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
and clumps, their Officers struggling against the flight; "mixed groups
you would see huddled together a hundred men deep." The Russian Left
Wing is beaten: had we our cannon up here, our cavalry up here, the
Russian Army were in a bad way!
This is a glorious beginning; completed, I think, as far almost as
Kunersdorf by one o'clock: and could the iron continue to be struck
while it is at white-heat as now, the result were as good as certain.
That was Friedrich's calculation: but circumstances which he had not
counted on, some which he could not count on, sadly retarded the matter.
His Left Wing (Rear Line, which should now have been Left Wing) from
southward, his Right Wing from northward, and Finck farther west,
were now on the instant to have simultaneously closed upon the beaten
Russians, and crushed them altogether. The Right Wing, conquerors of the
Muhlberg, are here: but neither Finck nor the Left can be simultaneous
with them. Finck and his artillery are much retarded with the Flosses
and poor single Bridges; and of the Left Wing there are only some
Vanguard Regiments capable of helping ("who drove out the Russians from
Kunersdorf Churchyard," as their first feat),--no Main Body yet for
a long while. Such impediments, such intricacies of bog and bush! The
entire Wing does at last get to the southeast of Kunersdorf, free of the
wood; but finds (contrary to Linden with his hunter eye) an intricate
meshwork of meres and straggling lakes, two of them in the burnt
Village itself; no passing of these except on narrow isthmuses, which
necessitate change of rank and re-change; and our Left Wing cannot, with
all its industry, "march up," that is, arrive at the enemy in fighting
line, without the painfulest delays.
And then the getting forward of our cannon! On the Muhlberg itself
the seventy-two Russian guns, "owing to difference of calibre," or
artillery-men know what, cannot be used by us: a few light guns,
Tempelhof to one of them, a poor four in all, with perhaps 100 shot to
each, did, by the King's order, hasten to the top of the Muhlberg; and
never did Tempelhof see a finer chance for artillery than there. Soft
sloping ground, with Russians simmering ahead of you, all the way
down to Kunersdorf, a mile long: by horizontal pointing, you had such
reboundings (RICOCHETS); and carried beautiful execution! Tempelhof soon
spent his hundred shots: but it was not at once that any of our sixty
heavy guns could be got up thither. Twelve horses to each: fancy it, and
what baffling delays here and elsewhere;--and how the Russian whirlpool
was settling more and more, in the interim! And had, in part, settled;
in part, got through to the rear, and been replaced by fresh troops!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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