70 VOLTAIRE. 



in a condition of such weakness as exposed the royal 

 combatant of Machiavel's principles to an irresistible 

 temptation, and he made upon her province of Silesia 

 one of the most unprovoked and unjustifiable attacks 

 of which history has left any record. It is singular 

 enough that, in the history which he afterwards wrote 

 of the war, he in plain terms had stated as the cause 

 of it, his possessing a fine army, and great treasure, 

 which his father's recent death had left him, and his 

 inability to resist the temptation of her weakness. 

 Voltaire, on revising the work, struck this singular 

 passage out of it ; but, having kept a copy, he has given 

 it in his ' Memoirs.'* 



The favour which he was known to enjoy with 

 Frederick induced the French ministry, three years 

 after, to employ him in a secret mission, which he ap- 

 pears to have fulfilled with much success. He went 

 to Berlin under cover of visiting his royal and literary 

 correspondent, and obtained from him the assurance, 

 that a declaration of war by France against England, 

 then taking the Empress- Queen's part, would be fol- 



* The passage thus erased and thus preserved is extremely curious, 

 and for honesty or impudence has no parallel in the history of 

 warriors : 



" Que Ton joigne a ces considerations, des troupes toujours prates 

 d'agir, mon epargne bien remplie, et la vivacite de mon caractere, 

 c'etait les raisons que j'avais de faire la guerre a Marie Therese, 

 Reine de Bohemie et de Hongrie, 1'ambition, 1'interet, le desir de 

 faire parler de moi, I'importerent ; et la guerre fut resolue." (Mem. 

 238.) If every man who enters upon a voluntary war would speak 

 out, we should have the same commentary on the lives of all the 

 butchers who disgrace and afflict our species. Nothing, certainly, 

 can more eloquently describe their cold-blooded wickedness than 

 these words of Frederick. 



