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As for grand old William I., the real maker of the German Empire on the quid facit per alium facit per se axiom, he died a veteran of many wars. He was not seventeen when he won the Iron Cross by a service of conspicuous gallantry under heavy fire. He took his chances in the bullet and shell fire at Koeniggraetz, and again on the afternoon of Gravelotte.
His army was hunted by Ziethen's cavalry to Koeniggraetz, losing two thousand prisoners and a large amount of baggage; and thirty-seven thousand men only, of the eighty thousand that stood in battle array at Leuthen, reached the sheltering walls of the fortress, and those in so dilapidated and worn out a condition that, by the end of a week after arriving there, no less than twenty-two thousand were in hospital.
"I cannot say it seemed so to me," he said to the lieutenant, as they rode away from the camp. "Why, we have prevented the king from penetrating into Bohemia." "But the king could have done that three days ago, without fighting a battle," Fergus said; "just as Schwerin did at Koeniggraetz.
Bismarck closed his field-glasses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these are not plough furrows; the spaces are not equal; they are marching lines!" And he was right. Eighteen days after the victory of Koeniggraetz the Prussian hosts were in line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be dimly seen through the heat-haze.
He knew full well that his aspirations could be fulfilled only at the bayonet point; and recognising the defects of the army, he had while still Regent set himself energetically to the task of making Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was who had put into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won Koeniggraetz.
When the inner history of the period comes to be written, it will be recognised that at no time of his extraordinary career did Bismarck prove himself a greater statesman than during the five days of armistice in July 1866, when he fought his diplomatic Koeniggraetz in the Castle of Nikolsburg and assuaged the wounds of the Austrian defeat by terms the moderation of which went far to obliterate the memory of the rancour of the recent strife.
He had been wily enough to secure by vague non-committal half-promises the neutrality of France during the weeks while Prussia was crushing the armed strength of Austria in Bohemia. But the issue of Koeniggraetz startled Napoleon and set France in ferment.
The Elector of Saxony who was also King of Poland however, was only negotiating in order to give time for Austria to gather an army in Bohemia; and so to relieve the Saxons, who were watched by the eastern column, which had crossed the defiles into Bohemia and taken post near Koeniggraetz; while that of Prince Maurice of Brunswick pushed forward farther, to threaten their line of retreat from the west.
He made a masterly retreat, struck a heavy blow at Daun by capturing and destroying his principal magazine, and then took up a very strong position near Koeniggraetz.
Fergus asked. "No, indeed. We do not absolutely close the direct road, but our position, and that of Marshal Schwerin facing Koeniggraetz, so menaces their line of retreat that they dare not venture from their shelter; and our cavalry render it impossible for any supplies to be thrown in, unless the convoy is supported by an army.
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