With Frederick the Great Part 30

"We are off tomorrow morning," he said, when he went up on the evening of the 30th of September. "Where, I know not. Except the king, Marshal Keith, and Prince Maurice, I do not suppose that anyone knows; but wherever it is, we start at daybreak."

"May you return, ere long, safe and sound!" the count said. "Is there nothing that we can do for you? You know we regard you as one of the family, and there is nothing that would give us greater pleasure than to be able, in some way, to make you comfortable."

"I thank you heartily, count, but I need nothing; and if I did I could purchase it, for it is but seldom that one has to put one's hand in one's pocket; and as a captain I have saved the greater part of my pay for the last two years, and shall pile up my h.o.a.rd still faster, now that I am a major.

"I have never had an opportunity, before, of thanking you for that purse which you handed to Karl, to be laid out for my benefit in case of need. He holds it still, and I have never had occasion to draw upon it, and hope that I never may have to do so."

The next morning the army, furnished with nine days' provisions, and leaving a force to face the army of the Confederates, strode along the road at its usual pace. They took the road for Bautzen, drove off Loudon (who commanded Daun's northern outposts) without difficulty, and so pa.s.sed his flank. The advance guard pushed on to Bautzen, drove away the small force there and, leaving there the magazines of the army, occupied Hochkirch, a few miles away. The king with the main body arrived at Bautzen on the following day, and halted there, to see what Daun was going to do.

The latter was, in fact, obliged to abandon his stronghold; for the Prussians, at Hochkirch, menaced the road by which he drew his provisions from his magazines at Zittau. Marching at night, he reached and occupied a line of hills between Hochkirch and Zittau, and within a couple of miles of the former place.

Frederick had been forced to wait, at Bautzen, till another convoy of provisions arrived. When he joined the division at Hochkirch, and saw Daun's army on the opposite hills, busy as usual in intrenching itself, he ordered the army to encamp when they were within a mile of Daun's position.

Marwitz, the staff officer to whom he gave the order, argued and remonstrated, and at length refused to be concerned in the marking out of such an encampment. He was at once put under arrest, and another officer did the work. Frederick, in fact, entertained a sovereign contempt for Daun, with his slow marches, his perpetual intrenchings, and his obstinate caution; and had no belief, whatever, that the Austrian marshal would attempt to attack him. He was in a very bad humour, too, having discovered that Retzow had failed to take possession of the Stromberg, a detached hill which would have rendered the position a safe one. He put him under arrest, and ordered the Stromberg to be occupied.

The next morning the force proceeding to do so found, however, that the post was already occupied by Austrians; who resisted stoutly and, being largely reinforced, maintained their position on the hill, on which several batteries were placed. It was now Tuesday, and Frederick determined to march away on the Sat.u.r.day.

His obstinacy had placed the army in an altogether untenable and dangerous position. All his officers were extremely uneasy, and Keith declared to the king that the Austrians deserved to be hanged if they did not attack; to which Frederick replied:

"We must hope that they are more afraid of us than even of the gallows."

Chapter 13: Hochkirch.

The village of Hochkirch stood on a hilltop, with an extensive view for miles round on all sides; save on the south, where hills rose one above another. Among these hills was one called the Devil's Hill, where the primitive country people believed that the devil and his witches held high festival, once a year.

Frederick's right wing, which was commanded by Keith, lay in Hochkirch. Beyond the village he had four battalions, and a battery of twenty guns on the next height to Hochkirch. From this point to the Devil's Hill extended a thick wood, in which a strong body of Croats were lurking. Frederick, with the centre, extended four miles to the left of Hochkirch. Retzow, who had been restored to his command, had ten or twelve thousand men lying in or behind Weissenberg, four miles away.

Frederick's force, with that of Keith, amounted to twenty-eight thousand men, and Retzow's command was too far away to be considered as available. Daun's force, lying within a mile of Hochkirch, amounted to ninety thousand men. Well might Keith say that the Austrians deserved to be hanged, if they did not attack.

Frederick himself was somewhat uneasy, and would have moved away on the Friday night, had he not been waiting for the arrival of a convoy of provisions from Bautzen. Still, he relied upon Daun's inactivity.

