which he answered, that the king, his
master, had ordered him to defend the place to the last extremity, and
he would obey his orders. The enemy then thought of besieging the city;
but, before they could prepare any one implement for that purpose, they
were alarmed by the approach of the king of Prussia, who, judging that
his feint would probably induce them to take the step they did, had,
by previous and private orders, collected together all his distant
detachments, some of which were twenty leagues asunder, and was
advancing, by long marches, to Leipsic; upon notice of which the
enemy repassed the Sala. The Prussian army was re-assembled on the
twenty-seventh of October, and remained at Leipsic the twenty-eighth and
twenty-ninth, when everybody expected a battle would be fought in the
plains of Lutzen. On the thirtieth, the king drew nigh that place, and
on the thirty-first, in his way through Weissenfells and Meresbourg, he
made five hundred men prisoners of war. The combined army had repassed
the Sala at Weissenfells, Meresbourg, and Halle, where they broke down
the bridges; but these were soon repaired, and the whole Prussian army,
amounting to no more than twenty thousand men, having passed that river,
through these towns, in each of which they left a battalion, joined
again on the third of November, in the evening, over against the
enemy, whose forces consisted of forty thousand French, and twenty-five
thousand Imperialists. On the fifth, about nine o'clock in the morning,
the Prussians received intelligence that the enemy were every where in
motion. They likewise heard the drums beating the march, and, so near
were the two armies to each other, plainly perceived from their camp
that their whole infantry, which had drawn nearer upon the rising
grounds over against them, was filing off towards their right. No
certain judgment could, however, yet be formed of the enemy's real
design, and as they were in want of bread, it wras thought probable that
they intended to repass the Un-strut; but it was soon perceived that
their several motions were contradictory to each other. At the same time
that some of their infantry were filing off towards their right, a large
body of cavalry wheeled round towards their left, directing its march
all along to the rising grounds with which the whole Prussian camp,
that lay in a bottom between the villages of Eederow and Rosbach, was
surrounded within the reach of large cannon. Soon aft