Chapter 11:
Progress of the war in Europe.1779.
Frederic of Prussia had raised the hope that heChap. XI.} 1779. |
1778. |
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would follow France in recognising the independence of the United States; but the question of the Bavarian succession, of which the just solution also affected the cause of human progress, compelled him to stand forth as the protector of his own dominions against mortal danger, and as the champion of Germany; so that in his late old age, broken as he was in everything but spirit, he joined with Saxony to stay the aggressions of Austria on Bavarian territory. ‘At this moment,’ wrote he to his envoys, ‘the affairs of England with her colonies disappear from my eyes.’
To William Lee, who in March, 1778, im-
portuned his minister Schulenburg for leave to reside at Berlin as an American functionary, he minuted this answer: ‘We are so occupied with Germany that we cannot think of the Americans: we should be heartily glad to recognise them; but at this present ’
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1874.
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