ONE:There were nearly thirty thousand men, infantry and cavalry, thus assembling under the banners of Frederick for battle. They were in as perfect state of drill as troops have ever attained, and were armed with the most potent implements of war which that age could furnish. The king was visibly affected by the spectacle. Whether humane considerations touched his heart, or merely poetic emotion moved him, we can not tell. But he was well aware that within a few hours not merely hundreds, but thousands of those men, torn by shot and shell, would be prostrate in their blood upon the plain; and he could not but know that for all the carnage and the suffering, he, above all others, would be responsible at the bar of God.
TWO:Hotham, quite indignant, sent this dispatch, dated May 13, to London, including with it a very earnest letter from the Crown Prince to his uncle, in which Fritz wrote:
ONE: Les torrents deau rpandus sur la terre
TWO:Much to Fredericks chagrin, he soon learned that a body of three hundred foot and three hundred horse, cautiously approaching through by-paths in the mountains, had thrown itself into Neisse, to strengthen the garrison there. This was on the 5th of March. But six days before a still more alarming event had occurred. On the 27th of February, Frederick, with a small escort, not dreaming of danger, set out to visit two small posts in the vicinity of Neisse. He stopped to dine with a few of his officers in the little village of Wartha, while the principal part of the detachment which accompanied him continued its movement to Baumgarten.The officer drew up a statement of the facts, and sent it to the king, with the complaint that he had been dishonored in discharging the duties intrusted to him by his majesty. The king sent the following reply:
ONE:After a long search, I at length found him in a tower of a church, with a telescope in his hand. Never had I seen him in so much perplexity and anxiety as at this moment. The order he gave me was, You must get out of this scrape as well as you can. I had hardly got back to my post when his adjutant337 followed me with a new order to cross the town, and to remain on horseback with my squadron in the opposite suburb.
TWO:FREDERICK IN THE GARDEN.307 Elsewhere, Frederick, speaking of these two winter campaigns, says: Winter campaigns are bad, and should always be avoided, except in cases of necessity. The best army in the world is liable to be ruined by them. I myself have made more winter campaigns than any general of this age. But there were reasons. In 1740 there were hardly above two Austrian regiments in Silesia, at the death of the Emperor Charles VI. Being determined to assert my right to that duchy, I had to try it at once, in winter, and carry the war, if possible, to the banks of the Neisse. Had I waited till spring, we must have begun the war between Crossen and Glogau. What was now to be gained by one march would then have cost us three or four campaigns. A sufficient reason, this, for campaigning in winter. If I did not succeed in the winter campaigns of 1742, a campaign which I made to deliver Moravia, then overrun by Austrians, it was because the French acted like fools, and the Saxons like traitors.64
