HumanitiesWeb.org - History of Friedrich II of Prussia - Frederick the Great (Chapter VII. - The Saxons Get Out of Pirna on Dismal Terms.) by Thomas Carlyle
History of Friedrich II of Prussia - Frederick the Great Chapter VII. - The Saxons Get Out of Pirna on Dismal Terms.
by Thomas Carlyle
The disaster of October 1st--for which they were trying to sing
TE-DEUMS at Vienna--fell heavier on the poor Saxons, in their cage
at Pirna: "Alas, where is our deliverance now?" Friedrich's people,
in their lines here, gave them such a "joy-firing" for Lobositz as
Retzow has seldom heard; huge volleyings, salvoings, running-fires,
starting out, artistically timed and stationed, thunderous, high;
and borne by the echoes, gloomily reverberative, into every dell
and labyrinth of the Pirna Country;--intended to strike a deeper
damp into them, thinks he. [Retzow, i. 67.] But Imperial Majesty
was mindful, too; and straightway sent Browne positive order,
"Deliver me these poor Saxons at any price!" And in the course of
not quite a week from Lobositz, there arrives a confidential
Messenger from Browne: "Courage still, ye caged Saxons; I will try
it another way! Only you must hold out till the 11th; on the 11th
stand to your tools, and it shall be done."
Browne is to take a succinct Detachment, 8,000 picked men, horse
and foot; to make a wider sweep with these, well eastward by the
foot of Lausitz Hills, and far enough from all Prussian parties and
scouts; to march, with all speed and silence, "through Bohm-Leipa,
Kamnitz, Rumburg, Schluckenau; and come in upon the Schandau
region, quite from the northeast side; say, at Lichtenhayn;
an eligible Village, which is but seven miles or so from the
Konigstein, with the chasmy country and the river intervening.
Monday, October llth, Browne will arrive at Lichtenhayn (sixty
miles of circling march from Budin); privately post himself near
Lichtenhayn; Prussian posts, of no great strength, lying ahead of
him there. You, indignant extenuated Saxons, are to get yourselves
across,--near the Konigstein it will have to be, under cover of the
Konigstein's cannon,--on the front or riverward side of those same
Prussian posts: crossing-place (Browne's Messenger settles) can be
Thurmsdorf Hamlet, opposite the Lilienstein, opposite the Hamlets
of Ebenheit and Halbstadt there. Konigstein fire will cover your
bridge and your building of it.
"Monday night next, I say, post yourselves there, with hearts
resolute, with powder dry; there, about the eastern roots of the
Lilienstein [beautiful Show Mountain, with stair-steps cut on it
for Tourist people, by August the Strong], and avoid the Prussian
battery and abatis which is on it just now! You at Ebenheit, I at
Lichtenhayn, trimmed and braced for action, through that Monday
night. Tuesday morning, the Konigstein, at your beckoning, shall
fire two cannon-shots; which shall mean, 'All ready here!'
Then forward, you, on those Prussian posts by the front; I will
attack them by the rear. With right fury, both of us! I am told,
they are but weak in those posts; surely, by double impetus, and
dead-lift effort from us both, they CAN be forced? Only force
them,--you are in the open field again; and you march away with me,
colors flying; your hunger-cage and all your tribulations left
behind you!"--
This is Browne's plan. The poor Saxons accept,--what choice have
they?--though the question of crossing and bridge-building has its
intricacies; and that inevitable item of "postponement till the
11th" is a sore clause to them; for not only are there short and
ever shorter rations, but grim famine itself is advancing with
large strides. The "daily twenty ounces of meal" has sunk to half
that quantity; the "ounce or so of butcher's-meat once a week" has
vanished, or become HORSE of extreme leanness. The cavalry horses
have not tasted oats, nothing but hay or straw (not even water
always); the artillery horses had to live by grazing, brown leaves
their main diet latterly. Not horses any longer; but walking
trestles, poor animals! And the men,--well, they are fallen pale;
but they are resolute as ever. The nine corn-mills, which they have
in this circuit of theirs, grind now night and day; and all the
cavalry are set to thresh whatever grain can be found about;
no hind or husbandman shall retain one sheaf: in this way, they
hope, utter hunger may be staved off, and the great attempt made.
