"Futile, lost by loitering, as all else was," groans Schmettau.

Prince Henri was averse to attempt, intimates the King,--as indeed (though refusing to own it) was I."September 10th, my forage will be out, your Majesty," says Henri, always a punctual calculating man.
The Austrians, on their side, were equally stagnant; and, except the continual skirmishing with the Prussian foragers, undertook nothing.
"Shamefully ill-clone our foraging, too," exclaims Schmettau again and again: "Had we done it with neatness, with regularity, the Country would have lasted us twice as long.

Doing it headlong, wastefully and by the rule-of-thumb, the Country was a desert, all its inhabitants fled, all its edibles consumed, before six weeks were over.

Friedrich is not now himself at all; in great things or in little; what a changed Friedrich!" exclaims Schmettau, with wearisome iteration.
From about August 6th, or especially August 10th, when the Maria-Theresa Correspondence, or "Congress of Braunau," ended likewise in zero, Friedrich became impatient for actual junction with Prince Henri, actual push of business; and began to hint of an excellent plan he had: "Burst through on their left flank; blow up their post of Hohenelbe yonder: thence is but one march to Iser river; junction with Prince Henri there; and a Lacy and a Loudon tumbled to the winds." "A plan perfectly feasible," says Schmettau; "which solaced the King's humor, but which he never really intended to execute." Possibly not; otherwise, according to old wont, he would have forborne to speak of it beforehand.

At all events, August 15th, in the feeling that one ought really to do something, the rather as forage hereabouts was almost or altogether running out, he actually set about this grand scheme.
Got on march to rightward, namely, up the Aupa river, through the gloomy chasms of Kingdom-Wood, memorable in old days: had his bakery shifted to Trautenau; his heavy cannon getting tugged through the mire and the rains, which by this time were abundant, towards Hohenelbe, for the great enterprise: and sat encamped on and about the Battle-ground of Sohr for a week or so, waiting till all were forward; eating Sohr Country, which was painfully easy to do.