124 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63constructing a new angle looking north over the Kaiser-Strasse.
To Frederick, the strength of any position held by the enemy was
probably no longer of overwhelming consequence:
The cause of our misfortune is chiefly owing to the great success
the king of Prussia's arms have had in eight successive battles
against the Austrians; and, particularly to the victory obtained
near Prague, on the 6th of May, which made His Prussian
Majesty imagine, that he could force them from the most
advantageous posts. (Mitchell, 29 June, PRO SP 90/69)
The Prussian army set out from the Kaurschim camp at 6 a.m. on 18
June. A thick mist still hung in the hollows, but the sunlight
threatened a day of crushing heat. The initial direction of the march
was north to the neighbourhood of Planian, where the army made a
right turn and continued east along the Kaiser-Strasse. Frederick
climbed the main tower of the sombre church at Planian, but he
found that the site was so low-lying that he still had no view of the
new Austrian positions. He rejoined the army, whose advance guard
was now pushing some way along the Kaiser-Strasse.
The short ascent from the Planian hollow carried Frederick into a
landscape far grander than the close-set country of the last few days.
The plain of the Elbe stretched limitlessly to the left, and a couple of
thousand paces to the right the open ground rose smoothly but
impressively to a long rounded ridge. A line of Austrian troops
stretched across the summits of the nearest hills.
Frederick halted his army, which was already exhausted by the
forced march of ten miles in the increasing heat. Croats were swarm-
ing in the fields of cereals to the south of the Kaiser-Strasse, which
prevented a closer investigation of the ridge, and Frederick therefore
ascended to the upper storey of the tall inn of the Zlatt Slunce
('Golden Sun'). He made a very close examination of the ground with
his telescope and remarked that the Austrians had skilfully posted
their cavalry wherever the terrain best suited its action, and not in
text-book style on either flank. Nothing that Bevern or Zieten could
say, however, would persuade Frederick that he was facing over-
whelming odds. The engineer captain Friedrich Giese is said to have
assured the king that the attack was practicable, while Prince Moritz,
who would act as second in command in any battle, kissed the royal
coat and declared: 'Things are certain to go well, wherever Your
Majesty happens to be!' (Henckel von Donnersmarck, 1858, I, Part 2,
230).
Where should the attack be directed? The two component hills of
the ridge, the Przerovsky Hill to Frederick's front and the Krzeczhorz
ill to the east, did not present themselves very clearly to an observer