements; a peculiar impress has been communicated by nature to their minds, which appears, not less than on the painter’s canvass or in the poet’s lines, in all their actions. As much as grandeur of conception distinguishes Homer, tenderness of feeling Virgil, and sublimity of thought Milton, does impetuous daring characterize Eugene, consummate generalship Marlborough, indomitable firmness Frederick, lofty genius Napoleon, unerring wisdom Wellington. Greatness in the military, as in every other art, is to be attained only by strong natural talents, perseveringly directed to one object, undistracted by other pursuits, undivided by inferior ambition. The men who have risen to the highest eminence in war, have done so by the exercise of faculties as great, and the force of genius as transcendent, as that which formed a Homer, a Bacon, or a Newton. Success doubtless commands the admiration of the multitude; military glory captivates the unthinking throng; but to those who know the military art, and can appreciate real merit, the chief ground for admiration of its great masters, is a sense of the difficulties, to most unknown, which they have overcome.

Prince Eugene, though belonging to the same age, often acting in the same army, and sometimes commanding alternately with Marlborough, was a general of an essentially different character. A descendant of the House of Savoy, born at Paris, in 1663, and originally destined for the church, he early evinced a repugnance for theological studies, and, instead of his breviary, was devouring in secret Plutarch’s lives of ancient heroes. His figure was slender, and his constitution at first weak; but these disadvantages, which caused Louis XIV. to refuse him a regiment, from an opinion that he was not equal to its duties, were soon overcome by the ardour of his mind. Immediately setting out for Vienna, he entered the imperial service; but he was still pursued by the enmity of Louvois, who procured from Louis a decree which pronounced sentence of banishment on all Frenchmen in the armies of foreign powers who should fail to return to their country. “I will re-enter France in spite of him,” said Eugene; and he was more than once as good as his word. His genius for war was not methodical or scientific like that of Turenne or Marlborough, nor essentially chivalrous like that of the Black Prince or the Great CondÉ. It was more akin to the terrible sweep of the Tartar chiefs; it savoured more of oriental daring. He was as prodigal of the blood of his soldiers as Napoleon; but, unlike him, he never failed to expose his own with equal readiness in the fight. He did not reserve his attack in person for the close of the affray, like the French Emperor, but was generally to be seen in the fire from the very outset. It was with difficulty he could be restrained from heading the first assault of grenadiers, or leading on the first charge of horse. His first distinguished command was in Italy, in 1691, and his abilities soon gave his kinsman, the Duke of Savoy, an ascendant there over the French. But it was at the great battle of Zenta, on the Teife, where he surprised and totally defeated Cara-Mustapha, at the head of 120,000 Turks, that his wonderful genius for war first shone forth in its full lustre. He there killed 20,000 of the enemy, drove 10,000 into the river, took their whole artillery and standards, and entirely dispersed their mighty array.

Like Nelson at Copenhagen, Eugene had gained this glorious victory by acting in opposition to his orders, which were positively to avoid a general engagement. This circumstance, joined to the envy excited by his unparalleled triumph, raised a storm at Court against the illustrious general, and led to his being deprived of his command, and even threatened with a court-martial. The public voice, however, at Vienna, loudly condemned such base ingratitude towards so great a benefactor to the imperial dominions: the want of his directing eye was speedily felt in the campaign with the Turks, and the Emperor was obliged to restore him to his command, which he, however, only agreed to accept on being given carte blanche for the conduct of the war. The peace of Carlowetz, in 1699, between the Imperialists and the Ottomans, soon after restored him to a pacific life, and the study of history, in which, above any other, he delighted. But on the breaking out of the war of the Succession, in 1701, he was restored to his military duties, and during two campaigns measured his strength, always with success, in the plains of Lombardy, with the scientific abilities of Marshal Catinat, and the learned experience of Marshal Villeroi, the latter of whom he made prisoner during a nocturnal attack on Cremona, in 1703. In 1704, he was transferred to the north of the Alps to unite with Marlborough in making head against the great army of Marshal Tallard, which was advancing, in so threatening a manner, through Bavaria; and he shared with the illustrious Englishman the glories of Blenheim, which at once delivered Germany, and hurled the French armies with disgrace behind the Rhine. Then commenced that steady friendship, and sincere and mutual regard, between these illustrious men, which continued unbroken till the time of their death, and is not the least honourable trait in the character of each. But the want of his protecting arm was long felt in Italy: the great abilities of the Duke de VendÔme had well-nigh counterbalanced there all the advantages of the allies in Germany; and the issue of the war in the plains of Piedmont continued doubtful till the glorious victory of Eugene, on the 7th Sept. 1706, when he stormed the French intrenchments around Turin, defended by eighty thousand men, at the head of thirty thousand only, and totally defeated Marshal Marsin and the Duke of Orleans, with such loss, that the French armies were speedily driven across the Alps.

Eugene was now received in the most flattering manner at Vienna: the lustre of his exploits had put to silence, if not to shame, the malignity of his enemies. “I have but one fault to find with you,” said the Emperor when he was first presented to him after his victory, “and that is that you expose yourself too much.” He was next placed at the head of the Imperial armies in Flanders; and shared with Marlborough in the conduct, as he did in the glories, of Oudenarde and Malplaquet. Intrusted with the command of the corps which besieged Lille, he was penetrated with the utmost admiration for Marshal Boufflers, and evinced the native generosity of his disposition, by the readiness with which he granted the most favourable terms to the illustrious besieged chief, who had with equal skill and valour conducted the defence. When the articles of capitulation proposed by Boufflers were placed before him, he said at once, without looking at them, “I will subscribe them at once: knowing well you would propose nothing unworthy of you and me.” The delicacy of his subsequent attentions to his noble prisoner evinced the sincerity of his admiration. When Marlborough’s influence at the English Court was sensibly declining, in 1711, he repaired to London, and exerted all his talents and address to bring the English council back to the common cause, and restore his great rival to his former ascendency with Queen Anne. When it was all in vain, and the English armies withdrew from the coalition, Eugene did all that skill and genius could achieve to make up for the great deficiency arising from the withdrawal of Marlborough and his gallant followers; and when it had become apparent that he was over-matched by the French armies, he was the first to counsel his Imperial master to conclude peace, which was done at Rastadt on the 6th March, 1714.

