History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 20 by Thomas Carlyle

Daun being now cleared away, Friedrich instantly proceeds upon Schweidnitz. Orders the necessary Siege Materials to get under way from Neisse; posts his Army in the proper places, between Daun and the Fortress, -- King's head-quarter Dittmannsdorf, Army spread in fine large crescent-shape, to southwest of Schweidnitz some ten miles, and as far between Daun and it; -- orders home to him his Upper-Silesia Detachments, "Home, all of you, by Neisse Country, to make up for Czernichef's departure; from Neisse onwards you can guard the Siege-Ammunition wagons! " Naturally he has blockaded Schweidnitz, from the first; he names Tauentzien Siege-Captain, with a 10 or 12,000 to do the Siege: "Ahead, all of you! " -- and in short, AUGUST 7th, with the due adroitness and precautions, opens his first parallel; suffering little or nothing hitherto by a resistance which is rather vehement. [Tempelhof, vi. 126.] He expects to have the place in a couple of weeks -- "one week (HUIT JOUR)" he sometimes counts it, but was far out in his reckoning as to time.

The Siege of Schweidnitz occupied two most laborious, tedious months; -- and would be wearisome to every reader now, as it was to Friedrich then, did we venture on more than the briefest outline. The resistance is vehement, very skilful: -- Commandant is Guasco (the same who was so truculent to Schmettau in the Dresden time); his Garrison is near 12,000, picked from all regiments of the Austrian Army; his provisions, ammunitions, are of the amplest; and he has under him as chief Engineer a M. Gribeauval, who understands "counter-mining" like no other. After about a fortnight of trial, and one Event in the neighborhood which shall be mentioned, this of Mining and Counter-mining -- though the External Sap went restlessly forward too, and the cannonading was incessant on both sides -- came to be regarded more and more as the real method, and for six or seven weeks longer was persisted in, with wonderful tenacity of attempt and resistance. Friedrich's chief Mining Engineer is also a Frenchman, one Lefebvre; who is personally the rival of Gribeauval (his old class-fellow at College, I almost think); but is not his equal in subterranean work, -- or perhaps rather has the harder task of it, that of Mining, instead of COUNTER-mining, or SPOILING Mines. Tempelhof's account of these two people, and their underground wrestle here, is really curious reading; -- clear as daylight to those that will study, but of endless expansion (as usual in Tempelhof), and fit only to be indicated here. [Tempelhof, vi. 122-219; _Bericht und Tagebuch von der Belagerung von Schweidnitz vom 7ten August bis 9 October, 1762_ (Seyfarth, _Beylagen,_ iii. 376-479); Archenholtz, Retzow, &c.]