third. No attack was made upon the rear-guard, though great
numbers of Austrian hussars, and other irregulars, had appeared
the evening before within cannon-shot of the Prussian camp. On the
twenty-fourth the army marched to Nellendorf; on the twenty-fifth, it
encamped near Cotta, on the twenty-sixth near Pirna, where it halted the
next day; and on the twenty-eighth it crossed the river near that place,
and entered Lusatia, where, by the end of the month, it encamped at
Bautzen.

The king's army made this retreat with all the success that could be
wished; but the corps under the prince of Prussia had not the same good
fortune. For the Austrians, immediately after their taking Gabel, sent a
strong detachment against Zittau, a trading town in the circle of Upper
Saxony, where the Prussians had large magazines, and a garrison of six
battalions, and, in his sight, attacked it with uncommon rage. Paying no
regard to the inhabitants as being friends or allies, but determined to
reduce the place before the king of Prussia could have time to march to
its relief, they no sooner arrived before it, than they bombarded
and cannonaded it with such fury, that most of the garrison, finding
themselves unable to resist, made their escape, and carried off as much
as they could of the magazines, leaving only three or four hundred men
in the town, under colonel Diricke, to hold it out as long as possible;
which he accordingly did, till the whole place was almost destroyed. The
cannonading began on the twenty-third of July, at eleven in the morning,
and lasted till five in the evening. In this space of time four thousand
balls, many of them red hot, were fired into this unfortunate city, with
so little intermission, that it was soon set on fire in several places.
In the confusion which the conflagration produced, the Austrians entered
the town, and the inhabitants imagined that they had then nothing
further to fear; and that their friends the Austrians would assist
them in extinguishing the flames, and saving the place; but in this
particular their expectations were disappointed. The pan-dours and
Sclavonians, who rushed in with regular troops, made no distinction
between the Prussians and the inhabitants of Zittau: instead of helping
to quench the flames, they began to plunder the warehouses which
the fire had not readied: so that all the valuable merchandise they
contained was either carried off, or reduced to ashes. Upwards of six
hundre