"You are a good man, my Podewils, and do what can be expected of you" (Podewils has been apologizing for his terrors; and referring hopefully "to Providence"): "Perform faithfully the given work on your side, as I on mine; for the rest, let what you call 'Providence' decide as it likes [UNE PROVIDENCE AVEUGLE? Ranke, who alone knows, gives "BLINDE VORSEHUNG." What an utterance, on the part of this little Titan! Consider it as exceptional with him, unusual, accidental to the hard moment, and perhaps not so impious as it looks!]--Neither our prudence nor our courage shall be liable to blame; but only circumstances that would not favor us. ...
"I prepare myself for every event. Fortune may be kind or be unkind, it shall neither dishearten me nor uplift me. If I am to perish, let it be with honor, and sword in hand. What the issue is to be-- Well, what pleases Heaven, or the Other Party (J'AI JETE LEBONNET PAR DESSUS LES MOULINS)! Adieu, my dear Podewils; become as good a philosopher as you are a politician; and learn from a man who does not go to Elsner's Preaching [fashionable at the time], that one must oppose to ill fortune a brow of iron; and, during this life, renounce all happiness, all acquisitions, possessions and lying shows, none of which will follow us beyond the grave."[Ranke, iii. pp. 238-241.]
"By what points the Austrian-Saxon Armament will come through upon us? Together will it be, or separately? Saxons from the Lausitz, Austrians from Bohmen, enclosing us between two fires?"--were enigmatic questions with Friedrich; and the Saxons especially are an enigma. But that come they will, that these Pandours are their preliminary veiling-apparatus as usual, is evident to him; and that he must not spend himself upon Pandours; but coalesce, and lie ready for the main wrestle. So that from April 28th, as above noticed, Friedrich has gone into cantonments, some way up the Neisse Valley, westward of Neisse Town; and is calling in his outposts, his detachments; emptying his Frontier Magazines;--abandoning his Upper-Silesian Frontier more and more, and in the end altogether, to the Pandour hordes; a small matter they, compared to the grand Invasion which is coming on. Here, with shiftings up the Neisse Valley, he lies till the end of May;watching Argus-like, and scanning with every faculty the Austrian-Saxon motions and intentions, until at length they become clear to him, and we shall see how he deals with them.
His own lodging, or head-quarter, most of this time (4th May-27th May), is in the pleasant Abbey of Camenz (mythic scene of that BAUMGARTEN-SKIRMISH business, in the First Silesian War). He has excellent Tobias Stusche for company in leisure hours; and the outlook of bright Spring all round him, flowering into gorgeous Summer, as he hurries about on his many occasions, not of an idyllic nature. [Orlich, ii. 139; Ranke, iii. 242-249.] But his Army is getting into excellent completeness of number, health, equipment, and altogether such a spirit as he could wish. May 22d, here is another snatch from some Note to Podewils, from this balmy Locality, potential with such explosions of another kind.
CAMENZ, MAY 22d. ... "The Enemies are ****** movements; but nothing like enough as yet for our guessing their designs. Till we see, therefore, the thunder lies quiet in us (LA FOUDRE REPOSE EN MESMAINS). Ah, could we but have a Day like that May Eleventh!"[Ranke, iii. 248 n.]
What "that May Eleventh" is or was? Readers are curious to know;especially English readers, who guess FONTENOY. And Historic Art, if she were strict, would decline to inform them at any length;for really the thing is no better than a "Victory on the Scamander, and a Siege of Pekin" (as a certain observer did afterwards define it), in reference to the matter now on hand! Well, Pharsalia, Arbela, the Scamander, Armageddon, and so many Battles and Victories being luminous, by study, to cultivated Englishmen, and one's own Fontenoy such a mystery and riddle,--Art, after consideration, reluctantly consents to be indulgent; will produce from her Paper Imbroglios a slight Piece on the subject, and print instead of burning.
Chapter VIII.
THE MARTIAL BOY AND HIS ENGLISH versus THE LAWS 0F NATURE.
"Glorious Campaign in the Netherlands, Siege of Tournay, final ruin of the Dutch Barrier!" this is the French program for Season 1745, --no Belleisle to contradict it; Belleisle secure at Windsor, who might have leant more towards German enterprises. And to this his Britannic Majesty (small gain to him from that adroitness in the Harz, last winter!) has to make front. And is strenuously doing so, by all methods; especially by heroic expenditure of money, and ditto exposure of his Martial Boy. Poor old Wade, last year,--perhaps Wade did suffer, as he alleged, from "want of sufficient authority in that mixed Army"? Well, here is a Prince of the Blood, Royal Highness of Cumberland, to command in chief. With a Konigseck to dry-nurse him, may not Royal Highness, luck favoring, do very well? Luck did not favor; Britannic Majesty, neither in the Netherlands over seas, nor at home (strange new domestic wool, of a tarry HIGHLAND nature, being thrown him to card, on the sudden!), made a good Campaign, but a bad. And again a bad (1746) and again (1747), ever again, till he pleased to cease altogether. Of which distressing objects we propose that the following one glimpse be our last.
BATTLE OF FONTENOY (11th May, 1745).
... "In the end of April, Marechal de Saxe, now become very famous for his sieges in the Netherlands, opened trenches before Tournay;King Louis, with his Dauphin, not to speak of mistresses, play-actors and cookery apparatus (in wagons innumerable), hastens to be there. A fighting Army, say of 70,000, besides the garrisons; and great things, it is expected, will be done; Tournay, in spite of strong works and Dutch garrison of 9,000, to be taken in the first place.