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"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after five in the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account, which he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the Emperor smiled and interrupted him. "How many miles?"
One day in the town of Durrenstein the minstrel heard of an illustrious prisoner who was held captive in the castle of Trifels, surrounded by almost impassable crags. Much that goes on in the fortress becomes known outside in the market town, through the gossip of servants who come down for supplies.
It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin?
"From where to where, Your Majesty?" "From Durrenstein to Krems." "Three and a half miles, Your Majesty." "The French have abandoned the left bank?" "According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during the night." "Is there sufficient forage in Krems?" "Forage has not been supplied to the extent..." The Emperor interrupted him. "At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?"
His music excels in grace and humour, and he rarely treated serious subjects with success. 'Richard Coeur de Lion' is the one instance of Grétry having successfully attempted a loftier theme, and it remains his masterpiece. The scene is laid at the castle of Dürrenstein in Austria, where Richard lies imprisoned, and deals with the efforts of his faithful minstrel Blondel to rescue him.
Sweeping around in a wider circle from that point, we saw, beyond the Durrenstein, the snow-covered pile of the Gross-Glockner; the crimson bastions of the Rothwand appeared to the north, behind Tofana; then the white slopes that hang far away above the Zillerthal; and, nearer, the Geislerspitze, like five fingers thrust into the air; behind that, the distant Oetzthaler Mountain, and just a single white glimpse of the highest peak of the Ortler by the Engadine; nearer still we saw the vast fortress of the Sella group and the red combs of the Rosengarten; Monte Marmolata, the Queen of the Dolomites, stood before us revealed from base to peak in a bridal dress of snow; and southward we looked into the dark rugged face of La Civetta, rising sheer out of the vale of Agordo, where the Lake of Alleghe slept unseen.
The czar, Alexander I., accompanied it in person, and the emperor, Francis II., joined him with his remaining forces. A bloody engagement took place between Kutusow and the French at Durrenstein on the Danube, but, on the loss of Vienna, the Russians retired to Moravia.
On the whole, regular night surprises excepted, such cases will always be of rare occurrence, and those in which an enemy is compelled to fight by being practically surrounded, will happen mostly to single corps only, like Mortier's at Durrenstein 1809, and Vandamme at Kulm, 1813.
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