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I believe General Tempelhof was right when he said the siege of a second-rate fortress would cost a million dollars, and in Holland we should have to take more than ten fortresses from the stubborn and intrepid French. This would cost as more than ten million dollars, and, moreover, we should have to use up the powder and ammunition destined for our own defence.
Tempelhof, at that time a subaltern of artillery, was stationed with a couple of 24-pounders in attendance on the Battalion Plothow, which with three others and some cavalry lay to the south side of Hochkirch, forming a kind of fore-arm or POTENCE there to right of the big Battery, with their rear to Hochkirch; and keeping vedettes and Free-corps parties spread out into the woods and Devil's Hills ahead.
At the time when he sent off Prince Henry to China, the kaiser was far from well, and was suffering more than usually from the painful malady of the ear already referred to, and which is identical with the disease which first of all wrecked the mind and then killed his grand-uncle, King Frederick William IV. Added to this, he is firmly imbued with the idea that he is destined to meet with a sudden death at the hands of an assassin, a conviction which never leaves him, and which is perhaps responsible for that species of stern and even aggressive air with which he, gazes at the cheering crowds when he rides home at the head of his troops through the streets of Berlin or of Potsdam after a day spent in military manoeuvres on the great plains of Tempelhof.
From and after the Evening of Wednesday, July 9th, it is upon a Siege of Dresden that Friedrich goes; turning the whole war-theatre topsy-turvy; throwing Daun, Loudon, Lacy, everybody OUT, in this strange and sudden manner. One of the finest military feats ever done, thinks Tempelhof.
Loud exceedingly; and more or less appalling to the Russian imagination: but not destructive in proportion; the distance being too considerable, "1,950 paces at the nearest," as Tempelhof has since ascertained by measuring. Friedrich's two batteries, however, as they took the Russians in the flank or by enfilade, did good execution.
Ever since Zorndorf, an idea had got abroad, says Tempelhof, that the Russians would die instead of yielding; but it proved far otherwise here. Down as far as Kunersdorf, which may be about a mile westward, the Russians are all in a whirl; at best hanging in tatters and clumps, their Officers struggling against the flight; "mixed groups you would see huddled together a hundred men deep."
By way of indicating this gentleman's character, it was told to us young people that when, in the course of a sitting, he was roused from a light slumber to give his vote, he used to say, "I vote with my colleague Tempelhof" whereupon it was sometimes necessary to point out to him that Herr Tempelhof was not present.
And indeed, Tempelhof, without censure of Montalembert and his vocation, but accurately computing time and circumstance, comes to the same conclusion; as thus: "OCTOBER 8th, seeing no Lacy come, Czernichef, had it not been for Montalembert's eloquence, had fixed for returning to Copenik: whom cautious Lacy would have been obliged to imitate.
Volcanic to a degree all these; nor are the Russians wanting, though they get more and more astonished: Tempelhof, who was in it, says he never, except at Torgau next Year, heard a louder cannonade.
Awakening with the blood running down his face, poor Tempelhof concluded it had been a musket-shot in the head; but on getting to his hands and knees, he found the place "full of Austrian grenadiers, who had crept in through our tents to rear; and that it had been a knock with the butt of the musket from one of those fellows, and not a bullet" that had struck him down.
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