Volcanically answered by the Russians, as soon as possible;who have 72 guns on this Muhlberg, and are nothing loath. Upon whom Finck's battery is opening from the north, withal: Friedrich has 60cannon hereabouts; on the Walckberg, on the LITTLE Spitzberg (called SEIDLITZ HILL ever since); all playing diligently on the head and south shoulder of this Muhlberg: while Finck's battery opens on the north shoulder (could he but get near enough).
Volcanic to a degree all these; nor are the Russians wanting, though they get more and more astonished: Tempelhof, who was in it, says he never, except at Torgau next Year, heard a louder cannonade. Loud exceedingly; and more or less appalling to the Russian imagination: but not destructive in proportion;the distance being too considerable,--"1,950 paces at the nearest,"as Tempelhof has since ascertained by measuring. Friedrich's two batteries, however, as they took the Russians in the flank or by enfilade, did good execution. "The Russian guns were ill-pointed;the Russian batteries wrong-built; batteries so built as did not allow them sight of the Hollow they were meant to defend."[Tempelhof, iii. 186, 187.]
After above half an hour of this, Friedrich orders storm of the Muhlberg: Forward on it, with what of enfilading it has had! Eight grenadier Battalions, a chosen vanguard appointed for the work (names of Battalions all given, and deathless in the Prussian War-Annals), tramp forth on this service: cross the abatis, which the Russian grenadoes have mostly burnt; down into the Hollow.
Steady as planets; "with a precision and coherency," says Tempelhof, "which even on the parade-ground would have deserved praises. Once well in the Hollow, they suffer nothing; though the blind Russian fire, going all over their heads, rages threefold:"suffered nothing in the Hollow; nor till they reached almost the brow of the Muhlberg, and were within a hundred steps of the Russian guns. These were the critical steps, these final ones;such torrents of grape-shot and musket-shot and sheer death bursting out, here at last, upon the Eight Battalions, as they come above ground. Who advanced, unwavering, all the faster,--speed one's only safety. They poured into the Russian gunners and musketry battalions one volley of choicest quality, which had a shaking effect; then, with level bayonets, plunge on the batteries:
which are all empty before we can leap into them; artillery-men, musketeer battalions, all on wing; general whirlpool spreading.
And so, in ten minutes, the Muhlberg and its guns are ours.
Ever since Zorndorf, an idea had got abroad, says Tempelhof, that the Russians would die instead of yielding; but it proved far otherwise here. Down as far as Kunersdorf, which may be about a mile westward, the Russians are all in a whirl; at best hanging in tatters 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!