Leobschutz, and all the rest of you, make your packages;
march without delay; rendezvous at Steinau and Upper Glogau [far
different from GREAT-Glogau], Neisse-ward; swift!' And would have
himself gone on the 14th, but could not,--his poor little Bakery
not being here, nor wagons for his baggages quite to be collected
in a moment,--and it was Saturday, 15th, 5 A.M., that Goltz
appointed himself to march.

"The last time we saw General Goltz was on the Green of Bautzen,
above two years ago,--when he delivered that hard message to the
King's Brother and his party, 'You deserve to be tried by Court-
martial, and have your heads cut off!' He was of that sad Zittau
business of the late Prince of Prussia's,--Goltz, Winterfeld,
Ziethen, Schmettau and others? Winterfeld and the Prince are both
dead; Schmettau is fallen into disaster; Goltz is still in good
esteem with the King. A stalwart, swift, flinty kind of man, to
judge by the Portraits of him; considerable obstinacy, of a tacitly
intelligent kind, in that steady eye, in that droop of the eyebrows
towards the strong cheek-bones; plenty of sleeping fire in
Lieutenant-General Goltz.

"His principal force, on this occasion, is one Infantry Regiment;
REGIMENT MANTEUFFEL:--readers perhaps recollect that stout Pommern
Regiment, Manteuffel of Foot, and the little Dialogue it had with
the King himself, on the eve of Leuthen: 'Good-night, then, Fritz!
To-morrow all dead, or else the Enemy beaten.' Their conduct, I
have heard, was very shining at Leuthen, where everybody shone;
and since then they have been plunging about through the death-
element in their old rugged way,--and re-emerge here into definite
view again, under Lieutenant-General Goltz, issuing from the north
end of Neustadt, in the dim dawn of a cold spring morning, March
15th, 5 A.M.; weather latterly very wet, as I learn. They intend
Neisse-way, with their considerable stock of baggage-wagons; a
company of Dragoons is to help in escorting: party perhaps about
2,000 in all. Goltz will have his difficulties this day; and has
calculated on them. And, indeed, at the first issuing, here they
already are.

"Loudon, with about 5,000 horse,--four Regiments drawn up here, and
by and by with a fifth (happily not with the grenadiers, as he had
calculated, who are detained by broken bridges, waters all in flood
from the rain),--is waiting for him, at the very environs of
Neustadt. Loudon, by a trumpet, politely invites him to surrender,
being so outnumbered; Goltz, politely thanking, disregards it, and
marches on: Loudon escorting, in an ominous way; till, at
Buchelsdorf, the fifth Regiment (best in the Austrian service) is
seen drawn out across the highway, plainly intimating, No
thoroughfare to Goltz and Pommern. Loudon sends a second trumpet:
'Surrender prisoners; honorablest terms; keep all your baggage:
refuse, and you are cut down every man.' 'You shall yourself hear
the answer,' said Goltz. Goltz leads this second trumpet to the
front; and, in Pommern dialect, makes known what General Loudon's
proposal is. The Pommerners answer, as one man, a No of such
emphasis as I have never heard; in terms which are intensely
vernacular, it seems, and which do at this day astonish the foreign
mind: 'We will for him something, WIR WOLLEN IHM WAS--' But the
powers of translation and even of typography fail; and feeble
paraphrase must give it: 'We will for him SOMETHING INEFFABLE
CONCOCT,' of a surprisingly contrary kind! 'WIR WOLLEN IHM WAS'
(with ineffable dissyllabic verb governing it)! growled one
indignant Pommerner; 'and it ran like file-fire along the ranks,'
says Archenholtz; everybody growling it, and bellowing it, in
fierce bass chorus, as the indubitable vote of Pommern in
those circumstances.

"Loudon's trumpet withdrew. Pommern formed square round its
baggage; Loudon's 5,000 came thundering in, fit to break adamant;
but met such a storm of bullets from Pommern, they stopped about
ten paces short, in considerable amazement, and wheeled back.
Tried it again, still more amazement; the like a third time;
every time in vain. After which, Pommern took the road again, with
vanguard, rearguard; and had peace for certain miles,--Loudon
gloomily following, for a new chance. How many times Loudon tried
again, and ever again, at good places, I forget,--say six times in
all. Between Siebenhufen and Steinau, in a dirty defile, the jewel
of the road for Loudon, who tried his very best there, one of our
wagons broke down; the few to rear of it, eighteen wagons and some
country carts, had to be left standing. Nothing more of Pommern was
left there or anywhere. Near Steinau there, Loudon gave it up as
desperate, and went his way. His loss, they say, was 300 killed,
500 wounded; Pommern's was 35 killed, and above 100 left wounded or
prisoners. One of the stiffest day's works I have known:
some twelve miles of march, in every two an attack. Pommern has
really concocted something surprising, and kept its promise to
Loudon! 'Thou knowest what the Pommerners can do,' said they once
to their own King. An obstinate, strong-boned, heavy-browed people;
not so stupid as you think. More or less of Jutish or Anglish type;
highly deficient in the graces of speech, and, I should judge, with
little call to Parliamentary Eloquence." [Preuss, ii. 241
(incorrect in some small points); Archenholtz, ii. 61; Seyfarth,
ii. 640, and <italic> Beylagen, <end italic> ii. 657-660;
Tempelhof, iv. 8-10; in ANONYMOUS OF HAMBURG (iv. 68) the
Austrian account.]

