Note 314 — ADDRESS.
Reading edition
"Que l'on joigne à ces considérations des troupes toujours prêtes d'agir, mon épargne bien remplie, et la vivacité de mon caractère: c'étaient les raisons que j'avais de faire la guerre à Marie-Thérèse, reine de Bohême et d'Hongrie." These are the very words of Frederick, deliberately written in his own account of the war. Voltaire, on revising the work, dishonestly struck out this important confession, but preserved a copy, which afterwards appeared in his own Memoirs. Lord Brougham, in his sketch of Voltaire, says that "the passage thus erased and thus preserved is extremely curious, and for honesty or impudence has no parallel in the history of warriors."—Brougham, Lives of Men of Letters, Voltaire, p. 59.