[PRECIS DE LA RETRAITE DE L'ARMEE SAXONNE DE SON CAMP DE PIRNA (in
Gesammelte Nachrichten, i. 482-494).]
Browne skilfully and perfectly did his part of the Adventure.
Browne arrives punctually at Lichtenhayn, evening of the 11th;
bivouacs, hidden in the Woods thereabouts, in cold damp weather;
stealthily reconnoitres the Prussian Villages ahead, and trims
himself for assault, at sound of the two cannons to-morrow.
But there came no cannon-signal on the morrow; far other
signallings and messagings to-morrow, and next day, and next, from
the Konigstein and neighborhood! "Wait, Excellency Feldmarschall
[writes Bruhl to him, Note after Note, instead of signalling from
the Konigstein]: do wait a very little! You run no risk in waiting;
we, even if we MUST yield, will make that our first stipulation!"
"YOU will?" grumbles Browne; and waits, naturally, with extreme
impatience. But the truth is, the Adventure, on the Saxon side of
it, has already altogether misgone; and becomes, from this point
onwards, a mere series of failures, futilities and disastrous
miseries, tragical to think of. Worth some record here, since there
are Documents abundant;--especially as Feldmarschall Rutowski (who
is General-in-Chief, an old, not esteemed, friend of ours) has
produced, or caused to be produced, a Narrative, which illuminates
the Business from within as well. [PRECIS, &c. (just cited);
compare TAGEBUCH DER EINSCHLIESSUNG DES SACHSISCHEN LAGERS BEY
PIRNA ("Diary," &c., which is the Prussian Account: in Seyfarth,
BEYLAGEN), ii. 22-48.] The latter is our main Document here:--
I know not how much of the blame was General Rutowski's: one could
surmise some laxity of effort, and a rather slovenly-survey of
facts, in that quarter. The Enterprise, from the first, was flatly
impossible, say judges; and it is certain, poor Rutowski's
execution was not first-rate. "How get across the Elbe?" Rutowski
had said to himself, perhaps not quite with the due rigor of candor
proportionate to the rigorous fact: "How get across the Elbe?
We have copper pontoons at Pirna; but they will be difficult to
cart. Or we might have a boat-bridge; boats planked together two
and two. At Pirna are plenty of boats; and by oar and track-rope,
the River itself might be a road for them? Boats or pontoons to
Konigstein, by water or land, they must be got. Eight miles of
abysmal roads, our horses all extenuated? Impossible to cart these
pontoons!" said Rutowski to himself.--Pity he had not tried it.
He had a week to do those eight bad miles in; and 2,000 lean
horses, picking grass or brown leaves, while their riders threshed.
"We will drag our pontoons by water, by the Elbe tow-path," thought
Rutowski, "that will be easier;"--and forthwith sets about
preparing for it, secretly collecting boats at Pirna, steersmen,
towing-men, bridge-tackle and what else will be necessary.
Rutowski made, at least, no delay. Browne's messenger, we find, had
come to him, "Thursday, 7th:" and on Friday night Rutowski has a
squad of boatmen, steersmen and twoscore of towiug peasants ready;
and actually gets under way. They are escorted by the due
battalions with field-pieces;--who are to fire upon the Prussian
batteries, and keep up such a blaze of musketry and heavier shot,
as will screen the boats in passing. Surely a ticklish operation,
this;--arguing a sanguine temper in General Rutowski! The south
bank of the River is ours; but there are various Prussian
batteries, three of them very strong, along the north bank, which
will not fail to pelt us terribly as we pass. No help for it;--we
must trust in luck! Here is the sequel, with dates adjusted.
ELBE RIVER, NIGHT OF OCTOBER 8th-9th. Friday night, accordingly, so
soon as Darkness (unusually dark this night) has dropt her veil on
the business, Rutowski sets forth. The Prussian battery, or bridge-
head (TETE-DE-PONT), at Pirna, has not noticed him, so silent was
he. But, alas, the other batteries do not fail to notice; to give
fire; and, in fact, on being answered, and finding it a serious
thing, to burst out into horrible explosion; unanswerable by the
Saxon field-pieces; and surely perilous to human nature steering
and towing those big River-Boats. "Loyal to our King, and full of
pity for him; that are we;"--but towing at a rate, say of two
shillings per head! Before long, the forty towing peasants fling
down their ropes, first one, then more, then all, in spite of
efforts, promises, menaces; and vanish among the thickets,--
forfeiting the two shillings, on view of imminent death.
