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Count Daun, having nothing more to hope from the active operations of his own army, contented himself with amusing the Prussian monarch in Lusatia, while the Austrian generals, Harsche and De Ville, should prosecute the reduction of Neiss and Cosel in Silesia, which they now actually invested.
The other is fully twice his strength, and so intrenched, as I hear, that the position is well-nigh impregnable." "I expect the king will find means to force him out of it, without fighting," Fergus said with a smile. "Daun is altogether over cautious, and Leuthen is not likely to have rendered him more confident."
The King, himself in the vanguard as usual, has watched with eager questioning eye the courses of Daun's advanced parties, and by what routes they retreat; discerns for certain that Daun has no views upon Duben or our little Magazine; and that the tug of wrestle for Torgau, which is to crown this Campaign into conquest of Saxony, or shatter it into zero like its foregoers on the Austrian part, and will be of death-or-life nature on the Prussian part, ought to ensue to-morrow.
Friedrich's Column marches nearest the Daun positions; the Baggage-column farthest; and that latter is to halt, under escort, quite away to left or westward of the disturbance coming; the other Two Columns, Hulsen's of foot, Holstein's mostly of horse, go through intermediate tracks of wood, by roads more or less parallel; and are all, Friedrich's own Column, still more the others, to leave Siptitz several miles to right, and to end, not AT Siptitz Height, but several miles past it, and then wheeling round, begin business from the northward or rearward side of Daun, while Ziethen attacks or menaces his front, simultaneously, if possible.
Kosel, under Commandant Lattorf, whose praises, like Treskow's, were great, had stood four months of Pandour blockading and assaulting, which also had to take itself away on advent of Friedrich. Of Friedrich, on his return-journey, we shall hear again before long; but in the mean while must industriously follow Daun.
The plan, people say, was good; but required rapidity of execution, a thing Daun is not strong in. Bevern's behavior, too, upon whom the edge of the matter fell, was very good. "The Fischerberg lost to us!" Beck had to report, in disappointment. And on the third day following, the BATTLE OF REICHENBACH ensued.
The Austrians in this campaign proved that they were still imbued with the false system of Daun and Lascy, of covering every point in order to guard every point. The fact of having twenty thousand men in Brisgau while the Moselle and Sarre were uncovered, shows the fear they had of losing a village, and how their system led to large detachments, which are frequently the ruin of armies.
Forward, then! This Camp of Torgau is not a new place to Daun. It was Prince Henri's Camp last Autumn; where Daun tried all his efforts to no purpose; and though hugely outnumbering the Prince, could make absolutely nothing of it. Nothing, or less; and was flowing back to Dresden and the Bohemian Frontier, uncheered by anything, till that comfortable Maxen Incident turned up.
Commandant Schmettau signifies to Daun, the day Daun came in sight, "If your Excellenz advance farther on me, the grim Rules of War in besieged places will order That I burn the Suburbs, which are your defences in attacking me," and actually fills the fine houses on the Southern Suburb with combustible matter, making due announcements, to Court and population, as well as to Dann.
For months the Prussian and Austrian armies lay inactive. Daun had supposed that, as the king had begun the three previous campaigns by launching his forces into Bohemia, he would be certain to follow the same policy; and he had therefore placed his army in an almost impregnable position, and waited for the king to assume the offensive.
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