"Advance, my heroes!" counsel they: "You cannot drag your ammunitions, say you; your poor couple of big guns? Here are his Majesty's own royal horses for that service!"--and, in effect, the royal stud is heroically flung open in this pressure; and a splashing column of sleek quadrupeds, "150 royal draught-horses, early in the forenoon," [Gotzinger, p. 156.] swim across to Ebenheit accordingly, if that could encourage. And, "about noon, there is strong cannonading from the Konigstein, as signal to Browne," who is off. Polish Majesty looking with his spy-glass in an astonished manner. In Vain! Rutowski and his Council of War--sitting wet in a hut of Ebenheit, with 14,000 starved men outside, who have stood seventy-two hours of rain, for one item--see nothing for it but "surrender on such terms as we can get.""In fact," independently of weather and circumstances, "the Enterprise," says Friedrich, "was radically impossible; nobody that had known the ground could have judged it other." Rutowski had not known it, then? Browne never pretended to know it. Rutowski was not candid with the conditions; the conditions never known nor candidly looked at; and THEY are now replying to him with candor enough.
From the first his Enterprise was a final flicker of false hope;going out, as here, by spasm, in the rigors of impossibility and flat despair.
That column of royal horses sent splashing across the River,--that was the utmost of self-sacrifice which I find recorded of his Polish Majesty in this matter. He was very obstinate; his Bruhl and he were. But his conduct was not very heroic. That royal Autograph, "General Rutowski, and ye true Saxons, attack these Prussian lines, then; sell your lives like men" (not like Bruhl and me), must have fallen cold on the heart, after seventy-two hours of rain!
Rutowski's wet Council of War, in the hut at Ebenheit, rain still pouring, answers unanimously, "That it were a leading of men to the butchery;" that there is nothing for it but surrender. Bruhl and Majesty can only answer: "Well-a-day; it must be so, then!"--Winterfeld, Prussian Commander hereabouts, grants Armistice, grants liberal "wagon-loads of bread" first of all; terms of Capitulation to be settled at Struppen to-morrow.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15th, Rutowski goes across to Struppen, the late Saxon head-quarter, now Friedrich's;--Friday gone a fortnight was the day of Lobositz. Winterfeld and he are the negotiators there;Friedrich ratifying or refusing by marginal remarks. The terms granted are hard enough: but they must be accepted.
First preliminary of all terms has already been accepted: a gift of bread to these poor Saxons; their haversacks are empty, their cartridge-boxes drowned; it has rained on them three days and nights. Last upshot of all terms is still well known to everybody:
That the 14,000 Saxons are compelled to become Prussian, and "forced to volunteer"!
That had been Friedrich's determination, and reading of his rights in the matter, now that hard had come to hard. "You refused all terms; you have resisted to death (or death's-DOOR); and are now at discretion!" Of the question, What is to be done with those Saxons?
Friedricb had thought a great deal, first and last; and had found it very intricate,--as readers too will, if they think of it.
"Prisoners of War,--to keep them locked up, with trouble and expense, in that fashion? They can never be exchanged: Saxony has now nothing to exchange them with; and Austria will not.
Their obstinacy has had costs to me; who of us can count what costs! In short, they shall volunteer!""Never did I, for my poor part, authorize such a thing," loudly asseverated Rutowski afterwards. And indeed the Capitulation is not precise on that interesting point. A lengthy Document, and not worth the least perusal otherwise; we condense it into three Articles, all grounding on this general Basis, not deniable by Rutowski: "The Saxon Army, being at such a pass, ready to die of hunger, if we did NOT lift our finger, has, so to speak, become our property; and we grant it the following terms:"--"1. Kettle-drums, standards and the like insignia and matters of honor,--carry these to the Konigstein, with my regretful respects to his Polish Majesty. Konigstein to be a neutral Fortress during this War. Polish Majesty at perfect liberty to go to Warsaw [as he on the instant now did, and never returned].
"2. Officers to depart on giving their parole, Not to serve against us during this War [Parole given, nothing like too well kept].
"3. Rest of the Army, with all its equipments, munitions, soul and body (so to speak), is to surrender utterly, and be ours, as all Saxony shall for the present be." [In <italic> Helden-Geschichte, <end italic> iii. 920-928, at full length--with Briedrich's MARGINALIA noticeably brief.]
That is, in sum, the Capitulation of Struppen. Nothing articulate in it about the one now interesting point,--and in regard to that, I can only fancy Rutowski might interject, interrogatively, perhaps at some length: "Our soldiers to be Prisoners of War, then?""Prisoners; yes, clearly,--unless they choose to volunteer, and have a better fate! Prisoners can volunteer. They are at discretion; they would die, if we did NOT lift our finger!" thus Isuppose Winterfeld would rejoin, if necessary;--and that, in the Winterfeld-Rutowski Conferences, the thing had probably been kept in a kind of CHIAROSCURO by both parties.