February 5th, the trio at Hubertsburg got their Preliminaries signed. On the tenth day thereafter, the Treaty itself was signed and sealed. All other Treaties on the same subject had been guided towards a contemporary finis: England and France, ready since the 3d of November last, signed and ended February 10th. February 11th, the Reich signed and ended; February 15th, Prussia, Austria, Saxony; and the THIRD SILESIAN or SEVEN-YEARS WAR was completely finished. [Copy of the treaty in <italic> Helden-Geschichte, <end italic> vii. 624 et seq.; in Seyfarth, <italic> Beylagen, <end italic> iii. 479-495; in ROUSSET, in WENCK, in &c. &c.]
It had cost, in loss of human lives first of all, nobody can say what: according to Friedrich's computation, there had perished of actual fighters, on the various fields, of all the nations, 853,000; of which above the fifth part, or 180,000, is his own share: and, by misery and ravage, the general Population of Prussia finds itself 500,000 fewer; nearly the ninth man missing. This is the expenditure of Life. Other items are not worth enumerating, in comparison; if statistically given, you can find the most approved guesses at them by the same Head, who ought to be an authority.
[<italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic> v. 230-234; Preuss, iii. 349-351.] It was a War distinguished by--Archenholtz will tell you, with melodious emphasis, what a distinguished, great and thrice-greatest War it was. There have since been other far bigger Wars,--if size were a measure of greatness; which it by no means is! I believe there was excellent Heroism shown in this War, by persons I could name; by one person, Heroism really to be called superior, or, in its kind, almost of the rank of supreme;--and that in regard to the Military Arts and Virtues, it has as yet, for faculty and for performance, had no rival; nor is likely soon to have. The Prussians, as we once mentioned, still use it as their school-model in those respects. And we-- O readers, do not at least you and I thank God to have now done with it!--Of the Peace-Treaties at Hubertsburg, Paris and other places, it is not necessary that we say almost anything. They are to be found in innumerable Books, dreary to the mind; and of the 158 Articles to be counted there, not one could be interesting at present.
The substance of the whole lies now in Three Points, not mentioned or contemplated at all in those Documents, though repeatedly alluded to and intimated by us here.
The issue, as between Austria and Prussia, strives to be, in all points, simply AS-YOU-WERE; and, in all outward or tangible points, strictly is so. After such a tornado of strife as the civilized world had not witnessed since the Thirty-Years War.
Tornado springing doubtless from the regions called Infernal;and darkening the upper world from south to north, and from east to west for Seven Years long;--issuing in general AS-YOU-WERE!
Yes truly, the tornado was Infernal; but Heaven too had silently its purposes in it. Nor is the mere expenditure of men's diabolic rages, in mutual clash as of opposite electricities, with reduction to equipoise, and restoration of zero and repose again after seven years, the one or the principal result arrived at.
Inarticulately, little dreamt of at the time by any by-stander, the results, on survey from this distance, are visible as Threefold.
Let us name them one other time:--
1. There is no taking of Silesia from this man; no clipping of him down to the orthodox old limits; he and his Country have palpably outgrown these. Austria gives up the Problem: "We have lost Silesia!" Yes; and, what you hardly yet know,--and what, Iperceive, Friedrich himself still less knows,--Teutschland has found Prussia. Prussia, it seems, cannot be conquered by the whole world trying to do it; Prussia has gone through its Fire-Baptism, to the satisfaction of gods and men; and is a Nation henceforth.
In and of poor dislocated Teutschland, there is one of the Great Powers of the World henceforth; an actual Nation. And a Nation not grounding itself on extinct Traditions, Wiggeries, Papistries, Immaculate Conceptions; no, but on living Facts,--Facts of Arithmetic, Geometry, Gravitation, Martin Luther's Reformation, and what it really can believe in:--to the infinite advantage of said Nation and of poor Teutschland henceforth. To be a Nation; and to believe as you are convinced, instead of pretending to believe as you are bribed or bullied by the devils about you; what an advantage to parties concerned! If Prussia follow its star-- As it really tries to do, in spite of stumbling! For the sake of Germany, one hopes always Prussia will; and that it may get through its various Child-Diseases, without death: though it has had sad plunges and crises,--and is perhaps just now in one of its worst Influenzas, the Parliamentary-Eloquence or Ballot-Box Influenza!