An immortal word, spoken by some anonymous soldier on the eve of the battle of Kolin in Bohemia, in 1757. The Prussian King Frederick the Great had taken it in his head to go conquer Austria, but on the hillsides of Kolin he ran into some difficulties, in the form of the artillery of Field Marshal von Daun. Indeed, he had run headlong into them twice with his infantry, suffering horrific losses; nevertheless, he wished to make a third attempt, but for the first time, the shattered remnants of the Prussian forces — having presumably some better notion than their king of the chances of such an enterprise — refused to obey.

The king couldn't control his outrage at such an unprecedented mutiny, and shouted »Racker, wollt ihr ewig leben!«

It was then that some weary survivor of the bloodshed gave him the reasonable response: »Für sechs Groschen, Fritz, ist's heute genug.«


When people say that there are words which are untranslatable, they are either ignorant or liars; they merely want it to be true for fruity, romantic reasons. But whole phrases are often hard to translate adequately, and so it is with this one: although I am no expert, I believe that in the slightly antiquated German of its time the phrase can be understood both as »...we've had enough for today« and »...we'll settle for living the day out«.

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