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It was right!" "You mean your daughter's?" the Prince gently suggested. "Hers and her mother's. Our story was well known in St. Petersburg twenty years ago, but I suppose no one recollects it now. My wife was the daughter of a Baron von Plauen, and loved music and myself better than her home and a titled bridegroom. She escaped, we united our lives, suffered and were happy together, and she died.
The 14th they slept at Bayreuth, the 15th at Plauen, and on the 16th they reached Dresden. As Thiers says, Napoleon had passed through Germany amid an unprecedented throng of the populace, whose curiosity equalled their hatred. "Never, indeed, had the potentate whom they abhorred appeared more surrounded with glory.
By Thursday evening the whole of his army had crossed Dresden bridge and got in safely behind Plauen, leaving ten thousand men to aid the four thousand in the garrison. At noon Fergus, hearing that, without doubt, the whole of the enemy had fallen back, started with Karl; and that evening rode into the royal camp, and reported himself to the king.
They were successively driven out of all their posts in Bohemia, and anxious only to secure their plunder, they precipitately crossed the heights of Meissen. But being followed into Saxony by the pursuing enemy, and defeated at Plauen, they were obliged to take refuge in Thuringia.
For eight days more Friedrich did not rest from his spadework; made many changes and improvements, till he had artificially made a very Stolpen of it, a Plauen, or more. Cogniazzo, the AUSTRIAN VETERAN, says: "Plauen, and Daun's often ridiculed precautions there, were nothing to it.
Meanwhile the great blow was struck by Napoleon at the allied left. There the Austrian wing was sundered from the main force by the difficult defile of Plauen; and it was crushed by one of the Emperor's most brilliant combinations.
After which, Daun himself issued minatory from the Plauen Chasm; expecting, as all the world did, that Friedrich, who is 36,000 of Unfortunate against, say, 72,000 of Triumphant, will, under penalty, take himself away. But it proved otherwise.
A few days later the surrender of Dresden gave Saxony to the Austrians; and at the close of the year an attempt upon them at Plauen was foiled with terrible loss. But every disaster was retrieved by the indomitable courage and tenacity of the king, and winter found him as before master of Silesia and of all Saxony save the ground which Daun's camp covered.
A little further on, in a lonely alley in the suburb of Plauen, I fell in with the musician Hiebendahl, the first oboist in the royal orchestra, and a man who still enjoyed a very high reputation; he was in the uniform of the Communal Guards, but carried no gun, and was chatting with a citizen in a similar costume.
Next day there was pursuit of Lacy; some prisoners and furnitures got from him, but nothing of moment: Daun and Lacy joined at Dresden; took post, as usual, behind their inaccessible Plauen Chasms. Sat there, in view of the chasing Prussians, without farther loss than this of Torgau, and of a Campaign gone to water again.
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