History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 18
TekstChapter X.—BATTLE OF LEUTHEN
From Neumarkt, on Monday, long before day, the Prussians, all but a small party left there to guard the Bakery and Army Properties, are out again; in four columns; towards what may lie ahead. Friedrich, as usual in such cases, for obvious reasons, rides with the vanguard. To Borne, the first Village on the Highway, is some seven or eight miles. The air is damp, the dim incipiences of dawn struggling among haze; a little way on this side Borne, we come on ranks of cavalry drawn across the Highway, stretching right and left into the dim void: Austrian Army this, then? Push up to it; see what it is, at least.
It proves to be poor General Nostitz, with his three Saxon regiments of dragoons, famous since Kolin-day, and a couple of Hussar regiments, standing here as outpost;—who ought to have been more alert; but they could not see through the dark, and so, instead of catching, are caught. The Prussians fall upon them, front and flank, tumble them into immediate wreck; drive the whole outpost at full gallop home, through Borne, upon Nypern and the right wing,—without news except of this symbolical sort. Saxon regiments are quite ruined, "540 of them prisoners" (poor Nostitz himself not prisoner, but wounded to death [Died in Breslau, the twelfth day after (Seyfarth, ii. 362).]); and the ground clear in this quarter.
Friedrich, on the farther side of Borne, calls halt, till the main body arrive; rides forward, himself and staff, to the highest of a range or suite of knolls, some furlongs ahead; sees there in full view, far and wide, the Austrians drawn up before him. From Nypern to Sagschuitz yonder; miles in length; and so distinct, while the light mended and the hazes faded, "that you could have counted them [through your glasses], man by man." A highly interesting sight to Friedrich; who continues there in the profoundest study, and calls up some horse regiments of the vanguard to maintain this Height and the range of Heights running south from it. And there, I think, the King is mainly to be found, looking now at the Austrians, now at his own people, for some three hours to come. His plan of Battle is soon clear to him: Nypern, with its bogs and scrags, on the Austrian right wing, is tortuous impossible ground, as he well remembers, no good prospect for us there: better ground for us on their left yonder, at Leuthen, even at Sagschutz farther south, whither they are stretching themselves. Attempt their left wing; try our "Oblique Order" upon that, with all the skill that is in us; perhaps we can do it rightly this time, and prosper accordingly! That is Friedrich's plan of action. The four columns once got to Borne shall fall into two; turn to the right, and go southward, ever southward:—they are to become our two Lines of Battle, were they once got to the right point southward. Well opposite Sagschutz, that will be the point for facing to left, and marching up,—in "Oblique Order," with the utmost faculty they have!
"The Oblique Order, SCHRAGE STELLUNG," let the hasty reader pause to understand, "is an old plan practised by Epaminondas, and revived by Friedrich,—who has tried it in almost all his Battles more or less, from Hohenfriedberg forward to Prag, Kolin, Rossbach; but never could, in all points, get it rightly done till now, at Leuthen, in the highest time of need. "It is a particular manoeuvre," says Archenholtz, rather sergeant-wise, "which indeed other troops are now [1793] in the habit of imitating; but which, up to this present time, none but Prussian troops can execute with the precision and velocity indispensable to it. You divide your line into many pieces; you can push these forward stairwise, so that they shall halt close to one another," obliquely, to either hand; and so, on a minimum of ground, bring your mass of men to the required point at the required angle. Friedrich invented this mode of getting into position; by its close ranking, by its depth, and the manner of movement used, it had some resemblance to the "Macedonian Phalanx,"—chiefly in the latter point, I should guess; for when arrived at its place, it is no deeper than common. "Forming itself in this way, a mass of troops takes up in proportion very little ground; and it shows in the distance, by reason of the mixed uniforms and standards, a totally chaotic mass of men heaped on one another," going in rapid mazes this way and that. "But it needs only that the Commander lift his finger; instantly this living coil of knotted intricacies develops itself in perfect order, and with a speed like that of mountain rivers when the ice breaks,"—is upon its Enemy. [Archenholtz, i. 209.]
"Your Enemy is ranked as here, in long line, three or two to one. You march towards him, but keep him uncertain as to how you will attack; then do on a sudden march up, not parallel to him, but oblique, at an angle of 45 degrees,—swift, vehement, in overpowering numbers, on the wing you have chosen. Roll that wing together, ruined, in upon its own line, you may roll the whole five miles of line into disorder and ruin, and always be in overpowering number at the point of dispute. Provided, only, you are swift enough about it, sharp enough! But extraordinary swiftness, sharpness, precision is the indispensable condition;—by no means try it otherwise; none but Prussians, drilled by an Old Dessauer, capable of doing it. This is the SCHRAGE ORDNUNG, about which there has been such commentating and controversying among military people: whether Friedrich invented it, whether Caesar did it, how Epaminondas, how Alexander at Arbela; how"—Which shall not in the least concern us on this occasion.
