But in the northwest part, those Fincks and Wunsches, Excellenz?"--And the actual truth is, Wunsch has taken Leipzig, day before yesterday (September 13th), as Daun sorrowfully knows, by news come in overnight. And six days hence (September 21st), Finck and Wunsch together will do their "ACTION OF KORBITZ," and be sending Haddick a bad road! These things Zweibruck knows only in part; but past experience gives him ominous presentiment, as it may well do;and he thinks decidedly: "Excellenz, more Austrian troops are indispensable there; in fact, your Excellenz's self, were that possible; which one feels it is not, in the presence of these Russians!"Russians and Reichsfolk, these are a pair of thumbscrews on both thumbs of Daun; screwing the cunctation out of him; painfully intimating: "Get rid of this Prince Henri; you must, you must!"And, in the course of the next eight days Daun has actually girt himself to this great enterprise. Goaded on, I could guess, by the "Action of Korbitz " (done on Friday, thirty hours ago); the news of which, and that Haddick, instead of extinguishing Finck, is retreating from him upon Dresden,--what a piece of news! thinks Daun: "You, Zweibruck, Haddick, Maguire and Company, you are 36,000in Saxony; Finck has not 12,000 in the field: How is this?"--and indignantly dismisses Haddick altogether: "Go, Sir, and attend to your health!" [Tempelhof, iii. 276, 258-261.] News poignantly astonishing to Daun, as would seem;--like an ox-goad in the lazy rear of Daun. Certain it is, Daun had marched out to Gorlitz in collected form; and, on Saturday afternoon, SEPTEMBER 22d is personally on the Heights (not Moys Hill, I should judge, but other points of vision), taking earnest survey of Prince Henri's position on the Landskron there. "To-morrow morning we attack that Camp,"thinks Daun; "storm Prince Henri and it: be rid of him, at any price!" [Ib. iii. 253-256 (for the March now ensuing):
iii. 228-234, 241-247 (for Henri's anterior movements).]
"To-morrow morning," yes:--but this afternoon, and earlier, Prince Henri has formed a great resolution, his plans all laid, everything in readiness; and it is not here you will find Prince Henri to-morrow. This is his famous March of Fifty Hours, this that we are now come to; which deserves all our attention,--and all Daun's much more! Prince Henri was habitually a man cautious in War;not aggressive, like his Brother, but defensive, frugal of risks, and averse to the lion-springs usual with some people;though capable of them, too, in the hour of need. Military men are full of wonder at the bold scheme he now fell upon; and at his style of executing it. Hardly was Daun gone home to his meditations on the storm of the Landskron to-morrow, and tattoo beaten in Prince Henri's Camp there, when, at 8 that Saturday evening, issuing softly, with a minimum of noise, in the proper marching columns, baggage-columns, Henri altogether quitted this Camp;and vanished like a dream. Into the Night; men and goods, every item:--who shall say whitherward? Leaving only a few light people to keep up the watch-fires and sentry-cries, for behoof of Daun!
Let readers here, who are in the secret, watch him a little from afar.
Straight northward goes Prince Henri, down Neisse Valley, 20 miles or so, to Rothenburg; in columns several-fold, with much delicate arranging, which was punctually followed: and in the course of to-morrow Prince Henri is bivouacked, for a short rest of three hours,--hidden in unknown space, 20 miles from Daun, when Daun comes marching up to storm him on the Landskron! Gone veritably;but whitherward Daun cannot form the least guess. Daun can only keep his men under arms there, all day; while his scouts gallop far and wide,--bringing in this false guess and the other; and at length returning with the eminently false one, misled by some of Henri's baggage-columns, which have to go many routes, That the Prince is on march for Glogau:--"Gone northeast; that way went his wagons; these we saw with our eyes." "Northeast? Yes, to Glogau possibly enough," thinks Daun: "Or may not he, cunning as he is and full of feints, intend a stroke on Bautzen, in my absence?"--and hastens thither again, and sits down on the Magazine-lid, glad to find nothing wrong there.
This is all that Daun hears of Henri for the next four days.
Plenty of bad news from Saxony in these four days: the Finck-Haddick Action of Korbitz, a dismal certainty before one started,--and Haddick on his road to some Watering Place by this time! But no trace of Henri farther; since that of the wagons wending northeast.
"Gone to Glogau, to his Brother: no use in pushing him, or trying to molest him there!" thinks Daun; and waits, in stagnant humor, chewing the cud of bitter enough thoughts, till confirmation of that guess arrive:--as it never will in this world! Read an important Note:--"To northward of Bautzen forty miles, and to westward forty miles, the country is all Daun's; only towards Glogau, with the Russians and Friedrich thereabouts, does it become disputable, or offer Prince Henri any chance. Nevertheless it is not to Glogau, it is far the reverse, that the nimble Henri has gone. Resting himself at Rothenburg 'three hours' (speed is of all things the vitalest), Prince Henri starts again, SUNDAY afternoon, straight westward this time. Marches, with his best swiftness, with his best arrangements, through many sleeping Villages, to Klitten, not a wakeful one: a march of 18 miles from Rothenburg;--direct for the Saxon side of things, instead of the Silesian, as Daun had made sure.