uders.

Frederick therefore, evading Daun's attempts to arrest his march,
crossed the mountains into Silesia again. At Landshut he gave his
army two days' rest; wrote and sent a paper to his brother Prince
Henry, who was commander of the army defending Saxony from
invasion, telling him that he was on the point of marching against
the Russians and might well be killed; and giving him orders as to
the course to be pursued, in such an event.

He left Keith, in command of forty thousand men, to hold Daun in
check should the latter advance against Silesia; and he again took
Fergus with him, finding the young officer's talk a pleasant means
of taking his mind off the troubles that beset him.

In nine days the army, which was but fifteen thousand strong,
marched from Landshut to Frankfort-on-Oder. Here the king learned
that though Kuestrin, which the Russians were besieging, still held
out, the town had been barbarously destroyed by the enemy.

In fierce anger the army pressed forward. The Russian army itself,
officers and men, were indignant in the extreme at the brutalities
committed by the Cossacks, but were powerless to restrain them; for
indeed these ruffians did not hesitate to attack and kill any
officer who ventured to interfere between them and their victims.

The next morning, early, Frederick reached the camp of his general
Dohna; who had been watching, although unable to interfere with the
Russians' proceedings. The king had a profound contempt for the
Russians, in spite of the warning of Keith, who had served with
them, that they were far better soldiers than they appeared to be;
and he anticipated a very easy victory over them.

Early on the 22nd of August the army from Frankfort arrived.
Dohna's strength was numerically about the same as the king's, and
with his thirty thousand men Frederick had no doubt that he would
make but short work of the eighty thousand Russians, of whom some
twenty-seven thousand were the Cossack rabble, who were not worth
being considered, in a pitched battle. Deceiving the Russians as to
his intentions by opening a heavy cannonade on one of their
redoubts, as if intending to ford the river there, he crossed that
evening twelve miles lower down and, after some manoeuvring, faced
the Russians, who had at once broken up the siege on hearing of his
passage.

Fermor sent away his baggage train to a small village called
Kleinkalmin, and planted himself on a moor, where his front was