The four columns rustled themselves into two, and turned southward on the two sides of Borne;—southward henceforth, for about two hours; as if straight towards the Magic Mountain, the Zobtenberg, far off, which is conspicuous over all that region. Their steadiness, their swiftness and exactitude were unsurpassable. "It was a beautiful sight," says Tempelhof, an eye-witness: "The heads of the columns were constantly on the same level, and at the distance necessary for forming; all flowed on exact, as if in a review. And you could read in the eyes of our brave troops the noble temper they were in." [Tempelhof, i. 288, 287.] I know not at what point of their course, or for how long, but it was from the column nearest him, which is to be first line, that the King heard, borne on the winds amid their field-music, as they marched there, the sound of Psalms,—many-voiced melody of a Church Hymn, well known to him; which had broken out, band accompanying, among those otherwise silent men. The fact is very certain, very strange to me: details not very precise, except that here, as specimen, is a verse of their Hymn:—
"Grant that with zeal and skill, this day, I do
What me to do behooves, what thou command'st me to;
Grant that I do it sharp, at point of moment fit,
And when I do it, grant me good success in it."
"Gieb dass ich thu' mit Fleiss was mir zu thun gebuhret,
Wozu mich dein Befehl in meinem Stande fuhret,
Gieb dass ich's thue bald, zu der Zeit da ich's soll;
Und wenn ich's thu', so gieb dass es gerathe wohl."
["HYMN-BOOK of Porst" (Prussian Sternhold-and-Hopkins), "p. 689:" cited in Preuss, ii. 107.]
One has heard the voice of waters, one has paused in the mountains at the voice of far-off Covenanter psalms; but a voice like this, breaking the commanded silences, one has not heard. "Shall we order that to cease, your Majesty?" "By no means," said the King; whose hard heart seems to have been touched by it, as might well be. Indeed there is in him, in those grim days, a tone as of trust in the Eternal, as of real religious piety and faith, scarcely noticeable elsewhere in his History. His religion, and he had in withered forms a good deal of it, if we will look well, being almost always in a strictly voiceless state,—nay, ultra-voiceless, or voiced the wrong way, as is too well known. "By no means!" answered he: and a moment after, said to some one, Ziethen probably: "With men like these, don't you think I shall have victory this day!"
The loss of their Saxon Forepost proved more important to the Austrians than it seemed;—not computable in prisoners, or killed and wounded. The Height named Scheuberg,—"Borne Rise" (so we might call it, which has got its Pillar of memorial since, with gilt Victory atop [Not till 1854 (Kutzen, pp. 194, 195).];—where Friedrich now is and where the Austrians are not, is at once a screen and a point of vision to Friedrich. By loss of their Nostitz Forepost, they had lost view of Friedrich, and never could recover view of him; could not for hours learn distinctly what he was about; and when he did come in sight again, it was in a most unexpected place! On the farther side of Borne, edge of the big expanse of open country there, Friedrich has halted; ridden with his adjutants to the top of "the Scheuberg (Shy-HILL)," as the Books call it, though it is more properly a blunt Knoll or "Rise,"—the nearest of a Chain of Knolls, or swells in the ground, which runs from north to south on that part.
Except the Zobtenberg, rising blue and massive, on the southern horizon (famous mythologic Mountain, reminding you of an ARTHUR'S SEAT in shape too, only bigger and solitary), this Country, for many miles round, has nothing that could be called a Hill; it is definable as a bare wide-waving champaign, with slight bumps on it, or slow heavings and sinkings. Country mostly under culture, though it is of sandy quality; one or two sluggish brooks in it; and reedy meres or mires, drained in our day. It is dotted with Hamlets of the usual kind; and has patches of scraggy fir. Your horizon, even where bare, is limited, owing to the wavy heavings of the ground; windmills and church-belfries are your only resource, and even these, from about Leuthen and the Austrian position, leave the Borne quarter mostly invisible to you. Leuthen Belfry, the same which may have stood a hundred years before this Battle, ends in a small tile-roof, open only at the gables:—"Leuthen Belfry," says a recent Tourist, "is of small resource for a view. To south you can see some distance, Sagschutz, Lobetintz and other Hamlets, amid scraggy fir-patches, and meadows, once miry pools; but to north you are soon shut in by a swell or slow rise, with two windmills upon it [important to readers at present]; and to eastward [Breslau side and Lissa side], or to westward [Friedrich's side], one has no view, except of the old warped rafters and their old mouldy tiles within few inches; or, if by audacious efforts at each end, to the risk of your neck, you get a transient peep, it is stopt, far short of Borne, by the slow irregular heavings, with or without fir about them." [Tourist's Note, PENES ME.]