Friedrich is, this Year, considered by the generality of mankind,
to be ruined: "Lost 60,000 men last Campaign; was beaten twice; his
luck is done; what is to become of him?" say his enemies, and even
the impartial Gazetteer, with joy or sorrow. Among his own people
there is gloom or censure; hard commentaries on Maxen: "So self-
willed, high, and deaf to counsel from Prince Henri!" Henri
himself, they say, is sullen; threatening, as he often does, to
resign "for want of health;" and as he quite did, for a while, in
the end of this Campaign, or interval between this and next.

Friedrich has, with incredible diligence, got together his finance
(copper in larger dose than ever, Jew Ephraim presiding as usual);
and, as if by art-magic, has on their feet 100,000 men against his
enemy's 280,000. Some higher Officers are secretly in bad spirits;
but the men know nothing of discouragement. Friedrich proclaims to
them at marching, "For every cannon you capture, 100 ducats; for
every flag, 50; for every standard (cavalry flag), 40;"--which
sums, as they fell due, were accordingly paid thenceforth.
[Stenzel, v. 236, 237; ib. 243.] But Friedrich, too, is abundantly
gloomy, if that could help him; which he knows well it cannot, and
strictly hides it from all but a few;--or all but D'Argens almost
alone, to whom it can do no harm. Read carefully by the light of
contemporary occurrences, not vaguely in the vacant haze, as the
Editors give it, his correspondence with D'Argens becomes
interesting almost to a painful degree: an unaffected picture of
one of the bravest human souls weighed down with dispiriting labors
and chagrins, such as were seldom laid on any man; almost beyond
bearing, but incurable, and demanding to be borne. Wilhelmina is
away, away; to D'Argens alone of mortals does he whisper of these
things; and to him not wearisomely, or with the least prolixity,
but in short sharp gusts, seldom now with any indignation, oftenest
with a touch of humor in them, not soliciting any sympathy, nor
expecting nearly as much as he will get from the faithful D'Argens.

"I am unfortunate and old, dear Marquis; that is why they persecute
me: God knows what my future is to be this Year! I grieve to
resemble Cassandra with my prophecies; but how augur well of the
desperate situation we are in, and which goes on growing worse?
I am so gloomy to-day, I will cut short. ... Write to me when you
have nothing better to do; and don't forget a poor Philosopher who,
perhaps to expiate his incredulity, is doomed to find his Purgatory
in THIS world." [<italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic> xix.
138, 139 ("Freyberg, 20th March, 1760").] ... To another Friend, in
the way of speech, he more deliberately says: "The difficulties I
had, last Campaign, were almost infinite: such a multitude of
enemies acting against me; Pommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Frontiers
of Silesia, alike in danger, often enough all at one time. If I
escaped absolute destructiou, I must impute it chiefly to the
misconduct of my enemies; who gained such advantages, but had not
the sense to follow them up. Experience often corrects people of
their blunders: I cannot expect to profit by anything of that kind;
on their part, in the course of this Campaign:" judge if it will be
a light one, MON CHER. [To Mitchell, one evening, "Camp of
Schlettau, May 23d" (Mitchell, ii. 159).]

The symptoms we decipher in these Letters, and otherwise, are those
of a man drenched in misery; but used to his black element,
unaffectedly defiant of it, or not at the pains to defy it;
occupied only to do his very utmost in it, with or without success,
till the end come. Prometheus, chained on the Ocean-cliffs, with
the New Ruling-Powers in the upper hand, and their vultures
gradually eating him; dumb Time and dumb Space looking on,
apparently with small sympathy: Prometheus and other Titans, now
and then, have touched the soul of some AEschylus, and drawn tones
of melodious sympathy, far heard among mankind. But with this new
Titan it is not so: nor, upon the whole, with the proper Titan, in
this world, is it usually so; the world being a--what shall we
say?--a poorish kind of world, and its melodies and dissonances,
its loves and its hatreds worth comparatively little in the long-
run. Friedrich does wonderfully without sympathy from almost
anybody; and the indifference with which he walks along, under such
a cloud of sulky stupidities, of mendacities and misconceptions
from the herd of mankind, is decidedly admirable to me.

But let us look into the Campaign itself. Perhaps--contrary to the
world's opinion, and to Friedrich's own when, in ultra-lucid
moments, he gazes into it in the light of cold arithmetic, and
finds the aspect of it "frightful"--this Campaign will be a little
luckier to him than the last? Unluckier it cannot well be:--or if
so, it will at least be final to him!





End of Project Gutenberg's Etext History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 19

