by G. A. Henty
On the 13th Frederick set out, with 10,000 men—to be followed by 4000 more under Prince Maurice, two days later, these being all that could be spared from the siege works—to join Bevern, who had fallen back as Daun advanced. The junction effected, Frederick joined Bevern and approached Daun, who was posted in a strong position near Kolin, thirty-five miles from Prague. On the 17th Prince Maurice arrived, and after several changes of position the armies faced each other on the 18th, within a short distance of Kolin.
Daun’s new position was also a strong one, and was, in fact, only to be assailed on its right; and the Prussian army was moved in that direction, their order being to pay no attention to the Austrian batteries or musketry fire, but to march steadily to the spot indicated. This was done. Ziethen dashed with his hussars upon the Austrian cavalry, drawn up to bar the way; defeated them, and drove them far from the field; while Hulsen’s division of infantry carried the village of Preezer, on the Austrian flank, in spite of the Austrian batteries. So far Frederick’s combination had worked admirably.
Hulsen then attacked a wood behind it, strongly held by the Austrians. Here a struggle commenced which lasted the whole day, the wood being several times taken and lost. He was not supported, owing to a mistake that entirely upset Frederick’s plan of battle.
While three miles away from the point where the attack was to be delivered, Mannstein, whose quickness of inspiration had largely contributed to the victory of Prague, now ruined Frederick’s plan by his impetuosity. The corn fields, through which his division was marching towards the assault of the Austrian left, were full of Croats; who kept up so galling a fire that, losing all patience, he turned and attacked them.
The regiment to which he gave the order cleared the Croats off; but these returned, strongly reinforced. The regiments coming behind, supposing that fresh orders had arrived, also turned off; and in a short time the whole division, whose support was so sorely needed by Hulsen, were assaulting the almost impregnable Austrian position in front.
Another mistake—this time arising from a misconception of a too brief and positive order, given by Frederick himself—led Prince Maurice, who commanded the Prussian centre, to hurl himself in like manner against the Austrians.
For four hours the battle raged. In spite of their disadvantages, the Prussians fought so desperately that Daun believed the day to be lost, and sent orders to the troops to retreat to Suchdol; but the commander of the Saxon cavalry considered the order premature and, gathering a large body of Austrian infantry, charged with them and his own cavalry so furiously upon Hulsen that the latter was forced to retreat.
The movement spread, the attack slackened, and the other division moved down the hill. They had all but won. Frederick in vain tried to rally and lead them afresh to the attack. They had done all that men could do, and the battle ceased. Daun scarcely attempted to pursue, and the Prussians marched away, unmolested even by cavalry; some of the regiments remaining firm in their position until nightfall, repulsing with great loss the one attempt of the Austrians at pursuit; and Ziethen’s cavalry did not draw off until ten at night.
The Austrians had 60,000 men in the field, of whom they lost in killed and wounded 8114. The Prussians, who began the day 34,000 strong, lost 13,773; of whom the prisoners, including all the wounded, amounted to 5380.
The news of the disaster, and with it Frederick’s order to prepare to raise the siege of Prague at once, came like a thunderclap upon the Prussian camp. Frederick himself, and the remnant of his army, arrived there in good order, with all their baggage train, a day later. The cannon were removed from the batteries, the magazines emptied; and in good order, and without any attempt on the part of the Austrian garrison to molest them, the Prussian army marched away and took up their post at Leitmeritz.
The news that an Austrian army had at last beaten Frederick, and that Prague was saved, caused an exultation and joy, among the allies, equal to the dismay that had been aroused by the defeat at Prague; although there was nothing remarkable, or worth much congratulation, in the fact that an army, in an almost impregnable position, had repulsed the attack of another of little over half its strength.
CHAPTER 9
In Disguise
Leitmeritz, lying as it did but a short distance beyond the mouth of the defiles leading into Saxony, was an admirably chosen position. Supplies for the army could be brought up by the Elbe, and a retreat was assured, should an overwhelming force advance to the attack; while from this spot Frederick could march, at once, either to the defence of Silesia, or to check an enemy approaching from the west towards the defiles through the mountains.
