United States or Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What is kaisership without Silesia? Prussia has no insulted kaiser to defend, desires no more than peace on the old Breslau terms properly ratified; but finances are low. Grand Duke Franz is duly elected; but the empress queen will have Silesia. Battle of Sohr does not convince her.
Trautenau, well down the Hills, with swift streams, more like torrents, bound Elbe-wards, watering it, is a considerable Austrian Town, and the Bohemian end of the Pass, Sohr only a few miles from it: heartily indifferent to Schwerin at this moment; who was home from the Army, in a kind of disfavor, or mutual pet, at the time Sohr was done.
One Schlichtling, on guard with a weak party, saved what was in the right wing of the Camp, small thanks to him, the Main Fight being so near: Friedrich's opinion is, an Officer, in Schlichtling's place, ought to have done more, and not have been so helpless. This was the Battle of Sohr; so called because the Austrians had begun there, and the Prussians ended there.
Prince Karl, from Konigshof, soon fell back to Konigsgratz; and lay motionless there, nothing but his Tolpatcheries astir, Sohr Country all eaten, Friedrich, in the due Divisions, marched northward. Through Trautenau, Schatzlar, his own Division, which was the main one; and, fencing off the Tolpatches successfully with trouble, brings all his men into Silesia again.
Their poor Hamlets, Sohr, Staudentz, Prausnitz, Burgersdorf and others still send up a faint smoke; and have in them, languidly, the live-coal of mysterious human existence, in those woods, to judge by the last maps that have come out. A thing worth considering by the passing tourist, military or other."
They did not fear a defeat at Sohr, although the grand duke was now the leader of forty thousand men, and Frederick's army had been so diminished by the forces he had sent to Saxony and Silesia, that it consisted of scarcely twenty thousand men.
'Should have been done, admits Friedrich; 'but then, as it is, there are not troops enough: with 18,000 men you cannot do everything!" Here, however, is the important point. In Sohr, this night, 29th September, in a most private manner, the Austrians, 30,000 of them and more, have come gliding through the woods, without even their pipe lit, and with thick veil of hussars ahead!
Word Of The Day