APRIL 1st-2d,--Siege-material being got to the ground, and Siege Division and Covering Army all in their places,--in spite of the heavy rains, we open our first parallel, Austrian Commandant not noticing till it is nearly done. April 8th, we have our batteries built; and burst out, at our best rate, into cannonade; aiming a good deal at "Fort No. 1," called also "GALGEN or Gallows Fort,"which we esteem the principal. Cannonade continues day after day, prospers tolerably on Gallows Fort,"--though the wet weather, and hardship to the troops, are grievous circumstances, and make Friedrich doubly urgent. "Try it by storm!" counsels Balbi, who is Engineer. Night of APRIL 15th-16th storm takes place; with such vigor and such cunning, that the Gallows Fort is got for almost nothing (loss of ten men);-and few hours after, Austria beat the chamade. [Tempelhof, ii. 21-25; <italic> Helden-Geschichte, <end italic> v. 109-123: above all, Tielcke, <italic> Beytrage zur Kriegs-Kunst und zur Geschichte des Krieges von 1756 bis 1763 <end italic> (6 vols. 4to, Freyberg, 1775-1786), iv. 43-76. Volume iv.
is wholly devoted to Schweidnitz and its successive Sieges.]
Fifty-one new Austrian guns, for one item, and about 7,000 pounds of money. Prisoners of War the Garrison, 8,000 gone to 4,900;with such stores as we can guess, of ours and theirs added:
Balbi was Prussian Engineer-in-Chief, Treskau Captain of the Siege;--other particulars I spare the reader.
Unfortunate Schweidnitz underwent four Sieges, four captures or recaptures, in this War;--upon all of which we must be quite summary, only the results of them important to us. For the curious in sieges, especiaIly for the scientifically curious, there is, by a Captain Tielcke, excellent account of all these Schweidnitz Sieges, and of others;--Artillery-Captain Tielcke, in the Saxon or Saxon-Russian service; whom perhaps we shall transiently fall in with, on a different field, in the course of this Year.
Chapter XII.
SIEGE OF OLMUTZ.
Fouquet, on the first movement towards Schweidnitz, had been detached from Landshut to sweep certain Croat Parties out of Glatz;Ziethen, with a similar view, into Troppau Country; both which errands were at once perfectly done. Daun lies behind the Bohemian Frontier (betimes in the field he too, "arrived at Konigsgratz, March 13th"); and is, with all diligence, perfecting his new levies; intrenching himself on all points, as man seldom did;"felling whole forests," they say, building abatis within abatis;--not doubting, especially on these Ziethen-Fouquet symptoms, but Friedrich's Campaign is to be an Invasion of Bohemia again.
"Which he shall not do gratis!" hopes Daun; and, indeed, judges say the entrance would hardly have been possible on that side, had Friedrich tried it; which he did not.
Schweidnitz being done, and Daun deep in the Bohemian problem,--Friedrich, in an unintelligible manner, breaks out from Grussau and the Landshut region (April 19th-25th), not straight southward, as Daun had been expecting, but straight southeastward through Neisse, Jagerndorf: all gone, or all but Ziethen and Fouquet gone, that way;--meaning who shall say what, when news of it comes to Daun?
In two divisions, from 30 to 40,000 strong; through Jagerndorf, ever onward through Troppau, and not till THEN turning southward:
indubitable march of that cunning Enemy; rapidly proceeding, his 40,000 and he, along those elevated upland countries, watershed of the Black Sea and the Baltic, bleakly illumined by the April sun;a march into the mists of the future tense, which do not yet clear themselves to Daun. Seeing the march turn southward at Troppau, a light breaks on Daun: "Ha! coming round upon Bohemia from the east, then?" That is Daun's opinion, for some time yet; and he immediately starts that way, to save a fine magazine he has at Leutomischl over there. Daun, from Skalitz near Konigsgratz where he is, has but some eighty miles to march, for the King's hundred and fifty; and arrives in those parts few days after the King;posts himself at Leutomischl, veiled in Pandours. Not for two weeks more does he ascertain it to have been a march upon the Olmutz Country, and the intricate forks of the Morawa River; with a view to besieging Olmutz, by this wily Enemy! Upon which Daun did strive to bestir himself thitherward, at last; and, though very slow and hesitative, his measures otherwise were unexceptionable, and turned out luckier than had been expected by some people.