In quality and in position, however, his army was worse off than before, while the enemy was much better. In the previous year he had led seasoned troops whose ranks had been purged by incessant marches under a scorching sun to join the army of Dohna, which was at least unbeaten and unwearied. Their meeting had provoked one of Frederick’s best-remembered sayings: “Your men have made themselves wonderfully smart; mine look like grass-devils, but they can bite.” Now, however, a great part of his command consisted of troops mishandled by Wobersnow and decimated by the Russians at Kay. It was unlikely that they would fight like the victors of Leuthen. [Illustration: PLAN OF KUNERSDORF, AUGUST 12, 1759.] Nor was Frederick favoured by the ground. The most casual glance at the two fields is sufficient to show that Kunersdorf, the scene of the bloody drama of August 12, 1759, presented difficulties such as the assailant at Zorndorf never had to overcome. The allies were again encamped on the right bank of the Oder, and were now separated by the broad river from the town of Frankfurt. To march round their position was far more arduous than at Zorndorf. Their left wing was shielded by impassable morasses, and the right by forest. Behind them lay a fortress commanding a well-bridged river, before them a tangled mass of sand-hills, woods, and lakes which seemed to have been designed by nature to impede an attacking force and which was now made still more formidable by art. This position, even if the 16,000 irregulars be ignored, was held by some 40,000 Russians, now veterans in western warfare, aided by 13,000 of the flower of the Austrian army under a captain worthy to cross swords with Frederick himself. On the other hand, the King had still Seydlitz, but such men as Wedell could ill supply the place of Schwerin, the Old Dessauer, and Keith. Some of his troops were men who had fled before the Russians every year, at Gross-Jägersdorf, at Zorndorf, and at Kay, and whom he could not even trust. Owing to the difficulties of the ground and the King’s impatience, most of the Prussians went into action suffering under privations that would have well-nigh killed ordinary men. They lacked food and drink. After two nights without sleep they must drag themselves and their accoutrements through a manœuvre of nine hours’ duration, now tugging cannon through pine-woods, now clambering over sand-hills under the broiling August sun. Then at noon they were ordered to attack an enemy more numerous than themselves who was resting quietly behind entrenchments in ground of his own choosing.