The news of the defeat at Kolin set all the enemies of Prussia in movement. The Russian army entered East Prussia, where there was no adequate force to oppose it; the Swedes issued from Stralsund; the French pressed hard upon the so-called British column of observation, and forced the Duke of Cumberland to retreat before them. Another French army, in conjunction with that of the German Confederacy, threatened the western passes into Saxony.
As yet, it was impossible to say where Marshal Daun and Prince Karl would deliver their blow, and great efforts were made to fill up the terrible gaps created at Prague and Kolin, in the regiments most hotly engaged, with fresh troops; who were speedily rendered, by incessant drills and discipline, fit to take their places in the ranks with the veterans.
The king was lodged in the cathedral close of the city. Keith with his division occupied the other side of the river, across which a bridge was at once thrown. Prince Maurice and Bevern had gone to Bunzlau, at the junction of the Iser and Elbe; but when, upon a crowd of light Austrian horse approaching, the Prince sent to the king to ask whether he should retreat, he was at once recalled, and the Prince of Prussia appointed in his stead.
On the 2nd of July came news which, on the top of his other troubles, almost prostrated Frederick. This was of the death of his mother, to whom he was most fondly attached. He retired from public view for some days; for although he was as iron in the hour of battle, he was a man of very sensitive disposition, and fondly attached to his family.
His chief confidant during this sad time was the English ambassador, Mitchell; a bluff, shrewd, hearty man, for whom the king had conceived a close friendship. He had accompanied Frederick from the time he left Berlin, and had even been near him on the battlefields; and it was in no small degree due to his despatches and correspondence that we have obtained so close a view of Frederick, the man, as distinct from Frederick the king and general.
The Prince of Prussia, however, did no better than Prince Maurice. The main Austrian army, after much hesitation, at last crossed the Elbe and moved against him; thinking, doubtless, that he was a less formidable antagonist than the king. The prince fell back, but in such hesitating and blundering fashion that he allowed the Austrians to get between him and his base, the town of Zittau, where his magazines had been established.
Zittau stood at the foot of the mountain, and was a Saxon town. The Austrians had come to deliver Saxony, and they began the work by firing red-hot balls into Zittau, thereby laying the whole town in ashes, rendering 10,000 people homeless, and doing no injury whatever to the Prussian garrison or magazines.
The heat, however, from the ruins was so terrible that the five battalions in garrison there were unable to support it and, evacuating the town, joined the prince’s army; which immediately retired to Bautzen on the other side of the mountains, leaving the defiles to Saxony and Silesia both unguarded.
As messenger after messenger arrived at Leitmeritz, with reports of the movements of the troops, the astonishment and indignation of Frederick rose higher and higher. The whole fruits of the campaign were lost, by this astounding succession of blunders; and on hearing that Zittau had been destroyed, and that the army had arrived at Bautzen in the condition of a beaten and disheartened force, he at once started, with the bulk of the army, by the Elbe passes for that town; leaving Maurice of Dessau, with 10,000 men, to secure the pas
ses; and Keith to follow more slowly with the baggage train and magazines.
On his arrival at Bautzen Frederick refused to speak to his brother, but sent him a message saying that he deserved to be brought before a court martial, which would sentence him and all his generals to death; but that he should not carry the matter so far, being unable to forget that the chief offender was his brother. The prince resigned his command, and the king, in answer to his letter to that effect, said that, in the situation created by him, nothing was left but to try the last extremity.
“I must go and give battle,” he wrote, “and if we cannot conquer, we must all of us get ourselves killed.”
Frederick, indeed, as his letters show, had fully made up his mind that he would die in battle, rather than live beaten. The animosity of his enemies was, to a large extent, personal to himself; and he believed that they would, after his death, be inclined to give better terms to Prussia than they would ever grant, while he lived. For three weeks the king vainly tried to get the Austrians to give battle, but Prince Karl and Daun remained on the hill from which they had bombarded Zittau, and which they had now strongly fortified.
