Hustled into this still stronger place, with wheeling and shoving, which lasted to a late hour, Daun composes himself for the night. He lies now, with centre and right looking northward, pretty much parallel to the Planian-Kolin or Prag-Vienna Highway, and about a mile south of the same; extreme posts extending almost to Kolin on that side; left wing well planted EN POTENCE; Kamhayek ridge, north face and west end of it, completely his on both the exposed or Anti-Prussian faces. Friedrich feels uncertain whether he has not gone his ways altogether; but proposes to ascertain by break of day.
By break of day Friedrich starts, having cleared off certain Pandour swarms visible in places of difficulty, who go on first notice, and without shot fired. [Lloyd, i. 61 et seq. (or Tempelhof's Translation, i. 151-164); Tempelhof's own Account is, i. 179-196; Retzow's, i. 120-149 (fewer errors of detail than usual); Kutzen, Der Tag von Kolin (Breslau, 1857), a useful little compilation from many sources. Very incorrect most of the common accounts are; Kausler's Schlachten, Jomini, and the like.] Marches through Planian in two columns, along the Kolin Highway and to north of it; marches on, four or five miles farther, nothing visible but the skirts of retiring Pandours,"Daun's rear-guard probably?"Friedrich himself is with Ziethen, who has the vanguard, as Friedrich's wont is, eagerly enough looking out; reaches a certain Inn on the wayside (WIRTHSHAUS "of Slatislunz or GOLDEN-SUN," say the Modern Books,though I am driven to think it Novomiesto, nearer Planian; but will not quarrel on the subject); Inn of good height for one thing; and there, mounting to the top-story or perhaps the leads, descries Daun, stretching far and wide, leant against the Kamhayek, in the summer morning. What a sight for Friedrich: "Big game SHALL be played, then; death sure, this day, to thousands of men: and to me? Well!"
Friedrich calls halt: rest here a little; to consider, examine, settle how. A hot close morning; rest for an hour or two, till our rear from Kaurzim come up: horses and men will be the better for it,horses can have a mouthful of grass, mouthful of water; some of them "had no drink last night, so late in getting home." Poor quadrupeds, they also have to get into a blaze of battle-rage this day, and be blown to pieces a great many of them,in a quarrel not of their seeking! Horse and rider are alike satisfied on that latter point; silently ready for the task THEY have; and deaf on questions that are bottomless.
At this Hostelry of Novomiesto (not of Slatislunz or "GOLDEN-SUN" at all, which is a "Sun" fallen dismally eclipsed in other ways ["The Inn of Slati-Slunz was burnt, about twenty years ago; nothing of it but the stone walls now dates from Friedrich's time. It is a biggish solid-looking House of two stories (whether ever of three, I could not learn); 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 wingmain line always pretty parallel to the Highway, and pointing rather southward of Kolinreaches 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, abhorrent of German speech;in what nook those inarticulate inhabitants, diving underground at a great rate this morning, have hidden themselves to-day, I know not. The country consists of knolls and slopes, with swamps intermediate; rises higher on the Planian side; but except the top of that Kamhayek ridge on the Planian side, and "Friedrich's-Berg" on the Kolin side, there is nothing that you could think of calling a Hill, though many Books (and even Friedrich's Book) rashly say otherwise. Friedrich's-Berg, now so called, is on the north side of the Highway: half a mile northeastward of Slatislunz, the mal-odorous Inn. A conical height of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet; rises rather suddenly from the still-sloping ground, checking the slope there; on which the Austrian populations have built some memorial lately, notable to Tourists. Here Friedrich "stood during the Battle," say they; and the Prussians "had a battery there." Which remains uncertain to me, at least the battery part of it: that Friedrich himself was there, now and then, can be believed; but not that he kept "standing there" for long together. Friedrich's-Berg does command some view of the Kreczor scene, which at times was cardinal, at others not: but Friedrich did not stand anywhere: "oftenest in the thick of the fire," say those who saw.