berg; Russians,
Swedes, Reichsfolk,--here, in Mahren, will be the crown of the game for
all these. Prosper in Mahren, all these are lamed; one right stroke at
the heart, the limbs become manageable quantities! This was Friedrich's
program; and had not imperfections of execution, beyond what was looked
for, and also a good deal of plain ill-luck, intervened, this bold
stroke for Mahren might have turned out far otherwise than it did.

The march thither (started from Neisse April 27th) was beautiful:
Friedrich with vanguard and first division; Keith with rear-guard and
second, always at a day's distance; split into proper columns, for
convenience of road and quarter in the hungry countries; threading
those silent mountain villages, and upper streamlets of Oder and Morawa:
Ziethen waving intrusive Croateries far off; Fouquet, in thousands
of wagons, shoving on from Neisse, "in four sections," with the
due intervals, under the due escorts, the immensity of stores and
siege-furniture, through Jagerndorf, through Troppau, and onwards;
[Table of his routes and stages in TEMPELHOF, ii. 46.]--punctual
everybody; besiegers and siege materials ready on their ground by the
set day. Daun too had made speed to save his Magazine. Daun was at
Leutomischl, May 5th,--a forty miles to west of the Morawa,--few days
after Friedrich had arrived in those countries by the eastern or left
bank, by Troppau, Gibau, Littau, Aschmeritz, Prossnitz; and a week
before Friedrich had finished his reconnoitrings, campings, and taken
position to his mind. Camps, four or more (shrank in the end to three),
on both banks of the River; a matter of abstruse study; so that it was
May 12th before Friedrich first took view of Olmutz itself, and could
fairly begin his Problem,--Daun, with his best Tolpatcheries, still
unable to guess what it was.

Of the Siege I propose to say little, though the accounts of it are
ample, useful to the Artillerist and Engineer. If the reader can be
made to conceive it as a blazing loud-sounding fact, on which, and on
Friedrich in it, the eyes of all Europe were fixed for some weeks, it
may rest now in impressive indistinctness to us. Keith is Captain of the
Siege, whom all praise for his punctual firmness of progress; Balbi as
before, is Engineer, against whom goes the criticism, Keith's first of
all, that he "opened his first parallel 800 yards too far off,"--which
much increased the labor, and the expenditure of useless gunpowde