Goltz arrived with this emphatic Piece, Tuesday Evening, after his course of seventy miles: this did at last rouse our cautious Young Dessauer; and so there is next obtainable, on much compression, the following authentic Excerpt:--"GLOGAU, 8th MARCH, 1741. His Durchlaucht the Prince Leopold summoned all the Generals at noon; and informed them That, this very night, Glogau must be won. He gave them their Instructions in writing: where each was to post himself; with what detachments;how to proceed. There are to be three Attacks: one up stream, coming on with the River to its right; one down stream, River to its left; and a third from the landward side, perpendicular to the other two. The very captains that shall go foremost are specified;at what hour each is to leave quarters, so that all be ready simultaneously, waiting in the posts assigned;--against what points to advance out of these, and storm Rampart and Wall. Places, times, particulars, everything is fixed with mathematical exactitude:
'Be steady, be correct, especially be silent; and so far as Law of Nature will permit, be simultaneous! When the big steeple of Glogau peals Midnight,--Forward, with the first stroke; with the second, much more with the twelfth stroke, be one and all of you, in the utmost silence, advancing! And, under pain of death, two things:
Not one shot till you are in; No plundering when you are.'--In this manner is the silent three-sided avalanche to be let go.
Whereupon", says my Dryasdust, "the Generals retired; and had, for one item, their fire-arms all cleaned and new-loaded."[ Helden-Geschichte, i. 823; ii. 165.]
Without plans of Glogau, and more detail and study than the reader would consent to, there can no Narrative be given. Glogau has Ramparts, due Ring-fence, palisaded and repaired by Wallis;inside of this is an old Town-Wall, which will need petards:
there are about 1,000 men under Wallis, and altogether on the works, not to count a mortar or two, fifty-eight big guns.
The reader must conceive a poor Town under blockade, in the wintry night-time, with its tough Count Wallis; ill-off for the necessaries of life; Town shrouded in darkness, and creeping quietly to its bed. This on the one hand: and on the other hand, Prussian battalions marching up, at 10 o'clock or later, with the utmost softness of step; "taking post behind the ordinary field-watches;" and at length, all standing ranked, in the invisible dark; silent, like machinery, like a sleeping avalanche: Husht!--No sentry from the walls dreams of such a thing. "Twelve!" sings out the steeple of Glogau; and in grim whisper the word is, "VORWARTS!" and the three-winged avalanche is in motion.
They reach their glacises, their ditches, covered ways, correct as mathematics; tear out chevaux-de-frise, hew down palisades, in the given number of minutes: Swift, ye Regiment's-carpenters;smite your best! Four cannon-shot do now boom out upon them;which go high over their heads, little dreaming how close at hand they are. The glacis is thirty feet high, of stiff slope, and slippery with frost: no matter, the avalanche, led on by Leopold in person, by Margraf Karl the King's Cousin, by Adjutant Goltz and the chief personages, rushes up with strange impetus; hews down a second palisade; surges in;--Wallis's sentries extinct, or driven to their main guards. There is a singular fire in the besieging party. For example, Four Grenadiers,--I think of this First Column, which succeeded sooner, certainly of the Regiment Glasenapp,--four grenadiers, owing to slippery or other accidents, in climbing the glacis, had fallen a few steps behind the general body; and on getting to the top, took the wrong course, and rushed along rightward instead of leftward. Rightward, the first thing they come upon is a mass of Austrians still ranked in arms; fifty-two men, as it turned out, with their Captain over them. Slight stutter ensues on the part of the Four Grenadiers; but they give one another the hint, and dash forward: "Prisoners?" ask they sternly, as if all Prussia had been at their rear. The fifty-two, in the darkness, in the danger and alarm, answer "Yes."--"Pile arms, then!" Three of the grenadiers stand to see that done; the fourth runs off for force, and happily gets back with it before the comedy had become tragic for his comrades. "I must make acquaintance with these four men," writes Friedrich, on hearing of it; and he did reward them by present, by promotion to sergeantcy (to ensigncy one of them), or what else they were fit for. Grenadiers of Glasenapp: these are the men Friedrich heard swearing-in under his window, one memorable morning when he burst into tears! At half-past Twelve, the Ramparts, on all sides, are ours.
The Gates of the Town, under axe and petard, can make little resistance, to Leopold's Column or the other two. A hole is soon cut in the Town-Gate, where Leopold is; and gallant Wallis, who had rallied behind it, with his Artillery-General and what they could get together, fires through the opening, kills four men; but is then (by order, and not till then) fired upon, and obliged to draw back, with his Artillery-General mortally hurt. Inside he attempts another rally, some 200 with him; and here and there perhaps a house-window tries to give shot; but it is to no purpose, not the least stand can be made. Poor Wallis is rapidly swept back, into the Market-place, into the Main Guard-house; and there piles arms:
"Glogau yours, Ihr Herren, and we prisoners of War!" The steeple had not yet quite struck One. Here has been a good hour's-work!
Glogau, as in a dream, or half awake, and timidly peeping from behind window-curtains, finds that it is a Town taken. Glogau easily consoles itself, I hear, or even is generally glad;Prussian discipline being so perfect, and ingress now free for the necessaries of life. There was no plundering; not the least insult:
