"On arriving with his Column where the Officer, a perfectly skilful man, had marked out the Camp, the King would lift his spy-glass;gaze to right and left, riding round the place at perhaps a hundred yards' distance; and begin: 'SIEHT ER, HERR, But look, Herr, what a botching you have made of it again (WAS ER DA WIEDER FUR DUMM ZEUGGEMACHT HAT)!' and grumbling and blaming, would alter the Camp, till it was all out of rule; and then say, 'See there, that is the way to mark out Camps.'" [Schmettau, xxv. 30, 24.]
In a week's time, July 13th, came another fine excuse for inaction;Plenipotentiary Thugut, namely, and the Kaiserinn's Letter, which we spoke of. Autograph from Maria Theresa herself, inspired by the terror of Vienna and of her beautiful motherly heart.
Negotiation to be private utterly: "My Son, the Kaiser, knows nothing of it; I beg the most absolute secrecy;" which was accordingly kept, while Thugut, with Finkenstein and Hertzberg again, held "Congress of Braunau" in those neighborhoods,--with as little effect as ever. Thugut's Name, it seems, was originally TUNICOTTO (Tyrolese-Italian); which the ignorant Vienna people changed into "THU-NICHT-GUT (Do-no-good)," till Maria Theresa, in very charity, struck out the negative, and made him "Do-good."Do-good and his Congress held Friedrich till August 10th: five more weeks gone; and nothing but reconnoitring,--with of course foraging, and diligently eating the Country, which is a daily employment, and produces fencing and skirmishing enough.
Henri, in the interim, has invaded from the West; seen Leitmeritz, Lobositz;--Prag Nobility all running, and I suppose Prayers to St.
Titus going again,--and Loudon in alarm. Loudon, however, saved Prag "by two masterly positions" (not mentionable here); upon which Henri took camp at Niemes; Loudon, the weaker in this part, seizing the Iser as a bulwark, and ranking himself behind it, back-to-back of Lacy. Here for about five weeks sat Henri, nothing on hand but to eat the Country. Over the heads of Loudon and Lacy, as the crow flies, Henri's Camp may be about 70 miles from Jaromirtz, where the King is. Hussar Belling, our old Anti-Swede friend, a brilliant cutting man, broke over the Iser once, perhaps twice; and there was pretty fencing by him and the like of him: "but Prince Henri did nothing," says the King, [ OEuvres de Frederic, vi. 154]--was, in fact, helping the King to do nothing.
By the 10th of September, as Henri has computed, this Country will be eaten; "Forage, I find, will be quite done here on September 10th," writes Henri, after a week or two's experience.
There was always talk of Henri and the King, who are 100,000 each, joining hands by the post of Arnau, or some weak point of Lacy's well north of Konigsgratz; thus of cutting off the meal-carts of that back-to-back copartnery, and so of tumbling it off the ground (which was perfectly possible, says Schmettau); and small detachments and expeditious were pushed out, General Dahlwig, General Anhalt, partly for that object: but not the least of it ever took effect. "Futile, lost by loitering, as all else was,"groans Schmettau. Prince Henri was averse to attempt, intimates the King,--as indeed (though refusing to own it) was I.
"September 10th, my forage will be out, your Majesty," says Henri, always a punctual calculating man.
The Austrians, on their side, were equally stagnant; and, except the continual skirmishing with the Prussian foragers, undertook nothing. "Shamefully ill-clone our foraging, too," exclaims Schmettau again and again: "Had we done it with neatness, with regularity, the Country would have lasted us twice as long.
Doing it headlong, wastefully and by the rule-of-thumb, the Country was a desert, all its inhabitants fled, all its edibles consumed, before six weeks were over. Friedrich is not now himself at all;in great things or in little; what a changed Friedrich!" exclaims Schmettau, with wearisome iteration.
From about August 6th, or especially August 10th, when the Maria-Theresa Correspondence, or "Congress of Braunau," ended likewise in zero, Friedrich became impatient for actual junction with Prince Henri, actual push of business; and began to hint of an excellent plan he had: "Burst through on their left flank; blow up their post of Hohenelbe yonder: thence is but one march to Iser river;junction with Prince Henri there; and a Lacy and a Loudon tumbled to the winds." "A plan perfectly feasible," says Schmettau; "which solaced the King's humor, but which he never really intended to execute." Possibly not; otherwise, according to old wont, he would have forborne to speak of it beforehand. At all events, August 15th, in the feeling that one ought really to do something, the rather as forage hereabouts was almost or altogether running out, he actually set about this grand scheme.
Got on march to rightward, namely, up the Aupa river, through the gloomy chasms of Kingdom-Wood, memorable in old days: had his bakery shifted to Trautenau; his heavy cannon getting tugged through the mire and the rains, which by this time were abundant, towards Hohenelbe, for the great enterprise: and sat encamped on and about the Battle-ground of Sohr for a week or so, waiting till all were forward; eating Sohr Country, which was painfully easy to do. The Austrians did next to nothing on him; but the rains, the mud and scarcity were doing much. Getting on to Hohenelbe region, after a week's wet waiting, he, on ocular survey of the ground about, was heard to say, "This cannot be done, then!" "Had never meant to do it," sneers Schmettau, "and only wanted some excuse."Which is very likely. Schmettau gives an Anecdote of him here: