led a good
deal, "Cowardice! Wanted courage: Haha!" in its usual foolish way; not
worth answer from him or from us. Friedrich's demeanor, in that disaster
of his right wing, was furious despair rather; and neither Schulenburg
nor Margraf Friedrich, nor any of the captains, killed or left living,
was supposed to have sinned by "cowardice" in a visible degree!--

Indisputable it is, though there is deep mystery upon it, the King
vanishes from Mollwitz Field at this point for sixteen hours, into the
regions of Myth, "into Fairyland," as would once have been said; but
reappears unharmed in to-morrow's daylight: at which time, not sooner,
readers shall hear what little is to be said of this obscure and
much-disfigured small affair. For the present we hasten back to
Mollwitz,--where the murderous thunder rages unabated all this while;
the very noise of it alarming mankind for thirty miles round. At
Breslau, which is thirty good miles off, horrible dull grumble was heard
from the southern quarter ("still better, if you put a staff in the
ground, and set your ear to it"); and from the steeple-tops, there was
dim cloudland of powder-smoke discernible in the horizon there. "At
Liegnitz," which is twice the distance, "the earth sensibly shook,"
[_Helden-Geschichte;_ and Jordan's Letter, infra.]--at least the air
did, and the nerves of men.

"Had Goldlein but advanced with his Foot, in support of gallant Romer!"
say the Austrian Books. But Goldlein did not advance; nor is it certain
he would have found advantage in so doing: Goldlein, where he stands,
has difficulty enough to hold his own. For the notable circumstance,
miraculous to military men, still is, How the Prussian Foot (men who had
never been in fire, but whom Friedrich Wilhelm had drilled for twenty
years) stand their ground, in this distraction of the Horse. Not
even the two outlying Grenadier Battalions will give way: those poor
intercalated Grenadiers, when their Horse fled on the right and on the
left, they stand there, like a fixed stone-dam in that wild whirlpool
of ruin. They fix bayonets, "bring their two field-pieces to flank"
(Winterfeld was Captain there), and, from small arms and big, deliver
such a fire as was very unexpected. Nothing to be made of Winterfeld and
them. They invincibly hurl back charge after charge; and, with dogged
steadiness, manoeuvre themselves into the general Line again; or into
contact with the three superfluous Battalions, arranged EN