at disadvantage
in almost every respect, he resolved to hazard a battle on the thirtieth
of August. The Russians, consisting, as we before observed, of eighty
thousand regulars, under the command of mareschal Apraxin, avoiding the
open field, were intrenched in a most advantageous camp near Norkitten
in Prussia. Their army was composed of four lines, each of which was
guarded by an intrenchment, and the whole was defended by two hundred
pieces of cannon, batteries being placed upon all the eminences.
Mareschal Lehwald's army scarcely amounted to thirty thousand men.
The action began at five in the morning, and was carried on with so much
vigour, that the Prussians entirely broke the whole first line of the
enemy, and forced all their batteries. The prince of Holstein-Grottorp,
brother to the king of Sweden, at the head of his regiment of dragoons,
routed the Russian cavalry, and afterwards fell upon a regiment of
grenadiers, which was cut to pieces; but when the Prussians came to the
second intrenchment, mareschal Lehwald, seeing that he could not attempt
to carry it without exposing his army too much, took the resolution to
retire. The Prussians returned to their former camp at Velau, and the
Russians remained in their present situation. The loss of the Prussians
little exceeding two thousand killed and wounded, was immediately
replaced out of the disciplined militia. The Russians lost a much
greater number. General Lapuchin was wounded and taken prisoner, with
a colonel of the Russian artillery; but the former was sent back on his
parole. The Prussia*: Army had, at first, made themselves masters of
above eighty pieces of cannon; but were afterwards obliged to abandon
them, with eleven of their own, for want of carriages. Three Russian
generals were killed; but the Prussians lost no general or officer
of distinction, of which rank count Dohna was the only one that was
wounded.

HASTY RETREAT OF THE RUSSIANS OUT OF PRUSSIA.

After this engagement, mareschal Lehwald changed the position of his
army, by drawing towards Peters-wald; and the Russians, after remaining
quite inactive till the thirteenth of September, on a sudden, to
the great surprise of every one, retreated out of Prussia with such
precipitation, that they left all their sick and wounded behind them,
to the amount of fifteen or sixteen thousand men, together with eighty
pieces of cannon, and a considerable part of their military stores.
Mareschal Apr