Soldiers take the towing-ropes; try to continue it a little;
but now the steersmen also manage to call halt: "We won't! Let us
out, let us out! We will steer you aground on the Prussian shore if
you don't!" making night hideous. And the towing enterprise breaks
down for that bout; double barges mooring on the Saxon shore, I
know not precisely at what point, nor is it material.
SATURDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 9th-10th) New boatmen, forty new towmen
have been hired at immense increase of wages; say four shillings
for the night: but have you much good probability, my General, that
even for that high guerdon imminence of death can be made
indifferent to towmen? No, you have n't. The matter goes this night
precisely as it did last: towmen vanishing in the horrible cannon
tumult; steersmen shrieking, "We will ground you on the Prussian
shore;" very soldiers obliged to give it up; and General Rutowski
himself obliged to wash his hands of it, as a thing that cannot be
done. In fact, a thing which need not have been tried, had Rutowski
been rigorously candid with himself and his hopes, as the facts now
prove to be. "Twenty-four hours lost by this bad business" (says
he; "thirty-six," as I count, or, to take it rigorously, "forty-
eight" even): and now, Sunday morning instead of Friday, at what,
in sad truth, is metaphorically "the eleventh hour," Rutowski has
to bethink him of his copper pontoons; and make the impossible
carting method possible in a day's time, or do worse.
SUNDAY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 10th-11th, By unheard-of exertions, all
hands and all spent-horses now at a dead-lift effort night and day,
Rutowski does get his pontoons carted out of the Pirna storehouse;
lands them at Thurmsdorf,--opposite the Lilienstein,--a mile or so
short of Konigstein, where his Bridge shall be. It is now the 11th,
at night. And our pontoons are got to the ground, nothing more.
Every man of us, at this hour, should have been across, and
trimming himself to climb, with bayonet fixed! Browne is ready,
expecting our signal-shot to storm in on his side. And our bridge
is not built, only the pontoons here. "All things went perverse,"
adds Rutowski, for farther comfort: "we [Saxon Home-Army] had with
us, except Officers, only Four Pontoniers, or trained Bridge-
builders; all the rest are at Warsaw:" sad thought, but too late to
think it!
TUESDAY, TILL WEDNESDAY EARLY (12th-13th), Bridge, the Four
Pontoniers, with Officers and numb soldiers doing their best, is
got built;--Browne waiting for us, on thorns, all day;
Prussians extensively beginning to strengthen their posts, about
the Lilienstein, about Lichtenhayn, or where risk is; and in fact
pouring across to that northern side, quite aware of Rutowski
and Browne.
That same night, 12th-13th, while the Bridge was struggling to
complete itself,--rain now falling, and tempests broken out,--the
Saxon Army, from Pirna down to Hennersdorf, had lifted itself from
its Lines, and got under way towards Thurmsdorf, and the crossing-
place. Dark night, plunging rain; all the elements in uproar.
The worst roads in Nature; now champed doubly; "such roads as never
any Army marched on before." Most of their cannon are left
standing; a few they had tried to yoke, broke down, "and choked up
the narrow road altogether; so that the cavalry had to dismount,
and lead their horses by side-paths,"--figure what side-paths!
Distance to Thurmsdorf, from any point of the Saxon Lines, cannot
be above six miles: but it takes them all that night and all next
day. Such a march as might fill the heart with pity. Oh, ye
Rutowskis, Bruhls, though never so decorated by twelve tailors,
what a sight ye are at the head of men! Dark night, wild raging
weather, labyrinthic roads worn knee-deep. It is broad daylight,
Wednesday, 13th, and only the vanguard is yet got across, trailing
a couple of cannons; and splashes about, endeavoring to take rank
there, in spite of wet and hunger; rain still pouring, wind
very high.
Nothing of Browne comes, this Wednesday; but from the opposite
Gross-Sedlitz and Gottleube side, the Prussians are coming.
