ad to console him, "Courage, you
will manage it; make chicanes on Gribeauval, as he does on you,"--and
suggested that powder-SACK instead of deal-box, which we just mentioned.

Friedrich's patience seems to have been great; but in the end he began
to think the time long. He was in three successive head-quarters,
Dittmannsdorf, Peterswaldau, Bogendorf, nearer and nearer; at length
quite near (Bogendorf within a couple of miles); and wondering
Gazetteers reported him on horseback, examining minutely the parallels
and siege-works,--with a singular indifference to the cannon-balls
flying about ("Not easy to hit a small object with cannon!"), and intent
only on giving Tauentzien suggestions, admonitions and new orders. Here,
prior to Bogendorf, are three snatches of writing, which successively
have indications for us. KING TO PRINCE HENRI:--

PETERSWALDAU, AUGUST 13th, 1762 (King has just shifted hither, August
10th, on the Bevern-REICHENBACH score; continues here till September
23d).... "You are right to say, 'We ourselves are our best Allies.' I
am of the same opinion; nevertheless, it is a clear duty and call of
prudence to try and alleviate the burden as much as possible: and I own
to you, that if, after all I have written, the thing fails this time [as
it does], I shall be obliged to grant

MAP GOES HERE--FACING PAGE 152, CHAP XII, BOOK 20----

that there is nothing to be made of those Turks."--"We are now in the
press of our crisis as to Schweidnitz. The Siege advances beautifully:
but Beck is come hereabouts, Lacy masked behind him; and I cannot yet
tell you [not till REICHENBACH and the 16th] whether the Enemy intends
some big adventure for disengaging Schweidnitz, or will content himself
with disturbing and annoying us."

PETERSWALDAU, 9th SEPTEMBER. Springs, water-threads coming into our
mines delay us a little: "by the 12th [in 3 days' time, little thinking
it would be 30 days!] I still hope to despatch you a courier with
the news, All is over! Your Nephew [Prince of Prussia] is out to-day
assisting in a forage; he begins to kindle into fine action. We are
nothing but pygmies in comparison to him [in point of physical stature];
imagine to yourself Prince Franz [of Brunswick; killed, poor fellow, at
Hochkirch], only taller still: this is the figure of him at present."

PETERSWALDAU, SEPTEMBER 19th.... "Our Siege wearies all the world;
people persecute me to know the end of it; I never get a Berlin Letter
with