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Independently of Mollwitz, or of Silesia altogether, it was next to impossible that Europe could long avoid blazing out; especially unless the Spanish-English quarrel got quenched, of which there was no likelihood. This was "the little stone broken loose from the mountain;" this, rather than the late Kaiser's Death, which Friedrich defined in that manner.
These things are of singular omen. Here stands one that will avenge Friedrich Wilhelm, if Friedrich Wilhelm were not already sufficiently avenged by the mere verdict of facts, which is palpably coming out, as Time peels the wiggeries away from them more and more. Mollwitz and such places are full of veracity; and no head is so thick as to resist conviction in that kind.
Strehlen is a pleasant little Town, nestled prettily among its granite Hills, the steeple of it visible from Mollwitz; some twenty-five miles west of Brieg, some thirty south of Breslau, and about as far northwest of Neisse: there Friedrich and his Prussians lie, under canvas mainly, with outposts and detachments sprinkled about under roofs: a Camp of Strehlen, more or less imaginable by the reader.
Friedrich's Silesian Camps this Summer, Camp of Strehlen chiefly, were among the strangest places in the world. Friedrich, as we have often noticed, did not much pursue the defeated Austrians, at or near Mollwitz, or press them towards flat ruin in their Silesian business: it is clear he anxiously wished a bargain without farther exasperation; and hoped he might get it by judicious patience.
The siege of Neisse is to open on April 4, when we find Austrian Neipperg with his army approaching; by good fortune a dilatory Neipperg; of which comes the battle of Mollwitz. A victory, though, of old Friedrich Wilhelm, and his training and discipline, having in it as yet nothing of young Frederick's own.
Considering the Battle of Mollwitz, and then, in contrast, the intricate Pragmatic Sanction, and what their consequences were and their antecedents, it is curious once more! This, then, is what the Pragmatic Sanction has come to? Twenty years of world-wide diplomacy, cunningly devised spider-threads overnetting all the world, have issued here.
It is said that in Prussian drills all the bullets hit the ground at fifty paces. With the arms of that time and the manner of fighting, results would have been magnificent in battle if the bullets had struck fifty paces before the enemy instead of passing over his head. Yet at Mollwitz, where the Austrians had five thousand men disabled, the Prussians had over four thousand.
In spite of all this, after two or three volleys, so says General Renard, whom we believe more than charitable, there is no power of discipline which can prevent regular fire from breaking into fire at will. But let us look further, into Frederick's battles. Let us take the battle of Mollwitz, in which success was specifically laid to fire at command, half lost, then won by the Prussian salvos.
At the first volley the enemy would have broken and fled, under the penalty of annihilation in case they stayed. However, if we look at the final result at Mollwitz, we see that the number of killed is about the same on the side that used fire at command as on the side that did not. The Prussians lost 960 dead, the Austrians 966.
Before 1730, all European troops used wooden ramrods; and the credit of the invention of iron ones is attributed by some to the Prince of Anhalt, and by others to Prince Leopold of Dessau. The Prussians were the first to adopt the iron ramrod, and at the date of the battle of Mollwitz it had not been introduced into the Austrian service.
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