Zisca Hill, where the Austrians now are, rises sheer up, of well-nigh precipitous steepness, though there are trees and grass on it, from the eastern side of Prag, say five or six hundred feet. A steep, picturesque, massive green Hill; Moldau River, turning suddenly to right, strikes the northwest corner of it (has flowed well to west of it, till then), and winds eastward round its northern base. As will be noticed presently. The ascent of Ziscaberg, by roads, is steep and tedious: but once at the top, you find that it is precipitous on two sides only, the City or westward side, and the Moldau or northward. Atop it spreads out, far and wide, into a waving upland level; bare of hedges; ploughable all of it, studded with littery hamlets and farmsteadings; far and wide, a kind of Plain, sloping with extreme gentleness, five or six miles to eastward, and as far to southward, before the level perceptibly rise again.
Another feature of the Ziscaberg, already hinted at, is very notable: that of the Moldau skirting its northern base, and scarping the Hill, on that side too, into a precipitous, or very steep condition. Moldau having arrived from southward, fairly past the end of Ziscaberg, had, so to speak, made up his mind to go right eastward, quarrying his way through the lower uplands there, And he proceeds accordingly, hugging the northern base of Ziscaberg, and making it steep enough; but finds, in the course of a mile or so, that he can no more; upland being still rock-built, not underminable farther; and so is obliged to wind round again, to northward, and finally straight westward, the way he came, or parallel to the way he came; and has effected that great Horse-shoe Hollow we heard of lately. An extremely pretty Hollow, and curious to look upon; pretty villas, gardens, and a "Belvedere Park," laid out in the bottom part; with green mountain-walls rising all round it, and a silver ring of river at the base of them: length of Horse-shoe, from heel to toe, or from west to east, is perhaps a mile; breadth, from heel to heel, perhaps half as much. Having arrived at his old distance to west, Moldau, like a repentant prodigal, and as if ashamed of his frolic, just over against the old point he swerved from, takes straight to northward again. Straight northward; and quarries out that fine narrow valley, or Quasi-Highland Strath, with its pleasant busy villages, where he turns the overshot machinery, and where Friedrich and his men had their pontoons swimming yesterday.
It is here, on this broad back of the Ziscaberg, that the Austrians now lie; looking northward over to the King, and trying cannon-shots upon him. There they have been encamping, and diligently intrenching themselves for four days past; diligent especially since yesterday, when they heard of Friedrich's crossing the River. Their groups of tents, and batteries at all the good points, stretch from near the crown of Ziscaberg, eastward to the Villages of Hlaupetin, Kyge, and their Lakes, near four miles; and rearward into the interior one knows not how far;Prince Karl, hardly awake yet, lies at Nussel, near the Moldau, near the Wischerad or southeastmost point of Prag; six good miles west-by-south of Kyge, at the other end of the diagonal line. About the same distance, right east from Nussel, and a mile or more to south of Kyge, over yonder, is a littery Farmstead named Sterbohol, which is not yet occupied by the Austrians, but will become very famous in their War-Annals, this day!
Where the Austrian Camp or various Tent-groups were, at the time Friedrich first cast eye on them, is no great concern of his or ours; inasmuch as, in two or three hours hence, the Austrians were obliged, rather suddenly, to take Order of Battle; and that, and not their camping, is the thing we are curious upon. Let us step across, and take some survey of that Austrian ground, which Friedrich is now surveying from the distance, fully intending that it shall be a battle-ground in few hours; and try to explain how the Austrians drew up on it, when they noticed the Prussian symptoms to become serious more and more. By nine in the morning,some two hours after Friedrich began his scanning, and the Austrian outposts their firing of stray cannon-shots on him,it is Battle-lines, not empty Tents (which there was not time to strike), that salute the eye over yonder.
From behind that verdant Horse-shoe Chasm we spoke of, buttressed by the inaccessible steeps, and the Moldau, double-folded in the form of Horse-shoe, all along the brow of that sloping expanse, stands (by 9 A.M. "foragers all suddenly called in") the Austrian front; the second line and the reserve, parallel to it, at good distances behind. Ranked there; say 65,000 regulars (Prussian force little short of the same), on the brow of Ziscaberg slope, some four miles long. Their right wing ends, in strong batteries, in intricate marshes, knolls, lakelets, between Hlaupetin and Kyge: the extreme of their left wing looks over on that Horse-shoe Hollow, where Moldau tried to dig his way, but could not and had to turn back. They have numerous redoubts, in front and in all the good places; and are busy with more, some of them just now getting finished, treble-quick, while the Prussians are seen under way. As many as sixty heavy cannon in battery up and down: of field-pieces they have a hundred and fifty. Excellent always with their Artillery, these Austrians; plenty of it, well-placed and well-served: thanks to Prince Lichtenstein's fine labors within these ten years past. [OEuvres de Frederic, (in several places); see Hormayr,? Lichtenstein.] The villages, the farmsteads, are occupied; every rising ground especially has its battery,Homoly Berg, Tabor Berg, "Mount of Tabor;" say KNOLL of Tabor (nothing like so high as Battersea Rise, hardly even as Constitution Hill), though scriptural Zisca would make a Mount of it;these, and other BERGS of the like type.
That is the Austrian Battle Order (as it stood about 9, though it had still to change a little, as we shall see): their first line, straight or nearly so, looking northward, stands on the brow of the Zisca Slope; their second and their third, singularly like it, at the due distances behind;in the intervals, their tents, which stand scattered, in groups wide apart, in the ample interior to southward. The cavalry is on both wings; left wing, behind that Moldau Chasm, cannot attack nor be attacked,except it were on hippogriffs, and its enemy on the like, capable of fighting in the air, overhead of these Belvedere Pleasure-grounds: perhaps Prince Karl will remedy this oversight; fruit of close following of the orthodox practice? Prince Karl, supreme Chief, commands on the left wing; Browne on the right, where he can attack or be attacked, NOT on hippogriffs. As we shall see, and others will! Light horse, in any quantity, hang scattered on all outskirts. With foot, with cannon batteries, with horse, light or heavy, they cover in long broad flood the whole of that Zisca Slope, to near where it ceases, and the ground to eastward begins perceptibly to rise again.
In this latter quarter, Zisca Slope, now nearly ended, begins to get very swampy in parts; on the eastern border of the Austrian Camp, at Kyge, Hostawitz, and beyond it southward, about Sterbohol and Michelup, there are many little lakelets; artificial fish-ponds, several of them, with their sluices, dams and apparatus: a ragged broadish lacing of ponds and lakelets (all well dried in our day) straggles and zigzags along there, connected by the miserablest Brook in nature, which takes to oozing and serpentizing forward thereabouts, and does finally get emptied, now in a rather livelier condition, into the Moldau, about the TOE-part of that Horse-shoe or Belvedere region. It runs in sight of the King, I think, where he now is; this lower livelier part of it: little does the King know how important the upper oozing portion of it will be to him this day. Near Michelup are lakelets worth noticing; a little under Sterbohol, in the course of this miserable Brook, is a string of fish-ponds, with their sluices open at this time, the water out, and the mud bottom sown with herb-provender for the intended carps, which is coming on beautifully, green as leeks, and nearly ready for the fish getting to it again.
Friedrich surveys diligently what he can of all this, from the northern verge. We will now return to Friedrich; and will stay on his side through the terrible Action that is coming. Battle of Prag, one of the furious Battles of the World; loud as Doomsday;the very Emblem of which, done on the Piano by females of energy, scatters mankind to flight who love their ears! Of this great Action the Narratives old and modern are innumerable; false some of them, unintelligible well-nigh all. There are three in Lloyd, known probably to some of my readers. Tempelhof, with criticisms of these three, gives a fourth,perhaps the one Narrative which human nature, after much study, can in some sort understand. Human readers, especially military, I refer to that as their finale. [In Lloyd, i. 38 et seq. (the Three): in Tempelhof, i. 123 (the Fourth); ib. i. 144 (strength of each Army), 105-149 (remarks of Tempelhof).The "HISTORY," or Series of Lectures on the Battles &c. of this War, "BY THE ROYAL STAFF-OFFICERS"which, for the last thirty or forty years, is used as Text-Book, or Military EUCLID, in the Prussian Cadet-Schools,appears to possess the fit professorial lucidity and amplitude; and, in regard to all Official details, enumerations and the like, is received as of CANONICAL authority: it is not accessible to the general Public,though liberally enough conceded in special cases; whereby, in effect, the main results of it are now become current in modern Prussian Books. By favor in high quarters, I had once possession of a copy, for some months; but not, at that time, the possibility of thoroughly reading any part of it.] Other interest than military-scientific the Action now has not much. The stormy fire of soul that blazed that day (higher in no ancient or modern Fight of men) is extinct, hopeless of resuscitation for English readers. Approximately what the thing to human eyes might be like; what Friedrich's procedure, humor and physiognomy of soul was in it: this, especially the latter head, is what we search for,had lazy Dryasdust given us almost anything on this latter head! What little can be gleaned from him on both heads let us faithfully give, and finish our sad part of the combat.
Friedrich, with his Schwerin and Winterfeld, surveying these things from the northern edge, admits that the Austrian position is extremely strong; but he has no doubt that it must be, by some good method, attacked straightway, and the Austrians got beaten. Indisputably the enterprise is difficult. Unattackable clearly, the Austrians, on that left wing of theirs; not in the centre well attackable, nor in the front at all, with that stiff ground, and such redoubts and points of strength: but round on their right yonder; take them in flank,cannot we? On as far as Kyge, the Three have ridden reconnoitring; and found no possibility upon the front; nor at Kyge, where the front ends in batteries, pools and quagmires, is there any. "Difficult, not undoable," persists the King: "and it must be straightway set about and got done." Winterfeld, always for action, is of that opinion, too: and, examining farther down along their right flank, reports that there the thing is feasible.
Feasible perhaps: "but straightway?" objects Schwerin. His men have been on foot since midnight, and on forced marches for days past: were it not better to rest for this one day? "Rest:and Daun, coming on with 30,000 of reinforcement to them, might arrive this night? Never, my good Feldmarschall;"and as the Feldmarschall was a man of stiff notions, and had a tongue of some emphasis, the Dialogue went on, probably with increasing emphasis on Friedrich's side too, till old Schwerin, with a quite emphatic flash of countenance, crushing the hat firm over his brow, exclaims: "Well, your Majesty: the fresher fish the better fish (FRISCHE FISCHE, GUTE FISCHE): straightway, then!" and springs off on the gallop southward, he too, seeking some likely point of attack. He too,conjointly or not with Winterfeld, I do not know: Winterfeld himself does not say; whose own modest words on the subject readers shall see before we finish. But both are mentioned in the Books as searching, at hand-gallop, in this way: and both, once well round to south, by the Podschernitz ["Podschernitz" is pronounced PotSHERnitz (should we happen to mentionn it again); "Kyge," KEEGA.] quarter, with the Austrian right flank full in view, were agreed that here the thing was possible. "Infantry to push from this quarter towards Sterbohol yonder, and then plunge into their redoubts and them! Cavalry may sweep still farther southward, if found convenient, and even take them in rear." Both agree that it will do in this way: ground tolerably good, slightly downwards for us, then slightly upwards again; tolerable for horse even:the intermediate lacing of dirty lakelets, the fish-ponds with their sluices drawn, Schwerin and Winterfeld either did not notice at all, or thought them insiginificant, interspersed with such beautiful "pasture-ground,"of unusual verdure at this early season of the year.
The deployment, or "marching up (AUFMARSCHIREN)" of the Prussians was wonderful; in their squadrons, in their battalions, horse, foot, artillery, wheeling, closing, opening; strangely checkering a country-side,in movements intricate, chaotic to all but the scientific eye. Conceive them, flowing along, from the Heights of Chaber, behind Prossik Hamlet (right wing of infantry plants itself at Prossik, horse westward of them); and ever onwards in broad many-checkered tide-stream, eastward, eastward, then southward ("our artillery went through Podschernitz, the foot and horse a little on this westward side of it"): intricate, many-glancing tide of coming battle; which, swift, correct as clock-work, becomes two lines, from Prossik to near Chwala ("baggage well behind at Gbell"); thence round by Podschernitz quarter; and descends, steady, swift, tornado-storm so beautifully hidden in it, towards Sterbohol, there to grip to. Gradually, in stirring up those old dead pedantic record-books, the fact rises on us: silent whirlwinds of old Platt-Deutsch fire, beautifully held down, dwell in those mute masses; better human stuff there is not than that old Teutsch (Dutch, English, Platt-Deutsch and other varieties); and so disciplined as here it never was before or since. "In an hour and half," what military men may count almost incredible, they are fairly on their ground, motionless the most of them by 9 A.M.; the rest wheeling rightward, as they successively arrive in the Chwala-Podschernitz localities; and, descending diligently, Sterbohol way; and will be at their harvest-work anon.
Meanwhile the Austrians, seeing, to their astonishment, these phenomena to the north, and that it is a quite serious thing, do also rapidly bestir themselves; swarming like bees;bringing in their foraging Cavalry, "No time to change your jacket for a coat:" rank, double-quick! Browne is on that right wing of theirs: "Bring the left wing over hither," suggests Browne; "cavalry is useless yonder, unless they had hippogriffs!"and (again Browne suggesting) the Austrians make a change in the position of their right wing, both horse and foot: change which is of vital importance, though unnoted in many Narratives of this Battle. Seeing, namely, what the Prussians intend, they wheel their right wing (say the last furlong or two of their long Line of Battle) half round to right; so that the last furlong or two stands at right angles ("EN POTENCE," gallows-wise, or joiner's-square-wise to the rest); and, in this way, make front to the Prussian onslaught,front now, not flank, as the Prussians are anticipating. This is an important wheel to right, and formation in joiner's-square manner; and involves no end of interior wheeling, marching and deploying; which Austrians cannot manage with Prussian velocity. "Swift with it, here about Sterbohol at least, my men! For here are the Prussians within wind of us!" urges Browne. And here straightway the hurricane does break loose.