it there. The matter went
thus:--

Friedrich Wilhelm was fighting, far south in Alsace, on Kaiser Leopold's
side, in the Louis-Fourteenth War; that second one, which ended in the
treaty of Nimwegen. Doing his best there,--when the Swedes, egged on
by Louis XIV., made war upon him; crossed the Pomeranian marches, troop
after troop, and invaded his Brandenburg Territory with a force which
at length amounted to some 16,000 men. No help for the moment: Friedrich
Wilhelm could not be spared from his post. The Swedes, who had at first
professed well, gradually went into plunder, roving, harrying, at their
own will; and a melancholy time they made of it for Friedrich Wilhelm
and his People. Lucky if temporary harm were all the ill they were
likely to do; lucky if--! He stood steady, however; in his solid manner,
finishing the thing in hand first, since that was feasible. He then even
retired into winter-quarters, to rest his men; and seemed to have left
the Swedish 16,000 autocrats of the situation; who accordingly went
storming about at a great rate.

Not so, however; very far indeed from so. Having rested his men for
certain months, Friedrich Wilhelm silently in the first days of June
(1675) gets them under march again; marches, his Cavalry and he as first
instalment, with best speed from Schweinfurt, [Stenzel, ii. 347.] which
is on the river Main, to Magdeburg; a distance of two hundred miles. At
Magdeburg, where he rests three days, waiting for the first handful of
foot and a field-piece or two, he learns that the Swedes are in three
parties wide asunder; the middle party of them within forty miles of
him. Probably stronger, even this middle one, than his small body (of
"six thousand Horse, twelve hundred Foot and three guns");--stronger,
but capable perhaps of being surprised, of being cut in pieces, before
the others can come up? Rathenau is the nearest skirt of this middle
party: thither goes the Kurfurst, softly, swiftly, in the June night
(16-17th June, 1675); gets into Rathenau, by brisk stratagem; tumbles
out the Swedish Horse-regiment there, drives it back towards Fehrbellin.

He himself follows hard;--swift riding enough, in the summer night,
through those damp Havel lands, in the old Hohenzollern fashion: and
indeed old Freisack Castle, as it chances,--Freisack, scene of Dietrich
von Quitzow and LAZY PEG long since,--is close by! Follows hard, we
say: strikes in upon this midmost party (nearly twice his number,