ssian vigour should be exhausted, their strength
impaired by losses and desertion, the first fire and ardour of their
genius extinguished by continual fatigue and incessant alarms, and until
the impression made on his own men, by the late defeat, should in some
degree be effaced. The event justified Daun's conduct. His army grew
every day more numerous, while his Prussian majesty began to express the
utmost impatience at the length of the siege. When that monarch first
invested Prague, it was on the presumption that the numerous forces
within the walls would, by consuming all the provisions, oblige it to
surrender in a few days; but perceiving that the Austrians had still
a considerable quantity of corn, that count Daun's army was daily
increasing, and would soon be powerful enough not only to cope with the
detachment under the prince of Bevern, but in a condition to raise the
siege, he determined to give the count battle with one part of his army,
while he kept Prague blocked up with the other. The Austrians, amounting
now to sixty thousand men, were deeply intrenched, and defended by a
numerous train of artillery, placed on redoubts and batteries erected
on the most advantageous posts. Every accessible part of the camp was
fortified with lines and heavy pieces of battering cannon, and the foot
of the hills secured by difficult defiles. Yet, strong as this situation
might appear, formidable as the Austrian forces certainly were, his
Prussian majesty undertook to dislodge them with a body of horse and
foot not exceeding thirty-two thousand men.

KING OF PRUSSIA DEFEATED AT KOLIN.

On the thirteenth day of June, the king of Prussia quitted the camp
before Prague, escorted by a few battalions and squadrons, with which he
joined the prince of Bevern at Milkowitz, Mareschal Keith, it is said,
strenuously opposed this measure, and advised either raising the siege
entirely, and attacking the Austrians with the united forces of Prussia,
or postponing the attack on the camp at Kolin, until his majesty should
either gain possession of the city, or some attempts should be made to
oblige him to quit his posts. From either measure an advantage would
have resulted. With his whole army he might probably have defeated count
Daun, or at least have obliged him to retreat. Had he continued within
his lines at Prague, the Austrian general could not have constrained him
to raise the siege without losing his own advantageous situation