This morning, at daylight, struck by symptoms, "the Prussians
mounted our empty redoubts:" they are now in full chase of us,
Ziethen with Hussars as vanguard. A difficult bit of marching, even
Ziethen and his light people find it; sprawling forward, at their
cheeriest, with daylight to help, and in chase, not chased, through
such intricacies of rock and mud. Ziethen's company did not assist
the Saxons! They wheel round, show fight, and there is volleying
and bickering all day; the Saxon march getting ever more perturbed.
Nearly all the baggage has to be left. Ziethen takes into the woods
near Thurmsdorf; giving fire as the poor wet Saxons, now much in a
pell-mell condition, pass to their Bridge. [PRUSSIAN ACCOUNT (in
Gesammelte Nachrichten), i. 852.]
Heavier Prussians are striding on to rear; these, from some final
hill-top, do at last belch out two cannon-shots: figure the
confusion at that Bridge, the speed now becoming delirious there!
Towards evening, rain still violent, the Saxons, baggageless, and
rushing quite pell-mell the latter part of them, are mostly across,
still countable to 14,000 or so;--upon which they cut their Bridge
adrift, and let the river take it. At Raden, a few miles lower, the
Prussians fished it out; rebuilt it more deliberately,--and we
shall find it there anon. This day Friedrich, hearing what is
afoot, has returned in person from the Lobositz Country;
takes Struppen as his head-quarter, which was lately the
Polish Majesty's.
From Browne there has nothing come this Wednesday; but to-morrow
morning at seven there comes a Letter from him, written this night
at ten; to the effect:--
"HEAD-QUARTER, LICHTENHAYN, Wednesday, October 13th, 10 P.M.
"EXCELLENZ,--Have [omitting the I] waited here at Lichtenhayn since
Tuesday, expecting your signal-cannon; hearing nothing of it,
conclude you have by misfortune not been able to get across;
and that the Enterprise is up. My own position being dangerous
[Prussians of double my strength intrenched within few miles of
me], I turn homewards to-morrow at nine A.M.: ready for whatever
occurs TILL then; and sorrowfully say adieu," [PRECIS (ut supra),
p. 493; Helden-Geschichte, iii. 940; &c.]
Dreadful weather for Browne in his bivouac, and wearisome waiting,
with Prussians and perils accumulating on him! Browne was ill of
lungs; coughing much; lodging, in these violent tempests, on the
cold ground. A right valiant soldier and man, as does appear;
the flower of all the Irish Brownes (though they have quite
forgotten him in our time), and of all those Irish Exiles then
tragically spending themselves in Austrian quarrels! "You saw the
great man," says one who seems to have been present, "how he
sacrificed himself to this Enterprise. What Austrian Field-marshal
but himself would ever have lowered his loftiness to lead, in
person, so insignificant a Detachment, merely for the public good!
I have seen staff-officers, distinguished only by their sasheries
and insignia, who would not have stirred to inspect a vedette
without 250 men. Our Field-marshal was of another turn.
Sharing with his troops all the hardships, none excepted, of these
critical days; and in spite of a violent cough, which often brought
the visible blood from his lungs, and had quite worn him down;
exposing himself, like the meanest of the Army, to the tempests of
rainy weather. Think what a sight it was, going to your very heart,
and summoning you to endurance of every hardship,--that evening
[not said which], when the Field-marshal, worn out with his
fatigues and his disorder, sank out of fainting-fits into a sleep!
The ground was his bed, and the storm of clouds his coverlid.
In crowds his brave war-comrades gathered round; stripped their
cloaks, their coats, and strove in noble rivalry which of them
should have the happiness to screen the Father of the Army at their
own cost of exposure, and by any device keep the pelting of the
weather from that loved head!" [Cogniazzo, Gestandnisse
eines OEsterreichischen Veterans, ii. 251.] There is a
picture for you, in the heights of Lichtenhayn, as you steam past
Schandau, in contemplative mood; and perhaps think of "Justice to
Ireland!" among other sad thoughts that rise.
