201 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63continue his progress to Schweidnitz or Breslau, but first he had to
overcome the obstacle of the Katzbach. This was 'a small rivulet with
steep banks, resembling an ordinary ditch' (ibid.), but the passage of
the bridges and fords was a matter of some delicacy now that the
enemy were in the neighbourhood. The army was on the move again
on the 9th, and Frederick discovered that the Austrians had antici-
pated him at Goldberg. In other words for the second time this year
Daun had outmarched the Prussians, moving his larger forces with
greater facility across higher and more broken country. The junction
of Daun and Loudon was now assured.
On 10 August Frederick set off down the left, or western, bank of
the Katzbach, hoping to slip past the Austrian right flank and reach
the heart of Silesia, where he could unite with Henry, restore his
communications with Breslau and Schweidnitz, and interpose him-
self between Daun and the Russians. The army set off in three
columns, but 'no sooner did he begin to move, than the Austrians
immediately decamped, and continued marching along the heights
on the opposite side of the Katzbach; and so to the eye they appeared
to make a fourth Prussian column, so small was the distance between'
(Mitchell, 1850, II, 192). Frederick halted in the neighbourhood of
Liegnitz. He could see that the Austrians were drawn up in battle
array on the right bank of the river, barring his route to Jauer.
Frederick heard that the Austrians had proclaimed: 'We have
opened the bag. Now all we have to do is to tie it up, and we have the
king and his whole army inside.' Frederick laughed and commented:
There is something in what they say. But I intend to make a great
hole in this bag which will be difficult to sew up again.' What he had
in mind was to double back upstream and effect a passage beyond the
Austrian left.
Frederick made his attempt on the night of 10 August. At Gold-
berg he bumped into the corps of Lacy, who, unknown to the king,
had been hovering in the Prussian rear. Frederick chased Lacy over
the Katzbach, but on the far side his progress was checked by Daun,
who had shifted the main Austrian army to the left. Frederick was left
with the prize of Lacy's baggage at Goldberg, which contained the
meticulous Irishman's portfolio of maps, and a very pretty Tyrolean
kitchen maid. Frederick wrote to Lacy a few days later, offering to
return the maps once the Prussian engineers had copied them out.
The lightness of the tone belies the magnitude of the crisis in
which Frederick found himself at the time of the event, isolated from
his magazines and from any support. His army had not been in such
peril since the far-off day of Mollwitz. 'Half of Europe was at war with
Frederick over Silesia, and the general opinion was that this drama
was drawing to its eagerly desired close' (Zimmermann, 1788, 226).