counter-manoeuvring

Updated: May 23, 2025

We are to conceive this military business as a dead-lock; attended with hussar skirmishes; attacks, defences, of outposts, of provision-wagons from Moravia or Silesia: Friedrich has his food from Silesia chiefly, by several routes, 'convoys come once in the five days. His horse-provender he forages; with Tolpatches watching him, and continual scufflings of fight: 'for hay and glory, writes one Prussian Officer, 'I assure you we fight well! Endless enterprising, manoeuvring, counter-manoeuvring there at first was; and still is, if either party stir: but here, in their mutually fixed camps, tacit mutual observances establish themselves; and amid the rigorous armed vigilantes, there are traits of human neighborship.

Thomas Carlyle - History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 15