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In fact, a thing which need not have been tried, had Rutowski been rigorously candid with himself and his hopes, as the facts now prove to be.
The Enterprise, from the first, was flatly impossible, say judges; and it is certain, poor Rutowski's execution was not first-rate. "How get across the Elbe?" Rutowski had said to himself, perhaps not quite with the due rigor of candor proportionate to the rigorous fact: "How get across the Elbe? We have copper pontoons at Pirna; but they will be difficult to cart.
Or we might have a boat-bridge; boats planked together two and two. At Pirna are plenty of boats; and by oar and track-rope, the River itself might be a road for them? Boats or pontoons to Konigstein, by water or land, they must be got. Eight miles of abysmal roads, our horses all extenuated? Impossible to cart these pontoons!" said Rutowski to himself. Pity he had not tried it.
The matter goes this night precisely as it did last: towmen vanishing in the horrible cannon tumult; steersmen shrieking, "We will ground you on the Prussian shore;" very soldiers obliged to give it up; and General Rutowski himself obliged to wash his hands of it, as a thing that cannot be done.
Grim Old Dessauer having reconnoitred, and rapidly considered, decides to try it, what else? will range himself on the west side of that Tschonengrund, horse and foot; two lines, wide as Rutowski opposite him; but means to direct his main and prime effort against Kesselsdorf, which is clearly the key of the position, if it can be taken.
Well, Friedrich too would have been up, and it had most likely been the same on a larger scale. But the Saxon Commandant did not stand out; he glided off, safe; joined Rutowski and Grune, who are lying about Wilsdruf, six or seven miles on the hither side of Dresden, and eagerly waiting for Prince Karl.
"In fact," independently of weather and circumstances, "the Enterprise," says Friedrich, "was radically impossible; nobody that had known the ground could have judged it other." Rutowski had not known it, then? Browne never pretended to know it. Rutowski was not candid with the conditions; the conditions never known nor candidly looked at; and THEY are now replying to him with candor enough.
'Rutowski, lying close in his Cantonments, and then suddenly springing out, will overwhelm the Old Dessauer, who lies wide; can do it, surely; and Grune is there to help if necessary. Dessauer blown to pieces, Grune, with Rutowski combined, push in upon Brandenburg, Grune himself upon Berlin, from the west and south, nobody expecting him.
Rutowski numbers 35,000, now on this ground, with immensity of cannon; 32,000 we, with only the usual field-artillery, and such a Tschonengrund, with its half-frozen quagmires ahead. A ticklish case for the old man, as he grimly reconnoitres it, in the winter morning.
Nor has Grime's corps, the right wing, done anything except meditate: it stood there unattacked, unattacking; till deep in the dark night, when Rutowski remembered it, and sent it order to come home.
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