History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 18 [39]
stands pleasantly, at the crown of a long rise from Kolin;--and inwardly, alas, in our day, offers little but bad smells and negative quantities! Only the ground- floor is now inhabited. From the front, your view northward, Nimburg way, across the Elbe Valley, is fertile, wide-waving, pretty: but rearward, upstairs,--having with difficulty got permission,--you find bare balks, tattered feathers, several hundredweight of pigeon's dung, and no outlook at all, except into walls of office-houses and the overhanging brow of Heights,--fatal, clearly, to any view of Daun, even from a third story!" (TOURIST'S NOTE, 1858.)--Tempelhof (UBI SUPRA) seems to have known the right, place; not, Retzow, or almost anybody since: and indeed the question, except for expressly Military people, is of no moment.]), Friedrich halted for three hours and more; saw Daun developing himself into new Order of Battle, "every part of his position visible;" considered with his whole might what was to be tried upon him;--and about noon, having made up his mind, called his Generals, in sight of the phenomenon itself there, to give them their various orders and injunctions in regard to the same. The Plan of Fight, which was thought then, and is still thought by everybody, an excellent one,--resting on the "oblique order of attack," Friedrich's favorite mode,--was, if the reader will take his Map, conceivable as follows.
Daun has by this time deployed himself; in three lines, or two lines and a reserve; on the high-lying Champaign south of the Planian-Kolin Great Road; south, say a mile, and over the crests of the rising ground, or Kamhayek ridge, so that from the Great Road you can see nothing of him. His line, swaying here and there a little, to take advantage of its ground, extends nearly five miles, from east to west; pointing towards Planian side, the left wing of it; from Planian, eastward, the way Friedrich has marched, Daun's left wing may be four miles distant. On the other side, Daun's right wing--main line always pretty parallel to the Highway, and pointing rather southward of Kolin--reaches to the small Hamlet of Krzeczhorz, which is two miles off Kolin. In front of his centre is a Village called Chotzemitz (from which for a while, in those months, the Battle gets its name, "Battle of Chotzemitz," by Daun's christening): in front of him, to right or to left of Chotzemitz, are some four or even six other Villages (dim rustic Hamlets, invisible from the High Road), every Village of which Daun has well beset with batteries, with good infantry, not to speak of Croat parties hovering about, or dismounted Pandours squatted in the corn. That easternmost Village of his is spelt "Krzeczhorz" (unpronounceable to mankind), a dirty little place; in and round which the Battle had its hinge or cardinal point: the others, as abstruse of spelling, all but equally impossible to the human organs, we will forbear to name, except in case of necessity. Half a mile behind Krzeczhorz (let us write it Kreczor, for the future: what can we do?), is a thin little Oak-wood, bushes mainly, but with sparse trees too, which is now quite stubbed out, though it was then important enough, and played a great part in the result of this day's work. Radowesnitz, a pronounceable little Village, half a mile farther or southward of the Oak-bush, is beyond the extremity of Daun's position; low down on a marshy little Brook, which oozes through lakes and swamps towards Kolin, in the northerly direction.
Most or all of these Villages are on little Brooks (natural thirst so leading them): always some little runlet of water, not so swampy when there is any fall for it; in general lively when it gets over the ridge, and becomes visible from this Highway. And it is curious to see what a considerable dell, or green ascending chasm, this little thread of water, working at all moments for thousands of years, has hollowed out for itself in the sloping ground; making a great military obstacle, if you are mounting to attack there. Poor Czech Hamlets all of them, dirty, dark, mal-odorous, ignorant,
Daun has by this time deployed himself; in three lines, or two lines and a reserve; on the high-lying Champaign south of the Planian-Kolin Great Road; south, say a mile, and over the crests of the rising ground, or Kamhayek ridge, so that from the Great Road you can see nothing of him. His line, swaying here and there a little, to take advantage of its ground, extends nearly five miles, from east to west; pointing towards Planian side, the left wing of it; from Planian, eastward, the way Friedrich has marched, Daun's left wing may be four miles distant. On the other side, Daun's right wing--main line always pretty parallel to the Highway, and pointing rather southward of Kolin--reaches to the small Hamlet of Krzeczhorz, which is two miles off Kolin. In front of his centre is a Village called Chotzemitz (from which for a while, in those months, the Battle gets its name, "Battle of Chotzemitz," by Daun's christening): in front of him, to right or to left of Chotzemitz, are some four or even six other Villages (dim rustic Hamlets, invisible from the High Road), every Village of which Daun has well beset with batteries, with good infantry, not to speak of Croat parties hovering about, or dismounted Pandours squatted in the corn. That easternmost Village of his is spelt "Krzeczhorz" (unpronounceable to mankind), a dirty little place; in and round which the Battle had its hinge or cardinal point: the others, as abstruse of spelling, all but equally impossible to the human organs, we will forbear to name, except in case of necessity. Half a mile behind Krzeczhorz (let us write it Kreczor, for the future: what can we do?), is a thin little Oak-wood, bushes mainly, but with sparse trees too, which is now quite stubbed out, though it was then important enough, and played a great part in the result of this day's work. Radowesnitz, a pronounceable little Village, half a mile farther or southward of the Oak-bush, is beyond the extremity of Daun's position; low down on a marshy little Brook, which oozes through lakes and swamps towards Kolin, in the northerly direction.
Most or all of these Villages are on little Brooks (natural thirst so leading them): always some little runlet of water, not so swampy when there is any fall for it; in general lively when it gets over the ridge, and becomes visible from this Highway. And it is curious to see what a considerable dell, or green ascending chasm, this little thread of water, working at all moments for thousands of years, has hollowed out for itself in the sloping ground; making a great military obstacle, if you are mounting to attack there. Poor Czech Hamlets all of them, dirty, dark, mal-odorous, ignorant,