Great as had been the services then performed by Eugene for the Imperialists, they were outdone by those which he subsequently rendered in the wars with the Turks. In truth it was he who first effectually broke their power, and for ever delivered Europe from the sabres of the Osmanlis, by which it had been incessantly threatened for three hundred years. Intrusted with the command of the Austrian army in Hungary, sixty thousand strong, he gained at Peterwardin, in 1716, a complete victory over an hundred and fifty thousand Turks. This glorious success led him to resume the offensive, and in the following year he laid siege, with forty thousand men, to Belgrade, the great frontier fortress of Turkey, in presence of the whole strength of the Ottoman empire. The obstinate resistance of the Turks, as famous then, as they have ever since been, in the defence of fortified places, joined to the dysenteries and fevers usual on the marshy banks of the Danube in the autumnal months, soon reduced his effective force to twenty-five thousand men, while that of the enemy, by prodigious efforts, had been swelled to an hundred and fifty thousand around the besiegers’ lines, besides thirty thousand within the walls. Every thing presaged that Eugene was about to undergo the fate of Marshal Marsin twelve years before at Turin, and even his most experienced officers deemed a capitulation the only way of extricating them from their perilous situation. Eugene himself was attacked and seriously weakened by the prevailing dysentery: all seemed lost in the Austrian camp. It was in these circumstances, with this weakened and dispirited force, that he achieved one of the most glorious victories ever gained by the Cross over the Crescent. With admirable skill he collected his little army together, divided it into columns of attack, and though scarcely able to sit on horseback himself, led them to the assault of the Turkish intrenchments. The result was equal to the success of CÆsar over the Gauls at the blockade of Alesia, seventeen centuries before. The innumerable host of the Turks was totally defeated—all their artillery and baggage taken, and their troops entirely dispersed. Belgrade, immediately after, opened its gates, and has since remained, with some mutations of fortune, the great frontier bulwark of Europe against the Turks. The successes which he gained in the following campaign of 1718 were so decisive, that they entirely broke the Ottoman power; and he was preparing to march to Constantinople, when the treaty of Passarowitz put a period to his conquests, and gave a breathing time to the exhausted Ottoman empire.3

From this brief sketch of his exploits, it may readily be understood what was the character of Eugene as a general. He had none of the methodical prudence of Turenne, Marlborough, or Villars. His genius was entirely different: it was more akin to that of Napoleon, when he was reduced to counterbalance inferiority of numbers by superiority of skill. The immortal campaigns of 1796, in Italy, and of 1814, in Champagne, bear a strong resemblance to those of Eugene. Like the French Emperor, his strokes were rapid and forcible; his coup-d’oeil was at once quick and just; his activity indefatigable; his courage undaunted; his resources equal to any undertaking. He did not lay much stress on previous arrangements, and seldom attempted the extensive combinations which enabled Marlborough to command success; but dashed fearlessly on, trusting to his own resources to extricate him out of any difficulty—to his genius, in any circumstances, to command victory. Yet was this daring disposition not without peril. His audacity often bordered on rashness, his rapidity on haste; and he repeatedly brought his armies into situations all but desperate, and which, to a general of lesser capacity, unquestionably would have proved so. Yet in these difficulties no one could exceed him in the energy and vigour with which he extricated himself from the toils: and many of his greatest victories, particularly those of Turin and Belgrade, were gained under circumstances where even the boldest officers in his army had given him over for lost. He was prodigal of the blood of his soldiers, and, like Napoleon, indifferent to the sacrifices at which he purchased his successes; but he was still more lavish of his own, and never failed to share the hardships and dangers of the meanest of his followers. He was engaged in thirteen pitched battles, in all of which he fought like a common soldier. He was in consequence repeatedly, sometimes dangerously, wounded; and it was extraordinary “that his life escaped his reiterated perils.” He raised the Austrian monarchy by his triumphs to the very highest pitch of glory, and finally broke the power of the Turks, the most persevering and not the least formidable of its enemies. But the enterprises which his genius prompted the cabinet of Vienna to undertake, were beyond the strength of the hereditary states; and for nearly a century after, it achieved nothing worthy, either of its growing resources, or the military renown which he had spread around its annals.

Frederick II., surnamed the Great, with more justice than that title has elsewhere been applied in modern times, was born at Berlin on the 24th January, 1712. His education was as much neglected as ill-directed. Destined from early youth for the military profession, he was in the first instance subjected to a discipline so rigorous, that he conceived the utmost aversion for a career in which he was ultimately to shine with such eclat, and, as his only resource, threw himself with ardour into the study of French literature, for which he retained a strong predilection through the whole of his subsequent life. Unfortunately his education was almost entirely confined to that literature. That of his own country, since so illustrious, had not started into existence. Of Italian and Spanish he was ignorant. He could not read Greek; and with Latin his acquaintance was so imperfect, as to be of no practical service to him through life. To this unfortunate contraction of his education his limited taste in literature, in subsequent life, is chiefly to be ascribed. He at first was desirous of espousing an English princess; but his father, who was most imperious in his disposition, decided otherwise, and he was compelled, in 1733, to marry the Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick. This union, like most others contracted under restraint, proved unfortunate; and it did not give Frederick the blessing of an heir to the throne. Debarred from domestic enjoyments, the young prince took refuge with more eagerness than ever in literary pursuits; the chateau of Rhinsberg, which was his favourite abode, was styled by him in his transport the “Palace of the Muses;” and the greatest general and most hardy soldier of modern times spent some years of his youth in corresponding with Maupertuis, Voltaire, and other French philosophers, and in making indifferent verses and madrigals, which gave no token of any remarkable genius. He had already prepared for the press a book entitled “Refutation of the Prince of Machiavel,” when, in 1740, the death of his father called him to the throne, its duties, its dangers, and its ambition.

The philosophers were in transports, when they beheld “one of themselves,” as they styled him, elevated to a throne: they flattered themselves that he would continue his literary pursuits, and acknowledge their influence, when surrounded by the attractions, and wielding the patronage of the crown. They soon found their mistake. Frederick continued through life his literary tastes: he corresponded with Voltaire and the philosophers through all his campaigns: he made French verses, in his tent, after tracing out the plans of the battles of Leuthen and Rosbach. But his heart was in his kingdom: his ambition was set on its aggrandizement: his passion was war, by which alone it could be achieved. Without being discarded, the philosophers and madrigals were soon forgotten. The finances and the army occupied his whole attention. The former were in admirable order, and his father had even accumulated a large treasure which remained in the exchequer. The army, admirably equipped and disciplined, already amounted to 60,000 men: he augmented it to 80,000. Nothing could exceed the vigour he displayed in every department, or the unceasing attention he paid to public affairs. Indefatigable day and night, sober and temperate in his habits, he employed even artificial means to augment the time during the day he could devote to business. Finding that he was constitutionally inclined to more sleep than he deemed consistent with the full discharge of all his regal duties, he ordered his servants to waken him at five in the morning; and if words were not effectual to rouse him from his sleep, he commanded them, on pain of dismissal, to apply linen steeped in cold water to his person. This order was punctually executed, even in the depth of winter, till nature was fairly subdued, and the king had gained the time he desired from his slumbers.

It was not long before he had an opportunity of evincing at once the vigour and unscrupulous character of his mind. The Emperor Charles VI. having died on the 20th October, 1740, the immense possessions of the house of Austria devolved to his daughter, since so famous by the name of Maria Theresa. The defenceless condition of the imperial dominions, consisting of so many different and discordant states, some of them but recently united under one head, when under the guidance of a young unmarried princess, suggested to the neighbouring powers the idea of a partition. Frederick eagerly united with France in this project. He revived some old and obsolete claims of Prussia to Silesia; but in his manifesto to the European powers, upon invading that province, he was scarcely at the pains to conceal the real motives of his aggression. “It is,” said he, “an army ready to take the field, treasures long accumulated, and perhaps the desire to acquire glory.” He was not long in winning the battle, though it was at first rather owing to the skill of his generals, and discipline of his soldiers, than his own capacity. On the 10th April, 1741, the army under his command gained a complete victory over the Austrians, at Mollwitz, in Silesia, which led to the entire reduction of that rich and important province. The king owed little to his own courage, however, on this occasion. Like Wellington, the first essay in arms of so indomitable a hero was unfortunate. He fled from the field of battle, at the first repulse of his cavalry; and he was already seven miles off, where he was resting in a mill, when he received intelligence that his troops had regained the day; and at the earnest entreaties of General afterwards Marshal Schwerin, he returned to take the command of the army. Next year, however, he evinced equal courage and capacity in the battle of Czaslau, which he gained over the Prince of Lorraine. Austria, on the brink of ruin, hastened to disarm the most formidable of her assailants; and, by a separate peace, concluded at Breslau on June 11, 1742, she ceded to Prussia nearly the whole of Silesia.

This cruel loss, however, was too plainly the result of necessity to be acquiesced in without a struggle by the Cabinet of Vienna. Maria Theresa made no secret of her determination to resume possession of the lost province on the first convenient opportunity. Austria soon united the whole of Germany in a league against Frederick, who had no ally but the King of France. Assailed by such a host of enemies, however, the young king was not discouraged, and, boldly assuming the initiative, he gained at Hohenfriedberg a complete victory over his old antagonist the Prince of Lorraine. This triumph was won entirely by the extraordinary genius displayed by the King of Prussia: “It was one of those battles,” says the military historian, Guibert, “where a great master makes every thing give way before him, and which is gained from the very beginning, because he never gives the enemy time to recover from their disorder.” The Austrians made great exertions to repair the consequences of this disaster, and with such success, that in four months Prince Charles of Lorraine again attacked him at the head of 50,000 men near Soor. Frederick had not 25,000, but with these he again defeated the Austrians with immense loss, and took up his winter quarters in Silesia. So vast were the resources, however, of the great German League, of which Austria was the head, that they were enabled to keep the field during winter, and even meditate a coup-de-main against the king, in his capital of Berlin. Informed of this design, Frederick lost not a moment in anticipating it by a sudden attack on his part on his enemies. Assembling his troops in the depth of winter with perfect secrecy, he surprised a large body of Saxons at Naumberg, made himself master of their magazines at Gorlitz, and soon after made his triumphant entry into Dresden, where he dictated a glorious peace, on 25th December, 1745, to his enemies, which secured, permanently, Silesia to Prussia. It was full time for the Imperialists to come to an accommodation. In eighteen months Frederick had defeated them in four pitched battles, besides several combats; taken 45,000 prisoners, and killed or wounded an equal number of his enemies. His own armies had not sustained losses to a fifth part of this amount, and the chasms in his ranks were more than compensated by the multitude of the prisoners who enlisted under his banners, anxious to share the fortunes of the hero who had already filled Europe with his renown.

The ambitious and decided, and, above all, indomitable character of Frederick, had already become conspicuous during these brief campaigns. His correspondence, all conducted by himself, evinced a vigour and tranchant style, at that period unknown in European diplomacy, but to which the world has since been abundantly accustomed in the proclamations of Napoleon. Already he spoke on every occasion as the hero and the conqueror—to conquer or die was his invariable maxim. On the eve of his invasion of Saxony, he wrote to the Empress of Russia, who was endeavouring to dissuade him from that design:—“I wish nothing from the King of Poland (Elector of Saxony) but to punish him in his Electorate, and make him sign an acknowledgment of repentance in his capital.” During the negotiations for peace, he wrote to the King of England, who had proposed the mediation of Great Britain:—“These are my conditions. I will perish with my army before departing from one iota of them: if the Empress does not accept them, I will rise in my demands.”

The peace of Dresden lasted ten years; and these were of inestimable importance to Frederick. He employed that precious interval in consolidating his conquests, securing the affections by protecting the interests of his subjects, and pursuing every design which could conduce to their welfare. Marshes were drained, lands broken up and cultivated, manufactures established, the finances were put in the best order, agriculture, as the great staple of the kingdom, sedulously encouraged. His capital was embellished, and the fame of his exploits attracted the greatest and most celebrated men in Europe. Voltaire, among the rest, became for years his guest; but the aspiring genius and irascible temper of the military monarch could ill accord with the vanity and insatiable thirst for praise in the French author, and they parted with mutual respect, but irretrievable alienation. Meanwhile, the strength of the monarchy was daily increasing under Frederick’s wise and provident administration. The population nearly reached 6,000,000 of souls; the cavalry mustered 30,000, all in the highest state of discipline and equipment; and the infantry, esteemed with reason the most perfect in Europe, numbered an hundred and twenty thousand bayonets. These troops had long been accustomed to act together in large bodies; the best training next to actual service in the field which an army can receive. They had need of all their skill, and discipline, and courage, for Prussia was ere long threatened by the most formidable confederacy that ever yet had been directed in modern times against a single State. Austria, Russia, France, Sweden, and Saxony, united in alliance for the purpose of partitioning the Prussian territories. They had ninety millions of men in their dominions, and could with ease bring four hundred thousand men into the field. Prussia had not six million of inhabitants, who were strained to the uttermost to array a hundred and fifty thousand combatants—and even with the aid of England and Hanover, not more than fifty thousand auxiliaries could be relied on. Prussia had neither strong fortresses like Flanders, nor mountain chains like Spain, nor a frontier stream like France. It was chiefly composed of flat plains, unprotected by great rivers, and surrounded on all sides by its enemies. The contest seemed utterly desperate; there did not seem a chance of escape for the Prussian monarchy.

Frederick began the contest by one of those strokes which demonstrated the strength of his understanding and the vigour of his determination. Instead of waiting to be attacked, he carried the war at once into the enemy’s territories, and converted the resources of the nearest of them to his own advantage. Having received authentic intelligence of the signature of a treaty for the partition of his kingdom by the great powers, on 9th May 1756, he suddenly entered the Saxon territories, made himself master of Dresden, and shut up the whole forces of Saxony in the intrenched camp at Pirna. Marshal Brown having advanced at the head of 60,000 men to relieve them, he encountered and totally defeated him at Lowositz, with the loss of 15,000 men. Deprived of all hope of succour, the Saxons in Pirna, after having made vain efforts to escape, were obliged to lay down their arms, 14,000 strong. The whole of Saxony submitted to the victor, who thenceforward, during the whole war, converted its entire resources to his own support. Beyond all question, it was this masterly and successful stroke, in the very outset, and in the teeth of his enemies, adding above a third to his warlike resources, which enabled him subsequently to maintain his ground against the desperate odds by which he was assailed. Most of the Saxons taken at Pirna, dazzled by their conqueror’s fame, entered his service: the Saxon youth hastened in crowds to enrol themselves under the banners of the hero of the North of Germany. Frederick, at the same time, effectually vindicated the step he had taken in the eyes of all Europe, by the publication of the secret treaty of partition, taken in the archives at Dresden, in spite of the efforts of the electress to conceal it. Whatever might have been the case in the former war, when he seized on Silesia, it was apparent to the world, that he now, at least, was strictly in the right, and that his invasion of Saxony was not less justifiable on the score of public morality, than important in its consequences to the great contest in which he was engaged.

The allies made the utmost efforts to regain the advantages they had lost. France, instead of the 24,000 men she was bound to furnish by the treaty of partition, put 100,000 on foot; the Diet of Ratisbon placed 60,000 troops of the empire at the disposal of Austria; but Frederick still preserved the ascendant. Breaking into Bohemia, in March 1757, he defeated the Austrians in a great battle under the walls of Prague, shut up 40,000 of their best troops in that town, and soon reduced them to such extremities, that it was evident, if not succoured, they must surrender. The cabinet of Vienna made the greatest efforts for their relief Marshal Daun, whose cautious and scientific policy were peculiarly calculated to thwart the designs, and baffle the audacity of his youthful antagonist, advanced at the head of 60,000 men to their relief. Frederick advanced to meet them with less than 20,000 combatants. He attacked the Imperialists in a strong position at Kolin, on the 18th July, and, for the first time in his life, met with a bloody defeat. His army, especially that division commanded by his brother, the prince-royal, sustained severe losses in the retreat, which became unavoidable, out of Bohemia; and the king confessed, in his private correspondence, that an honourable death alone remained to him. Disaster accumulated on every side. The English and Hanoverian army, his only allies, capitulated at Closterseven, and left the French army, 70,000 strong, at liberty to follow the Prussians; the French and troops of the empire, with the Duke of Richelieu at their head, menaced Magdeburg, where the royal family of Prussia had taken refuge; and advanced towards Dresden. The Russians, 60,000 strong, were making serious progress on the side of Poland, and had recently defeated the Prussians opposed to them. The king was put to the ban of the empire, and the army of the empire, mustering 40,000, was moving against him. Four huge armies, each stronger than his own, were advancing to crush a prince who could not collect 30,000 men round his banners. At that period he carried a sure poison always with him, determined not to fall alive into the hands of his enemies. He seriously contemplated suicide, and gave vent to the mournful, but yet heroic, sentiments with which he was inspired, in a letter to Voltaire, terminating with the lines—

Then it was that the astonishing vigour and powers of his mind shone forth with their full lustre. Collecting hastily 25,000 men out of his shattered battalions, he marched against the Prince of Soubise, who, at the head of 60,000 French and troops of the empire, was advancing against him through Thuringia, and totally defeated him, with the loss of 18,000 men, on the memorable field of Rosbach. Hardly was this triumph achieved, when he was called, with his indefatigable followers, to stem the progress of the Prince of Lorraine and Marshal Daun, who were making the most alarming progress in Silesia. Schweidnitz, its capital, had fallen: a large body of Prussians, under the Duke de Bevorn, had been defeated at Breslau. That rich and important province seemed on the point of falling again into the hands of the Austrians, when Frederick reinstated his affairs, which seemed wholly desperate, by one of those astonishing strokes which distinguish him, perhaps, above any general of modern times. In the depth of winter he attacked, at Leuthen, on the 5th December, 1757, Marshal Daun and the Prince of Lorraine,—who had 60,000 admirable troops under their orders,—and, by the skilful application of the oblique method of attack, defeated them entirely, with the loss of 30,000 men, of whom 18,000 were prisoners! It was the greatest victory that had been gained in Europe since the battle of Blenheim. Its effects were immense: the Austrians were driven headlong out of Silesia; Schweidnitz was regained; the King of Prussia, pursuing them, carried the war into Moravia, and laid siege to Olmutz; and England, awakening, at the voice of Chatham, from its unworthy slumber, refused to ratify the capitulation of Closterseven, resumed the war on the continent with more vigour than ever, and intrusted its direction to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, who soon rivalled Turenne in the skill and science of his methodical warfare.

