210 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63
amused when a soldier's wife blew sparks from a cooking fire into his
face. Another of these ladies halted for a few minutes at a barn to give
birth to a son, and when the march resumed she announced that the
infant was to be called Fritz, in honour of the king.
In the middle of October Frederick veered west out of the direct
path to Berlin, upon receiving reports that the enemy had evacuated
the capital and that the main Russian army was motionless at
Frankfurt. A little later it became clear that the Austrians were
building up a powerful concentration in Saxony - Lacy made his way
there after he abandoned Berlin, and Daun was marching with the
principal army from Silesia to join him on the middle Elbe.
On 26 October the rival Prussian and Austrian armies completed
their concentrations on the west bank of the Elbe above Magdeburg.
Frederick had written that he was hoping for a decisive battle which
might bring this exhausting war to an end (PC 12435), but people like
Prince Henry and the gossipy ex-cavalryman Warnery could never
understand why the king was so set on a confrontation. Long after-
wards one of the royal ministers (probably Finckenstein) even
claimed that the Russians had made some kind of underhand deal
with Frederick, and that they required him to fight a battle in order to
give them an excuse to retreat (Toulongeon, 1881, 103-4).
On 27 October Frederick set out from Dessau and went in search
of the enemy. He first struck out for Diiben, where he expected that
Daun and the Reichsarmee intended to join forces. The 30,000 Ger-
mans made off by way of Leipzig, however, rather than endure
another Rossbach. At Eilenburg, on 30 October, Frederick learnt that
the Reichsarmee was out of the reckoning, which left the Austrians
without support, and on 2 November he established that Daun was in
position hard by the little town of Torgau.
Torgau was known as the most strategically important crossing
of the middle Elbe. The permanent bridge had been demolished, but
the Austrians had built three bridges of boats to take its place.
Military men were also aware of the tactical value of the low ridge
that extended to the north-west of the town. From here Prince Henry
had bidden defiance to Daun's 60,000 Austrians in 1759, and here also
Lieutenant-General Hiilsen had held the Reichsarmee at bay earlier
in the present campaign. Frederick was therefore acquainted with the
general features of the Torgau position, if not with the precise
location of the Austrian units.
In the course of his search for Daun, Frederick had actually
worked himself around to Langen-Reichenbach, six miles to the
south of the Austrian army. He knew enough of the Torgau camp to
deter him from delivering his main assault against the southern, or
nearer, side of the Austrian army. In this direction the slopes of the