This time, however, his reliance was falsified. All Daun's generals were of opinion that it would be disgraceful, were they to stand on the defensive against an army practically less than a third of their force; and their expostulations at length roused Daun into activity. Once decided, his dispositions were, as usual, excellent.

[Map: Battle of Hochkirch]

His plan was an able one. He himself, with thirty thousand men, was to start as soon as it was dark on Friday evening, sweep round to the south, follow the base of the Devil's Mountain, and then through the hollows and thick wood till he was close to the force on the right of Hochkirch; and was to fall suddenly on them, at five o'clock on Sat.u.r.day morning. The orders were that, as soon as Hochkirch was taken, the rest of the army, sixty thousand strong, were to march against Frederick, both in front and on his left, and so completely smash and crumple him up.

Frederick had no premonition of the storm that was gathering. On Thursday and Friday the Austrians were engaged, as usual, in felling trees, forming abattis, throwing up earthworks, and in all ways strengthening their position. Everything seemed to show that Daun was still bent upon standing upon the defensive only.

As the lurking Croats and Pandoors had, every night, crept up through the brushwood and hollows, and skirmished with the Prussian outposts away on the right, scattered firing was not heeded much in Hochkirch. Fergus had just got up, in the little room he shared with Lindsay in the marshal's quarters, a mile north of Hochkirch; and was putting on his boots when, a few minutes past five, the sound of firing was heard.

"There are the Croats, as usual," he said.

"What a restless fellow you are, Drummond! You have been up, at this unearthly hour, each morning since we got here. It won't be light for another two hours yet. I doubt whether it will be light then. It looks to me as if it were a thick fog."

"You are right about my early hours, and I admit I have been restless. It is not a pleasant idea that, but a mile away, there is an army big enough to eat us up; and nothing whatever to prevent their pouncing upon us, at any moment, except two or three batteries. The marshal was saying, last night, he should regard it as the most fortunate escape he ever had, if we drew off safely tonight without being attacked.

"That firing is heavier than usual. There go a couple of guns!"

"Those two advanced pieces are sending a round or two of case shot into the bushes, I suppose," Lindsay said drowsily.

Fergus completed his dressing, and went downstairs and out into the night. Here he could hear much better than in the room above; which had but one loophole for air and light, and that was almost stopped up, with a wisp of straw. He could now plainly hear volley firing, and a continued crackle of musketry. He ran upstairs again.

"You had better get your things on at once, Lindsay. It is a more serious affair than usual. I shall take it upon myself to wake the marshal."

He went to Keith's door, knocked, and opened it.

"Who is there? What is it?" the marshal asked.

"It is I, Drummond, sir. There is heavy firing going on to the right, much heavier than it has been any other night."

"What o'clock is it?"

"About ten minutes past five, sir. There is a thick mist, and it is pitch dark. Shall I go over and inquire what is going on?"

"Yes, do. I expect that those rascally Croats have been reinforced, and are trying to find out whether we are still in our positions."

"I will be back as soon as I can, sir."

Fergus ran round to the low range of sheds in which their horses were stabled.

"Karl, are you there?" he shouted.

"Yes, major," a voice said, close at hand. "I am listening to all that firing."

"Saddle up at once. You may as well ride with me. I am going to see what it is all about."

A lantern was burning in the shed, and by its light Fergus and the orderly rapidly saddled the horses.

"You had better light two more lanterns, Karl. Leave the one on the wall burning. We will take the others. We shall want them, for one cannot see a horse's length away; and if we had not the sound of firing to guide us, we should soon lose our way altogether."

The light enabled them to go at a fairly fast trot, but they trusted rather to their horses' than to their own eyes. The roar and rattle of the firing increased in volume, every minute.

"That is more than an affair with the Croats, Karl."

"A good deal more, major. It looks as if the Austrians were beating up our quarters in earnest."

"It does indeed."

When they reached Hochkirch they found the troops there astir. The cavalry trumpets were sounding to horse, and the clamour round the village told that the troops encamped there were getting under arms.

"Do you know what is going on to the right, sir?" Fergus asked a field officer, who was in the act of mounting. "Marshal Keith has sent me to inquire."

"Not in the least; but as far as I can tell by the sound, they must be attacking us in force, and they seem to be working round in rear of our battery there. The sound is certainly coming this way."