Furious, and strenuous, it is not doubted, on this Friedrich's part: but against such odds, what can he do?
With Austrians in front, with Russians to left, with French to right and arear, not to mention Swedes and appendages: surely here, if ever, is a lost King!-- It is by no means Friedrich's intention that Saxony itself shall need to be invaded.

Friedrich's habit is, as his enemies might by this time be beginning to learn, not that of standing on the defensive, but that of GOING on it, as the preferable method wherever possible.

March 24th, Friedrich had quitted Dresden City; and for a month after (head-quarters Lockwitz, edge of the Pirna Country), he had been shifting, redistributing, his cantoned Army,--privately into the due Divisions, due readiness for march.

Which done, on fixed days, about the end of April, the whole Army, he himself from Lockwitz, April 20th,--to the surprise of Austria and the world, Friedrich in three grand Columns, Bevern out of the Lausitz, King himself over the Metal Mountains, Schwerin out of Schlesien, is marching with extraordinary rapidity direct for Prag; in the notion that a right plunge into the heart of Bohemia will be the best defence for Saxony and the other places under menace.
This is a most unexpected movement; which greatly astonishes the world-theatre, pit, boxes and gallery alike (as Friedrich's sudden movements often do); and which is, above all, interesting on the stage itself, where the actors had been counting on a quite opposite set of entries and activities! Feldmarschall Browne and General Konigseck (not our old friend Konigseck, who used to dry-nurse in the Netherlands, but his nephew and heir) may cease gathering Magazines, in those Lausitz and Metal-Mountain parts: happy could they give wings to those already gathered! Magazines, for Austrian service, are clearly not the things wanted there.

One does not burn one's Magazines till the last extremity; but wings they have none; and such is the enigmatic velocity of those Prussian movements, one seldom has time even to burn them, in the last crisis of catastrophe! Considerable portions of that provender fell into the Prussian throat; as much as "three months' provision for the whole Army," count they,--adding to those Frontier sundries the really important Magazine which they seized at Jung-Bunzlau farther in.
[_Helden-Geschichte_, iv.