mped with their right at the river Weisle; the
rest of their army extended along a rising ground, at the foot of a
mountain covered with wood, which protected their left; and before their
front, at the bottom of the hill on which they were drawn up, was a
small brook, passable only in three places, and for no more than four or
five men a-breast. Towards the left of their army was an opening, where
three or four battalions might have marched in front; but behind it they
had placed three lines of infantry, and on a hill which flanked this
opening, within musket-shot, were placed four thousand foot, with forty
or fifty pieces of cannon; so that, in reality, this was the strongest
part of their camp. The king left nothing undone to bring the Austrians
to battle; but finding them absolutely bent on avoiding it, after
lying four days before them, he and his army returned to their camp
at Bernstedel. They were followed by some of the enemy's hussars and
pan-dours, who, however, had not the satisfaction to take the smallest
booty in this retreat. The Austrian army, which thus declined engaging,
was, by their own account, an hundred and thirty thousand strong, more
than double the number of the king of Prussia, who, the day he returned
to Bernstedel, after he had retired about two thousand yards, again drew
up his army in line of battle, and remained so upwards of an hour,
but not a man stirred from the Austrian camp. The army of the empire,
commanded by the prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen, and that of the French
under the prince de Soubise, making together about fifty thousand men,
half of which were French, had by this time joined, and advanced as far
as Erfurth in Saxony; upon which his Prussian majesty, finding that all
his endeavours could not bring the Austrians to an engagement, set out
from Lusatia, accompanied by mareschal Keith, with sixteen battalions
and forty squadrons of his troops, and arrived at Dresden on the
twenty-ninth of August, leaving the rest of the army in a strong camp,
under the prince of Bevern. With this detachment, which, by the junction
of several bodies of troops, amounted to about forty thousand men,
he made a quick march, by the way of Leipsic towards Erfurth, to give
battle to the united army of the French and the empire. But by the time
he arrived at Erfurth, which was on the fourteenth of September, the
enemy had retreated towards Gotha; and upon his further approach, they
retired to Eyesenach, w