[5]“Very certain it is, at sight of his own regiment in retreat, Feld-Marschall Schwerin seized the colors, as did other generals, who are not named, that day. Seizes the colors, fiery old man: ‘Heran, meine kinder’ (‘This way, my sons’), and rides ahead, along the straight dam again; his ‘sons’ all turning and with hot repentance following. ‘On, my children, heran!’ Five bits of grapeshot, deadly each of them, at once hit the old man; dead he sinks there on his flag: and will never fight more. ‘Heran!’ storm the others with hot tears. Adjutant von Platen takes the flag; Platen too is instantly shot; but another takes it. ‘Heran, on!’ in wild storm of rage and grief; in a word, they manage to do the work at Sterbohol, they and the rest.”—Carlyle’s “Life of Frederick the Great,” Book XVIII.
[6]July 5, 1757, Frederick wrote to his sister Wilhelmina at Baireuth: “We have no longer a mother. This loss puts the crown on my sorrows. I am obliged to act; and have not time to give free course to my tears. Judge, I pray you, of the situation of a feeling heart put to so cruel a trial. All losses in the world are capable of being remedied; but those which death causes are beyond the reach of hope.”
[7]July 22, 1757.
[8]Eisenach is famous as the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach, the father of modern music. Luther also passed his early days there. Wartburg, the princely residence of the Grand Duke of Weimar, is there.
[9]A village in Saxony, nine miles southwest of Merseburg.
[10]Carlyle, in his “Frederick the Great,” quotes the following verse from one of these hymns:
“Grant that with zeal and skill this day I do
What me to do behoves, what thou command’st me to;
Grant that I do it sharp, at point of moment fit,
And when I do it grant me good success in it.”