55 THE SILESIAN WARS, 1740-5was quite impossible for the Prussians to get their hands on the fodder
and grain which ought to have been at their disposal in the better-
cultivated stretches of the countryside. Frederick asked his readers to
bear in mind that 'in Bohemia the great nobles, the clergy and the
stewards are all devoted to the house of Austria, and that the
common people, who are stupid and superstitious, were much embit-
tered against us on account of the difference of religion' (Oeuvres, III,
60). The Austrian hussars and Croats skirmished right up to the
perimeters of the Prussian camps, and the foragers could venture forth
only in heavily escorted masses of several thousand troops at a time.
Saxony was now to be considered hostile territoiy, and Frederick
could no longer return along the path by which he had entered
Bohemia. If he moved quickly, however, he would still have open to
him a good communication with Prussian territoiy by way of the low
passes from north-east Bohemia to Glatz and Silesia. Frederick
accordingly swung his army half-right towards the upper Elbe, and
sent Lieutenant-General Nassau with the advance guard to occupy
Neu-Kolin and Pardubitz. Marching through storms of rain the Prus-
sians suffered heavy attrition all the way through desertion, typhus
and dysentery. The seventh of November nearly brought a battle near
Kuttenberg, but the allies shrank from the encounter, and Frederick
was now intent only on gaining the far bank of the upper Elbe and
affording his troops some rest. Finally the Prussians made their
passage at Neu-Kolin on the 8th and 9th.
It was no coincidence that the line of the upper Elbe corres-
ponded with the southern border of the part of Bohemia that
Frederick intended to keep for Prussia at the peace. He assumed that
all major operations were at an end, and he scattered his troops in
quarters with the intention of staying in Bohemia through the win-
ter. In all of this he reposed altogether too much trust in the passive
barrier of the Elbe, which along this stretch presented a slow-moving
body of shallowish water just ninety paces broad.
Early on 19 November the Austrians and Saxons crossed the Elbe
in the neighbourhood of Teltschitz and nearly annihilated the grena-
dier battalion of Wedel, which was the only Prussian unit that was
close enough to offer any opposition. Frederick at once recognised
that his refuge north of the Elbe was untenable. On the 20th he sent
the sick and the spare baggage ahead towards the border, and a
number of Feldjager made off at speed to Lieutenant-General Ein-
siedel at Prague, bearing separate but identical orders to evacuate the
six battalions that were in garrison there.
Frederick called in his detachments, and, after giving his united
army a short rest at Koniggratz, he made for the passes with Silesia
and Glatz. The snow was being driven by a strong wind, burying the