Their barbarous and most useless bombardment of Zittau had done their cause harm; for it roused a fierce cry of indignation throughout Europe, even among their allies; excited public feeling in England to the highest point in favour of Frederick; and created a strong feeling of hostility to the Austrians throughout Saxony.
As soon as Keith and the waggon train arrived, bringing up the Prussian strength to 56,000, the king started, on the 15th August (1757), for Bernstadt; and then, to the stupefaction of the Austrians—who had believed that they had either Saxony or Silesia at their mercy, whenever they could make up their mind which ought first to be gobbled up—so rapidly did the Prussian cavalry push forward that Generals Beck and Nadasti were both so taken by surprise that they had to ride for their lives, leaving baggage coaches, horses, and all their belongings behind them.
On the 16th, Frederick with the army marched and offered battle to the Austrians; but although so superior in numbers, they refused to be beguiled from their fortified hill. At last, after tempting them in vain, Frederick was forced to abandon the attempt and return to Saxony, bitterly disappointed. He had wanted, above all things, to finish with the Austrians; so as to be able to move off to the other points threatened.
He now arranged that Bevern and Winterfeld should take the command in his absence, watch the Austrians, and guard Silesia; while he, with 23,000 men, marched on the 31st of August from Dresden, with the intention of attacking the combined French and German Confederacy force, under Soubise, that had already reached Erfurt. Keith accompanied the king on his harassing march.
Since the arrival of the army at Leitmeritz, Fergus had been incessantly engaged in carrying despatches between that town and Dresden; and worked even harder while the king was trying, but in vain, to bring about an engagement with the Austrians. For the first few days after starting for Erfurt, he had a comparatively quiet time of it. The marshal was now constantly the king’s companion, his cheerful and buoyant temper being invaluable to Frederick, in this time of terrible anxiety. Fergus would have found it dull work, had it not been for the companionship of Lindsay, who was always light hearted, and ready to make the best of everything.
“I would rather be an aide-de-camp than a general, at present, Drummond,” he said one day. “Thank goodness, we get our orders and have to carry them out, and leave all the thinking to be done by others! Never was there such a mess as this. Here we are in October, and we are very much as we were when we began in March.”
“Yes, except that all our enemies are drawing closer to us.”
“They are closer, certainly, but none of them would seem to know what he wants to do; and as for fighting, it is of all things that which they most avoid. We have been trying, for the last two months, for a fight with the Austrians, and cannot get one. Now we are off to Erfurt, and I will wager a month’s pay that the French will retire, as soon as we approach; and we shall have all this long tramp for nothing, and will have to hurry back again, as fast as we came.”
“It is unfortunate that we had to come, Lindsay. Things always seem to go badly, when the king himself is not present. The princes make blunder after blunder, and I have no faith in Bevern.”
“No,” Lindsay agreed, “but he has Winterfeld with him.”
“Yes, he is a splendid fellow,” Drummond said; “but everyone knows that he and Bevern do not get on well together, and that the duke would very much rather that Winterfeld was not with him; and with two men like that, the one slow and cautious, the other quick and daring, there are sure to be disagreements. We are going to attack a force more than twice our own strength, but I am much more certain as to what will be the result, than I am that we shall find matters unchanged when we get back here.”
The foreboding was very quickly confirmed. A day or two later came the news that the Austrians had suddenly attacked an advanced position called the Jakelsberg; where Winterfeld, who commanded the van of Bevern’s army, had posted two thousand grenadiers. Prince Karl undertook the operation by no means willingly; but the indignation, at Vienna, at his long delays had resulted in imperative orders being sent to him, to fight. Nadasti was to lead the attack, with fifteen thousand men; while the main army remained, a short distance behind, ready to move up should a general battle be brought on.