From Thurmsdorf to the Pontoon-Bridge there was a kind of road;
down which the Saxons scrambled yesterday; and, by painful degrees,
got wriggled across. But, on the other shore, forward to the
Hamlets of Halbstadt and Ebenheit, there is nothing but a steep
slippery footpath: figure what a problem for the 14,000 in such
weather! Then at Ebenheit, close behind, Browne-wards, were Browne
now there, rises the Lilienstein, abrupt rocky mountain, its slopes
on both hands washed by the River (River making its first elbow
here, closely girdling this Lilienstein): on both these slopes are
Prussian batteries, each with its abatis; needing to be stormed:--
that will be your first operation. Abatis and slopes of the
Lilienstein once stormed, you fall into a valley or hollow, raked
again by Prussian batteries; and will have to mount, still
storming, out of the valley, sky-high across the Ziegenruck
(GOAT'S-BACK) ridge: that is your second preliminary operation.
After which you come upon the work itself; namely, the Prussian
redoubts at Lichtenhayn, and 12,000 men on them by this time!
A modern Tourist says, reminding or informing:
"From the Konigstein to Pirna, Elbe, if serpentine, is like a
serpent rushing at full speed. Just past the Konigstein, the Elbe,
from westward, as its general course is, turns suddenly to
northward; runs so for a mile and a half; then, just before getting
to the BASTEI at Raden, turns suddenly to westward again, and so
continues. Tourists know Raden,"--where the Prussians have just
fished out a Bridge for themselves,--"with the BASTEI high aloft to
west of it. The Old Inn, hospitable though sleepless, stands
pleasantly upon the River-brink, overhung by high cliffs: close on
its left side, or in the intricacies to rear of it, are huts and
houses, sprinkled about, as if burrowed in the sandstone;
more comfortably than you could expect. The site is a narrow dell,
narrow chasm, with labyrinthic chasms branching off from it;
narrow and gloomy as seen from the River, but opening out even into
cornfields as you advance inwards: work of a small Brook, which is
still industriously tinkling and gushing there, and has in Pre-
Adamite times been a lake, and we know not what. Nieder-Raden,
this, on the north side of the River; of Ober-Raden, on the south
side, there is nothing visible from your Inn windows,"--nor have we
anything to do with it farther. An older Guide of Tourists yields
us this second Fraction (capable of condensation):--
... "To Halbstadt, thence to Ebenheit, your path is steeper and
steeper; from Ebenheit to the Lilienstein you take a guide.
The Mountain is conical; coarse RED sandstone; steps cut for you
where needed: August the Strong's Hunting-Lodge (JAGDHUTTE) is here
(August went thither in a grand way, 1708, with his Wife);
Lodge still extant, by the side of a wood;--Lilienstein towering
huge and sheer, solitary, grand, like some colossal Pillar of the
Cyclops, from this round Pediment of Country which you have been
climbing; tops of Lilienstein plumed everywhere with fir and birch,
Pediment also very green and woody. August the Strong, grandly
visiting here, 1708, on finish of those stair-steps cut for you,
set up an Ebenezer, or Column of Memorial at this Hunting-Hut, with
Inscription which can still be read, though now with difficulty in
its time-worn state:--
"FRIEDERICUS AUGUSTUS, REX [of what? Dare not say of POLAND just
now, for fear of Charles XII.], ET ELECTOR SAX., UT FORTUNAEM
VIRTUTE, ITA ASPERAM HANC RUPEM PRIMUS [PRIMUS not of men, but of
Saxon Electors] SUPERAVIT, ADITUMQUE FACILIOREM REDDI CURAVIT.
ANNO 1708."--"UT FORTUNAM VIRTUTE, As his fortune by valor, SO he
conquered this rugged rock by"--Poor devil, only hear him:--and
think how good Nature is (for the time being) to poor devils and
their 354 bastards! [M.(agister) Wilhelm Lebrecht Gotzinger,
Schandau und seine Umgebungen, oder Beschreibung der
Sachsischen Schweitz (Dresden, 1812), pp. 145-148.
Gotzinger, who designates himself as "Pastor at Neustadt near
Stolpen" (northwest border of the Pirna Country), has made of this
(which would now be called a TOURIST'S GUIDE, and has something
geological in it) a modest, good little Book, put together with
industry, clearness, brevity. Gives interesting Narrative of our
present Business too, as gathered from his "Father" and other good
sources and testimonies.]