But it was the destiny of the King of Prussia—a destiny which displayed his great qualities in their full lustre—to be perpetually involved in difficulties, from the enormous numerical preponderance of his enemies, or the misfortunes of the lieutenants to whom his subordinate armies were intrusted. Frederick could not be personally present every where at the same time; and wherever he was absent, disaster revealed the overwhelming superiority of the force by which he was assailed. The siege of Olmutz, commenced in March 1758, proved unfortunate. The battering train, at the disposal of the king, was unequal to its reduction, and it became necessary to raise it on the approach of Daun with a formidable Austrian army. During this unsuccessful irruption into the south, the Russians had been making alarming progress in the north-east, where the feeble force opposed to them was well-nigh overwhelmed by their enormous superiority of numbers. Frederick led back the flower of his army from Olmutz, in Moravia, crossed all Silesia and Prussia, and encountered the sturdy barbarians at Zorndorf, defeating them with the loss of 17,000 men, an advantage which delivered the eastern provinces of the monarchy from this formidable invasion; dearly purchased, however, by the sacrifice of 10,000 of his own best soldiers. But, during the king’s absence, Prince Henry of Prussia, whom he had left in command of 16,000 men, to keep Marshal Daun in check, was well-nigh overwhelmed by that able commander, who was again at the head of 50,000 combatants. Frederick flew back to his support, and, having joined his brother, took post at Hohenkirchen. The position was unfavourable: the army inferior to the enemy. “If Daun does not attack us here,” said Marshal Keith, “he deserves to be hanged.” “I hope,” answered Frederick, “he will be more afraid of us than the rope.” The Austrian veteran, however, saw his advantage, and attacked the Prussians, during the night, with such skill, that he threw them into momentary confusion, took 150 pieces of cannon, and drove them from their ground, with the loss of 7000 men. Then it was that the courage and genius of the king shone forth with their full lustre. Though grievously wounded in the conflict, and after having seen his best generals fall around him, he rallied his troops at daybreak,—formed them in good order behind the village which had been surprised, and led them leisurely to a position a mile from the field of conflict, where he offered battle to the enemy, who did not venture to accept it. Having remained two days in this position to re-organize his troops, he decamped, raised the siege of Niesse, and succeeded in taking up his winter quarters at Breslau, in the very middle of the province he had wrested from the enemy.

The campaign of 1759 was still more perilous to Frederick; but, if possible, it displayed his extraordinary talents in still brighter colours. He began by observing the Austrians, under Daun and the Prince of Lorraine, in Silesia, and reserved his strength to combat the Russians, who were advancing, 80,000 strong, through East Prussia. Frederick attacked them at Cunnersdorf, with 40,000 only, in an intrenched position, guarded by 200 pieces of cannon. The first onset of the Prussians was entirely successful: they forced the front line of the Russian intrenchment, and took 72 pieces of cannon. But the situation of the king was such, pressed on all sides by superior armies, that he could not stop short with ordinary success; and, in the attempt to gain a decisive victory, he had well-nigh lost all. The heroism of his troops was shattered against the strength of the second line of the Russians; a large body of Austrians came up to their support during the battle, and, after having exhausted all the resources of courage and genius, he was driven from the field with the loss of 20,000 men and all his artillery. The Russians lost 18,000 men in this terrible battle, the most bloody which had been fought for centuries in Europe, and were in no condition to follow up their victory. Other misfortunes, however, in appearance overwhelming, succeeded each other. General Schmellau capitulated in Dresden; and General Finch, with 17,000 men, was obliged to lay down his arms in the defiles of the Bohemian mountains. All seemed lost; but the king still persevered, and the victory of Minden enabled Prince Ferdinand to detach 12,000 men to his support. The Prussians nobly stood by their heroic sovereign in the hour of trial; new levies supplied the wide chasms in his ranks. Frederick’s great skill averted all future disasters, and the campaign of 1759, the fourth of the war, concluded with the king still in possession of all his dominions in the midst of the enormous forces of his enemies.

The campaign of 1760 began in March by another disaster at Landshech, where ten thousand Prussians were cut to pieces, under one of his generals, and the important fortress of Glatz invested by the Austrians. Frederick advanced to relieve it; but soon remeasured his steps to attempt the siege of Dresden. Daun, in his turn, followed him, and obliged the Prussian monarch to raise the siege; and he resumed his march into Silesia, closely followed by three armies, each more numerous than his own, under Laudon, Daun, and Lacey, without their being able to obtain the slightest advantage over him. Laudon, the most active of them, attempted to surprise him; but Frederick was aware of his design, and received the attacking columns in so masterly a manner, that they were totally defeated, with the loss of 12,000 men. Scarcely had he achieved this victory, when he had to make head against Lacey, withstand Daun, repel an enormous body of Russians, who were advancing through East Prussia, and deliver Berlin, which had been a second time occupied by his enemies. Driven to desperate measures by such an unparalleled succession of dangers, he extricated himself from them by the terrible battle and extraordinary victory of Torgau, on November 3, 1761, in which, after a dreadful struggle, he defeated Daun, though intrenched to the teeth, with the loss of 25,000 men—an advantage dearly purchased by the loss of 18,000 of his own brave soldiers. But this victory saved the Prussian monarchy: Daun, severely wounded in the battle, retired to Vienna; the army withdrew into Bohemia; two-thirds of Saxony was regained by the Prussians; the Russians and Swedes retired; Berlin was delivered from the enemy; and the fifth campaign terminated with the unconquerable monarch still in possession of nearly his whole dominions.

