25th April-15th June 1760. mains of the once terrible Affair, through Campaigns Sixth and Seventh, is like a race between spent horses, little to be said of it in comparison. Campaign 1760 is the last of any outward eminence or greatness of event. Let us diligently follow that, and be compendious with the remainder.

Friedrich was always famed for his Marches; but, this Year, they exceeded all calculation and example; and are still the admiration of military men. Can there by no method be some distant notion afforded of them to the general reader? They were the one resource Friedrich had left, against such overwhelming superiority in numbers; and they came out like surprises in a theatre, unpleasantly surprising to Daun. Done with such dexterity, rapidity, and inexhaustible contrivance and ingenuity, as overset the schemes of his enemies again and again, and made his one army equivalent in effect to their three.

Evening of April 25th, Friedrich rose from his Freyberg cantonments; moved back, that is, northward, a good march; then encamped himself between Elbe and the Hill-Country; with freer prospect and more elbow-room for work coming. His left is on Meissen and the Elbe; his right, at a Village called the Katzenhäuser, an uncommonly strong camp, of which one often hears afterwards; his centre camp is at Schlettau,* which also is strong, though not to such a degree. This line extends from Meissen southward about 10 miles, commanding the Reich-ward Passes of the Metal Mountains, and is defensive of Leipzig, Torgau and the Towns thereabouts.1 Katzenhäuser is but a mile or two from Krögis-that unfortunate Village where Finck • Map at end of Book XX. Tempelhof, iv. 16 et seq.

25th April-15th June 1760.

got his Maxen Order: "Er weiss,-You know I can't "stand having difficulties raised; manage to do it!"

Friedrich's task, this Year, is to defend Saxony; Prince Henri having undertaken the Russians,-Prince Henri and Fouquet, the Russians and Silesia. Clearly on very uphill terms, both of them: so that Friedrich finds he will have a great many things to assist in, besides defending Saxony. He lies here expectant till the middle of June, above seven weeks; Daun also, for the last two weeks, having taken the field in a sort. In a sort;-but comes no nearer; merely posting himself astride of the Elbe, half in Dresden, half on the opposite or northern bank of the River, with Lacy thrown out ahead in good force on that vacant side; and so waiting the course of other people's enterprises.

Well to eastward and rearward of Daun, where we have seen Loudon about to be very busy, Prince Henri and Fouquet have spun themselves out into a long chain of posts, in length 300 miles or more, 'from 'Landshut, along the Bober, along the Queiss and Oder, through the Neumark, abutting on Stettin and Colberg, to the Baltic Sea."2 On that side, in aid of Loudon or otherwise, Daun can attempt nothing; still less on the Katzenhäuser-Schlettau side can he dream of an attempt: only towards Brandenburg and Berlin, -the Country on that side, 50 or 60 miles of it, to eastward of Meissen, being vacant of troops,-is Daun's road open, were he enterprising, as Friedrich hopes he is not. For some two weeks, Friedrich, not ready otherwise, it being difficult to cross the River, if Lacy with his 30,000 should think of interference,-had to leave the cunctatory Feldmarschall this chance or unlikely possibility. At the end of the second week

25th April-15th June 1760. June 14th,' as we shall mark by and by), the chance was withdrawn.

Daun and his Lacy are but one, and that by no means the most harassing, of the many cares and anxieties which Friedrich has upon him in those Seven Weeks, while waiting at Schlettau, reading the omens. Never hitherto was the augury of any Campaign more indecipherable to him, or so continually fluctuating with wild hopes, which proved visionary, and with huge practical fears, of what he knew to be the real likelihood. "Peace coming?" It is strange how long Friedrich clings to that fond hope: "My Edelsheim is in the Bastille, or packed home in disgrace: but will not the English and Choiseul make Peace? It is Choiseul's one rational course; bankrupt as he is, and reduced to spoons and kettles. In which case, what a beautiful effect might Duke Ferdinand produce, if he marched to Eger, say to Eger, with his 50,000 Germans (Britannic Majesty and Pitt so gracious), and twitched Daun by the skirt, whirling Daun home to Bohemia in a hurry!" Then the Turks; the Danes,-" Might not the Danes send us a trifle of Fleet to Colberg (since the English never will), and keep our Russians at bay ?"-" At lowest these hopes are consolatory," says he once, suspecting them all (as, no doubt, he often enough does), "and give us courage to look calmly for the opening of this Campaign, the very idea of which has made me shudder!"3

