270 THE WAR OF THE BAVARIAN SUCCESSION, 1778-9very old men - a gloomy, almost morose disposition of mind.
(Hildebrandt, 1829-35, III, 129)Frederick decided to bring his advance guard up to about 3,000
paces from the enemy lines on the sector to the north of Jaromiersch.
On the morning of 8 July he rode out once more, and came close
enough to the Austrian outposts to draw skirmishing fire:
To begin with he appeared gentle and good-natured, and he
joked in a very relaxed way with several people who were about
him. But he grew impatient after he had waited two hours in
vain for the columns to arrive. His gaze became dark,
threatening and fearsome, and his face betrayed signs of mighty
and barely containable anger. (Schmettau, 1789, 34)The Prussians remained thirty-seven days in their Camp of Wels-
dorf. In other circumstances the neighbourhood would have been an
attractive one, with its gentle hills, verdant valleys and scattered
woodland. The troops soon came to hate it. 'Already by the second
day we were short of everything. Not only were we running out of
food, but we suffered from lack of tobacco, spirits, salt and even water
and straw for our camp. You would scarcely have recognised our poor
men. All good humour and cheerfulness had vanished' (Anon., 1884,
39-40).
Frederick made himself at home in a hut of squared logs in
Ober-Welsdorf, an open village of cabins, scattered along either side
of a little stream. To the north, a plain extended to the tall, close-
packed trees of the Konigreich-Wald. Southward, a low rounded ridge
separated the Welsdorf hollow from the valley of the upper Elbe. The
vandalism of the soldiers ranged around him unchecked. The huts
were broken up for firewood, and the agricultural instruments and
the seed corn were senselessly destroyed.
Daily Frederick rode up and down the heights of the left bank,
looking for some gap in the enemy positions on the far side. These
were the equivalent of the defences of the Bunzelwitz perimeter of
1761, uncoupled and arranged in line along six miles of the upper
Elbe, complete with batteries, palisades, mines and abatis. The
strongpoints of this 'Camp of Jaromiersch' (Map 29, p. 381) were
carefully sited to take full advantage of the salients and re-entrants
formed by the low hills. The left or northern flank was anchored on
the bastion presented by the palace or monastery of the Barmher-
zigen Bruder at Kukus, which had been built to the prescriptions of
the old Austrian cavalryman Count Sporck. The house was garri-
soned, and when Frederick looked at the gardens, he could detect
several pieces of artillery, as well as the baroque statues of the Virtues