Bruhl and the Polish Majesty, safe enough they, and snug in the
Konigstein, are clear for advancing: "Die like soldiers, for your
King and Country!" writes Polish Majesty, "Thursday, two in the
morning:" that also Rutowski reads; and I think still other Royal
Autographs, sent as Postscripts to that. From the Konigstein they
duly fire off the two Cannon-shot, as signal that we are coming;
signal which Browne, just in the act of departing, never heard,
owing to the piping of the winds and rattling of the rain.
"Advance, my heroes!" counsel they: "You cannot drag your
ammunitions, say you; your poor couple of big guns? Here are his
Majesty's own royal horses for that service!"--and, in effect, the
royal stud is heroically flung open in this pressure; and a
splashing column of sleek quadrupeds, "150 royal draught-horses,
early in the forenoon," [Gotzinger, p. 156.] swim across to
Ebenheit accordingly, if that could encourage. And, "about noon,
there is strong cannonading from the Konigstein, as signal to
Browne," who is off. Polish Majesty looking with his spy-glass in
an astonished manner. In Vain! Rutowski and his Council of War--
sitting wet in a hut of Ebenheit, with 14,000 starved men outside,
who have stood seventy-two hours of rain, for one item--see nothing
for it but "surrender on such terms as we can get."
"In fact," independently of weather and circumstances, "the
Enterprise," says Friedrich, "was radically impossible; nobody that
had known the ground could have judged it other." Rutowski had not
known it, then? Browne never pretended to know it. Rutowski was not
candid with the conditions; the conditions never known nor candidly
looked at; and THEY are now replying to him with candor enough.
From the first his Enterprise was a final flicker of false hope;
going out, as here, by spasm, in the rigors of impossibility and
flat despair.
That column of royal horses sent splashing across the River,--that
was the utmost of self-sacrifice which I find recorded of his
Polish Majesty in this matter. He was very obstinate; his Bruhl and
he were. But his conduct was not very heroic. That royal Autograph,
"General Rutowski, and ye true Saxons, attack these Prussian lines,
then; sell your lives like men" (not like Bruhl and me), must have
fallen cold on the heart, after seventy-two hours of rain!
Rutowski's wet Council of War, in the hut at Ebenheit, rain still
pouring, answers unanimously, "That it were a leading of men to the
butchery;" that there is nothing for it but surrender. Bruhl and
Majesty can only answer: "Well-a-day; it must be so, then!"--
Winterfeld, Prussian Commander hereabouts, grants Armistice, grants
liberal "wagon-loads of bread" first of all; terms of Capitulation
to be settled at Struppen to-morrow.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15th, Rutowski goes across to Struppen, the late
Saxon head-quarter, now Friedrich's;--Friday gone a fortnight was
the day of Lobositz. Winterfeld and he are the negotiators there;
Friedrich ratifying or refusing by marginal remarks. The terms
granted are hard enough: but they must be accepted.
First preliminary of all terms has already been accepted: a gift of
bread to these poor Saxons; their haversacks are empty, their
cartridge-boxes drowned; it has rained on them three days and
nights. Last upshot of all terms is still well known to everybody:
That the 14,000 Saxons are compelled to become Prussian, and
"forced to volunteer"!
That had been Friedrich's determination, and reading of his rights
in the matter, now that hard had come to hard. "You refused all
terms; you have resisted to death (or death's-DOOR); and are now at
discretion!" Of the question, What is to be done with those Saxons?
Friedricb had thought a great deal, first and last; and had found
it very intricate,--as readers too will, if they think of it.
"Prisoners of War,--to keep them locked up, with trouble and
expense, in that fashion? They can never be exchanged: Saxony has
now nothing to exchange them with; and Austria will not.
Their obstinacy has had costs to me; who of us can count what
costs! In short, they shall volunteer!"
