"Frankfurt, a very ancient Town, not a very beautiful," says my Note, "stands on an alluvium which has been ground down from certain clay Hills on the left bank of Oder. It counted about 12,000 inhabitants in Friedrich's time; has now perhaps about 20,000; not half the bulk of its namesake on the Mayn; but with Three great Fairs annually, and much trade of the rough kind. On this left or west bank of Oder the country is arable, moderately grassy and umbrageous, the prospect round you not unpleasant; but eastward, over the River, nothing can be more in contrast. Oder is of swift current, of turbid color, as it rolls under Frankfurt Bridge,—Wooden Bridge, with Dam Suburb at the end;—a River treeless, desolate, as you look up and down; which has, evidently, often changed its course, since grinding down that alluvium as site for Frankfurt; and which, though now holding mainly to northward, is still given to be erratic, and destructive on the eastern low grounds,—had not the Frankfurters built an 'Oder-Dam' on that side; a broad strong Earth-mound, running for many miles, and confining its floods. Beyond the Dam there are traces of an 'Old Oder (ALTE ODER);' and, in fact, Oder, in primeval and in recent time, has gone along, many-streamed; indenting, quarrying, leaving lakelets, quagmires, miscellaneous sandy tumult, at a great rate, on that eastern shore. Making of it one of the unloveliest scenes of chaotic desolation anywhere to be met with;—fallen unlovelier than ever in our own more recent times.
"What we call the Heights of Kunersdorf is a broad Chain of Knolls; coming out, at right-angles, or as a kind of spur, from the eastern high grounds; direct towards Oder and Frankfurt. Mill-Hill (MUHLBERG) is the root or easternmost part of this spur. From the Muhlberg, over Kunersdorf, to Oder-Dam, which is the whole length of the spur, or Chain of Knolls, will be little short of four miles; the breadth of the Chain is nowhere one mile,—which is its grand defect as a Camp: 'too narrow for manoeuvring in.' Here, atop and on the three sides of this Block of Knolls, was fought the furious Battle of Kunersdorf [to be fought to-morrow], one of the most furious ever known. A Block of Knolls memorable ever since.
"To all appearance: it was once some big Island or chain of Islands in the Oder deluges: it is still cut with sudden hollows,—KUHGRUND (Cow-Hollow), TIEFE WEG (Deep Way), and westernmost of all, and most important for us here, HOHLE GRUND (Big Hollow, let us call it; 'LOUDON'S Hollow' people subsequently called it);—and is everywhere strangely tumbled up into knolls blunt or sharp, the work of primeval Oder in his rages. In its highest knolls,—of which let readers note specially the Spitzberg, the Muhlberg, the Judenberg,—it rises nowhere to 150 feet; perhaps the general height of it may be about 100. On each side of it, especially on the north, the Country is of most intricate character: bushy, scraggy, with brooklets or muddy oozings wandering about, especially with a thing called the HUNERFLIESS (Hen-Floss), which springs in the eastern woods, and has inconceivable difficulty to get into Oder,—if it get at all! This was a sore Floss to Friedrich to-morrow. Hen-Floss struggles, painfully meandering and oozing, along the northern side (sometimes close, sometimes not) of our Chain of Knolls: along the south side of it (in our time, through the middle of it) goes the Highway to Reppen ["From that Highway will his attack come!" thought the Russians, always till to-day]: on the north, to Leissow, to Trettin," where Friedrich is now on survey, "go various wheel-tracks, but no firm road. A most intricate unlovely Country. Withered bent-grasses, heath, perhaps gorse, and on both sides a great deal of straggling Forest-wood, reaching eastward, and especially southward, for many miles.
"For the rest," to our ill-luck in this place, "the Battlefield of Kunersdorf has had a peculiar fate in the world; that of being blown away by the winds! The then scene of things exists no longer; the descriptions in the Old Books are gone hopelessly irrecognizable. In our time, there is not anywhere a tract more purely of tumbled sand, than all this between Kunersdorf and Dam Vorstadt; and you judge, without aid of record or tradition, that it is greatly altered for the worse since Friedrich's time,—some rabbit-colony, or other the like insignificancy, eating out the roots, till all vegetation died, and the wind got hold and set it dancing;—and that, in 1759, when Russian human beings took it for a Camp, it must have been at least coherent, more or less; covered, held together by some film of scrubby vegetation; not blowing about in every wind as now! Kunersdorf stands with its northern end pushed into that KUHGRUND (Cow-Hollow); which must then have been a grassy place. Eastward of Kunersdorf the ground has still some skin of peat, and sticks together: but westward, all that three miles, it is a mere tumult of sand-hills, tumbled about in every direction (so diligent have the conies been, and then the winds); no gullet, or definite cut or hollow, now traceable anywhere, but only an endless imbroglio of twisted sand-heaps and sand-hollows, which continually alter in the wind-storms. Sand wholly, and—except the strong paved Highway that now runs through it (to Reppen, Meseritz and the Polish Frontier, and is strongly paved till it get through Kunersdorf)—chaotic wholly; a scene of heaped barrenness and horror, not to be matched but in Sahara; the features of the Battle quite blown away, and indecipherable in our time.
"A hundred years ago, it would have some tattered skin,—of peat, of heather and dwarf whins, with the sand cropping out only here and there. So one has to figure it in Soltikof's day,—before the conies ruined it. Which was not till within the last sixty years, as appears. Kriele's Book (in 1801) still gives no hint of change: the KUHGRUND, which now has nothing but dry sand for the most industrious ruminant, is still a place of succulence and herbage in Kriele's time; 'Deep Way,' where 'at one point two carts could not pass,' was not yet blown out of existence, but has still 'a Well in it' for Kriele; HOHLE GRUND (since called Loudon's Hollow), with the Jew Hill and Jew Churchyard beyond, seem tolerable enough places to Kriele. Probably not unlike what the surrounding Country still is. A Country of poor villages, and of wild ground, flat generally, and but tolerably green; with lakelets, bushes, scrubs, and intricate meandering little runlets and oozelets; and in general with more of Forest so called than now is:—this is Kunersdorf Chain of Knolls; Soltikof's Intrenched Camp at present; destined to become very famous in the world, after lying so long obscure under Oder and its rages." [TOURIST'S NOTE (Autumnn, 1852).]
From the Knolls of Trettin, that Saturday afternoon, Friedrich takes view of the Russian Camp. All lying bright enough there; from Muhlberg to Judenberg, convenient to our glass; between us and the evening Sun. Batteries most abundant, difficulties great: Soltikof just ahead here, 72,000: Loudon at the Red Grange yonder, on their extreme left, with 18,000 more. An uncommonly strong position for 90,000 against 50,000. One thing strikes Friedrich: On front in this northern side, close by the base of the Russian Camp, runs—for the present away FROM Oder, but intending to join it elsewhere—a paltry little Brook, "Hen-Floss" so called, with at least two successive Mills on it (KLEINE MUHLE, GROSSE MUHLE); and on the northern shore of it, spilling itself out into a wet waste called ELSBRUCH (Alder Waste), which is especially notable to Friedrich. ALDER Waste? Watery, scrubby; no passage there, thinks Friedrich; which his Peasant with the water-jug confirms. "Tell me, however," inquires Friedrich, with strictness, "From the Red Grange yonder, where General Loudon is, if you wished to get over to the HOHLE GRUND, or to the Judenberg, would you cross that Hen-Floss?" "It is not crossable, your Majesty; one has to go round quite westward by the Dam." "What, from Rothe Vorwerk to Big Hollow, no passage, say you; no crossing?" "None, your Majesty," insists the Peasant;—who is not aware that the Russians have made one of firm trestles and logs, and use it daily for highway there; an error of some interest to Friedrich within the next twenty-four hours!
