146 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63
political Testament of 1752 delivered into the shaky hands of August
Wilhelm, if that proved necessary, and he composed a morbid Dis-
position de ce que doit se (aire apr&s la bataille, en cas que je sois tu€
(PC 9559).
On 2 December Zieten reached Parchwitz with the demoralised
survivors of Bevern's army. Bevern himself had fallen into the hands
of the Austrians, and Frederick suspected that he had allowed himself
to be captured deliberately. The officers of the defeated army had
dreaded their encounter with the king, 'like the criminal who shrinks
from the gaze of his executioner' (Lojewsky, 1843, II, 123), but
Frederick was bent only on making them useful for the next battle,
and he regaled them with wine and reminded them of their past
victories. The soldiers were revived by a free distribution of extra
rations, and, more important still, by the men who came from the
royal camp with tales of Rossbach.
Frederick was never more close to his army than at Parchwitz:
During these winter days the king camped in the open air like
one of his private soldiers. He used to warm himself at their
fires, and then make room for others to take his place. He talked
with the soldiers as if they were of his own kind. He
sympathised with the travails which they had undergone, and,
in the most friendly possible way, he encouraged them to
behave like heroes just once more. (Professor Johann Georg
Sulzer, in Volz, 1926-7, II, 120)
Never again was his army more truly national in character, for the
Saxons and many of the foreign troops had been shed in the battles
and forced marches of the last three months, leaving Frederick with a
small but excellent force of 35,000 men, mostly native Branden-
burgers, Pomeranians and Magdeburgers. There were ample reserves
of musket ammunition (which in battle were to be brought up behind
the battalions in carts), and the disproportionately large heavy
artillery train of seventy-eight pieces included ten of the thundering
Brummers - thick-barrelled 12-pounder fortress cannon which Zieten
had transported from Glogau.
On 3 December Frederick made preparations to attack the Aus-
trians, whom he expected to find entrenched to the teeth in the Duke
of Bevern's old camp between Breslau and the Lohe. He brought
together large quantities of bridging materials, and he assembled
eight hundred volunteers in two battalions in order to spearhead an
attack on the Austrian left. He wished to convey to the army the
importance of what was at stake, and he ordered the generals and the
regimental and battalion commanders to attend him at his headquar-
ters at Parchwitz in the morning. This was melodrama indeed, by the