ting traces and galloping
off:--such are the phenomena of that march by circuit leftward, on the
poor Prince's part. March began, soon after midnight, SATURDAY, 16th,
Schmettau as vanguard; and"--

And, in fine, by FRIDAY, 22d, after not quite a week of it, the Prince,
curving from northward (in parabolic course, LESS speedy than the
cannon-ball's would have been) into sight of Zittau,--behold, there are
the Austrians far and wide to left of us, encamped impregnable behind
the Neisse River there! They have got the Eckart's Hill, which commands
Zittau:--and how to get into Zittau and our magazines, and how to
subsist if we were in? The poor Prince takes post on what Heights there
are, on his own side of the Neisse; looks wistfully down upon Zittau,
asking How?

About stroke of noon the Austrians, from their Eckartsberg, do a thing
which was much talked of. They open battery of red-hot balls upon
Zittau; kindle the roofs of it, shingle-roofs in dry July; set Zittau
all on blaze, the 10,000 innocent souls shrieking in vain to Heaven and
Earth; and before sunset, Zittau is ashes and red-hot walls, not Zittau
but a cinder-heap,--Prussian Garrison not hurt, nor Magazine as yet;
Garrison busy with buckets, I should guess, but beginning to find
the air grow very hot. On the morrow morning, Zittau is a smouldering
cinder-heap, hotter and hotter to the Prussian Garrison; and does not
exist as a City.

One of the most inhuman actions ever heard of in War, shrieks universal
Germany; asks itself what could have set a chivalrous Karl upon this
devil-like procedure? "Protestants these poor Zittauers were; shone in
commerce; no such weaving, industrying, in all Teutschland elsewhere:
Hah! An eye-sorrow, they, with their commerce, their weavings and
industryings, to Austrian Papists, who cannot weave or trade?" that was
finally the guess of some persons;--wide of the mark, we may well judge.
Prince Xavier of Saxony, present in the Camp too, made no remonstrance,
said others. Alas, my friends, what could Xavier probably avail,
the foolish fellow, with only three regiments? Prince Karl, it was
afterwards evident, could have got Zittau unburnt; and could even have
kept the Prussians out of Zittau altogether. Zittau surely would have
been very useful to Prince Karl. But overnight (let us try to fancy it
so), not knowing the Prussian possibilities, Prince Karl, screwed to the
devilish point, had got his furnaces lighted, his red-hot balls