That fateful morning was a very wet and raw one, pretty similar to that which, after a rainy night, had dawned upon the English at Waterloo. Long before midnight the troops had all been in motion to the front. The moon occasionally blinked out, but was mostly hidden behind clouds, and then could be distinctly seen the decaying bivouac fires in the places which had been occupied by the troops along the road from Gitschin to Sadowa and Königgrätz. These fires looked like large will-o’-the-wisps as their flames flickered about in the wind and stretched for many a mile, for the bivouacs of so large a force as that of the Red Prince’s army of nearly 100,000 men spread over a wide extent of country. With the first signs of dawn a drizzling rain came on, which lasted until late in the afternoon. The wind increased and blew coldly upon the soldiers, and they were short of both sleep and food, while frequent gusts bore down the water-laden corn on both sides of the ground along the way. Moltke and his staff had left Gitschin by four o’clock, driving to Horitz, where, mounting their horses, they rode on to Dub and joined Prince Frederick Charles. For this was the centre point of assembly. “A few short words,” wrote the _Times_ correspondent, “passed from the Commander of the First Army to his Chief of the Staff; a few _aides-de-camp_, mounting silently, rode away; and, as it were, by the utterance of a magician’s spell, one hundred thousand armed Prussian warriors, springing into sight as if from the bowels of the earth, swept over the southern edge of the Milowitz ravine towards the hill of Dub.” About eight o’clock, King William, with Bismarck and others of his great men, arrived upon the scene. Behind the King, besides his staff, were his royal guests, with their numerous retinues of adjutants and equerries, grooms and horses, in number equal unto about a couple of squadrons--making a fine mark for the shells of the Austrians. Before mounting his good mare “Fenella”--thenceforth to be called “Sadowa”--the King had got into his great-coat and put on goloshes over his boots. A wrong pair of spurs had been brought from Gitschin and would not fit. A groom whipped his off, and strapped them on over the royal goloshes; and thus equipped, with a field-glass slung round his neck by a long strap, the King rode away to view the course of the terrific fight, being everywhere received with tremendous cheering by his enthusiastic troops. For it touched their hearts to see so hoary a king come forth at the head of his “_Volk in Waffen_” or people in arms, to do strenuous battle with the alien. No _roi fainéant_, or stay-at-home monarch he, but one of the good old sort, like our own royal Edwards and Harries, under whose personal leadership the French were “beaten, bobbed, and thumped” at Crécy and at Agincourt.