Nothing of Browne comes, this Wednesday; but from the opposite Gross-Sedlitz and Gottleube side, the Prussians are coming. This morning, at daylight, struck by symptoms, "the Prussians mounted our empty redoubts:" they are now in full chase of us, Ziethen with Hussars as vanguard. A difficult bit of marching, even Ziethen and his light people find it; sprawling forward, at their cheeriest, with daylight to help, and in chase, not chased, through such intricacies of rock and mud. Ziethen's company did not assist the Saxons! They wheel round, show fight, and there is volleying and bickering all day; the Saxon march getting ever more perturbed. Nearly all the baggage has to be left. Ziethen takes into the woods near Thurmsdorf; giving fire as the poor wet Saxons, now much in a pell-mell condition, pass to their Bridge. [PRUSSIAN ACCOUNT (in Gesammelte Nachrichten), i. 852.] Heavier Prussians are striding on to rear; these, from some final hill-top, do at last belch out two cannon-shots: figure the confusion at that Bridge, the speed now becoming delirious there! Towards evening, rain still violent, the Saxons, baggageless, and rushing quite pell-mell the latter part of them, are mostly across, still countable to 14,000 or so;—upon which they cut their Bridge adrift, and let the river take it. At Raden, a few miles lower, the Prussians fished it out; rebuilt it more deliberately,—and we shall find it there anon. This day Friedrich, hearing what is afoot, has returned in person from the Lobositz Country; takes Struppen as his head-quarter, which was lately the Polish Majesty's.
From Browne there has nothing come this Wednesday; but to-morrow morning at seven there comes a Letter from him, written this night at ten; to the effect:—
"HEAD-QUARTER, LICHTENHAYN, Wednesday, October 13th, 10 P.M.
"EXCELLENZ,—Have [omitting the I] waited here at Lichtenhayn since Tuesday, expecting your signal-cannon; hearing nothing of it, conclude you have by misfortune not been able to get across; and that the Enterprise is up. My own position being dangerous [Prussians of double my strength intrenched within few miles of me], I turn homewards to-morrow at nine A.M.: ready for whatever occurs TILL then; and sorrowfully say adieu," [PRECIS (ut supra), p. 493; Helden-Geschichte, iii. 940; &c.]
Dreadful weather for Browne in his bivouac, and wearisome waiting, with Prussians and perils accumulating on him! Browne was ill of lungs; coughing much; lodging, in these violent tempests, on the cold ground. A right valiant soldier and man, as does appear; the flower of all the Irish Brownes (though they have quite forgotten him in our time), and of all those Irish Exiles then tragically spending themselves in Austrian quarrels! "You saw the great man," says one who seems to have been present, "how he sacrificed himself to this Enterprise. What Austrian Field-marshal but himself would ever have lowered his loftiness to lead, in person, so insignificant a Detachment, merely for the public good! I have seen staff-officers, distinguished only by their sasheries and insignia, who would not have stirred to inspect a vedette without 250 men. Our Field-marshal was of another turn. Sharing with his troops all the hardships, none excepted, of these critical days; and in spite of a violent cough, which often brought the visible blood from his lungs, and had quite worn him down; exposing himself, like the meanest of the Army, to the tempests of rainy weather. Think what a sight it was, going to your very heart, and summoning you to endurance of every hardship,—that evening [not said which], when the Field-marshal, worn out with his fatigues and his disorder, sank out of fainting-fits into a sleep! The ground was his bed, and the storm of clouds his coverlid. In crowds his brave war-comrades gathered round; stripped their cloaks, their coats, and strove in noble rivalry which of them should have the happiness to screen the Father of the Army at their own cost of exposure, and by any device keep the pelting of the weather from that loved head!" [Cogniazzo, Gestandnisse eines OEsterreichischen Veterans, ii. 251.] There is a picture for you, in the heights of Lichtenhayn, as you steam past Schandau, in contemplative mood; and perhaps think of "Justice to Ireland!" among other sad thoughts that rise.
