y stratagem, every barbarous
refinement, that constitutes the military art, to oblige them to
capitulate. After the conflagration had lasted three days, and consumed
a prodigious number of buildings, the principal inhabitants, burghers,
and clergy, perceiving their city on the point of being reduced to a
heap of rubbish, besought the commander, in a body, to hearken to terms;
but he was deaf to the voice of pity, and, instead of being moved with
their supplications, drove out twelve thousand persons, the least useful
in defending the city. These, by order of his Prussian majesty, were
again forced back, which soon produced so great a scarcity of provisions
within the walls, that the Austrians were reduced to the necessity of
eating horseflesh, forty horses being daily distributed to the troops,
and the same food sold at four-pence a pound to the inhabitants.
However, as there still remained great abundance of corn, they were
far from being brought to the last extremity. Two vigorous and
well-conducted sallies were made, but they proved unsuccessful. The only
advantage resulting from them, was the perpetual alarm in which they
kept the Prussian camp, and the vigilance required to guard against the
attacks of a numerous, resolute, and desperate garrison.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

COUNT DAUN COMMANDS THE AUSTRIANS.

Whatever difficulties might have attended the conquest of Prague,
certain it is, that the affairs of the empress-queen were in the most
critical and desperate situation. Her grand army dispersed in parties,
and dying for subsistence in small corps; their princes and commanders
cooped up in Prague; that capital in imminent danger of being taken,
the flourishing kingdom of Bohemia ready to fall into the hands of the
conqueror; a considerable army on the point of surrendering prisoners
of war; all the queen's hereditary dominions open and exposed, the whole
fertile tract of country from Egra to the Moldaw in actual possession
of the Prussians, the distance to the archduchy of Austria not very
considerable, and secured only by the Danube; Vienna under the utmost
apprehensions of a siege, and the imperial family ready to take refuge
in Hungary; the Prussian forces deemed invincible, and the sanguine
friends of that monarch already sharing with him, in imagination, the
spoils of the ancient and illustrious house of Austria. Such was the
aspect of affairs, and such the difficulties to be combated, when
Leopold