And,--here is the second phase notable,--"On Monday, 15th, ["18th," Feldzuge, i. 402(see Rodenbeck, i. 122).] at 7 A.M.," Friedrich rushes off, by Crossen, full speed for Liegnitz; "with Rothenburg, with the Prince of Prussia and Ferdinand of Brunswick accompanying." With what thoughts,--though, in his face, you can read nothing; all Berlin being already in such tremor! Friedrich is in Liegnitz next day;and after needful preliminaries there, does, on the Thursday following, "at Nieder-Adelsdorf," not far off, take actual command of Prince Leopold's Army, which had lain encamped for some days, waiting him. And now with such force in hand,--35,000, soldiers every man of them, and freshened by a month's rest,--one will endeavor to do some good upon Prince Karl. Probably sooner than Prince Karl supposes. For there is great velocity in this young King; a panther-like suddenness of spring in him: cunning, too, as any Felis of them; and with claws like the Felis Leo on occasion.
Here follows the brief Campaign that ensued, which I strive greatly to abridge.
Prince Karl's intentions towards Frankfurt-on-Oder Country, through the Lausitz, are now becoming practically manifest. There is a Magazine for him at Guben, within thirty miles of Frankfurt;arrangements getting ready all the way. A winter march of 150miles;--but what, say the spies, is to hinder? Prince Karl dreams not that Friedrich is on the ground, or that anybody is aware.
Which notion Friedrich finds that it will be extremely suitable to maintain in Prince Karl. Friedrich is now at Adelsdorf, some thirty miles eastward of the Lausitz Border, perhaps forty or more from the route Prince Karl will follow through that Province.
"It is a high-lying irregularly hilly Country; hilly, not mountainous. Various streams rise out of it that have a long course,--among others, the Spree, which washes Berlin;--especially three Valleys cross it, three Rivers with their Valleys:
Bober, Queiss, Neisse (the THIRD Neisse we have come upon);all running northward, pretty much parallel, though all are branches of the Oder. This is Neisse THIRD, we say; not the Neisse of Neisse City, which we used to know at the north base of the Giant Mountains, nor the Roaring Neisse, which we have seen at Hohenfriedberg; but a third [and the FOURTH and last, "Black Neisse," thank Heaven, is an upper branch of this, and we have, and shall have, nothing to do with it!]--third Neisse, which we may call the Lausitz Neisse. On which, near the head of it, there is a fine old spinning, linen-weaving Town called Zittau,--where, to make it memorable, one Tourist has read, on the Town-house, an Inscription worth repeating: 'BENE FACERE ET MALE AUDIRE REGIUMEST, To do good and have evil said of you, is a kingly thing.'
Other Towns, as Gorlitz, and seventy miles farther the above-said Guben, lie on this same Neisse,--shall we add that Herrnhuth stands near the head of it? The wondrous Town of Herrnhuth (LORD'S-KEEPING), founded by Count Zinzendorf, twenty years before those dates; ["In 1722, the first tree felled" (LIVES of Zinzendorf).]
where are a kind of German Methodist-Quakers to this day, who have become very celebrated in the interim. An opulent enough, most silent, strictly regular, strange little Town. The women are in uniform; wives, maids, widows, each their form of dress.
Missionaries, speaking flabby English, who have been in the West Indies or are going thither, seem to abound in the place;male population otherwise, I should think, must be mainly doing trade elsewhere; nothing but prayers, preachings, charitable boarding-schooling and the like, appeared to be going on.
Herrnhuth is 'a Sabbath Petrified; Calvinistic Sabbath done into Stone,' as one of my companions called it." [Tourist's Note (Autumn, 1852).]
Herrnhuth, of which all Englishmen have heard, stands near the head of this our third Neisse; as does Zittau, a few miles higher up.
I can do nothing more to give it mark for them. Bober Valley, then Queiss Valley, which run parallel though they join at last, and become Bober wholly before getting into the Oder,--these two Valleys and Rivers lie in Friedrich's own Territory; and are between him and the Lausitz, Queiss River being the boundary of Silesia and the Lausitz here. It is down the Neisse that Prince Karl means to march. There are Saxons already gathering about Zittau; and down as far as Guben they are making Magazines and arrangements,--for it is all their own Country in those years, though most of it is Prussia's now. Prince Karl's march will go parallel to the Bober and the Queiss; separated from the Queiss in this part by an undulating Hill-tract of twenty miles or more.
Friedrich has had somewhat to settle for the Southern Frontier of Silesia withal, which new doggeries of Pandours are invading,--to lie ready for Prince Karl on his return thither, whose grand meaning all this while (as Friedrich well knows), is "Silesia in the lump" again, had he once cut us off from Brandenburg and our supplies! General Nassau, far eastward, who is doing exploits in Moravia itself,--him Friedrich has ordered homeward, westward to his own side of the Mountains, to attend these new Pandour gentlemen; Winterfeld he has called home, out of those Southern mountains, as likely to be usefuler here on this Western frontier.
Winterfeld arrived in Camp the same day with Friedrich; and is sent forward with a body of 3,000 light troops, to keep watch about the Lausitz Frontier and the River Queiss; "careful not to quit our own side of that stream,"--as we mean to hoodwink Prince Karl, if we can!
Friedrich lies strictly within his own borders, for a day or two;till Prince Karl march, till his own arrangements are complete.
Friedrich himself keeps the Bober, Winterfeld the Queiss; "all pass freely out of the Lausitz; none are allowed to cross into it: