Forest (Height still known), from which they could use
their astronomer tubes day after day; [Orlich, ii. 225.] and now they
are about attempting something!

Thursday morning, very early, 30th September, 1745, Friedrich was in his
tent, busy with generals and march-routes,--when a rapid orderly comes
in, from that Vedette, or strong Piquet, on the Heights to our right:
"Austrians visibly moving, in quantity, near by!" and before he has done
answering, the officer himself arrives: "Regular Cavalry in great force;
long dust-cloud in Kingdom Forest, in the gray dawn; and, so far as we
can judge, it is their Army coming on." Here is news for a poor man, in
the raw of a September morning, by way of breakfast to him! "To arms!"
is, of course, Friedrich's instant order; and he himself gallops to the
Piquet on the Heights, glass in hand. "Austrian Army sure enough,
thirty to thirty-five thousand of them, we only eighteen. [_OEuvres
de Frederic,_ iii. 139.] Coming to take us on the right flank here;
to attack our Camp by surprise: will crush us northward through the
defiles, and trample us down in detail? Hmh! To run for it, will never
do. We must fight for it, and even attack THEM, as our way is, though on
such terms. Quick, a plan!" The head of Friedrich is a bank you cannot
easily break by coming on it for plans: such a creature for impromptu
plans, and unexpected dashes swift as the panther's, I have hardly
known,--especially when you squeeze him into a corner, and fancy he is
over with it! Friedrich gallops down, with his plan clear enough; and
already the Austrians, horse and foot, are deploying upon those Heights
he has quitted; Fifty Squadrons of Horse for left wing to them, and
a battery of Twenty-eight big Guns is establishing itself where
Friedrich's Piquet lately stood.

Friedrich's right flank has to become his front, and face those
formidable Austrian Heights and Batteries; and this with more than
Prussian velocity, and under the play of those twenty-eight big guns,
throwing case-shot (GRENADES ROYALES) and so forth, all the while.
To Valori, when he heard of the thing, it is inconceivable how mortal
troops could accomplish such a movement; Friedrich himself praises
it, as a thing honorably well done. Took about half an hour; case-shot
raining all the while; soldier honorably never-minding: no flurry,
though a speed like that of spinning-tops. And here we at length are,
Staudentz now to rear of us, behind our cent