In short, Friedrich keeps possession of that Borne ridge of Knolls, escorted by Cavalry in good numbers; twinkling about in an enigmatic way:—"Prussian right wing yonder," think the Austrians—"whitherward, or what can they mean?"—and keeps his own columns and the Austrian lines in view; himself and his movements invisible, or worse, to the Austrian Generals from any spy-glass or conjecture they can employ.
The Austrian Generals are in windmills, on church-belfries, here, there; diligently scanning the abstruse phenomenon, of which so little can be seen. Daun, who had always been against this adventure, thinks it probable the vanished Prussians are retiring southward: for Bohemia and our Magazines probably. "These good people are smuggling off (DIE GUTEN LEUTE PASCHEN AB)," said he: "let them go in peace." [Muller, p. 36.] Daun, that morning, in his reconnoitrings, had asked of a peasant, "What is that, then?" (meaning the top of a Village-steeple in the distance, but thought by the peasant to be meaning something nearer hand). "That is the Hill our King chases the Austrians over, when he is reviewing here!" Which Daun reported at head-quarters with a grin. [Nicolai, Anekdoten, iv. 34.]
Lucchesi, on the other hand, scanning those Borne Hills, and the cavalry of Friedrich's escort twinkling hither and thither on them, becomes convinced to a moral certainty, That yonder is the Prussian Vanguard, probable extremity of left wing; and that he, Lucchesi, here at Nypern, is to be attacked. "Attacked, you?" said one Montazet, French Agent or Emissary here: "unless they were snipes, it is impossible!" But Lucchesi saw it too well.
He sends to say that such is the evident fact, and that he, Lucchesi, is not equal to it, but must have large reinforcement of Horse to his right wing. "Tush!" answer Prince Karl and Daun; and return only argument, verbal consolation, to distressed Lucchesi. Lucchesi sends a second message, more passionately pressing, to the like effect; also with the like return. Upon which he sends a third message, quite passionate: "If Cavalry do not come, I will not be responsible for the issue!" And now Daun does collect the required reinforcement; "all the reserve of Horse, and a great many from the left wing;"—and, Daun himself heading them, goes off at a swift trot; to look into Lucchesi and his distresses, three or four miles to right, five or six from where the danger lies. Now is Friedrich's golden moment.
Wending always south, on their western or invisible side of those Knolls, Friedrich's people have got to about the level, or LATITUDE as we might call it, of Nadasti's left. To Radaxdorf, namely, to Lobetintz, or still farther south, and perhaps a mile to west of Nadasti. Friedrich has mounted to Lobetintz Windmill; and judges that the time is come. Daun and Cavalry once got to support their right wing, and our south latitude being now sufficient, Friedrich, swift as Prussian manoeuvring can do it, falls with all his strength upon their left wing. Forms in oblique order,—horse, foot, artillery, all perfect in their paces; and comes streaming over the Knolls at Sagschutz, suddenly like a fire-deluge on Nadasti, who had charge there, and was expecting no such adventure! How Friedrich did the forming in oblique order was at that time a mystery known only to Friedrich and his Prussians: but soldiers of all countries, gathering the secret from him, now understand it, and can learnedly explain it to such as are curious. Will readers take a touch more of the DRILL-SERGEANT?
"You go stairwise (EN ECHELON)," says he: "first battalion starts, second stands immovable till the first have done fifty steps; at the fifty-first, second battalion also steps along; third waiting for ITS fifty-first step. First battalion [rightmost battalion or leftmost, as the case may be; rightmost in this Leuthen case] doing fifty steps before the next stirs, and each battalion in succession punctually doing the same:" march along on these terms,—or halt at either end, while you advance at the other,—it is evident you will swing yourself out of the parallel position into any degree of obliquity. And furthermore, merely by halting and facing half round at the due intervals, you shove yourself to right or to left as required (always to right in this Leuthen case): and so—provided you CAN march as a pair of compasses would—you will, in the given number of minutes, impinge upon your Enemy's extremity at the required angle, and overlap him to the required length: whereupon, At him, in flank, in front, and rear, and see if he can stand it! "A beautiful manoeuvre" says Captain Archenholtz; "devised by Friedrich," by Friedrich inheriting Epaminondas and the Old Dessauer; "and which perhaps only Friedrich's men, to this day, could do with the requisite perfection."
