At this juncture, however, it would have been well for Prussia if her King’s activity had been less superhuman. Flushed with the triumph of his strategy and confident of the devotion of Pitt, he had the audacity to demand that compensation for Prussia should be the basis of negotiation for peace. During the greater part of October, 1759, he was tormented by gout and fever. He spent his enforced leisure in writing an essay on Charles XII., the Madman of the North, a warrior who would have prized the bloody afternoon of Kunersdorf far more than the strategy which drove Soltykoff empty-handed from Silesia. Then, when the Russian peril had vanished, Frederick set out in a litter for Saxony. “I am very weak, but although still a cripple, I will do all that my feebleness allows me to attempt,” he wrote on November 4th. His heart beat high with the hope of repeating the miracles of 1757, and of regaining, by a new Leuthen, all that had been lost during the summer, and peace. “I make them carry me like the relics of a saint,” wrote the King after the first day’s journey. Though sleepless and crippled, he concocted daily bulletins to Prince Henry in the spirit of a schoolboy. Since it had been noised abroad that Daun had received the papal benediction he had more than ever been the butt of Frederick’s jests. Now, to create “a favourable impression on the mind of the blessed creature and his council,” he bids his brother announce his little escort as 4000 strong, and sends a list of the regiments of which it may be said to consist. “Daun and his Austrians shall not perceive that I have the gout,” he boasted. Two days later, on November 14th, he took over the command. Pleased that Daun paid him the compliment of retreating, he ordered Finck to pursue. All the general’s objections were overruled, and he took refuge in wooden obedience to the letter of the King’s orders. “In a few days,” Frederick wrote on the 17th, “we shall reap the fruit of this disposition.” In four the royal prophecy was fulfilled, but the harvester was Daun. Finck’s command, some 15,000 strong, with seventy guns, was entangled in the hills south of Dresden. Believing themselves to be surrounded by thrice their number, the Prussians laid down their arms at Maxen (November 21, 1759).