One has heard the voice of waters, one has paused in the mountains at the voice of far-off Covenanter psalms; but a voice like this, breaking the commanded silences, one has not heard. "Shall we order that to cease, your Majesty?" "By no means," said the King;whose hard heart seems to have been touched by it, as might well be. Indeed there is in him, in those grim days, a tone as of trust in the Eternal, as of real religious piety and faith, scarcely noticeable elsewhere in his History. His religion, and he had in withered forms a good deal of it, if we will look well, beiug almost always in a strictly voiceless state,--nay, ultra-voiceless, or voiced the wrong way, as is too well known. "By no means!"answered he: and a moment after, said to some one, Ziethen probably: "With men like these, don't you think I shall have victory this day!"The loss of their Saxon Forepost proved more important to the Austrians than it seemed;--not computable in prisoners, or killed and wounded. The Height named Scheuberg,--"Borne Rise" (so we might call it, which has got its Pillar of memorial since, with gilt Victory atop [Not till 1854 (Kutzen, pp. 194, 195).];--where Friedrich now is and where the Austrians are not, is at once a screen and a point of vision to Friedrich. By loss of their Nostitz Forepost, they had lost view of Friedrich, and never could recover view of him; could not for hours learn distinctly what he was about; and when he did come in sight again, it was in a most unexpected place! On the farther side of Borne, edge of the big expanse of open country there, Friedrich has halted; ridden with his adjutants to the top of "the Scheuberg (Shy-HILL)," as the Books call it, though it is more properly a blunt Knoll or "Rise,"--the nearest of a Chain of Knolls, or swells in the ground, which runs from north to south on that part.
Except the Zobtenberg, rising blue and massive, on the southern horizon (famous mythologic Mountain, reminding you of an ARTHUR'SSEAT in shape too, only bigger and solitary), this Country, for many miles round, has nothing that could be called a Hill; it is definable as a bare wide-waving champaign, with slight bumps on it, or slow heavings and sinkings. Country mostly under culture, though it is of sandy quality; one or two sluggish brooks in it; and reedy meres or mires, drained in our day. It is dotted with Hamlets of the usual kind; and has patches of scraggy fir. Your horizon, even where bare, is limited, owing to the wavy heavings of the ground;windmills and church-belfries are your only resource, and even these, from about Leuthen and the Austrian position, leave the Borne quarter mostly invisible to you. Leuthen Belfry, the same which may have stood a hundred years before this Battle, ends in a small tile-roof, open only at the gables:--"Leuthen Belfry," says a recent Tourist, "is of small resource for a view. To south you can see some distance, Sagschutz, Lobetintz and other Hamlets, amid scraggy fir-patches, and meadows, once miry pools; but to north you are soon shut in by a swell or slow rise, with two windmills upon it [important to readers at present]; and to eastward [Breslau side and Lissa side], or to westward [Friedrich's side], one has no view, except of the old warped rafters and their old mouldy tiles within few inches; or, if by audacious efforts at each end, to the risk of your neck, you get a transient peep, it is stopt, far short of Borne, by the slow irregular heavings, with or without fir about them." [Tourist's Note, PENES ME.]
In short, Friedrich keeps possession of that Borne ridge of Knolls, escorted by Cavalry in good numbers; twinkling about in an enigmatic way:--"Prussian right wing yonder," think the Austrians--"whitherward, or what can they mean?"--and keeps his own columns and the Austrian lines in view; himself and his movements invisible, or worse, to the Austrian Generals from any spy-glass or conjecture they can employ.
The Austrian Generals are in windmills, on church-belfries, here, there; diligently scanning the abstruse phenomenon, of which so little can be seen. Daun, who had always been against this adventure, thinks it probable the vanished Prussians are retiring southward: for Bohemia and our Magazines probably. "These good people are smuggling off (DIE GUTEN LEUTE PASCHEN AB)," said he:
"let them go in peace." [Muller, p. 36.] Daun, that morning, in his reconnoitrings, had asked of a peasant, "What is that, then?"(meaning the top of a Village-steeple in the distance, but thought by the peasant to be meaning something nearer hand). "That is the Hill our King chases the Austrians over, when he is reviewing here!" Which Daun reported at head-quarters with a grin.
[Nicolai, <italic> Anekdoten, <end italic> iv. 34.]
Lucchesi, on the other hand, scanning those Borne Hills, and the cavalry of Friedrich's escort twinkling hither and thither on them, becomes convinced to a moral certainty, That yonder is the Prussian Vanguard, probable extremity of left wing; and that he, Lucchesi, here at Nypern, is to be attacked. "Attacked, you?" said one Montazet, French Agent or Emissary here: "unless they were snipes, it is impossible!" But Lucchesi saw it too well.
He sends to say that such is the evident fact, and that he, Lucchesi, is not equal to it, but must have large reinforcement of Horse to his right wing. "Tush!" answer Prince Karl and Daun; and return only argument, verbal consolation, to distressed Lucchesi.
Lucchesi sends a second message, more passionately pressing, to the like effect; also with the like return. Upon which he sends a third message, quite passionate: "If Cavalry do not come, I will not be responsible for the issue!" And now Daun does collect the required reinforcement; "all the reserve of Horse, and a great many from the left wing;"--and, Daun himself heading them, goes off at a swift trot; to look into Lucchesi and his distresses, three or four miles to right, five or six from where the danger lies. Now is Friedrich's golden moment.