The military strength of Prussia was now all but exhausted by the unparalleled and heroic efforts she had made. Frederick has left us the following picture of the state of his kingdom and army at this disastrous period:—“Our condition at that period can only be likened to that of a man riddled with balls, weakened by the loss of blood, and ready to sink under the weight of his sufferings. The noblesse was exhausted, the lower people ruined; numbers of villages burnt, many towns destroyed; an entire anarchy had overturned the whole order and police of government: in a word, desolation was universal. The army was in no better situation. Seventeen pitched battles had mowed down the flower of the officers and soldiers; the regiments were broken down and composed in part of deserters and prisoners: order had disappeared and discipline relaxed to such a degree that the old infantry was little better than a body of newly-raised militia.”4 Necessity, not less than prudence, in these circumstances, which to any other man would have seemed desperate, prescribed a cautious defensive policy; and it is doubtful whether in it his greatness did not appear more conspicuous than in the bolder parts of his former career. The campaign of 1761 passed in skilful marches and countermarches, without his numerous enemies being able to obtain a single advantage, where the king commanded in person. He was now, literally speaking, assailed on all sides: the immense masses of the Austrians and Russians were converging to one point; and Frederick, who could not muster 40,000 men under his banners, found himself assailed by 120,000 allies, whom six campaigns had brought to perfection in the military art. It seemed impossible he could escape: yet he did so, and compelled his enemies to retire without gaining the slightest advantage over him. Taking post in an intrenched camp at Bunzelwitz, fortified with the utmost skill, defended with the utmost vigilance, he succeeded in maintaining himself and providing his troops for two months within cannon-shot of the enormous masses of the Russians and Austrians, till want of provisions obliged them to separate. “It has just come to this,” said Frederick, “who will starve first?” He made his enemies do so. Burning with shame, they were forced to retire to their respective territories, so that he was enabled to take up his winter quarters at Breslau in Silesia. But, during this astonishing struggle, disaster had accumulated in other quarters. His camp at Bunzelwitz had only been maintained by concentrating in it nearly the whole strength of the monarchy, and its more distant provinces suffered severely under the drain. Schweidnitz, the capital of Silesia, was surprised by the Austrians, with its garrison of 4000 men. Prince Henry, after the loss of Dresden, had the utmost difficulty in maintaining himself in the part of Saxony which still remained to the Prussians: in Silesia they had lost all but Glogau, Breslau, and Neiss; and, to complete his misfortune, the dismissal of Lord Chatham from office in England, had led to the stoppage of the wonted subsidy of £750,000 a-year. The resolution of the king did not sink, but his judgment almost despaired of success under such a complication of disasters. Determined not to yield, he discovered a conspiracy at his head-quarters, to seize him, and deliver him to his enemies. Dreading such a calamity more than death, he carried with him, as formerly in similar circumstances, a sure poison, intended, in the last extremity, to terminate his days.

“Nevertheless,” as he himself said, “affairs which seemed desperate, in reality were not so; and perseverance at length surmounted every peril.” Fortune often, in real life as well as in romance, favours the brave. In the case of Frederick, however, it would be unjust to say he was favoured by Fortune. On the contrary, she long proved adverse to him; and he recovered her smiles only by heroically persevering till the ordinary chance of human affairs turned in his favour. He accomplished what in serious cases is the great aim of medicine; he made the patient survive the disease. In the winter of 1761, the Empress of Russia died, and was succeeded by Peter III. That prince had long conceived the most ardent admiration for Frederick, and he manifested it in the most decisive manner on his accession to the throne, by not only withdrawing from the alliance, but uniting his forces with those of Prussia against Austria. This great event speedily changed the face of affairs. The united Prussians and Russians under Frederick, 70,000 strong, retook Schweidnitz in the face of Daun, who had only 60,000 men; and, although the sudden death of the Czar Peter in a few months deprived him of the aid of his powerful neighbours, yet Russia took no farther part in the contest. France, exhausted and defeated in every quarter of the globe by England, could render no aid to Austria, upon whom the whole weight of the contest fell. It was soon apparent that she was over-matched by the Prussian hero. Relieved from the load which had so long oppressed him, Frederick vigorously resumed the offensive. Silesia was wholly regained by the king in person: the battle of Freyberg gave his brother, Prince Henry, the ascendant in Saxony; and the cabinet of Vienna, seeing the contest hopeless, were glad to make peace at Hubertsbourg, on 15th February, 1763, on terms which left Silesia and his whole dominions to the King of Prussia.

He entered Berlin in triumph after six years’ absence, in an open chariot, with Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick seated by his side. No words can paint the enthusiasm of the spectators at the august spectacle, or the admiration with which they regarded the hero who had filled the world with his renown. It was no wonder they were proud of their sovereign. His like had never been seen in modern times. He had founded and saved a kingdom. He had conquered Europe in arms. With six millions of subjects he had vanquished powers possessing ninety millions. He had created a new era in the art of war. His people were exhausted, pillaged, ruined; their numbers had declined a tenth during the contest. But what then? They had come victorious out of a struggle unparalleled in modern times: the halo of Leuthen and Rosbach, of Zorndorf and Torgau, played round their bayonets; they were inspired with the energy which so speedily repairs any disaster. Frederick wisely and magnanimously laid aside the sword when he resumed the pacific sceptre. His subsequent reign was almost entirely pacific; all the wounds of war were speedily healed under his sage and beneficent administration. Before his death, his subjects were double, and the national wealth triple what it had been at the commencement of his reign: and Prussia now boasts of sixteen millions of inhabitants, and a population increasing faster in numbers and resources than any other state in Europe.

No laboured character, no studied eulogium, can paint Frederick like this brief and simple narrative of his exploits. It places him at once at the head of modern generals,—if Hannibal be excepted, perhaps of ancient and modern. He was not uniformly successful: on the contrary, he sustained several dreadful defeats. But that arose from the enormous superiority of force by which he was assailed, and the desperate state of his affairs, which were generally so pressing, that a respite even in one quarter could be obtained only by a victory instantly gained, under whatever circumstances, in another. What appears rashness was often in him the height of wisdom. He could protract the struggle only by strong and vigorous strokes and the lustre of instant success, and they could not be dealt out without risking receiving as many. The fact of his maintaining the struggle against such desperate odds proves the general wisdom of his policy. No man ever made more skilful use of an interior line of communication, or flew with such rapidity from one threatened part of his dominions to another. None ever, by the force of skill in tactics and sagacity in strategy, gained such astonishing successes with forces so inferior. And if some generals have committed fewer faults, none were impelled by such desperate circumstances to a hazardous course, and none had ever so much magnanimity in confessing and explaining them for the benefit of future times.