"Never did I, for my poor part, authorize such a thing," loudly
asseverated Rutowski afterwards. And indeed the Capitulation is not
precise on that interesting point. A lengthy Document, and not
worth the least perusal otherwise; we condense it into three
Articles, all grounding on this general Basis, not deniable by
Rutowski: "The Saxon Army, being at such a pass, ready to die of
hunger, if we did NOT lift our finger, has, so to speak, become our
property; and we grant it the following terms:"--
"1. Kettle-drums, standards and the like insignia and matters of
honor,--carry these to the Konigstein, with my regretful respects
to his Polish Majesty. Konigstein to be a neutral Fortress during
this War. Polish Majesty at perfect liberty to go to Warsaw [as he
on the instant now did, and never returned].
"2. Officers to depart on giving their parole, Not to serve
against us during this War [Parole given, nothing like too well
kept].
"3. Rest of the Army, with all its equipments, munitions, soul
and body (so to speak), is to surrender utterly, and be ours, as
all Saxony shall for the present be." [In Helden-
Geschichte, iii. 920-928, at full length--with
Briedrich's MARGINALIA noticeably brief.]
That is, in sum, the Capitulation of Struppen. Nothing articulate
in it about the one now interesting point,--and in regard to that,
I can only fancy Rutowski might interject, interrogatively, perhaps
at some length: "Our soldiers to be Prisoners of War, then?"
"Prisoners; yes, clearly,--unless they choose to volunteer, and
have a better fate! Prisoners can volunteer. They are at
discretion; they would die, if we did NOT lift our finger!" thus I
suppose Winterfeld would rejoin, if necessary;--and that, in the
Winterfeld-Rutowski Conferences, the thing had probably been kept
in a kind of CHIAROSCURO by both parties.
Very certain it is, Sunday, 17th October, 1756, Capitulation being
signed the night before, Friedrich goes across at Nieder-Raden
(where the Pilgrim of the Picturesque now climbs to see the BASTEI;
where the Prussians have, by this time, a Bridge thrown together
out of those Pontoons),--goes across at Nieder-Raden, up that
chasmy Pass; rides to the Heights of Waltersdorf, in the opener
country behind; and pauses there, while the captive Saxon Army
defiles past him, laying down its arms at his feet. Unarmed, and
now under Prussian word of command, these Ex-Saxon soldiers go on
defiling; march through by that Chasm of Nieder-Raden; cross to
Ober-Raden; and, in the plainer country thereabouts, are--in I know
not what length of hours, but in an incredibly short length, so
swift is the management--changed wholly into Prussian soldiers:
"obliged to volunteer," every one of them!
That is the fact; fact loudly censured; fact surely questionable,--
to what intrinsic degree I at this moment do not know. Fact much
blamable before the loose public of mankind; upon which I leave men
to their verdict. It is not a fact which invites imitation, as we
shall see! Fact how accomplished; by what methods? that would be
the question with me; but even that is left dark. "The horse
regiments, three of heavy horse, he broke; and distributed about, a
good few in his own Garde-du-Corps." Three other horse regiments
were in Poland, the sole Saxon Army now left,--of whom, at least of
one man among whom, we may happen to hear. "Ten foot regiments
[what was reckoned a fault] he left together; in Prussian uniform,
with Prussian Officers. They were scattered up and down; put in
garrisons; not easy handling them: they deserted by whole companies
at a time in the course of this War." [Preuss, ii. 22, 135;
in Stenzel (v. 16-20) more precise details.] Not a measure for
imitation, as we said!--How Friedrich defended such hard conduct to
the Saxons? Reader, I know only that Destiny and Necessity, urged
on by Saxons and others, was hard as adamant upon Friedrich at this
time; and that Friedrich did not the least dream of making any
defence;--and will have to take your verdict, such as it may be.
Moritz of Dessau had a terrible Winter of it, organizing and
breaking in these Saxon people,--got by press-gang in this way.
