'QUE VOULEZ-VOUS DONC?' 'His Excellency Valori!' 'Well, no violence; I am your prisoner: let me dress!' answers the supposed Excellency,--and contrives to secrete portfolios, and tear or make away with papers. And is marched off, under a select guard, who leave the rest to do the pillage. And was not Valori at all;was Valori's Secretary, one D'Arget, who had called himself Valori on this dangerous occasion! Valori sat quaking behind his partition; not till the Pandours began plundering the stables did the Prussian sentry catch sound of them, and plunge in."Friedrich had his amusement out of this adventure; liked D'Arget, the clever Secretary; got D'Arget to himself before long, as will be seen;--and, in quieter times, dashed off a considerable Explosion of Rhyme, called LE PALLADION (Valori as Prussia's "Palladium," with Devils attempting to steal him, and the like), which was once thought an exquisite Burlesque,--Kings coveting a sight of it, in vain,--but is now wearisome enough to every reader.
[Valori, i. 242; <italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic>
iii. 130: for the Fact. Exquisite Burlesque, PALLADION itself, is in <italic> OEuvres, <end italic> xi. 192-271 (see IB. 139): a bad copy of that very bad Original, JEANNE D'ARC,--the only thing now good in it, Friedrich's polite yet positive refusal to gratify King Louis and his Pompdour with a sight of it (see IB. PREFACE, x-xiv, Friedrich's Letter to Louis; date of request and of refusal, March, 1750).]--Let us attend his Majesty's exit from Bohemia.
Chapter XII.
BATTLE OF SOHR.
The famed beautiful Elbe River rises in romantic chasms, terrible to the picturesque beholder, at the roots of the Riesengebirge;overlooked by the Hohe-Kamms, and highest summits of that chain.
"Out of eleven wells," says gentle Dulness, "EILF or ELF QUELLEN, whence its name, Elbe for ELF." Sure enough, it starts out of various wells; [Description, in Zollner, <italic> Briefe uber Schlesien, <end italic> ii. 305; in &c. &c.] rushes out, like a great peacock's or pasha's tail, from the roots of the Giant Mountains thereabouts; and hurries southward,--or even rather eastward, at first; for (except the Iser to westward, which does not fall in for a great while) its chief branches come from the eastern side: Aupa, Metau, Adler, the drainings of Glatz, and of that rugged Country where Friedrich has been camping and manoeuvring all summer. On the whole, its course is southward for the first seventy or eighty miles, washing Jaromirz, Konigshof, Konigsgratz, down to Pardubitz: at Pardubitz it turns abruptly westward, and holds on so, bending even northward, by hill and plain, through the rest of its five or six hundred miles.
Its first considerable branch, on that eastern or left bank, is the Aupa, which rises in the Pass of Schatzlar (great struggling there, for convoys, just now); goes next by Trautenau, which has lately been burnt; and joins the Elbe at Jaromirz, where Valori was stolen, or nearly so, from under the Prussian left wing. The Aupa runs nearly straight south; the Elbe, till meeting it, has run rather southeast; but after joining they go south together, augmented by the Metau, by the Adler, down to Pardubitz, where the final turn to west occurs. Jaromirz, which lies in the very angle of Elbe and Aupa, is the left wing of Friedrich's Camp; main body of the Camp lies on the other side of the Elbe, but of course has bridges (as at Smirzitz, where that straw sentry did his pranks lately); bridges are indispensable, part of our provision coming always by that BOHEMIAN Neustadt, from the northeast quarter out of Silesia; though the main course of our meal (and much fighting for it) is direct from the north, by the Pass of Schatzlar,--"Chaslard," as poor Valori calls it.
Thus Friedrich lay, when Valori escaped being stolen;when Tauenzien was assailed by the 10,000 Pandours with siege artillery, and stood inexpugnable in the breach till Friedrich relieved him. Those Pandours "had cut away his water, for the last two days;" so that, except for speedy relief, all valor had been in vain. Water being gone, not recoverable without difficulties, Neustadt was abandoned (September 16th, as I guess);--one of our main Silesian roads for meal has ceased. We have now only Schatzlar to depend on; where Franquini--lying westward among the glens of the Upper Elbe, and possessed of abundant talent in the Tolpatch way (witness Valori's narrow miss lately)--gives us trouble enough.
Friedrich determines to move towards Schatzlar. Homewards, in fact;eating the Country well as he goes.
Saturday, 18th September, Friedrich crosses the Elbe at Jaromirz.
Entirely unopposed; the Austrians were all busy firing FEU-DE-JOIEfor the Election of their Grand-Duke: Election done five days ago at Frankfurt, and the news just come. So they crackle about, and deliver rolling fire, at a great rate; proud to be "IMPERIAL Army"henceforth, as if that could do much for them. There was also vast dining, for three days, among the high heads, and a great deal of wine spent. That probably would have been the chance to undertake something upon them, better than crossing the Elbe, says Friedrich looking back. But he did not think of it in time; took second-best in place of best.