History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 19Carlyle, Thomas
History
History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 19
Carlyle, Thomas
Frederick II, King of Prussia, 1712-1786; Prussia (Germany) -- History -- Frederick II, 1740-1786; Social problems
"Loudon, with about 5,000 horse,--four Regiments drawn up here, and
by and by with a fifth (happily not with the grenadiers, as he had
calculated, who are detained by broken bridges, waters all in flood
from the rain),--is waiting for him, at the very environs of Neustadt.
Loudon, by a trumpet, politely invites him to surrender, being so
outnumbered; Goltz, politely thanking, disregards it, and marches on:
Loudon escorting, in an ominous way; till, at Buchelsdorf, the fifth
Regiment (best in the Austrian service) is seen drawn out across the
highway, plainly intimating, No thoroughfare to Goltz and Pommern.
Loudon sends a second trumpet: 'Surrender prisoners; honorablest terms;
keep all your baggage: refuse, and you are cut down every man.' 'You
shall yourself hear the answer,' said Goltz. Goltz leads this second
trumpet to the front; and, in Pommern dialect, makes known what General
Loudon's proposal is. The Pommerners answer, as one man, a No of such
emphasis as I have never heard; in terms which are intensely vernacular,
it seems, and which do at this day astonish the foreign mind: 'We will
for him something, WIR WOLLEN IHM WAS--' But the powers of translation
and even of typography fail; and feeble paraphrase must give it: 'We
will for him SOMETHING INEFFABLE CONCOCT,' of a surprisingly contrary
kind! 'WIR WOLLEN IHM WAS' (with ineffable dissyllabic verb governing
it)! growled one indignant Pommerner; 'and it ran like file-fire along
the ranks,' says Archenholtz; everybody growling it, and bellowing
it, in fierce bass chorus, as the indubitable vote of Pommern in those
circumstances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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