"THURSDAY, 19th, At Bernsdorf there is no Lacy to be found. Cautions Dorn has ordered him in,and not for Lacy's sake, as appears, but for his own: 'Hitherward, you alert Lacy; to cover my right flank here, my Hill of Reichenberg,lest it be not impregnable enough against that feline enemy!' And there they have taken post, say 60,000 against 30,000; and are palisading to a quite extraordinary degree. No fight possible with Lacy or Daun."
This is what Mitchell counts the failure of Friedrich's enterprise: and certainly it grieved Friedrich a good deal. Who, on riding out to reconnoitre Reichenberg (Quintus Icilius and Battalion QUINTUS part of his escort, if that be an interesting circumstance), finds Reichenberg a plainly unattackable post; finds, by Daun's rate of palisading, that there will be no attack from Daun either. No attack from Daun;and, therefore, that Hulsen's people may be sent home to Schlettau again; and that he, Friedrich, will take post close by, and wearisomely be content to wait for some new opportunity.
Which he does for a week to come; Daun sitting impregnable, intrenched and palisaded to the teeth,rather wishing to be attacked, you would say; or hopeful sometimes of doing something of the Hochkirch sort again (for the country is woody, and the enemy audacious);at all events, very clear not to attack. A man erring, sometimes to a notable degree, by over-caution. "Could hardly have failed to overwhelm Friedrich's small force, had he at once, on Friedrich's crossing the Elbe, joined Lacy, and gone out against him," thinks Tempelhof, pointing out the form of operation too. [Tempelhof, iv. 42, 48.] Caution is excellent; but not quite by itself. Would caution alone do it, an Army all of Druidic whinstones, or innocent clay-sacks, incapable of taking hurt, would be the proper one!Daun stood there; Friedrich looking daily into him,visibly in ill humor, says Mitchell; and no wonder; gloomy and surly words coming out of him, to the distress of his Generals: "Which I took the liberty of hinting, one evening, to his Majesty;" hint graciously received, and of effect perceptible, at least to my imagining.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25th, After nearly a week of this, there rose, towards sunset, all over the Reichenberg, and far and wide, an exuberant joy-firing: "For what in the world?" thinks Friedrich. Alas, your Majesty,since your own messenger has not arrived, nor indeed ever will, being picked up by Pandours,here, gathered from the Austrian outposts or deserters, are news for you, fatal enough! Landshut is done; Fouquet and his valiant 13,000 are trodden out there. Indignant Fouquet has obeyed you, not wisely but too well. He has kept Landshut six nights and five days. On the morning of the sixth day, here is what befell:
"LANDSHUT, MONDAY, 23d JUNE, About a quarter to two in the morning, Loudon, who had gathered 31,000 horse and foot for the business, and taken his measures, fired aloft, by way of signal, four howitzers into the gray of the summer morning; and burst loose upon Fouquet, in various columns, on his southward front, on both flanks, ultimately in his rear too: columns all in the height of fighting humor, confident as three to one,and having brandy in them, it is likewise said. Fouquet and his people stood to arms, in the temper Fouquet had vowed they would: defended their Hills with an energy, with a steady skill, which Loudon himself admired; but their Hill-works would have needed thrice the number;Fouquet, by detaching and otherwise, has in arms only 10,680 men. Toughly as they strove, after partial successes, they began to lose one Hill, and then another; and in the course of hours, nearly all their Hills. Landshut Town Loudon had taken from them, Landshut and its roads: in the end, the Prussian position is becoming permeable, plainly untenable;Austrian force is moving to their rearward to block the retreat.
"Seeing which latter fact, Fouquet throws out all his Cavalry, a poor 1,500, to secure the Passes of the Bober; himself formed square with the wrecks of his Infantry; and, at a steady step, cuts way for himself with bayonet and bullet. With singular success for some time, in spite of the odds. And is clear across the Bober; when lo, among the knolls ahead, masses of Austrian Cavalry are seen waiting him, besetting every passage! Even these do not break him; but these, with infantry and cannon coming up to help them, do. Here, for some time, was the fiercest tug of all,till a bullet having killed Fouquet's horse, and carried the General himself to the ground, the spasm ended. The Lichnowski Dragoons, a famed Austrian regiment, who had charged and again charged with nothing but repulse on repulse, now broke in, all in a foam of rage; cut furiously upon Fouquet himself; wounded Fouquet thrice; would have killed him, had it not been for the heroism of poor Trautschke, his Groom [let us name the gallant fellow, even if unpronounceable], who flung himself on the body of his Master, and took the bloody strokes instead of him; shrieking his loudest, 'Will you murder the Commanding General, then!' Which brought up the Colonel of Lichnowski; a Gentleman and Ritter, abhorrent of such practices. To him Fouquet gave his sword;kept his vow never to draw it again.
"The wrecks of Fouquet's Infantry were, many of them, massacred, no quarter given; such the unchivalrous fury that had risen. His Cavalry, with the loss of about 500, cut their way through. They and some stragglers of Foot, in whole about 1,500 of both kinds, were what remained of those 10,680 after this bloody morning's work. There had been about six hours of it; 'all over by 8 o'clock.'" [Hofbericht von der am 23 Junius, 1760, bey Landshuth vorgefallenen Action (in Seyfarth, Beylagen, ii. 669-671); Helden-Geschichte, vi. 258-284; Tempelhof, iv. 26-41; Stenzel, v. 241 (who, by oversight,this Volume being posthumous to poor Stenzel,protracts the Action to "half-past 7 in the evening").]
Fouquet has obeyed to the letter: "Did not my King wrong me?" Fouquet may say to himself. Truly, Herr General, your King's Order was a little unwise; as you (who were on the ground, and your King not) knew it to be. An unwise Order;perhaps not inexcusable in the sudden circumstances. And perhaps a still more perfect Bayard would have preferred obeying such a King in spirit, rather than in letter, and thereby doing him vital service AGAINST his temporary will? It is not doubted but Fouquet, left to himself and his 13,000, with the Fortresses and Garrisons about him, would have maintained himself in Silesia till help came. The issue is,Fouquet has probably lost this fine King his Silesia, for the time being; and beyond any question, has lost him 10,000 Prussian-Spartan fighters, and a fine General whom he could ill spare!In a word, the Gate of Silesia is burst open; and Loudon has every prospect of taking Glatz, which will keep it so.
What a thunder-bolt for Friedrich! One of the last pillars struck away from his tottering affairs. "Inevitable, then? We are over with it, then?" One may fancy Friedrich's reflections. But he showed nothing of them to anybody; in a few hours, had his mind composed, and new plans on the anvil. On the morrow of that Austrian Joy-Firing,morrow, or some day close on it (ought to have been dated, but is not),there went from him, to Magdeburg, the Order: "Have me such and such quantities of Siege-Artillery in a state of readiness." [Tempelhof, iv. 51.] Already meaning, it is thought, or contemplating as possible a certain Siege, which surprised everybody before long! A most inventive, enterprising being; no end to his contrivances and unexpected outbreaks; especially when you have him jammed into a corner, and fancy it is all over with him!
"To no other General," says Tempelhof, "would such a notion of besieging Dresden have occurred; or if it had suggested itself, the hideous difficulties would at once have banished it again, or left it only as a pious wish. But it is strokes of this kind that characterize the great man. Often enough they have succeeded, been decisive of great campaigns and wars, and become splendid in the eyes of all mankind; sometimes, as in this case, they have only deserved to succeed, and to be splendid in the eyes of judges. How get these masses of enemies lured away, so that you could try such a thing? There lay the difficulty; insuperable altogether, except by the most fine and appropriate treatment. Of a truth, it required a connected series of the wisest measures and most secret artifices of war;and withal, that you should throw over them such a veil as would lead your enemy to see in them precisely the reverse of what they meant. How all this was to be set in action, and how the Enemy's own plans, intentions and moods of mind were to be used as raw material for attainment of your object,studious readers will best see in the manoeuvres of the King in his now more than critical condition; which do certainly exhibit the completest masterpiece in the Art of leading Armies that Europe has ever seen."
Tempelhof is well enough aware, as readers should continue to be, that, primarily, and onward for three weeks more, not Dresden, but the getting to Silesia on good terms, is Friedrich's main enterprise: Dresden only a supplement or substitute, a second string to his bow, till the first fail. But, in effect, the two enterprises or strings coincide, or are one, till the first of them fail; and Tempelhof's eulogy will apply to either. The initiatory step to either is a Second Feat of Marching;still notabler than the former, which has had this poor issue. Soldiers of the studious or scientific sort, if there are yet any such among us, will naturally go to Tempelhof, and fearlessly encounter the ruggedest Documents and Books, if Tempelhof leave them dubious on any point (which he hardly will): to ingenuous readers of other sorts, who will take a little pains for understanding the thing, perhaps the following intermittent far-off glimpses may suffice. [Mitchell, ii. 162 et seq.; and Tempelhof (iv. 50-53 et seq.), as a scientific check on Mitchell, or unconscious fellow-witness with him,agreeing beautifully almost always.]
On ascertaining the Landshut disaster, Friedrich falls back a little; northward to Gross-Dobritz: "Possibly Daun will think us cowed by what has happened; and may try something on us?" Daun is by no means sure of this COWED phenomenon, or of the retreat it has made; and tries nothing on it; only rides up daily to it, to ascertain that it is there; and diligently sends out parties to watch the Northeastward parts, where run the Silesian Roads. After about a week of this, and some disappointments, Friedrich decides to march in earnest. There had, one day, come report of Lacy's being detached, Lacy with a strong Division, to block the Silesian roads; but that, on trial, proved to be false. "Pshaw, nothing for us but to go ourselves!" concludes Friedrich,and, JULY 1st, sends off his Bakery and Heavy Baggage; indicating to Mitchell, "To-morrow morning at 3!"Here is Mitchell's own account; accurate in every particular, as we find: [Mitchell, ii. 164; Tempelhof, iv. 54.]
