Its rough pavements, its heavy stone battlements and barriers, give it a guarled obstinate aspect,--stern enough place of exile for a Crown-Prince fallen into such disfavor with Papa! A rugged, compact, by no means handsome little Town, at the meeting of the Warta and the Oder; stands naturally among sedges, willows and drained mire, except that human industry is pleasantly busy upon it, and has long been. So that the neighborhood is populous beyond expectation; studded with rough cottages in white-wash; hamlets in a paved condition; and comfortable signs of labor victoriously wrestling with the wilderness. Custrin, an arsenal and garrison, begirt with two rivers, and with awful bulwarks, and bastions cased in stone,--"perhaps too high," say the learned,--is likely to be impregnable to Russian engineering on those terms. Here, with brevity, is the catastrophe of Custrin.
TUESDAY, 15th AUGUST, 1758. At two in the morning, several thousand Russians, grenadiers, under Quartermaster General Stoffeln, whom the readers of Mannstein know from old Oczakow times, are astir;pushing along from Gross Kamin, through the scraggy firwoods, and flat peat countries; intending a stroke on Custrin, if perhaps they can get it: [Tempelhof, ii. 217; but Tielcke, ii. 69 et seq., the real source.]--not the slightest chance to get Custrin;Prussian soldiership and Turkish being two quite different things!
The pickeering and manoeuvring of Stoffeln shall not detain us.
Stoffeln came along by the Landsberg road (course of the now Konigsberg-Custrin Railway); and drove in the Prussian out-parties, who at first took him for Cossacks. Stoffeln set himself down on the north side of the place; planted cannon in certain clay-pits thereabouts, and about nine o'clock began firing shells and incendiary grenadoes at a great rate. Tielcke saw everything,--and had the honor to take luncheon, that evening, with certain chief Officers, sitting on the ground, after all was over, and only a few shots from the Garrison still dropping. [Tielcke, ii. 75 n.]
At the third grenade, which, it seems, fell into a straw magazine, Custrin took fire; could not be quenched again, so much dry wood in it, so much disorder too, the very soldiers some of them disorderly (a bad deserter set); so that it soon flamed aloft,--from side to side one sea of flame: and man, woman and child, every soul (except the Garrison, which sat enclosed in strong stone), had to fly across the River, under penalty of death by fire. Of Custrin, by five in the evening, there was nothing left but the black ashes;the Garrison standing unharmed, and the Church, School-house and some stone edifices in a charred skeleton condition. "No life was lost, except that of one child in arms." All Neumark had lodged its valuables in this place of strength; all are fled now in horror and terror across the Oder, by the Bridge, before it also unquenchably takes fire, at the western or non-Russian end of the place. Such a day as was seldom seen in human experience;--Fermor responsible for it, happily not we.
Fermor, in the evening, said to his Artillery People: "Why have you ceased to fire grenadoes?" "Excellency, the Town is out;nothing now but ashes and stone." "Never mind; give them the rest, one every quarter of an hour. We shall not need the grenadoes again. The cannon-balls we shall; them, therefore, do not waste."On the morrow morning, after this performance on the Town, Fermor sends a Trumpeter: "Surrender or else--!" rather in the tremendous style. "Or else?" answers the Commandant, pointing to the ashes, to the black inconsumable stones; and is deaf to this EX-POST-FACTOTrumpeter. The Russians say they sent one yesterday morning, not EX-POST-FACTO, but he was killed in the pickeerings, and never heard of again. A mile or so to rear of Custrin, on the westward or Berlin side of the River, lies Dohna for the last four days;expecting that the Laws of Nature will hold good, and Custrin prove tenable against such sieging. So stands it on Friedrich's arrival.
We left Friedrich in the Lebus Suburb of Frankfurt, Sunday, August 20th, listening to the distant cannonade. Next morning, he is here himself; at Dohna's Camp of Gorgast, taking survey of affairs;came early, under rapid small escort, leaving his Army to follow;scorn and contemptuous indignation the humor of him, they say;resolution to be swiftly home upon that surprising Russian armament, and teach it new manners. The black skeleton of Custrin stares hideously across the River; "Custrin Siege" so called still going on;--had better make despatch now, and take itself away!
He greatly despises Russian soldiership: "Pooh, pooh," he would answer, if Keith from experience said, "Your Majesty does not do it justice;"--and Keith has been known to hint, "If the trial ever come, your Majesty will alter that opinion." A day or two hence, amid these hideous Russian fire-traceries, the Hussars bring him a dozen of Cossacks they have made prisoners: Friedrich looks at the dirty green vagabonds; says to one of his Staff: "And this is the kind of Doggery I have to bother with!"--The sight of the poor country-people, and their tears of joy and of sorrow on his reappearance among them, much affected him. Taking inspection of Dohna, he finds Dohna wonderfully clean, pipe-clayed, complete:
"You are very fine indeed, you;--I bring you a set of fellows, rough as GRASTEUFELN ["grass-devils," I never know whether insects or birds]; but they can bite,"--hope you can!
