his people safely encamped here, he returns to Dresden
for the night, to see that Friedrich is quiet. Friedrich is quiet
enough: Daun, at seven next morning (TUESDAY, 20th), appeared on the
ground again; and from all sides Finck is assaulted,--from Daun's side
nearest and soonest, with Daun's best vigor.

Dippoldiswalde is some seven miles from Maxen. Difficult hill-road
all the way: but the steepest, straitest and worst place is
at Reinhartsgrimma, the very first Hamlet after you are out of
Dippoldiswalde. There is a narrow gullet there, overhung with heights
all round. The roads are slippery, glazed with sleet and frost; Cavalry,
unroughened, make sad sliding and sprawling; hardly the Infantry
are secure on their feet: a terrible business getting masses of
artillery-wagons, horse and man, through such a Pass! It is thought, had
Finck garnished this Pass of Reinhartsgrimma, with the proper batteries,
the proper musketries, Daun never would have got through. Finck had not
a gun or a man in it: "Had not I order?" said he,--again too literally.
As it was, Daun, sliding and sprawling in the narrow steeps, had
difficulties almost too great; and, they say, would have given it up,
had it not been that a certain Major urged, "Can be done, Excellenz, and
shall!" and that the temper of his soldiers was everywhere excellent.
Unfortunate Finck had no artillery to bear on Daun's transit through the
Pass. Nothing but some weak body of hussars and infantry stood looking
into it, from the Hill of Hausdorf: even these might have given him
some slight hindrance; but these were played upon by endless Pandours,
"issuing from a wood near by," with musketries, and at length with
cannon batteries, one and another;--and had to fall back, or to be
called back, to Maxen Hill, where the main force is.

In the course of yesterday, by continual reconnoitring, by Austrian
deserters, and intense comparison of symptoms, Finck had completely
ascertained where the Enemy's Three Attacks were to be,--"on Maxen,
from Dippoldiswalde, Trohnitz, Dohna, simultaneously three attacks,"
it appears;--and had with all his skill arranged himself on the Maxen
summits to meet these. He stands now elaborately divided into Three
groups against those Three simultaneities; forming (sadly wide apart,
one would say, for such a force as Finck's) a very obtuse-angled
triangle:--the obtuse vertex of which (if readers care to look on their
Map) is Trohnitz, the road Brentano