These were the critical steps, these final ones;
such torrents of grape-shot and musket-shot and sheer death bursting
out, here at last, upon the Eight Battalions, as they come above ground.
Who advanced, unwavering, all the faster,--speed one's only safety. They
poured into the Russian gunners and musketry battalions one volley of
choicest quality, which had a shaking effect; then, with level bayonets,
plunge on the batteries: which are all empty before we can leap
into them; artillery-men, musketeer battalions, all on wing; general
whirlpool spreading. And so, in ten minutes, the Muhlberg and its guns
are ours. Ever since Zorndorf, an idea had got abroad, says Tempelhof,
that the Russians would die instead of yielding; but it proved far
otherwise here. Down as far as Kunersdorf, which may be about a mile
westward, the Russians are all in a whirl; at best hanging in tatters
and clumps, their Officers struggling against the flight; "mixed groups
you would see huddled together a hundred men deep." The Russian Left
Wing is beaten: had we our cannon up here, our cavalry up here, the
Russian Army were in a bad way!

This is a glorious beginning; completed, I think, as far almost as
Kunersdorf by one o'clock: and could the iron continue to be struck
while it is at white-heat as now, the result were as good as certain.
That was Friedrich's calculation: but circumstances which he had not
counted on, some which he could not count on, sadly retarded the matter.
His Left Wing (Rear Line, which should now have been Left Wing) from
southward, his Right Wing from northward, and Finck farther west,
were now on the instant to have simultaneously closed upon the beaten
Russians, and crushed them altogether. The Right Wing, conquerors of the
Muhlberg, are here: but neither Finck nor the Left can be simultaneous
with them. Finck and his artillery are much retarded with the Flosses
and poor single Bridges; and of the Left Wing there are only some
Vanguard Regiments capable of helping ("who drove out the Russians from
Kunersdorf Churchyard," as their first feat),--no Main Body yet for
a long while. Such impediments, such intricacies of bog and bush! The
entire Wing does at last get to the southeast of Kunersdorf, free of the
wood; but finds (contrary to Linden with his hunter eye) an intricate
meshwork of meres and straggling lakes, two of them in the burnt
Village itself; no passing of these except on narrow isthmuses, which
necessitate c