WEDNESDAY, JULY 2d. "From Gross-Dobritz to Quosdorf [to Quosdorf, a poor Hamlet there, not QuoLsdorf, as many write, which is a Town far enough from there]the Army marched accordingly. In two columns; baggage, bakery and artillery in a third; through a country extremely covered with wood. Were attacked by some Uhlans and Hussars; whom a few cannon-shot sent to the road again. March lasted from 3 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon;" twelve long hours. "Went northeastward a space of 20 miles, leaving Radeburg, much more leaving Reichenberg, Moritzburg and the Daun quarters well to the right, and at last quite to rearward; crossed the Roder, crossed the Pulsnitz," small tributaries or sub-tributaries of the Elbe in those parts; "crossed the latter (which divides Meissen from the Lausitz) partly by the Bridge of Krakau, first Village in the Lausitz. Head-quarter was the poor Hamlet of Quosdorf, a mile farther on. 'This march had been carefully kept secret,' says Mitchell; 'and it was the opinion of the most experienced Officers, that, had the Enemy discovered the King of Prussia's design, they might, by placing their light troops in the roads with proper supports, have rendered it extremely difficult, if not impracticable.'"
Daun very early got to know of Friedrich's departure, and whitherward; which was extremely interesting to Daun: "Aims to be in Silesia before me; will cut out Loudon from his fine prospects on Glatz?"and had instantly reinforced, perhaps to 20,000, Lacy's Division; and ordered Lacy, who is the nearest to Friedrich's March, to start instantly on the skirts of said March, and endeavor diligently to trample on the same. For the purpose of harassing said March, Lacy is to do whatever he with safety can (which we see is not much: "a few Uhlans and Hussars"); at lowest, is to keep it constantly in sight; and always encamp as near it as he dare; [Tempelhof, iv. 54.]Daun himself girding up his loins; and preparing, by a short-cut, to get ahead of it in a day or two. Lacy was alert enough, but could not do much with safety: a few Uhlans and Hussars, that was all; and he is now encamped somewhere to rearward, as near as he dare.
THURSDAY, 3d JULY. "A rest-day; Army resting about Krakau, after such a spell through the woody moors. The King, with small escort, rides out reconnoitring, hither, thither, on the southern side or Lacy quarter: to the top of the Keulenberg (BLUDGEON HILL), at last,which is ten or a dozen miles from Krakau and Quosdorf, but commands an extensive view. Towns, village-belfries, courses of streams; a country of mossy woods and wild agricultures, of bogs, of shaggy moor. Southward 10 miles is Radeberg [not RadebUrg, observe]; yonder is the town of Pulsnitz on our stream of Pulsnitz; to southeast, and twice as far, is Bischofswerda, chasmy Stolpen (too well known to us before this): behind us, Konigsbruck, Kamenz and the road from Grossenhayn to Bautzen: these and many other places memorable to this King are discoverable from Bludgeon Hill. But the discovery of discoveries to him is Lacy's Camp,not very far off, about a mile behind Pulsnitz; clearly visible, at Lichtenberg yonder. Which we at once determine to attack; which, and the roads to which, are the one object of interest just now,nothing else visible, as it were, on the top of the Keulenberg here, or as we ride homeward, meditating it with a practical view. 'March at midnight,' that is the practical result arrived at, on reaching home."
FRIDAY, JULY 4th. "Since the stroke of midnight we are all on march again; nothing but the baggages and bakeries left [with Quintus to watch them, which I see is his common function in these marches]; King himself in the Vanguard,who hopes to give Lacy a salutation. [Tempelhof, iv. 56.] 'The march was full of defiles,' says Mitchell: and Mitchell, in his carriage, knew little what a region it was, with boggy intricacies, lakelets, tangly thickets, stocks and stumps; or what a business to pass with heavy cannon, baggage-wagons and columns of men! Such a march; and again not far from twenty miles of it: very hot, as the morning broke, in the breathless woods. Had Lacy known what kind of ground we had to march in, and been enterprising! thinks Tempelhof. The march being so retarded, Lacy got notice of it, and vanished quite away,to Bischofswerda, I believe, and the protecting neighborhood of Daun. Nothing of him left when we emerge, simultaneously from this hand and from that, on his front and on his rear, to take him as in a vice, as in the sudden snap of a fox-trap;fox quite gone. Hardly a few hussars of him to be picked up; and no chase possible, after such a march."