THE PHILOSOPHERS
The old entrenchment of a field battery near the small wood, now half sunken and overgrown with shrubbery, has stood in the solitude of the fields for a good hundred years. It alone has remained of all the fortifications and mounds which extended here in a long line through the plain, concealing numberless Prussian cannon aimed against the emperor’s army protected by trenches. Now it resembles an ancient tomb in which herdsmen, on misty mornings or cold evenings, build fires to warm themselves and from which they halloo into the distance.
In the year 1778 during the war over the Bavarian succession, all the country along the Medhuj and the upper Elbe, containing two armies, resembled an immense anthill. At the head of the Prussian army, Friedrich; against him, Joseph, both philosophers.
A heavy fog had settled on the country like a deep lake. It was early in the morning, quiet and soundless, as if not a soldier were near. Nowhere was ringing of bells permitted, but instead there sounded, in a man’s voice, the old song “Whoever the protection of the Highest—”