The only general in modern times who can bear a comparison with Frederick, if the difficulties of his situation are considered, is Napoleon. It is a part only of his campaigns, however, which sustains the analogy. There is no resemblance between the mighty conqueror pouring down the valley of the Danube, at the head of 180,000 men, invading Russia with 500,000, or overrunning Spain with 300,000, and Frederick the Great with 30,000 or 40,000, turning every way against quadruple the number of Austrians, French, Swedes, and Russians. Yet a part, and the most brilliant part of Napoleon’s career, bears a close resemblance to that of the Prussian hero. In Lombardy in 1796, in Saxony in 1813, and in the plains of Champaigne in 1814, he was upon the whole inferior in force to his opponents, and owed the superiority which he generally enjoyed on the point of attack to the rapidity of his movements, and the skill with which, like Frederick, he availed himself of an interior line of communication. His immortal campaign in France in 1814, in particular, where he bore up with 70,000 men against 250,000 enemies, bears the closest resemblance to those which Frederick sustained for six years against the forces of the Coalition. Rapidity of movement, skill in strategy, and the able use of an interior line of communication, were what enabled both to compensate a prodigious inferiority of force. Both were often to appearance rash, because the affairs of each were so desperate, that nothing could save them but an audacious policy. Both were indomitable in resolution, and preferred ruin and death to sitting down on a dishonoured throne. Both were from the outset of the struggle placed in circumstances apparently hopeless, and each succeeded in protracting it solely by his astonishing talent and resolution. The fate of the two was widely different: the one transmitted an honoured and aggrandized throne to his successors; the other, overthrown and discrowned, terminated his days on the rock of St. Helena. But success is not always the test of real merit: the verdict of ages is often different from the judgment of present times. Hannibal conquered, has left a greater name among men than Scipio victorious. In depth of thought, force of genius, variety of information, and splendour of success, Frederick will bear no comparison with Napoleon. But Frederick’s deeds as a general were more extraordinary than those of the French emperor, because he bore up longer against greater odds. It is the highest praise of Napoleon to say, that he did in one campaign—his last and greatest—what Frederick had done in six.

If the campaigns of Eugene and Frederick suggest a comparison with those of Napoleon, those of Marlborough challenge a parallel with those of the other great commander of our day—Wellington. Their political and military situations were in many respects alike. Both combated at the head of the forces of an alliance, composed of dissimilar nations, actuated by separate interests, inflamed by different passions. Both had the utmost difficulty in soothing their jealousies and stifling their selfishness; and both found themselves often more seriously impeded by the allied cabinets in their rear, than by the enemy’s forces in their front. Both were the generals of a nation, which, albeit covetous of military glory, and proud of warlike renown, is to the last degree impatient of previous preparation, and frets at the cost of wars, which its political position renders unavoidable, or its ambitious spirit had readily undertaken. Both were compelled to husband the blood of their soldiers, and spare the resources of their governments, from the consciousness that they had already been strained to the uttermost in the cause, and that any farther demands would render the war so unpopular as speedily to lead to its termination. The career of both occurred at a time when political passions were strongly roused in their country; when the war in which they were engaged was waged against the inclination, and, in appearance at least, against the interests of a large and powerful party at home, which sympathized from political feeling with their enemies, and were ready to decry every success and magnify every disaster of their own arms, from a secret feeling that their party elevation was identified rather with the successes of the enemy than with those of their own countrymen. The Tories were to Marlborough precisely what the Whigs were to Wellington. Both were opposed to the armies of the most powerful monarch, led by the most renowned generals of Europe, whose forces, preponderating over the adjoining states, had come to threaten the liberties of all Europe, and at length produced a general coalition to restrain the ambition from which so much detriment had already been experienced.

But while in these respects the two British heroes were placed very much in the same circumstances, in other particulars, not less material, their situations were widely different. Marlborough had never any difficulties approaching those which beset Wellington to struggle with. By great exertions, both on his own part and that of the British and Dutch governments, his force was generally equal to that with which he had to contend. It was often exactly so. War at that period, in the Low Countries at least, consisted chiefly of a single battle during a campaign, followed by the siege of two or three frontier fortresses. The number of strongholds with which the country bristled, rendered any farther or more extensive operations, in general, impossible. This state of matters at once rendered success more probable to a general of superior abilities, and made it more easy to repair disaster. No vehement passions had been roused, bringing whole nations into the field, and giving one state, where they had burnt the fiercest, a vast superiority in point of numbers over its more pacific or less excited neighbours. But in all these respects, the circumstances in which Wellington was placed, were not only not parallel—they were contrasted. From first to last, in the Peninsula, he was enormously outnumbered by the enemy. Until the campaign of 1813, when his force in the field was, for the first time, equal to that of the French, the superiority to which he was opposed was so prodigious, that the only surprising thing is, how he was not driven into the sea in the very first encounter.

While the French had never less than 200,000, sometimes as many as 260,000 effective troops at their disposal, after providing for all their garrisons and communications, the English general had never more than 30,000 effective British and 20,000 Portuguese around his standard. The French were directed by the Emperor, who, intent on the subjugation of the Peninsula, and wielding the inexhaustible powers of the conscription for the supply of his armies, cared not though he lost 100,000 men, so as he purchased success by their sacrifice in every campaign. Wellington was supported at home by a government, which, raising its soldiers by voluntary enrolment, could with difficulty supply a drain of 15,000 men a-year from their ranks, and watched by a party which decried every advantage, and magnified every disaster, in order to induce the entire withdrawal of the troops from the Peninsula. Napoleon sent into Spain a host of veterans trained in fifteen years’ combats, who had carried the French standards into every capital of Europe. Wellington led to this encounter troops admirably disciplined, indeed, but almost all unacquainted with actual war, and who had often to learn the rudiments even of the most necessary field operations in presence of the enemy. Marlborough’s troops, though heterogeneous and dissimilar, had been trained to their practical duties in the preceding wars under William III., and brought into the field a degree of experience noways inferior to that of their opponents. Whoever weighs with impartiality those different circumstances, cannot avoid arriving at the conclusion that as Wellington’s difficulties were incomparably more formidable than Marlborough’s, so his merit, in surmounting them, was proportionally greater.

