ONE:With great joy Frederick learned that the Austrians had left their camp, and were on the advance to attack him. He immediately put his little army in motion for the perilous and decisive conflict. It was four oclock Sunday morning, December 4, 1757, when Frederick left Parchwitz on his march toward Breslau. He was familiar with every square mile of the region. The Austrians were so vastly superior in numbers that many of them quite despised the weakness of the Prussian army. Many jokes were tossed about in the Austrian camp respecting the feeble band of Frederick, which they contemptuously called the Potsdam Guard.
TWO:At the second repulse, the Saxon grenadiers, greatly elated, gave a shout of victory, and rushed from their works to pursue the retreating Prussians. This was their ruin.564 The sure fact, and the forever memorable, is that on Wednesday, the third day of it, from four in the morning, when the man?uvres began, till well after ten oclock, when they ended, there was rain like Noahs; rain falling as from buckets and water-spouts; and that Frederick, so intent upon his business, paid not the slightest regard to it, but rode about, intensely inspecting, in lynx-eyed watchfulness of every thing, as if no rain had been there. Was not at the pains even to put on his cloak. Six hours of such down-pour; and a weakly old man of seventy-three past! Of course he was wetted to the bone. On returning to head-quarters, his boots were found full of water; when pulled off, it came pouring from them like a pair of pails.195
THREE:Let him learn arithmetic, mathematics, artillery, economy, to the very bottom; history in particular; ancient history only slightly, but the history of the last hundred and fifty years to the exactest pitch. He must be completely master of geography, as also of whatever is remarkable in each country. With increasing years you will more and more, to an especial degree, go upon fortification, the formation of a camp, and other war sciences, that the prince may, from youth upward, be trained to act as officer and general, and to seek all his glory in the soldier profession. You have, in the highest measure, to make it your care to infuse into my son a true love for the soldier business, and to impress on him that, as there is nothing in the world which can bring a prince renown and honor like the sword, so he would be a despised creature before all men if he did not love it and seek his glory therein.
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