think I had sent this Letter to your Excellency; but I thought perhaps
you would show it to the King,"--and that it might do good one day.
[Valori (to the French Minister, "12th October, 1756"), ii. 204.] The
Prussians lay in their "Camp of Lobositz," posted up and down in that
neighborhood, for a couple of weeks more; waiting whether Browne would
attempt anything farther in the fighting way; and, in fine, whether the
solution of the crisis would fall out hereabouts, or on the other side
of the Hills.

Chapter VII.--THE SAXONS GET OUT OF PIRNA ON DISMAL TERMS.

The disaster of October 1st--for which they were trying to sing TE-DEUMS
at Vienna--fell heavier on the poor Saxons, in their cage at Pirna:
"Alas, where is our deliverance now?" Friedrich's people, in their lines
here, gave them such a "joy-firing" for Lobositz as Retzow has seldom
heard; huge volleyings, salvoings, running-fires, starting out,
artistically timed and stationed, thunderous, high; and borne by the
echoes, gloomily reverberative, into every dell and labyrinth of the
Pirna Country;--intended to strike a deeper damp into them, thinks he.
[Retzow, i. 67.] But Imperial Majesty was mindful, too; and straightway
sent Browne positive order, "Deliver me these poor Saxons at any price!"
And in the course of not quite a week from Lobositz, there arrives a
confidential Messenger from Browne: "Courage still, ye caged Saxons; I
will try it another way! Only you must hold out till the 11th; on the
11th stand to your tools, and it shall be done."

Browne is to take a succinct Detachment, 8,000 picked men, horse and
foot; to make a wider sweep with these, well eastward by the foot of
Lausitz Hills, and far enough from all Prussian parties and scouts;
to march, with all speed and silence, "through Bohm-Leipa, Kamnitz,
Rumburg, Schluckenau; and come in upon the Schandau region, quite from
the northeast side; say, at Lichtenhayn; an eligible Village, which is
but seven miles or so from the Konigstein, with the chasmy country
and the river intervening. Monday, October 11th, Browne will arrive at
Lichtenhayn (sixty miles of circling march from Budin); privately post
himself near Lichtenhayn; Prussian posts, of no great strength, lying
ahead of him there. You, indignant extenuated Saxons, are to get
yourselves across,--near the Konigstein it will have to be, under cover
of the Konigstein's cannon,--on the front or riverward side of those
same Prussian posts: cro