157 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63muskets and weapons and other equipment to distribute in the army.
More important, Frederick had gained ten clear days for the coming
campaign, 'and time is something which is very precious to me just
now' (PC 9939).
The concentration at Neisse could now go ahead:
Here I am at the outset of my campaign. God knows how it will
go, or what will become of me! I am cursed with having to make
war without respite, and yet some people are stupid enough to
think that I am fortunate... Look what a fine time I have!
Every morning I have to read through forty letters - half say
nothing at all; one quarter are very routine or very difficult to
read; the rest are full of ghastly news. (Catt, 1884, 25)
Frederick's thoughts turned to Sans Souci, and to his long-dead father,
who appeared to him in a nightmare and ordered him to be bound and
taken under arrest to Magdeburg. He awoke in a sweat.
On 24 April Frederick made an ostentatious reconnaissance of
the roads and country around Glatz, then made back at speed to
Neisse on the 25th. On that day the army came together 'in such small
divisions, and by so many different routes, that it was impossible for
anybody who was not previously informed of it, to imagine that so
great a force could be collected in and about this town... the cavalry
are encamped here and there in the bottoms so as not to be seen from
the mountains on the other side of the river, and the infantry is all
crammed into the town' (Major-General Joseph Yorke, 26 April, PRO
SP 90/71). In fact the king was going to take little more than 55,000
troops with him into Moravia. All the rest of the disposable force was
with Henry in Saxony, with Lieutenant-General Zieten at Landeshut
covering the Lower Silesian border, or facing the Russians beyond the
Oder.
On 29 April the royal army crossed the Austrian frontier, and
Frederick made an unopposed entry into Troppau - a sizeable but
indefensible town stranded on the Silesian side of the border hills. The
first of May brought a most tiring march across the steep valley of the
rushing Mohra stream, and up through darkly wooded hills to the
gloomy village of Alt-Zeschdorf. The snow fell all day long, and the
slippery roads accentuated Frederick's obvious exhaustion. The next
day the army pushed rapidly across an open, undulating table land
(very much like Salisbury Plain, except for the spruce trees), and
finally on the 3rd the Prussians reached the edge of the plateau in an
area of dense woodland which descended steeply to the plain of
Olmiitz. (See Map 17, p. 363.)
The Austrian field army was still nowhere to be seen, and
Frederick calculated that he had gained six marches on Daun, who