Nadasti, a skilful War-Captain, especially with Horse, was beautifully posted about Sagschutz; his extreme left folded up EN POTENCE there (elbow of it at Sagschutz, forearm of it running to Gohlau eastward); POTENCE ending in firwood Knolls with Croat musketeers, in ditches, ponds, difficult ground, especially towards Gohlau. He has a strong battery, 14 pieces, on the Height to rear of him, at the angle or elbow of his POTENCE; strong abatis, well manned in front to rightwards: upon this, and upon the Croats in the firwood, the Prussians intend their attack. General Wedell is there, Prince Moritz as chief, with six battalions, and their batteries, battery of 10 Brummers and another; Ziethen also and Horse: coming on, in swift fire-flood, and at an angle of forty-five degrees. Most unexpected, strange to behold! From southwest yonder; about one o'clock of the day.
Nadasti, though astonished at the Prussian fire-deluge, stands to his arms; makes, in front, vigorous defence; and even takes, in some sort, the initiative,—that is, dashes out his Cavalry on Ziethen, before Ziethen has charged. Ziethen's Horse, who are rightmost of the Prussians: and are bare to the right,—ground offering no bush, no brook there (though Ziethen, foreseeing such defect, has a clump of infantry near by to mend it),—reel back under this first shock, coming downhill upon them; and would have fared badly, had not the clump of infantry instantly opened fire on the Nadasti visitors, and poured it in such floods upon them, that they, in their turn, had to reel back. Back they, well out of range;—and leave Ziethen free for a counter-attack shortly, on easier terms, which was successful to him. For, during that first tussle of his, the Prussian Infantry, to left of Ziethen, has attacked the Sagschutz Firwood; clears that of Croats; attacks Nadasti's line, breaks it, their Brummer battery potently assisting, and the rage of Wedell and everybody being extreme. So that, in spite of the fine ground, Nadasti is in a bad way, on the extreme left or outmost point of his POTENCE, or tactical KNEE. Round the knee-pan or angle of his POTENCE, where is the abatis, he fares still worse. Abatis, beswept by those ten Brummers and other Batteries, till bullet and bayonet can act on it, speedily gives way. "They were mere Wurtembergers, these; and could not stand!" cried the Austrians apologetically, at a great rate, afterwards; as if anybody could well have stood.
Indisputably the Wurtembergers and the abatis are gone; and the Brandenburgers, storming after them, storm Nadasti's interior battery of 14 pieces; and Nadasti's affairs are rapidly getting desperate in this quarter. Figure Prince Karl's scouts, galloping madly to recall that Daun Cavalry! Austrian Battalions, plenty of them, rush down to help Nadasti; but they are met by the crowding fugitives, the chasing Prussians; are themselves thrown into disorder, and can do no good whatever. They arrive on the ground flurried, blown; have not the least time to take breath and order: the fewest of them ever got fairly ranked, none of them ever stood above one push: all goes rolling wildly back upon the centre about Leuthen. Chaos come on us;—and all for mere lack of time: could Nadasti but once stretch out one minute into twenty! But he cannot. Nadasti does not himself lose head; skilfully covers the retreat, trying to rally once and again. Not for the first few furlongs, till the ditches, till the firwood, quagmires are all done, could Ziethen, now on the open ground, fairly hew in; "take whole battalions prisoners;" drive the crowd in an altogether stormy manner; and wholly confound the matter in this part.
