First, there went 300 Hussars through the Village to Gruningen, who quartered themselves there; and rushed hither and thither into houses, robbing and plundering. From one they took his best horses, from another they took linen, clothes, and other furnitures and victual. General Neuburg [Neipperg] halted here at Mollwitz, with the whole Army; before the Village, in mind to quarter. And quarter was settled, so that a BAUER [Plough-Farmer] got four to five companies to lodge, and a GARTNER [Spade-Farmer] two or three hundred cavalry. .The houses were full of Officers, the GARTE[Garths] and the Fields full of horsemen and baggage; and all round, you saw nothing but fires burning; the ZAUNE [wooden railings] were instantly torn down for firewood; the hay, straw, barley and haver, were eaten away, and brought to nothing;and everything from the barns was carried out. And, as the whole Army could not lodge itself with us, 1,100 Infantry quartered at Laugwitz; Barzdorf got 400 Cavalry; and this day, nobody knew what would come of it." [Extract in FUCHS, p. 6.]
Monday morning, the Prussians are up betimes; King Friedrich, as above noted, had not, or had hardly at all, slept during those two nights, such his anxieties. This morning, all is calm, sleeked out into spotless white; Pogarell and the world are wrapt as in a winding-sheet, near two feet of snow on the ground. Air hard and crisp; a hot sun possible about noon season. "By daybreak" we are all astir, rendezvousing, ranking,--into Four Columns; ready to advance in that fashion for battle, or for deploying into battle, wherever the Enemy turn up. The orders were all given overnight, two nights ago; were all understood, too, and known to be rhadamanthine; and, down to the lowest pioneer, no man is uncertain what to do. If we but knew where the Enemy is; on which side of us;what doing, what intending?
Scouts, General-Adjutants are out on the quest; to no purpose hitherto. One young General-Adjutant, Saldern, whose name we shall know again, has ridden northward, has pulled bridle some way north of Pogarell; hangs, gazing diligently through his spy-glass, there;--can see nothing but a Plain of silent snow, with sparse bearding of bushes (nothing like a hedge in these countries), and here and there a tree, the miserable skeleton of a poplar:--when happily, owing to an Austrian Dragoon--Be pleased to accept (in abridged form) the poor old Schoolmaster's account of a small thing:--"Austrian Dragoon of the regiment Althan, native of Kriesewitz in this neighborhood, who was billeted in Christopher Schonwitz's, had been much in want of a clean shirt, and other interior outfit;and had, last night, imperatively despatched the man Scholzke, a farm-servant of the said Christopher's, off to his, the Dragoon's, Father in Kriesewitz, to procure such shirt or outfit, and to return early with the same; under penalty of--Scholzke and his master dare not think under what penalty. Scholzke, floundering homewards with the outfit from Kriesewitz, flounders at this moment into Saldern's sphere of vision: 'Whence, whither?' asks Saldern:
'Dost thou know where the Austrians are?' (RECHT GUT: in Mollwitz, whither I am going!' Saldern takes him to the King,--and that was the first clear light his Majesty had on the matter." [Fuchs, pp.
6, 7.] That or something equivalent, indisputably was; Saldern and "a Peasant," the account of it in all the Books.
The King says to this Peasant, "Thou shalt ride with me to-day!"And Scholzke, Ploschke others call him,--heavy-footed rational biped knowing the ground there practically, every yard of it,--did, as appears, attend the King all morning; and do service, that was recognizable long years afterwards. "For always," say the Books, "when the King held review here, Ploschke failed not to make appearance on the field of Pogarell, and get recognition and a gift from his Majesty."At break of day the ranking and arranging began. Pogarell clock is near striking ten, when the last squadron or battalion quits Pogarell; and the Four Columns, punctiliously correct, are all under way. Two on each side of Ohlau Highway; steadily advancing, with pioneers ahead to clear any obstacle there may be.
Few obstacles; here and there a little ditch (where Ploschke's advice may be good, under the sleek of the snow), no fences, smooth wide Plain, nothing you would even call a knoll in it for many miles ahead and around. Mollwitz is some seven miles north from Pogarell; intermediate lie dusty fractions of Villages more than one; two miles or more from Mollwitz we come to Pampitz on our left, the next considerable, if any of them can be counted considerable.
"All these Dorfs, and indeed most German ones," says my Tourist, "are made on one type; an agglomerate of dusty farmyards, with their stalls and barns; all the farmyards huddled together in two rows; a broad negligent road between, seldom mended, never swept except by the elements. Generally there is nothing to be seen, on each hand, but thatched roofs, dead clay walls and rude wooden gates; sometimes a poor public-house, with probable beer in it;never any shop, nowhere any patch of swept pavement, or trim gathering-place for natives of a social gossipy turn: the road lies sleepy, littery, good only for utilitarian purposes. In the middle of the Village stands Church and Churchyard, with probably some gnarled trees around it: Church often larger than you expected;the Churchyard, always fenced with high stone-and-mortar wall, is usually the principal military post of the place. Mollwitz, at the present day, has something of whitewash here and there; one of the farmer people, or more, wearing a civilized prosperous look.
The belfry offers you a pleasant view: the roofs and steeples of Brieg, pleasantly visible to eastward; villages dotted about, Laugwitz, Barzdorf, Hermsdorf, clear to your inquiring: and to westward, and to southward, tops of Hill-country in the distance.
