History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 13 by Thomas Carlyle

A day or two before that famous Audience of Hyndford and Robinson's, Neipperg had quitted his impregnable Camp at Neisse, and taken the field again; in the hope of perhaps helping Robinson's Negotiation by an inverse method. Should Robinson's offers not prove attractive enough, as is to be feared, a push from behind may have good effects. Neipperg intends to have a stroke on Breslau; to twitch Breslau out of Friedrich's hands, by a private manoeuvre on new resources that have offered themselves. [_ Helden-Geschichte,_ i. 982, and ii. 227.]

In Breslau, which is by great majority Protestant in creed and warmly Prussian in temper, there has been no oppression or unfair usage heard of to any class of persons; and certainly in the matter of Protestant and Catholic, there has been perfect equality observed. True, the change from favor and ascendency to mere equality, is not in itself welcome to human creatures: -- one conceives, for various reasons of lower and higher nature, a minority of discontented individuals in Breslau, zealous for their creed and old perquisites sacred and profane; who long in secret, sometimes vocally to one another, for the good old times, -- when souls were not liable to perish wholesale, and people guilty only of loyalty and orthodoxy to be turned out of their offices on suspicion. Friedrich says, it was mainly certain zealous Old Ladies of Quality who went into this adventure; and from whispering to one another, got into speaking, into meeting in one another's houses for the purpose of concerting and contriving. [_OEuvres,_ ii. 82, 83.] Zealous Old Ladies of Quality, -- these we consider were the Talking-Apparatus or Secret-Parliament of the thing: but it is certain one or two Official Gentlemen (Syndic Guzmar for instance, and others NOT yet become Ex-Official) had active hand in it, and furnished the practical ideas.