drich's
Testamentary arrangements in Note there,--Six in all, at different
times, besides this.]
THE KING TO M. JORDAN (in Breslau).
"POGARELL, 8th April, 1741.
"My DEAR JORDAN,---We are going to fight to-morrow. Thou knowest the
chances of war; the life of Kings not more regarded than that of private
people. I know not what will happen to me.
"If my destiny is finished, remember a friend, who loves thee always
tenderly: if Heaven prolong my days, I will write to thee after
to-morrow, and thou wilt hear of our victory. Adieu, dear friend; I
shall love thee till death.
"FEDERIC." [Ib. xvii. 98.]
The King, we incidentally discover somewhere, "had no sleep that night;"
none, "nor the next night either,"--such a crisis coming, still not
come.
Chapter X. -- BATTLE OF MOLLWITZ.
"To-morrow," Sunday, did not prove the Day of Fight, after all. Being a
day of wild drifting snow, so that you could not see twenty paces,
there was nothing for it but to sit quiet. The King makes all his
dispositions; sketches out punctually, to the last item, where each is
to station himself, how the Army is to advance in Four Columns, ready
for Neipperg wherever he may be,--towards Ohlau at any rate, whither
it is not doubted Neipperg is bent. These snowy six-and-thirty hours
at Pogarell were probably, since the Custrin time, the most anxious of
Friedrich's life.
Neipperg, for his part, struggles forward a few miles, this Sunday,
April 9th; the Prussians rest under shelter in the wild weather.
Neipperg's head-quarters, this night, are a small Village or Hamlet,
called Mollwitz: there and in the adjacent Hamlets, chiefly in Laugwitz
and Gruningen, his Army lodges itself:--he is now fairly got between us
and Ohlau,--if, in the blowing drift, we knew it, or he knew it. But,
in this confusion of the elements, neither party knows of the other:
Neipperg has appointed that to-morrow, Monday, 10th, shall be a
rest-day:--appointment which could by no means be kept, as it turned
out!
Friedrich had despatched messengers to Ohlau, that the force there
should join him; messengers are all captured. The like message had
already gone to Brieg, some days before, and the Blockading Body, a
good few thousand strong, quitted Brieg, as we saw, and effected their
junction with him. All day, this Sunday, 9th, it still snows and blows;
you cannot see a yard before you. No hope now of Holstein-Beck. Not the
least news from any quarter; Ohlau u
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