"Winter time; so dangerous, so precarious," answer Bruhl and Comte de Saxe: There is this danger, this uncertainty, and then that other;--which the King and Valori, with all their eloquence, confute. "Impossible, for want of victual," answers Maurice at last, driven into a corner: "Iglau, suppose we get it, will soon be eaten; then where is our provision?"--"Provision?" answers Valori:
"There is M. de Sechelles, Head of our Commissariat in Prag; such a Commissary never was before." "And you consent, if I take that in hand?" urges Friedrich upon them. They are obliged to consent, on that proviso. Friedrich undertakes Sechelles: the Enterprise cannot now be refused. [ OEuvres de Frederic, ii. 170; Valori, i.
139; &c. &c.] "Alert, then; not a moment to be lost! Good-night;AU REVOIR, my noble friends!"--and to-morrow many hours before daybreak, Friedrich is off for Prag, leaving Dresden to awaken when it can.
At Prag he renews acquaintance with his old maladroit Strasburg friend, Marechal de Broglio, not with increase of admiration, as would seem; declines the demonstrations and civilities of Broglio, business being urgent: finds M. de Sechelles to be in truth the supreme of living Commissaries (ready, in words which Friedrich calls golden, "to make the impossible possible"): "Only march, then, noble Saxons: swift!"--and dashes off again, next morning, to northeastward, through Leopold's Bohemian cantonments, Glatz-ward by degrees, to be ready with his own share of the affair; no delay in him, for one. January 24th, after Konigsgratz and other Prussian posts,--January 24th, which is elsewhere so notable a day,--his route goes northeast, to Glatz, a hundred miles away, among the intricacies of the Giant Mountains, hither side of the Silesian Highlands; wild route for winter season, if the young King feared any route. From Berlin, hither and farther, he may have gone well-nigh his seven hundred miles within the week; rushing on continually (starts, at say four in the winter morning);doing endless business, of the ordering sort, as he speeds along.
Glatz, a southwestern mountainous Appendage to Silesia, abutting on Moravia and Bohemia, is a small strong Country; upon which, ever since the first Friedrich times, we have seen him fixed; claiming it too, as expenses from the Austrians, since they will not bargain. For he rises Sibyl-like: a year ago, you might have had him with his 100,000 to boot, for the one Duchy of Glogau;and now--! At Glatz or in these adjacent Bohemian parts, the Young Dessauer has been on duty, busy enough, ever since the late Siege of Neisse: Glatz Town the Young Dessauer soon got, when ordered;Town, Population, Territory, all is his,--all but the high mountain Fortress (centre of the Town of Glatzj, with its stiff-necked Austrian Garrison shut up there, which he is wearing out by hunger.
We remember the little Note from Valori's waistcoat-pocket, "Don't give him Glatz, if you can possibly help it!" In his latest treaties with the French and their Allies, Friedrich has very expressly bargained for the Country (will even pay money for it);[ OEuvres de Frederic, ii. 85.] and is determined to have it, when the Austrians next take to bargaining.
Of Glatz Fortress, now getting hungered out by Leopold's Prussian Detachment, I will say farther, though Friedrich heeds these circumstances little at present, that it stands on a scarped rock, girt by the grim intricate Hills; and that in the Arsenal, in dusty fabulous condition, lies a certain Drum, which readers may have heard of. Drum is not a fable, but an antique reality fallen flaccid; made, by express bequest, as is mythically said, from the skin of Zisca, above 300 years ago: altogether mythic that latter clause. Drum, Fortress, Town, Villages and Territory, all shall be Friedrich's, had hunger done its work. [Town already, after short scuffle, 14th January, 1742; Fortress, by hunger (no firing nor being fired on, in the interim), 25th April following,--when the once 2,000 of garrison, worn to about 200, pale as shadows, marched away to Brunn; "only ten of them able for duty on arriving."(Orlich, i. 174.)]
Friedrich, while at Glatz this time, gave a new Dress to the Virgin, say all the Biographers; of which the story is this.
Holy Virgin stood in the main Convent of Glatz, in rather a threadbare condition, when the Prussians first approached;the Jesuits, and ardently Orthodox of both sexes, flagitating Heaven and her with their prayers, that she would vouchsafe to keep the Prussians out. In which case pious Madame Something, wife of the Austrian Commandant, vowed her a new suit of clothes.
Holy Virgin did not vouchsafe; on the Contrary, here the Prussians are, and Starvation with them. "Courage, nevertheless, my new friends!" intimates Friedrich: "The Prussians are not bugaboos, as you imagined: Holy Virgin shall have a new coat, all the same!" and was at the expense of the bit of broadcloth with trimmings. He was in the way of making such investments, in his light sceptical humor; and found them answer to him. At Glatz, and through those Bohemian and Silesian Cantonments, he sets his people in motion for the Moravian Expedition; rapidly stirs up the due Prussian detachments from their Christmas rest among the Mountains; and has work enough in these regions, now here now there. Schwerin is already in Olmutz, for a month past; and towards him, or his neighborhood, the march is to be.
January 26th, Friedrich, now with considerable retinue about him, gets from Glatz to Landskron, some fifty miles Olmutz-ward; such a march as General Stille never saw,--"through the ice and through the snow, which covered that dreadful Chain of Mountains between Bohmen and Mahren: we did not arrive till very late; many of our carriages broken down, and others overturned more than once."[Stille (Anonymous, Friedrich's Old-Tutor Stille),