The
windless day grows hotter and hotter; the roads are of loose sand,
full of jungles and impediments. This was such a march for heat and
difficulty as the King never had before. In front of each Column went
wagons with a few pontoons; there being many brooks and little streams
to cross. The soldier, for his own health's sake, is strictly forbidden
to drink; but as the burning day rose higher, in the sweltering close
march, thirst grew irresistible. Crossing any of these Brooks, the
soldiers pounce down, irrepressible, whole ranks of them; lift water,
clean or dirty; drink it greedily from the brim of the hat. Sergeants
may wag their tongues and their cudgels at discretion: 'showers of
cudgel-strokes,' says Archenholtz; Sergeants going like threshers on the
poor men;--'though the upper Officers had a touch of mercy, and affected
not to see this disobedience to the Sergeants and their cudgels,'
which was punishable with death. War is not an over-fond Mother, but a
sufficiently Spartan one, to her Sons. There dropt down, in the march
that day, 105 Prussian men, who never rose again. And as to intercepting
Daun by such velocity,--Daun too is on march; gone to Gorlitz, at almost
a faster pace, if at a far heavier,--like a cart-horse on gallop; faring
still worse in the heat: '200 of Daun's men died on the road this day,
and 300 more were invalided for life.' [Tempelhof, iv. 58; Archenholtz,
ii. 68; Mitchell, ii. 166.]

"Before reaching the Spree, Friedrich, who is in the Vanguard, hears
of this Gorlitz March, and that the bird is flown. For which he has,
therefore, to devise straightway a new expedient: 'Wheel to the right;
cross Spree farther down, holding towards Bautzen itself,' orders
Friedrich. And settles within two miles of Bautzen; his left being at
Doberschutz,--on the strong ground he held after Hochkirch, while Daun,
two years ago, sat watching so quiescent. Daun knows what kind of march
these Prussians, blocked out from relief of Neisse, stole on him THEN,
and saved their Silesia, in spite of his watching and blocking;--and
has plunged off, in the manner of a cart-horse scared into galloping, to
avoid the like." What a Sabbath-day's journey, on both sides, for those
Sons of War! Nothing in the Roman times, though they had less
baggage, comes up to such modern marching: nor is this the fastest of
Friedrich's, though of Daun's it unspeakably is. "Friedrich, having
missed Daun, is thinking now to whirl round, and