GENERAL INTO NOTICE.
After Brieg, Friedrich undertook nothing military, except strict
vigilance of Neipperg, for a couple of months or more. Military,
especially offensive operations, are not the methods just now. Rest on
your oars; see how this seething Ocean of European Politics, and Peace
or War, will settle itself into currents, into set winds; by which
of them a man may steer, who happens to have a fixed port in view.
Neipperg, too, is glad to be quiescent; "my Infantry hopelessly
inferior," he writes to head-quarters: "Could not one hire 10,000
Saxons, think you,"--or do several other chimerical things, for help?
Except with his Pandour people, working what mischief they can, Neipperg
does nothing. But this Hungarian rabble is extensively industrious,
scouring the country far and wide; and gives a great deal of trouble
both to Friedrich and the peaceable inhabitants. So that there is plenty
of Small War always going on:--not mentionable here, any passage of
it, except perhaps one, at a place called Rothschloss; which concerns
a remarkable Prussian Hussar Major, their famed Ziethen, and is still
remembered by the Prussian public.
We have heard of Captain, now Major Ziethen, how Friedrich Wilhelm sent
him to the Rhine Campaign, six years ago, to learn the Hussar Art from
the Austrians there. One Baronay (BARONIAY, or even BARANYAI, as others
write him), an excellent hand, taught him the Art;--and how well he has
learned, Baronay now sadly experiences. The affair of Rothschloss (in
abridged form) befell as follows:--
"In these Small-War businesses, Baronay, Austrian Major-General of
Hussars, had been exceedingly mischievous hitherto. It was but the other
day, a Prussian regular party had to go out upon him, just in time; and
to RE-wrench 'sixty cart-loads of meal,' wrenched by him from suffering
individuals; with which he was making off to Neisse, when the Prussians
[from their Camp of Mollwitz, where they still are] came in sight.
"And now again (May 16th) news is, That Baronay, and 1,400 Hussars with
him, has another considerable set of meal-carts,--in the Village of
Rothschloss, about twenty miles southward, Frankenstein way; and means
to march with them Neisse-ward to-morrow. Two marches or so will bring
him home; if Prussian diligence prevent not. 'Go instantly,' orders
Friedrich,--appointing Winterfeld to do it: Winterfeld with 300
dragoons, with Ziethen and Hussars to the amount of 600; which is more
than one to two of Austrians.
"Winterfeld and Ziethen march that same day; are in the neighborhood of
Rothschloss by nightfall; and take their measures,--block the road
to Neisse, and do other necessary things. And go in upon Baronay next
morning, at the due rate, fiery men both of them; sweep poor Baronay
away, MINUS the meal; who finds even his road blocked (bridge bursting
into cannon-shot upon him, at one point), instead of bridge, a stream,
or slow current of quagmire for him,--and is in imminent hazard.
Ziethen's behavior was superlative (details of it unintelligible off the
ground); and Baronay fled totally in wreck;--his own horse shot, and at
the moment no other to be had; swam the quagmire, or swashed through it,
'by help of a tree;' and had a near miss of capture. Recovering himself
on the other side, Baronay, we can fancy, gave a grin of various
expression, as he got into saddle again: 'The arrow so near killing was
feathered from one's own wing, too!'--And indeed, a day or two after, he
wrote Ziethen a handsome Letter to that effect." [_Helden-Geschichte,_
i. 927; Orlich, i. 120. _The Life of General de Zieten_ (English
Translation, very ill printed, Berlin, 1803), BY FRAU VON BLUMENTHAL
(a vaguish eloquent Lady, but with access to information, being a
connection of Z.'s), p. 84.]
Ziethen, for minor good feats, had been made Lieutenant-Colonel, the
very day he marched; his Commission dates May 16th, 1741; and on the
morrow he handsels it in this pretty manner. He is now forty-two; much
held down hitherto; being a man of inarticulate turn, hot and abrupt
in his ways,--liable always to multifarious obstruction, and unjust
contradiction from his fellow-creatures. But Winterfeld's report on this
occasion was emphatic; and Ziethen shoots rapidly up henceforth;
Colonel within the year, General in 1744; and more and more esteemed by
Friedrich during their subsequent long life together.
Though perhaps the two most opposite men in Nature, and standing so far
apart, they fully recognized one another in their several spheres. For
Ziethen too had good eyesight, though in abstruse sort:--rugged simple
son of the moorlands; nourished, body and soul, on orthodox frugal
oatmeal (so to speak), with a large sprinkling of fire and iron
thrown in! A man born poor: son of some poor Squirelet in the Ruppin
Country;--"used to walk five miles into Ruppin on Saturday nights," in
early life, "and have his hair done into club, which had to last him
till the week following." [_Militair-Lexikon,_ iv. 310.] A big-headed,
thick-lipped, decidedly ugly little man. And yet so beautiful in his
ugliness: wise, resolute, true, with a dash of high uncomplaining sorrow
in him;--not the "bleached nigger" at all, as Print-Collectors sometimes
call him! No; but (on those oatmeal terms) the Socrates-Odysseus, the
valiant pious Stoic, and much-enduring man. One of the best Hussar
Captains ever built. By degrees King Friedrich and he grew to
be,--with considerable tiffs now and then, and intervals of gloom and
eclipse,--what we might call sworn friends. On which and on general
grounds, Ziethen has become, like Friedrich himself, a kind of mythical
person with the soldiery and common people; more of a demi-god than any
other of Friedrich's Captains.
Friedrich is always eagerly in quest of men like Ziethen; specially so
at this time. He has meditated much on the bad figure his Cavalry made
at Mollwitz; and is already drilling them anew in multiplex ways, during
those leisure days he now has,--with evident success on the next trial,
this very Summer. And, as his wont is, will not rest satisfied there.
But strives incessantly, for a series of summers and years to come,
till he bring them to perfection; or to the likeness of his own thought,
which probably was not far from that. Till at length it can be said his
success became world-famous; and he had such Seidlitzes and Ziethens as
were not seen before or since.
[MAP FOR THE FIRST AND SECOND SILESIAN WAR HERE--missing]
END OF BOOK 12