The march was made at night, and at daybreak a thousand Croats, and forty companies of regular infantry, rushed up the hill. Although taken by surprise, the Prussians promptly formed and drove them down again. Winterfeld was some miles behind, having been escorting an important convoy; and rode at a gallop to the spot, as soon as he heard the sound of cannon; and brought up two regiments, at a run, just as the grenadiers were retiring from the hill, unable to withstand the masses hurled against them.
Sending urgent messages to Bevern, to hurry up reinforcements, Winterfeld led his two regiments forward, joined the grenadiers and, rushing eagerly up the hill, regained the position. But the Austrians were not to be denied, and the fight was obstinately sustained on both sides. No reinforcements reached Winterfeld and, after an hour’s desperate fighting, he was struck in the breast by a musket ball and fell, mortally wounded.
The Prussians drew off, slowly and in good order, at two o’clock in the afternoon; and soon afterwards the Austrians also retired, nothing having come of this useless battle save heavy loss to both sides, and the killing of one of Frederick’s best and most trusted generals. It was not, however, without result; for Bevern, freed from the restraint of his energetic colleague, at once fell back to Schlesien, where he was more comfortable, near his magazines.
Keith sent for Fergus, on the evening when this bad news had arrived.
“I want you, lad, to undertake a dangerous service. Now that Winterfeld has been killed, the king is more anxious than ever as to the situation. It is enough to madden anyone. It is imperative that he should get to Erfurt, and fight the French. On the other hand, everything may go wrong with Bevern while he is away, to say nothing of other troubles. Cumberland is retreating to the sea; the Russians are ever gaining ground in East Prussia; there is nothing, now, to prevent the remaining French army from marching on Berlin; and the Swedes have issued from Stralsund. It may be that by this time Soubise has moved from Erfurt; and this is what, above all things, we want to know.
“You showed so much shrewdness, in your last adventure, that I believe you might get through this safely. Doubtless there are cavalry parties, far in advance of Erfurt, and these would have to be passed. The point is, will you undertake this mission, to go to Erfurt to ascertain the force there, and if possible their intentions, and bring us back word?”
“I shall be glad to try, marshal. There should be no difficulty about it. I shall, of course, go in disguise. I should not be likely to fall in with any of the enemy’s cavalry patrols, till within a short distance of Erfurt; but should I do so, ther
e would be little chance of their catching me, mounted as I am.
“I could leave my horse within a short distance of the town. Two or three hours would be sufficient to gather news of the strength of the force there, and the movements of any bodies of detached troops.”
“Yes, you should have no great difficulty about that. A large proportion of the population are favourable to us and, being so near the frontier of Hanover, your accent and theirs must be so close that no one would suspect you of being aught but a townsman.
“Of course, the great thing is speed. We shall march from eighteen to twenty miles a day. You will be able to go fifty. That is to say, if you start at once you can be there in the morning; and on the following morning you can bring us back news.”
An hour later Fergus, dressed as a small farmer, started. It was a main line of road, and therefore he was able to travel as fast, at night, as he would do in the day. There was the advantage, too, that the disparity between his attire and the appearance of the horse he rode would pass unnoticed, in the darkness. He had with him a map of the road, on a large scale; and beneath his cloak he carried a small lantern, so as to be able to make detours, to avoid towns where detachments of the enemy’s cavalry might be lying.
He had started two hours after the troops halted, and had four hours of daylight still before him, which he made the most of, and by sunset he was within fifteen miles of Erfurt. So far, he had not left the main road; but he now learned, from some peasants, that there was a small party of French hussars at a place three miles ahead. He therefore struck off by a byroad and, travelling slowly along, turned off two hours later to a farmhouse, the lights from which had made him aware of its proximity.
He dismounted a hundred yards from it, fastened his horse loosely to a fence, and then went forward on foot, and peeped in cautiously at the window. It was well that he had taken the precaution, for the kitchen into which he looked contained a dozen French hussars. He retired at once, led his horse until he reached the road again, and then mounted.