Friedrich himself does not know this bit of ground: but there is with him, besides the Peasant, a Major Linden, whose Regiment used to lie in Frankfurt, of whom Friedrich makes minute questioning. Linden answers confidently; has been over all this tract a hundred times; "but knows it only as a hunter," says Tempelhof, [Tempelhof, iii. 186.] "not as a soldier," which he ought to have done. His answers are supposed to have misled Friedrich on various points, and done him essential damage. Friedrich's view of the case, that evening, is by no means so despondent as might be imagined: he regards the thing as difficult, not as impossible,—and one of his anxieties is, that he be not balked of trying it straightway. Retiring to his hut in Bischofsee, he makes two Dispositions, of admirable clearness, brevity, and calculated for two contingencies: [Given in Tempelhof, iii. 182, 183.] That of the enemy retaining his now posture; and That of the enemy making off for Reppen;—which latter does not at all concern us, as matters turned! Of the former the course will unfold itself to us, in practice, shortly. At 2 A.M. Friedrich will be on foot again, at 3 on march again.—The last phenomenon, at Bischofsee this night, is some sudden glare of disastrous light rising over the woods:—"Russians burning Kunersdorf!" as neighbors are sorry to hear. That is the finale of much Russian rearranging and tumbling, this day; that barbarous burning of Kunersdorf, before going to bed. To-morrow various other poor Villages got burnt by them, which they had better have left standing.
The Russians, on hearing that Friedrich was across at Goritz, and coming on them from the north side, not from Frankfurt by the Reppen Highway, were in great agitation. Not thrown into terror, but into manifold haste, knowing what hasty adversary there was. Endless readjustments they have to make; a day of tumultuous business with the Russians, this Saturday, 11th, when the news reached them. "They inverted their front [say all the Books but Friedrich's own]: Not coming by the Reppen Highway, then!" think they. And thereupon changed rear to front, as at Zorndorf, but more elaborately;—which I should not mention, were it not that hereby their late "right wing on the Muhlberg" has, in strict speech, become their "left," and there is ambiguity and discrepancy in some of the Books, should any poor reader take to studying them on this matter. Changed their front; which involves much interior changing; readjusting of batteries and the like. That of burning Kunersdorf was the barbaric winding up of all this: barbaric, and, in the military sense, absurd; poor Kunersdorf could have been burnt at any moment, if needful; and to the Russians the keeping of it standing was the profitable thing, as an impediment to Friedrich in his advance there. They have laid it flat and permeable; ashes all of it,—except the Church only, which is of stone; not so combustible, and may have uses withal. Has perhaps served as temporary lock-up, prison for the night, to some of those Frankfurt Deputations and their troublesome wailings; and may serve as temporary hospital to-morrow, who knows?
Readjustments in the Russian Camp were manifold: but these are as nothing, in the tumultuous business of the day. Carting of their baggage, every article of value, to that safe Wagenburg in the River; driving of cattle,—the very driving of cattle through Frankfurt, endless herds of them, gathered by the Cossacks from far and wide, "lasted for four-and-twenty hours." Oxen in Frankfurt that day were at the rate of ten shillings per head. Often enough you were offered a full-grown young steer for a loaf of bread; nay the Cossacks, when there was absolutely no bidder, would slaughter down the animal, leave its carcass in the streets, and sell the hide for a TYMPF,—fivepence (very bad silver at present). Never before or since was seen in Frankfurt such a Saturday, for bellowing and braying, and raging and tumulting, all through the day and through the night; ushering in such a Sunday too!
Sunday about 3 in the morning, Friedrich is on march again,—Russians still in their place; and Disposition FIRST, not SECOND at all, to be our rule of action! Friedrich, in Two Columns, marches off, eastward through the woods, as if for Reppen quite away from the Russians and their Muhlberg; but intending to circle round at the due point, and come down upon their right flank there (left flank, as he persists to call it), out of the woods, and clasp it in his arms in an impressive, unexpected way. In Two Columns; which are meant, as usual, to be the Two Lines of Battle: Seidlitz, with chosen Cavalry, is at the head of Column First, and will be Left Wing, were we on the ground; Eugen of Wurtemberg, closing the rear of Column First, will, he, or Finck and he together, be Right Wing. That is the order of march;—order of BATTLE, we shall find, had to alter itself somewhat, for reasons extremely valid!