Polish Majesty, "with 500 of suite," had driven instantly for
Warsaw; post-horses most politely furnished him, and all the
Prussian posts and soldiers well kept out of his road,--road chosen
for him to that end. Poor soul, he never came back. For six years
coming, he saw, from Warsaw in the distance (amid anarchy and
NIE-POZWALAM, which he never lacked there), the wide War raging, in
Saxony especially; and died soon after it was done. Nor did Bruhl
return, except broken by that event, and to die in few months
after. Let us pity the poor fat-goose of a Majesty (not ill-natured
at all, only stupid and idle): some pity even to the doomed-
phantasm Bruhl, if you can;--and thank Heaven to have got done with
such a pair!--
Friedrich's treatment of the Saxon Troops, Saxon Majesty and
Country: who shall say that it was wise in all points? It would be
singular treatment, if it were! In all things, AFTER is so
different from BEFORE and DURING. The truth is, Friedrich hoped
long to have made some agreement with the Saxons. And readers now,
in the universal silence, have no notion of Friedrich's
complexities from fact, and of the loud howl of hostile rumor,
which was piping through all journals, diplomacies and foreign
human throats, against him at that time.
"The essential passages of War and Peace," says a certain
Commentator, "during those Five weeks of Pirna, can be made
intelligible in small compass. But how the world argued of them
then and afterwards, and rang with hot Gazetteer and Diplomatic
logic from side to side, no reader will now ever know. A world-
tornado extinct, gone:--think of the sounds uttered from human
windpipes, shrill with rage some of them, hoarse others with ditto;
of the vituperations, execrations, printed and vocal,--grating
harsh thunder upon Friedrich and this new course of his.
Huge melody of Discords, shrieking, droning, grinding on that
topic, through the afflicted Universe in general, for certain
years. The very Pamphlets printed on it,--cannot Dryasdust give me
the number of tons weight, then? Dead now every Pamphlet of them;
a thing fallen horrible to human nature; extinct forever, as is the
wont in such cases."
I will give only this of Voltaire; a mild Epigram, done at The
DELICES, in pleasant view of Ferney and good things coming. A bolt
shot into the storm-tost Sea and its wreckages, by a Mariner now
cheerily drying his clothes on the shore there;--in fact, an
indifferent Epigram, on Kings Friedrich and George, which is now
flying about in select circles:--
"Rivaux du Vainqueur de l'Euphrate,
L'Oncle et le Neveu,
L'un fait la guerre en pirate,
L'autre en parti bleu.
"
"Rivals of Alexander the Great, this Uncle and Nephew make war, the
one as a Pirate [seizure of those French ships], the other [Saxony
stolen] as Captain of an Accidental Thieving-squad,"--PARTI BLEU,
as the French soldiers call it. [Walpole's LETTERS, "To Sir Horace
Mann, 8th December; 1756."]
MAP facing page 365, Chap VII, Book 17---------------------
Pirna was no sooner done than Friedrich returned to the "Camp at
Lobositz," where his victorious Keith-Army has been lying all this
while. The Camp of Lobositz, and all Camps Prussian and Austrian,
are about to strike their tents, and proceed to Winter-quarters, to
prepare against next Spring. Friedrich set off thither October 18th
(the very day after that of Waltersdorf); with intent to bring home
Keith's Army, and see if Browne meant anything farther (which
Browne did not, or does only in the small Tolpatch way); also to
meet, Schwerin, whom he had summoned over from Silesia for a little
conference there. Schwerin, after eating Konigsgratz Country well,
--which was all he could do, as Piccolomini would not come out, and
we know how strong the ground is,--had retired to Silesia again, in
due season (snapping up, in a sharply conclusive manner, any
Tolpatcheries that attempted chase of him); taken Winter
cantonments in Silesia, headquarter Schweidnitz; and is now getting
his Instructions, here personally, in the Metal Mountains, for a
day or two. [ Helden-Geschichte, iii.
946, 948.]
Friedrich brought his Keith-Army home to Gross-Sedlitz, to join the
other Force there; and distributed the whole into their Winter-
quarters. Cantoned far and wide, spreading out from Pirna on both
hands: on the left or western hand, by Zwickau, Freyberg, Chemnitz,
up to Leipzig, Torgau; and on the right or northeast hand, by
Zittau, Gorlitz, Bautzen, to protect the Lausitz against Austrian
inroads,--while a remote Detachment, under Winterfeld, watches the
Bober River with similar views. [In Helden-Geschichte,
iii. 948 et seq., a minute List by Place and
Regiment.] All which done, or settled to be done, Friedrich quits
Gross-Sedlitz, November 14th; and takes up his abode at Dresden for
this Winter.
