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Updated: June 17, 2025
"It is a particular manoeuvre," says Archenholtz, rather sergeant-wise, "which indeed other troops are now in the habit of imitating; but which, up to this present time, none but Prussian troops can execute with the precision and velocity indispensable to it.
This "insolent" style of management, says Archenholtz, was practised by Julius Caesar on the Gauls; and since his time by nobody, till Friedrich, his studious scholar and admirer, revived it "against another enemy."
"Bunzelwitz, Jauernik, Tschechen and Peterwitz, all fortified," continues Archenholtz; "Wurben, in the centre, is like a citadel, looking down upon Striegau Water. Heavy cannon, plenty of them, we have brought from Schweidnitz: we have 460 pieces of cannon in all and 182 mines. Wurben, our citadel and centre, is about five miles from Schweidnitz.
Friedrich's finances, copper and other, were got completed; his Armies too were once more put on a passable footing; and this Year will have its realities withal. Gotzkowsky, in regard to those Leipzig Finance difficulties, yields me a date, which is supplementary to some of the Archenholtz details. And withal, at Paris, in the same hours, there went on a thing worth noting.
The night is pitch-dark, says Archenholtz; you cannot see your hand before you. Old Hulsen's bridle-horses were all shot away, when he heard this alarm, far off: no horse left; and he is old, and has his own bruises. He seated himself on a cannon; and so rides, and arrives; right welcome the sight of him, doubt not! And the fight rages still for an hour or more.
After the death-like desertion and silence of Ferrara, the feeble bustle of Bologna seemed like a return to the world and its ways. Its streets are lined with covered porticoes, less heavy than those of Padua, but harbouring after nightfall, says the old traveller ARCHENHOLTZ, robbers and murderers, of whom the latter are the more numerous.
Sergeants may wag their tongues and their cudgels at discretion: 'showers of cudgel-strokes, says Archenholtz; Sergeants going like threshers on the poor men; 'though the upper Officers had a touch of mercy, and affected not to see this disobedience to the Sergeants and their cudgels, which was punishable with death. War is not an over-fond Mother, but a sufficiently Spartan one, to her Sons.
The Russians, never was such VIS INERTIAE as theirs now. They stood like sacks of clay, like oxen already dead; not even if you shot a bullet through them, would they fall at once, says Archenholtz, but seem to be deliberate about it. Complete disorder reigned on both sides; except that the Prussians could always form again when bidden, the Russians not.
Here, for instance, from the Duchy of Gottingen, are some items in the French Account current, this Winter, which are also furnished by Archenholtz:
Archenholtz, a very young officer of fifteen, who came into it perhaps an hour hence, describes it as a thing surpassable only by Doomsday: clangorous rage of noise risen to the infinite; the boughs of the trees raining down on you, with horrid crash; the Forest, with its echoes, bellowing far and near, and reverberating in universal death-peal; comparable to the Trump of Doom.
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