From Thurmsdorf to the Pontoon-Bridge there was a kind of road; down which the Saxons scrambled yesterday; and, by painful degrees, got wriggled across. But, on the other shore, forward to the Hamlets of Halbstadt and Ebenheit, there is nothing but a steep slippery footpath: figure what a problem for the 14,000 in such weather! Then at Ebenheit, close behind, Browne-wards, were Browne now there, rises the Lilienstein, abrupt rocky mountain, its slopes on both hands washed by the River (River making its first elbow here, closely girdling this Lilienstein): on both these slopes are Prussian batteries, each with its abatis; needing to be stormed:—that will be your first operation. Abatis and slopes of the Lilienstein once stormed, you fall into a valley or hollow, raked again by Prussian batteries; and will have to mount, still storming, out of the valley, sky-high across the Ziegenruck (GOAT'S-BACK) ridge: that is your second preliminary operation. After which you come upon the work itself; namely, the Prussian redoubts at Lichtenhayn, and 12,000 men on them by this time! A modern Tourist says, reminding or informing:
"From the Konigstein to Pirna, Elbe, if serpentine, is like a serpent rushing at full speed. Just past the Konigstein, the Elbe, from westward, as its general course is, turns suddenly to northward; runs so for a mile and a half; then, just before getting to the BASTEI at Raden, turns suddenly to westward again, and so continues. Tourists know Raden,"—where the Prussians have just fished out a Bridge for themselves,—"with the BASTEI high aloft to west of it. The Old Inn, hospitable though sleepless, stands pleasantly upon the River-brink, overhung by high cliffs: close on its left side, or in the intricacies to rear of it, are huts and houses, sprinkled about, as if burrowed in the sandstone; more comfortably than you could expect. The site is a narrow dell, narrow chasm, with labyrinthic chasms branching off from it; narrow and gloomy as seen from the River, but opening out even into cornfields as you advance inwards: work of a small Brook, which is still industriously tinkling and gushing there, and has in Pre-Adamite times been a lake, and we know not what. Nieder-Raden, this, on the north side of the River; of Ober-Raden, on the south side, there is nothing visible from your Inn windows,"—nor have we anything to do with it farther. An older Guide of Tourists yields us this second Fraction (capable of condensation):—
... "To Halbstadt, thence to Ebenheit, your path is steeper and steeper; from Ebenheit to the Lilienstein you take a guide. The Mountain is conical; coarse RED sandstone; steps cut for you where needed: August the Strong's Hunting-Lodge (JAGDHUTTE) is here (August went thither in a grand way, 1708, with his Wife); Lodge still extant, by the side of a wood;—Lilienstein towering huge and sheer, solitary, grand, like some colossal Pillar of the Cyclops, from this round Pediment of Country which you have been climbing; tops of Lilienstein plumed everywhere with fir and birch, Pediment also very green and woody. August the Strong, grandly visiting here, 1708, on finish of those stair-steps cut for you, set up an Ebenezer, or Column of Memorial at this Hunting-Hut, with Inscription which can still be read, though now with difficulty in its time-worn state:—
"FRIEDERICUS AUGUSTUS, REX [of what? Dare not say of POLAND just now, for fear of Charles XII.], ET ELECTOR SAX., UT FORTUNAEM VIRTUTE, ITA ASPERAM HANC RUPEM PRIMUS [PRIMUS not of men, but of Saxon Electors] SUPERAVIT, ADITUMQUE FACILIOREM REDDI CURAVIT. ANNO 1708."—"UT FORTUNAM VIRTUTE, As his fortune by valor, SO he conquered this rugged rock by"—Poor devil, only hear him:—and think how good Nature is (for the time being) to poor devils and their 354 bastards! [M.(agister) Wilhelm Lebrecht Gotzinger, Schandau und seine Umgebungen, oder Beschreibung der Sachsischen Schweitz (Dresden, 1812), pp. 145-148. Gotzinger, who designates himself as "Pastor at Neustadt near Stolpen" (northwest border of the Pirna Country), has made of this (which would now be called a TOURIST'S GUIDE, and has something geological in it) a modest, good little Book, put together with industry, clearness, brevity. Gives interesting Narrative of our present Business too, as gathered from his "Father" and other good sources and testimonies.]
Bruhl and the Polish Majesty, safe enough they, and snug in the Konigstein, are clear for advancing: "Die like soldiers, for your King and Country!" writes Polish Majesty, "Thursday, two in the morning:" that also Rutowski reads; and I think still other Royal Autographs, sent as Postscripts to that. From the Konigstein they duly fire off the two Cannon-shot, as signal that we are coming; signal which Browne, just in the act of departing, never heard, owing to the piping of the winds and rattling of the rain. "Advance, my heroes!" counsel they: "You cannot drag your ammunitions, say you; your poor couple of big guns? Here are his Majesty's own royal horses for that service!"—and, in effect, the royal stud is heroically flung open in this pressure; and a splashing column of sleek quadrupeds, "150 royal draught-horses, early in the forenoon," [Gotzinger, p. 156.] swim across to Ebenheit accordingly, if that could encourage. And, "about noon, there is strong cannonading from the Konigstein, as signal to Browne," who is off. Polish Majesty looking with his spy-glass in an astonished manner. In Vain! Rutowski and his Council of War—sitting wet in a hut of Ebenheit, with 14,000 starved men outside, who have stood seventy-two hours of rain, for one item—see nothing for it but "surrender on such terms as we can get."