Meanwhile, by the end of May, the Russians are come across the Weichsel again, lie in four camps on the hither side; start about June 1st;-Henri waiting

3 To Prince Henri:' in Schöning, ii. 246 (3d April 1760); ib. 263 (of the Danish outlook); &c. &c.

25th April-15th June 1760. for them, in Sagan Country his headquarter; and on both hands of that, Fouquet and he spread out, since the middle of May, in their long thin Chain of Posts, from Landshut to Colberg again, like a thin wall of 300 miles. To Friedrich the Russian movements are, and have been, full of enigma: "Going upon Colberg? Going upon Glogau; upon Breslau?" That is a heavyfooted certainty, audibly tramping forward on us, amid these fond visions of the air! Certain too, and visible to a duller eye than Friedrich's; Loudon in Silesia is meditating mischief. "The inevitable Russians, the inevitable Loudon; and nothing but Fouquet and Henri on guard there, with their long thin chain of posts, infinitely too thin to do any execution!" thinks the King. To whom their modes of operating are but little satisfactory, as seen at Schlettau from the distance. "Condense yourself," urges he always on Henri; "go forward on the Russians; attack sharply this Corps, that Corps, while they are still separate and on march!" Henri did condense himself, took post between Sagan and Sprottau; post at Frankfurt,'-poor Frankfurt, is it to have a Kunersdorf or Zorndorf every year, then? No; the cautious Henri never could see his way into these adventures; and did not attack any Corps of the Russians. Took post at Landsberg ultimately, the Russians, as usual, having Posen as place-of-arms,— and vigilantly watched the Russians, without coming to strokes at all. A spectacle growing gradually intolerable to the King, though he tries to veil his feelings.

เ

Neither was Fouquet's plan of procedure well seen. by Friedrich in the distance. Ever since that of Regiment Manteuffel, which was a bit of disappointment, Loudon has been quietly industrious on a bigger scale.

25th April-15th June 1760. Privately he cherishes the hope, being a swift vehement enterprising kind of man, to oust Fouquet; and perhaps to have Glatz Fortress taken, before his Russians come! In the very end of May, Loudon, privately aiming for Glatz, breaks in upon Silesia again,- -a long way to eastward of Fouquet, and as if regardless of Glatz. Upon which, Fouquet, in dread for Schweidnitz and perhaps Breslau itself, hastened down into the Plain Country, to manœuvre upon Loudon; but found no Loudon moving that way; and, in a day or two, learned that Landshut, so weakly guarded, had been picked up by a big corps of Austrians; and in another day or two, that Loudon (June 7th) had blocked Glatz,-Loudon's real intention now clear to Fouquet. As it was to Friedrich from the first; whose anger and astonishment at this loss of Landshut were great, when he heard of it in his Camp of Schlettau. "Back to Landshut," orders he (11th June, three days before leaving Schlettau); "neither Schweidnitz nor Breslau are in danger: it is Glatz the Austrians mean" (as Fouquet and all the world now see they do!); "watch Glatz; retake me Landshut instantly!"

The tone of Friedrich, which is usually all friendliness to Fouquet, had on this occasion something in it which offended the punctual, and rather peremptory Spartan mind. Fouquet would not have neglected Glatz; pity he had not been left to his own methods with Landshut and it. Deeply hurt, he read this Order (16th June); and vowing to obey it, and nothing but it, used these words, which were remembered afterwards, to his assembled Generals: "Meine Herren, it

appears, then, we must take Landshut again. Lou"don, as the next thing, will come on us then with his 66 mass of force; and we must then, like Prussians, hold