Prince Karl, his messengers flying madly, has struggled as man seldom did to put himself in some posture about Leuthen, to get up some defences there. Leuthen itself, the churchyard of it especially, is on the defensive. Men are bringing cannon to the windmills, to the swelling ground on the north side of Leuthen; they dig ditches, build batteries,—could they but make Time halt, and Friedrich with him, for one quarter of an hour. But they cannot. By the extreme of diligence, the Austrians have in some measure swung themselves into a new position, or imperfect Line round Leuthen as a centre,—Lucchesi, voluntarily or by order, swinging southwards on the one hand; Nadasti swinging northwards by compulsion;—new Line at an angle say of 75 degrees to the old one. And here, for an hour more, there was stiff fighting, the stiffest of the day;—of which, take one direct glimpse, from the Austrian side, furnished by a Young Gentleman famous afterwards:—
Leuthen, let us premise, is a long Hamlet of the usual littery sort; with two rows, in some parts three, of farm-houses, barns, cattle-stalls; with Church, or even with two Churches, a Protestant and a Catholic; goes from east to west above a mile in length. With the wrecks of Nadasti tumbling into it pell-mell from the southeast, and Lucchesi desperately endeavoring to swing round from the northwest, not quite incoherently, and the Prussian fire-storm for accompaniment, Leuthen is probably the most chaotic place in the Planet Earth during that hour or so (from half-past two to half-past three) while the agony lasted. At one o'clock Nadasti was attacked; at two he is tumbling in mid-career towards Leuthen: I guess the date of this Excerpt, or testimony by a Notable Eye-witness, may be half-past two; crisis of the agony just about to begin: and before four it was all finished again. Eye-witness is the young Prince de Ligne, now Captain in an Austrian Regiment of Foot; and standing here in this perilous posture, having been called in as part of the Reserve. He says:—
"Cry had risen for the Reserve," in which was my regiment, "and that it must come on as fast as possible,"—to Leuthen, west of us yonder. "We ran what we could run. Our Lieutenant-Colonel fell killed almost at the first; beyond this we lost our Major, and indeed all the Officers but three,—three only, and about eleven or twelve of the Voluuteer or Cadet kind. We had crossed two successive ditches, which lay in an orchard to left of the first houses in Leuthen; and were beginning to form in front of the Village. But there was no standing of it. Besides a general cannonade such as can hardly be imagined, there was a rain of case-shot upon this Battalion, of which I, as there was no Colonel left, had to take command; and a third Battalion of the Royal Prussian Foot-guards, which had already made several of our regiments pass that kind of muster, gave, at a distance of eighty paces, the liveliest fire on us. It stood as if on the parade-ground, that third Battalion, and waited for us, without stirring.
"The Austrian regiment Andlau, at our right hand, could not get itself formed properly by reason of the houses; it was standing thirty deep, and sometimes its shot hit us on the back. On my left the Austrian regiment Merci ran its ways; and I was glad of that, in comparison. By no method or effort could I get the dragoons of Bathyani, who stood fifty yards in rear of me, to cut in a little, and help me out,"—no good cutting hereabouts, think the dragoons of Bathyani. "My soldiers, who were still tired with running, and had no cannon (these either from necessity or choice they had left behind), were got scattered, fewer in number, and were fighting mainly out of sullenness. More our honor, than the notion of doing good in the affair, prevented us from running off. An Ensign of the regiment Arberg helped me awhile to form, from his and my own fragments, a kind of line; but he was shot down. Two Officers of the Grenadiers brought me what they still had. Some Hungarians, too, were luckily got together. But at last, as, with all helps and the remnants of my own brave Battalion, I had come down to at most 200, I drew back to the Height where the Windmill is," [Kutzen p. 103 (from "Prince de Ligne's DIARY, i. 63, German Translation").]—where many have drawn back, and are standing in sheltered places, a hundred deep, say our Books.
Stiff fighting at Leuthen; especially furious till Leuthen Churchyard, a place with high stone walls, was got. Leuthen Village, we observe, was crammed with Austrians spitting fire from every coign of vantage; Church and Churchyard especially are a citadel of death. Cannon playing from the Windmill Heights, too;—moments are inestimable. The Prussian Commander (name charitably hidden) at Leuthen Churchyard seems to hesitate in the murderous fire-deluge: Major Mollendorf, namable from that day forward, growling, "No time this for study," dashes out himself, "EIN ANDRER MANN (Follow me, whoever is a man)!"—smashes in the Church-Gate of the place, nine muskets blazing on him through it; smashes, after a desperate struggle, the Austrians clean out of it, and conquers the citadel. [Muller, p. 42.]
The Austrians, on confused terms, made stiff dispute in this second position for about an hour. The Prussian Reserve was ordered up by Friedrich; the Prussian left wing, which had stood "refused," about Radaxdorf, till now: at one time nearly all the Prussians were in fire. Friedrich is here, is there, wherever the press was greatest; "Prince Ferdinand," whom we now and then find named, as a diligent little fellow, and ascertain to be here in this and other Battles of Friedrich's,—"Prince Ferdinand at one time pointed his cannon on the Bush or Fir-Clump of Radaxdorf;—an aide-de-camp came to him with message: "You are firing on the King; the King is yonder!" At which Ferdinand [his dear little Brother] ERSCHRACK," or almost fainted with terror. [Kutzen, p. 110.]
