'Thirty miles,' say the multitude of Counsellors: 'Yes, but the first fifteen, TO Gabel, is cross-road, hilly, difficult; they have us in flank!' 'We are 25,000,' urges the Prince; 'fifteen miles is not much!' The thing had its difficulties: the Prince himself, it appears, faintly thought it feasible: '25,000 we; 20,000 they; only fifteen miles,' said he.

But the variety of Counsellors: 'Cross-roads, defiles, flank-march, dangerous,' said they.
And so the third course, which was incomparably the worst, found favor in Council of War: That of leaving Gabel and Puttkammer to their fate; and of pushing off for Zittau leftwards through the safe Hills, by Kamnitz, Kreywitz, Rumburg;--which, if the reader look, is by a circuitous, nay quite parabolic course, twice or thrice as far:--'In that manner let us save Zittau and our Main Body!' said the Council of War.

Yes, my friends: a cannon-ball, endeavoring to get into Zittau from the town-ditch, would have to take a parabolic course;--and the cannon-ball would be speedy upon it, and not have Hill roads to go by! This notable parabolic circuit of narrow steep roads may have its difficulties for an Army and its baggages!" Enough, the poor Prince adopted that worst third course; and even made no despatch in getting into it; and it proved ruinous to Zittau, and to much else, his own life partly included.
"JULY 16th-22d.

Thursday night, or Friday 3 A.M., that third and incomparably worst course was adopted: Gabel, Puttkammer with his wagons, ensigns, kettledrums, all this has to surrender in a day: High Road to Zittau, for the Austrians, is a smooth march, when they like to gather fully there, and start.

And in the Hills, with their jolts and precipitous windings, infested too by Pandours, the poor Prussian Main Body, on its wide parabolic circuit, has a time of it! Loses its pontoons, loses most of its baggage; obliged to set fire, not to the Pandours, but to your own wagons, and necessaries of army life; encamps on bleak heights; no food, not even water; road quite lost, road to be rediscovered or invented; Pandours sputtering on you out of every bush and hollow, your peasant wagoners cutting traces and galloping off:--such are the phenomena of that march by circuit leftward, on the poor Prince's part.