"Between Traun on the southwest hand, and his Pandours on the southeast, the small Prussian posts have all been driven in upon Troppau-Jagerndorf region; more and more narrowed there;--and, in fine (two days before this new Interview of Leopold and the impatient King at Schweidnitz), have had to quit the Troppau-Jagerndorf position; to quit the Hills altogether, and are now in full march towards Brieg. Of which march I should say nothing, were it not that Marwitz, Father of Wilhelmina's giggling Marmitzes, commanded;--and came by his death in the course of it; though our Wilhelmina is not now there, pen in hand, to tell us what the effects at Baireuth were. Marwitz had been left for dead on the Field of Mollwitz; lay so all night, but was nursed to some kind of strength again by those giggling young women; and came back to Schlesien, to posts of chief trust, for the last year or two,--was guarding the Mountains, and even invading Mahren, during the late Campaign;--but saw himself reduced latterly to Jagerndorf and Troppau; and had even to retreat out of these. And in the whirlpool of hurries thereupon,--how is not very clear; by apoplexy, say some; by accidental pistol from a servant of his own; in actual skirmish with Pandours,--too certainly, one way or the other, on December 23d (just during that second Interview at Schweidnitz), brave old Marwitz did suddenly sink dead, and is ended. [_Helden-Geschichte,_ ii. 1201.] Even so, ye poor giggling creatures, and your loud weeping will not mend it at all! "Friedrich, looking candidly into these phenomena, could not but see that: what with Tolpatcheries, what with Traun's 20,000 regulars, and the whole Army at their back, his Silesian Border is girt in by a very considerable inroad of Austrians,--huge Chain of them, in horse-shoe form, 300 miles long, pressing in; from beyond Glatz and Landshut, round by the southern Mountains, and up eastward again as far as Namslau, nothing but war whirlwinds in regular or irregular form, in the centre of them Traun;--and that the Old Dessauer really must have time to gird himself for dealing with Traun and them.