Read "History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 17" by Thomas Carlyle online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The disaster of October 1st -- for which they were trying to sing TE-DEUMS at Vienna -- fell heavier on the poor Saxons, in their cage at Pirna: "Alas, where is our deliverance now? " Friedrich's people, in their lines here, gave them such a "joy-firing" for Lobositz as Retzow has seldom heard; huge volleyings, salvoings, running-fires, starting out, artistically timed and stationed, thunderous, high; and borne by the echoes, gloomily reverberative, into every dell and labyrinth of the Pirna Country; -- intended to strike a deeper damp into them, thinks he. [Retzow, i. 67.] But Imperial Majesty was mindful, too; and straightway sent Browne positive order, "Deliver me these poor Saxons at any price! " And in the course of not quite a week from Lobositz, there arrives a confidential Messenger from Browne: "Courage still, ye caged Saxons; I will try it another way! Only you must hold out till the 11th; on the 11th stand to your tools, and it shall be done."
Browne is to take a succinct Detachment, 8,000 picked men, horse and foot; to make a wider sweep with these, well eastward by the foot of Lausitz Hills, and far enough from all Prussian parties and scouts; to march, with all speed and silence, "through Bohm-Leipa, Kamnitz, Rumburg, Schluckenau; and come in upon the Schandau region, quite from the northeast side; say, at Lichtenhayn; an eligible Village, which is but seven miles or so from the Konigstein, with the chasmy country and the river intervening. Monday, October 11th, Browne will arrive at Lichtenhayn (sixty miles of circling march from Budin); privately post himself near Lichtenhayn; Prussian posts, of no great strength, lying ahead of him there. You, indignant extenuated Saxons, are to get yourselves across, -- near the Konigstein it will have to be, under cover of the Konigstein's cannon, -- on the front or riverward side of those same Prussian posts: crossing-place (Browne's Messenger settles) can be Thurmsdorf Hamlet, opposite the Lilienstein, opposite the Hamlets of Ebenheit and Halbstadt there. Konigstein fire will cover your bridge and your building of it.