_The course of the Danish war.--Suspension of hostilities.--War renewed.--My husband ordered off just on the eve of my confinement.--The parting.--My confinement occurs simultaneously with my husband’s departure.--A dead child.--The mother in deadly peril.--Frederick’s letters from the seat of war.--Cousin Godfrey and the alliance between Austria and Prussia.--My recovery.--Anxiety and relapse.--Return of my husband._
From the theatre of war came good tidings. The allies won battle after battle. Immediately after the first combats the Danes were forced to abandon the entire Danewerk. Schleswig and Jutland up to Limfjord were occupied by our troops, and the enemy only maintained himself in the lines at Düppel and at Alsen.
I knew all this so accurately, because on the tables were again laid the maps stuck about with pins on which were marked the movements and positions of the troops as each despatch arrived. “If we could now only take the lines at Düppel, or if we could even conquer Alsen,” said the citizens of Olmütz (for no one is so fond of speaking of deeds of war with the “we” as those who were never present at them), “then we should be at an end of it. Now our Austrians are showing again what they can do. The brave Prussians too are fighting splendidly. Both together are of course invincible. The end will be that all Denmark will be overrun and will be annexed to the German Bund--a glorious, beneficent war.”
I too wished for nothing so anxiously as the storming of Düppel--the sooner, the better--for this action would at any rate be decisive and put an end to the butchery. Put an end to it, I hoped, before Frederick’s regiment got marching orders.
Oh, this Damocles’ sword! Every day when I woke the fear came on me that the news would be brought “We are to march”. Frederick was calm about it. He did not wish it, but saw it coming.
“Accustom yourself, dear, to the thought of it,” he said to me. “Against inexorable necessity no striving is of any avail. I do not believe that even if Düppel falls the war will thereby terminate. The allied army which has been despatched is far too small to force the Danes to a conclusion; we shall be obliged to send considerable reinforcements besides, and then my regiment will not be spared.”