"Czarish Majesty to have East Preussen guaranteed to him, if he will insist that the King of Prussia DISPENSE with Silesia;"which the indignant Czar rejected with scorn, and at once made his Royal Friend aware of; with what emotion on the Royal Friend's part we have transiently seen. "Horrors and perfidies!" ejaculated he, in our hearing lately; and regarded Bute, from that time, as a knave and an imbecile both in one; nor ever quite forgave Bute's Nation either, which was far from being Bute's accomplice in this unheard-of procedure. "No more Alliances with England!" counted he:
"What Alliance can there be with that ever-fluctuating People?
To-day they have a thrice-noble Pitt; to-morrow a thrice-paltry Bute, and all goes heels-over-head on the sudden!" [Preuss, ii.
308; Mitchell, ii. 286.]
Bute, at this rate of going, will manage to get hold of Peace before long. To Friedrich himself, a Siege of Schweidnitz is now free; Schweidnitz his, the Austrians will have to quit Silesia.
"Their cash is out: except prayer to the Virgin, what but Peace can they attempt farther? In Saxony things will have gone ill, if there be not enough left us to offer them in return for Glatz. And Peace and AS-YOU-WERE must ensue!"Let us go upon Schweidnitz, therefore; pausing on none of these subsidiary things; and be brief upon Schweidnitz too.
Chapter XII.
SIEGE OF SCHWEIDNITZ: SEVENTH CAMPAIGN ENDS.
Daun being now cleared away, Friedrich instantly proceeds upon Schweidnitz. Orders the necessary Siege Materials to get under way from Neisse; posts his Army in the proper places, between Daun and the Fortress,--King's head-quarter Dittmannsdorf, Army spread in fine large crescent-shape, to southwest of Schweidnitz some ten miles, and as far between Daun and it;--orders home to him his Upper-Silesia Detachments, "Home, all of you, by Neisse Country, to make up for Czernichef's departure; from Neisse onwards you can guard the Siege-Ammunition wagons!" Naturally he has blockaded Schweidnitz, from the first; he names Tauentzien Siege-Captain, with a 10 or 12,000 to do the Siege: "Ahead, all of you!"--and in short, AUGUST 7th, with the due adroitness and precautions, opens his first parallel; suffering little or nothing hitherto by a resistance which is rather vehement. [Tempelhof, vi. 126.]
He expects to have the place in a couple of weeks--"one week (HUITJOUR)" he sometimes counts it, but was far out in his reckoning as to time.
The Siege of Schweidnitz occupied two most laborious, tedious months;--and would be wearisome to every reader now, as it was to Friedricb then, did we venture on more than the briefest outline.
The resistance is vehement, very skilful:--Commandant is Guasco (the same who was so truculent to Schmettau in the Dresden time);his Garrison is near 12,000, picked from all regiments of the Austrian Army; his provisions, ammunitions, are of the amplest;and he has under him as chief Engineer a M. Gribeauval, who understands "counter-mining" like no other. After about a fortnight of trial, and one Event in the neighborhood which shall be mentioned, this of Mining and Counter-mining--though the External Sap went restlessly forward too, and the cannonading was incessant on both sides--came to be regarded more and more as the real method, and for six or seven weeks longer was persisted in, with wonderful tenacity of attempt and resistance. Friedrich's chief Mining Engineer is also a Frenchman, one Lefebvre; who is personally the rival of Gribeauval (his old class-fellow at College, I almost think); but is not his equal in subterranean work,--or perhaps rather has the harder task of it, that of Mining, instead of COUNTER-mining, or SPOILING Mines. Tempelhof's account of these two people, and their underground wrestle here, is really curious reading;--clear as daylight to those that will study, but of endless expansion (as usual in Tempelhof), and fit only to be indicated here. [Tempelhof, vi. 122-219; <italic> Bericht und Tagebuch von der Belagerung von Schweidnitz vom 7ten August bis 9October, 1762 <end italic> (Seyfarth, <italic> Beylagen, <end italic> iii. 376-479); Archenholtz, Retzow, &c.]
The external Event I promised to mention is an attempt on Daun's part (August 16th) to break in upon Friedrich's position, and interrupt the Siege, or render it still impossible. Event called the BATTLE OF REICHENBACH, though there was not much of battle in it;--in which our old friend the Duke of Brunswick-Bevern (whom we have seen in abeyance, and merely a Garrison Commandant, for years back, till the Russians left Stettin to itself) again played a shining part.
Daun--at Tannhausen, 10 miles to southwest of Friedrich, and spread out among the Hills, with Loudons, Lacys, Becks, as lieutenants, and in plenty of force, could he resolve on using it--has at last, after a month's meditation, hit upon a plan. Plan of flowing round by the southern skirt of Friedrich, and seizing certain Heights to the southeastern or open side of Schweidnitz,--Koltschen Height the key one; from which he may spread up at will, Height after Height, to the very Zobtenberg on that eastern side, and render Schweidnitz an impossibility. The plan, people say, was good; but required rapidity of execution,--a thing Daun is not strong in.
Bevern's behavior, too, upon whom the edge of the matter fell, was very good. Bevern, coming on from Neisse and Upper Silesia, had been much manoeuvred upon for various days by Beck; Beck, a dangerous, alert man, doing his utmost to seize post after post, and bar Bevern's way,--meaning especially, as ultimate thing, to get hold of a Height called Fischerberg, which lies near Reichenbach (in the southern Schweidnitz vicinities), and is preface to Koltschen Height and to the whole Enterprise of Daun.