Stiff dispute; and had the Austrians possessed the Prussian dexterity in manoeuvring, and a Friedrich been among them,—perhaps? But on their own terms, there was from the first little hope in it. "Behind the Windmills they are a hundred men deep;" by and by, your Windmills, riddled to pieces, have to be abandoned; the Prussian left wing rushing on with bayonets, will not all of you have to go? Lucchesi, with his abundant Cavalry, seeing this latter movement and the Prussian flank bare in that part, will do a stroke upon them;—and this proved properly the finale of the matter, finale to both Lucchesi and it.
The Prussian flank was to appearance bare in that leftward quarter; but only to appearance: Driesen with the left wing of Horse is in a Hollow hard by; strictly charged by Friedrich to protect said flank, and take nothing else in hand. Driesen lets Lucchesi gallop by, in this career of his; then emerges, ranked, and comes storming in upon Lucchesi's back,—entirely confounding his astonished Cavalry and their career. Astonished Cavalry, bullet-storm on this side of them, edge of sword on that, take wing in all directions (or all except to west and south) quite over the horizon; Lucchesi himself gets killed,—crosses a still wider horizon, poor man. He began the ruin, and he ends it. For now Driesen takes the bared Austrians in flank, in rear; and all goes tumbling here too, and in few minutes is a general deluge rearward towards Saara and Lissa side.
At Saara the Austrians, sun just sinking, made a third attempt to stand; but it was hopelessly faint this time; went all asunder at the first push; and flowed then, torrent-wise, towards all its Bridges over the Schweidnitz Water, towards Breslau by every method. There are four Bridges, Stabelwitz below Lissa; Goldschmieden, Hermannsdorf, above; and the main one at Lissa itself, a standing Bridge on the Highroad (also of wood); and by this the chief torrent flows; Prussian horse pursuing vigorously; Prussian Infantry drawn up at Saara, resting some minutes, after such a day's work. [Archenholtz, i. 209; Seyfarth, Beylagen, ii. 243-252 (by an eye-witness, intelligent succinct Account of the Battle and previous March; ib. 252-272, of the Sieges &c. following); Preuss, ii. 112, &c.; Tempelhof, i. 276.]
Truly a memorable bit of work; no finer done for a hundred years, or for hundreds of years; and the results of it manifold, immediate and remote. About 10,000 Austrians are left on the field, 3,000 of them slain; prisoners already 12,000, in a short time 21,000; flags 51, cannon 116;—"Conquest of Silesia" gone to water; Prince Karl and Austria fallen from their high hopes in one day. The Prussians lost in killed 1,141, in wounded 5,118; 85 had been taken prisoners about Sagschutz and Gohlau, in the first struggle there. [Kutzen, pp. 118, 125.] There and at Leuthen Village had been the two tough passages; about an hour each; in three hours the Battle was done. "MEINE HERREN," said Friedrich that night at parole, "after such a spell of work, you deserve rest. This day will bring the renown of your name, and of the Nation's, to the latest posterity."
High and low had shone this day; especially these four: Ziethen, Driesen, Retzow,—and above all Moritz of Dessau. Riding up the line, as night fell, Friedrich, in passing Moritz and the right wing, drew bridle for an instant: "I congratulate you on the Victory, Herr Feldmarschall!" cried he cheerily, and with emphasis on the last word. Moritz, still very busy, answered slightly; and Friedrich repeated louder, "Don't you hear that I congratulate you, Herr FELDMARSCHALL!"—a glad sound to Moritz, who ever since Kolin had stood rather in the shadow. "You have helped me, and performed every order, as none ever did before in any battle," added the grateful King.
Riding up the line, all now grown dusky, Friedrich asks, "Any battalion a mind to follow me to Lissa?" Three battalions volunteering, follow him; three are plenty. At Saara, on the Great Road, things are fallen utterly dark. "Landlord, bring a lantern, and escort." Landlord of the poor Tavern at Saara escorts obediently; lantern in his right hand, left hand holding by the King's stirrup-leather,—King (Excellency or General, as the Landlord thinks him) wishing to speak with the man. Will the reader consent to their Dialogue, which is dullish, but singular to have in an authentic form, with Nicolai as voucher? [Anekdoten, iii. 231-235.] Like some poor old horse-shoe, ploughed up on the field. Two farthings worth of rusty old iron; now little other than a curve of brown rust: but it galloped at the Battle of Leuthen; that is something!—