There wasn't much left of the crops by now, though, except for a space of about half a mile between the two armies. That area hadn't been trampled flat yet. It would be soon enough, Mike figured. Fifty thousand men and half as many horses—not to mention artillery balls—would probably turn that area into a wasteland within minutes.
They were no longer oriented directly west to east, in terms of the directions the armies faced. Since the march started at dawn, as he had done for the past two days, Torstensson had continued to move his troops south as well as east. He'd done so in order to force his opponent to come out of Leipzig and meet him on favorable ground. No doubt von Arnim would have preferred to remain in the city and turn a battle into a siege. But by moving around Leipzig to the south, Torstensson had given him no choice. Dresden was not far to the east and whatever else he did, von Arnim was surely under orders from John George to protect the Saxon capital.
There was another advantage to the maneuver, too, Mike now understood. The USE army's orientation this morning meant that the sun wouldn't be directly in their eyes when the battle started. That was a small thing, almost any other time. But Mike could see where it would matter during a battle. With bullets and cannonballs flying every whichaway, the last thing a man wanted to deal with was having to shade his eyes in order to see anything. Which even officers would have to do at least some of time, despite the broad-brimmed hats they favored.
That was Torstensson's experience showing. Experience which Mike himself lacked.
"There's more to this general business than meets the eye," he murmured.
"What was that, sir?" asked Christopher Long, who was writing next to him.
Mike waved his hand. "Just talking to myself."
Mike had originally intended to use all three of the officers he'd rescued from England to serve as his staff, in addition to Long. But it had become clear to him soon enough that Anthony Leebrick was the only one really suited to the task of being a staff officer. Richard Towson and Patrick Welch were much more comfortable commanding their own units. So Mike had given each of them a battalion. For a staff, in addition to Leebrick and Long, he'd taken on a crusty old German veteran. Ulbrecht Duerr had a generally unpleasant personality and was perhaps more foul-mouthed than any man Mike had ever met. Unusually, for this day and age, he was also given to blasphemy. That perhaps explained why a professional soldier who was well into his fifties and seemed to have been in practically every war fought in Europe for the past four decades was still a colonel.
Mike rather liked the man, though. And he found his advice quite helpful.
Those three were his only immediate staff. He planned to enlarge the staff over time, but wanted to wait until he had a better assessment of the many officers in the Third Division. Most of them were still strangers to him.
One was not, of course. As Mike looked to his right he could see the ranks of the 2nd Brigade moving forward. Somewhere among them—they should be right about in the middle—was the Black Falcon Regiment, and somewhere in that regiment was its 12th Battalion, now commanded by the newly-promoted Captain Jeff Higgins.
Mike was feeling doubly guilty today. First, because he'd thrown Jeff into the deep end of the pool by putting him in charge of a battalion. Technically, Brigadier Schuster had made the decision, but Mike had gone along with it.
Second, because he was planning to use Jeff as part of the bait.
No, trebly guilty. He also hadn't told Jeff what he was going to do. He'd been tempted, but from a security standpoint there was really no justification for telling all the battalion commanders what he'd planned for their divisions. He'd told the brigadiers and the regiment commanders, and that was enough. They'd pass along the information to whichever other officers in their units they thought needed to know. Mike was sure that didn't include mere captains, even if they did command battalions.
Mike had known Jeff since he was a kid. He hadn't known him well, since they weren't related and Mike had been a teenager by the time Jeff was born. Still, Grantville was a small town and few of its residents had really been strangers.
And now, he might be responsible for getting him killed.
"Like I said," he murmured again, "there's more to this general business than meets the eye. And a lot of it sucks."
"What was that, sir?" asked Christopher Long.
Jeff never had time to contemplate the strange beauty of armies maneuvering into battle. He was neither a top-hat general who could lounge around on a saddle and let his flunkies handle everything nor an experienced volley gun battery commander who'd been through a big battle before and could afford to let his mind wander.