ight, the French part of it, was towards Freiburg Bridge; in full
gallop, long after the chase had ceased; crossing of the Unstrut there,
hoarse, many-voiced, all night; burning of the Bridge; found burnt, when
Friedrich arrived next morning. He had encamped at Obschutz, short way
from the field itself. French Army, Reichs Army, all was gone to staves,
to utter chaotic wreck. Hildburghausen went by Naumburg; crossed the
Saale there; bent homewards through the Weimar Country; one wild flood
of ruin, swift as it could go; at Erfurt "only one regiment was in
rank, and marched through with drums beating." His Army, which had been
disgustingly unhappy from the first, and was now fallen fluid on these
mad terms, flowed all away in different rills, each by the course
straightest home; and Hildburghausen arriving at Bamberg, with
hardly the ghost or mutilated skeleton of an Army, flung down
his truncheon,--"A murrain on your Reichs Armies and regimental
chaoses!"--and went indignantly home. Reichs Army had to begin at the
beginning again; and did not reappear on the scene till late next Year,
under a new Commander, and with slightly improved conditions.

Dauphiness Proper was in no better case; and would have flowed home
in like manner, had not home been so far, and the way unknown. Twelve
thousand of them rushed straggling through the Eichsfeld; plundering and
harrying, like Cossacks or Calmucks: "Army blown asunder, over a circle
of forty miles' radius," writes St. Germain: "had the Enemy pursued us,
after I got broken [burst in upon by Mayer and his Free-Corps people]
we had been annihilated. Never did Army behave worse; the first
cannon-salvo decided our rout and our shame." [St. Germain to Verney:
different Excerpts of Letters in the two weeks after Rossbach and before
(given in Preuss, ii. 97).]

In two days' time (November 7th), the French had got to Langensalza,
fifty-five miles from the Battle-field of Rossbach; plundering, running,
SACRE-DIEU-ing; a wild deluge of molten wreck, filling the Eichsfeld
with its waste noises, making night hideous and day too;--in the
villages Placards were stuck up, appointing Nordhausen and Heiligenstadt
for rallying place. [Muller, p. 73.]

Soubise rode, with few attendants, all night towards Nordhausen,--eighty
miles off, foot of the Bracken Country, where the Richelieu resources
are;--Soubise with few attendants, face set towards the Brocken;
himself, it is like, in a somewhat hag-r