United States or Caribbean Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Since Napoleon's direction of operations was so clearly fixed, what mattered it to him to know the details of their movements? Being certain of the correctness of these principles, I did not hesitate to announce, a month before the war, that Napoleon would attempt just what he did, and that if the Prussians passed the Saale battles would take place at Jena and Naumburg!
I believed it, and when afterward I looked down from a height into the valley and saw the Saale, my imagination clothed the bare or pineclad mountain slopes with huge oak forests, and beheld the giant forms of the ancient Thuringians felling the trees with their heavy axes. The idea of violence which seemed to be connected with the name of Keilhau had suddenly disappeared.
In the valley of the Saale, the trees are blossoming and a thousand flowers deck all the meadows, just as they do here, and did there two years ago, when I left home for the second time. "After my father's death I was the heir, but neither hunting nor riding to court, neither singing nor the clinking of beakers could please me.
The news from that side begins to alarm him: and though, on the north, Ney, Bertrand, and Reynier cut up the rearguard of the allies, he learns with some disquiet that Blücher is withdrawing westwards behind the River Saale, a move which betokens a wish to come into touch with Schwarzenberg near Leipzig. Yet this disconcerting thought spurs him on to one of his most daring designs.
"Every thing is going on right, Gneisenau!" exclaimed Blucher. "Bonaparte cannot hold out; he must at length retreat. He is contracting the circle of his troops more and more, and advancing toward Leipsic. Ah, I understand, M. Bonaparte; you want to march through Leipsic and keep open the passage across the Saale! But it won't do it won't do! For Blucher is here, and his eyes are yet good.
For that end he revived his chemical experiments. New roads were built, hydraulic operations were conducted on more scientific principles, fertile meadows were won from the river Saale by systematic drainage, and in many a struggle with Nature an intelligently persistent will obtained the victory. Nor was it with material obstacles only that the poet-minister had to contend.
No materials were supplied, and so not a plank nor beam had been placed across a rivulet when, during the night of 18th-19th the Emperor ordered a retreat to Weissenfels and the river Saale. The allies had suffered such heavy losses that they felt it impossible to renew the struggle.
Haeckel himself is domiciled, when not instructing his classes, in a comfortable but plain room across the hall a room whose windows look out across the valley of the Saale on an exquisite mountain landscape, with the clear-cut mountain that Schiller's lines made famous at its focus. As you enter the room a big, robust man steps quickly forward to grasp your hand.
In Schaale, the first village through which we passed, he said, pointing to the stream which flowed into the Saale close by: "Look, boys, now we are coming into our own neighbourhood, the valley of the Schaal. It owes its name to this brook, which rises in our own meadows, and I suppose you would like to know why our village is called Keilhau?"
Four days after the victory, indeed, Frederick set out with thirteen thousand men; leaving Prince Henry to maintain the line of the Saale, and guard Saxony; while Marshal Keith was to go into Bohemia, raise contributions there, and threaten as far as might be the Austrian posts in that country.
Word Of The Day