Though similar in many respects, so far as the general conduct of their campaigns is concerned, from the necessity under which both laboured of husbanding the blood of their soldiers, the military qualities of England’s two chiefs were essentially different, and each possessed some points in which he was superior to the other. By nature Wellington was more daring than Marlborough, and though soon constrained, by necessity, to adopt a cautious system, he continued, throughout all his career, to incline more to a hazardous policy. The intrepid advance and fight at Assaye; the crossing of the Douro and movement on Talavera in 1809; the advance to Madrid and Burgos in 1812; the actions before Bayonne in 1813; the desperate stand made at Waterloo in 1815—place this beyond a doubt. Marlborough never hazarded so much on the success of a single enterprise: he ever aimed at compassing his objects by skill and combination, rather than risking them on the chance of arms. Wellington was a mixture of Turenne and Eugene: Marlborough was the perfection of the Turenne school alone. No man could fight more ably and gallantly than Marlborough: his talent and rapidity of eye in tactics were, at least, equal to his skill in strategy and previous combination. But he was not partial to such desperate passages at arms, and never resorted to them, but from necessity or the emergency of a happy opportunity for striking a blow. The proof of this is decisive. Marlborough, during ten campaigns, fought only five pitched battles. Wellington in seven fought fifteen, in every one of which he proved victorious.5

Marlborough’s consummate generalship, throughout his whole career, kept him out of disaster. It was said, with justice, that he never fought a battle which he did not gain, nor laid siege to a town which he did not take. He took above twenty fortified places of the first order, generally in presence of an enemy’s army superior to his own. Wellington’s bolder disposition, more frequently involved him in peril, and on some occasions caused serious losses to his army; but they were the price at which he purchased his transcendent successes. But Wellington’s bolder strategy gained for him advantages which the more circumspect measures of his predecessor never could have attained. Marlborough would never, with scarcely any artillery, have hazarded the attack on Burgos, nor incurred the perilous chances of the retreat from that town; but he never would have delivered the South of the Peninsula in a single campaign, by throwing himself, with 40,000 men, upon the communications, in the North, of 200,000. It is hard to say which was the greater general, if their merits in the field alone are considered; but Wellington’s successes were the more vital to his country, for they delivered it from the greater peril; and they were more honourable to himself, for they were achieved against greater odds. And his fame, in future times, will be proportionally brighter; for the final overthrow of Napoleon, and destruction of the revolutionary power, in a single battle, present an object of surpassing interest, to which there is nothing in history, perhaps, parallel, and which, to the latest generation, will fascinate the minds of men.

The examination of the comparative merits of these two illustrious generals, and the enumeration of the names of their glorious triumphs, suggests one reflection of a very peculiar kind. That England is a maritime power, that the spirit of her inhabitants is essentially nautical, and that the sea is the element on which her power has chiefly been developed, need be told to none who reflect on the magnitude of her present colonial empire, and how long she has wielded the empire of the waves. The French are the first to tell us that her strength is confined to that element; that she is, at land, only a third-rate power; and that the military career does not suit the genius of her people. How, then, has it happened that England, the nautical power, and little inured to land operations, has inflicted greater wounds upon France by military success, than any other power, and that in almost all the pitched battles which the two nations have fought, during five centuries, the English have proved victorious? That England’s military force is absorbed in the defence of a colonial empire which encircles the earth, is indeed certain, and, in every age, the impatience of taxation in her people has starved down her establishment, during peace, to so low a point, as rendered the occurrence of disaster, in the first years consequent on the breaking out of war, a matter of certainty; while the military spirit of its neighbours has kept theirs at the level which ensures early success. Yet with all these disadvantages, and with a population which, down to the close of the last war, was little more than half that of France, she has inflicted far greater land disasters on her redoubtable neighbour than all the military monarchies of Europe put together.

English armies, for 120 years, ravaged France: they have twice taken its capital; an English king was crowned at Paris; a French king rode captive through London; a French emperor died in English captivity, and his remains were surrendered by English generosity. Twice the English horse marched from Calais to the Pyrenees; the monuments of Napoleon in the French capital at this moment, owe their preservation from German revenge to an English general. All the great disasters and days of mourning for France, since the battle of Hastings,—Tenchebray, Cressy, Poitiers, Azincour, Verneuil, Blenheim, Oudenarde, Ramilies, Malplaquet, Minden, Quebec, Egypt, Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, Orthes, the Pyrenees, Waterloo,—were all gained by English generals, and won, for the most part, by English soldiers. Even at Fontenoy, the greatest victory over England of which France can boast since Hastings, every regiment in the French army was, on their own admission, routed by the terrible English column, and victory was snatched from its grasp solely by want of support on the part of the Dutch and Austrians. No coalition against France has ever been successful, in which England did not take a prominent part; none, in the end, failed of gaining its objects, in which she stood foremost in the fight. This fact is so apparent on the surface of history, that it is admitted by the ablest French historians, though they profess themselves unable to explain it.

Is it that there is a degree of hardihood and courage in the Anglo-Saxon race which renders them, without the benefit of previous experience in war, adequate to the conquest, on land, even of the most warlike Continental military nations? Is it that the quality of dogged resolution, determination not to be conquered, is of such value in war, that it compensates almost any degree of inferiority in the practical acquaintance with war? Is it that the North brings forth a bolder race of men than the South, and that, other things being equal, the people in a more rigorous climate will vanquish those in a more genial? Is it that the free spirit which, in every age, has distinguished the English people, has communicated a degree of vigour and resolution to their warlike operations, which has rendered them so often victorious in land fights, albeit nautical and commercial in their ideas, over their military neighbours? Or is it, that this courage in war, and this vigour in peace, and this passion for freedom at all times, arise from and are but symptoms of an ardent and aspiring disposition, imprinted by Nature on the races to whom was destined the dominion of half the globe? Experience has not yet determined to which of these causes this most extraordinary fact has been owing; but it is one upon which our military neighbours, and especially the French, would do well to ponder, now that the population of the British isles will, on the next census, be thirty millions. If England has done such things in Continental warfare, with an army which never brought fifty thousand native British sabres and bayonets into the field, what would be the result if national distress or necessities, or a change in the objects of general desire, were to send two hundred thousand?