;--which Friedrich thinks was an
extremely suitable thing. But so it stands: Here by the thousand and the
ten thousand they hang round us; and Prince Karl--It is of all things
necessary we get hold of that Beneschau, and the Magazine he is
gathering there!

"Rapidity is indispensable,--and yet how quit Tabor? We have detachments
out at Neuhaus, at Budweis, and in Tabor 300 men in hospital, whom there
are no means of carrying. To leave them to the Tolpaches? Friedrich
confesses he was weak on this occasion; he could not leave these 300
men, as was his clear duty, in this extremity of War. He ordered in his
Neuhaus Detachment; not yet any of the others. He despatched Schmerin
towards Beneschau with all his speed; Schwerin was lucky enough to
take Beneschau and its provender,--a most blessed fortune,--and fences
himself there. Hearing which, Friedrich, having now got the Neuhaus
Detachment in hand, orders the other Three, the Budweis, the Tabor here,
and the Frauenberg across the River, to maintain themselves; and
then, leaving those southern regions to their chance, hastens towards
Beneschau and Schwerin; encamps (October 18th) near Beneschau,--'Camp of
Konopischt,' unattackable Camp, celebrated in the Prussian Books;--and
there, for eight days, still on the south side of Sazawa, tries every
shift to mend the bad posture of affairs in that Luschnitz-Sazawa
Country. His Three Garrisons (3,000 men in them, besides the 300 sick)
he now sees will not be able to maintain themselves; and he sends in
succession 'eight messengers,' not one messenger of whom could get
through, to bid them come away. His own hope now is for a Battle
with Prince Karl; which might remedy all things. [_OEuvres de
Frederic,_ iii. 62-64.]"

That is Friedrich's wish; but it is by no means Traun's, who sees that
hunger and wet weather will of themselves suffice for Friedrich. There
ensues accordingly, for three weeks to come, in that confused Country,
a series of swift shufflings, checkings and manoeuvrings between these
two, which is gratifying and instructive to the strategic mind, but
cannot be inflicted upon common readers. Two considerable chess-players,
an old and a young; their chess-board a bushy, rocky, marshy
parallelogram, running fifty miles straight east from Prag, and twenty
or fewer south, of which Prag is the northwest angle, and Beneschau, or
the impregnable Konopischt the southwest: the reader must conceive it;
and how Traun will not f