ts.
Accordingly, on the twenty-second of November, about nine in the
morning, the Austrians began a most furious discharge of their cannon,
forty of which were twenty-four pounders, and this continued without
ceasing till one, when it was succeeded by a severe fire of their
small arms, which lasted till five in the evening. The Prussians, with
undaunted resolution, stood two of the most violent attacks that were
ever made; but at the third, overpowered by numbers, and assailed on
both sides, they began to lose ground, and were forced to retire from
one intrenchment to another. In this extremity, night coming on, the
Prussian generals fearing their intrenchments would be entirely forced,
and that they should then be totally defeated, thought proper to
retreat. The prince of Bevern, with the greatest part of the army,
retired to an eminence on the banks of the Oder, whilst the rest of the
troops threw themselves into Breslau, which they might have defended,
in all probability, till the king had come to its relief. But, on the
twenty-fourth, their commander-in-chief, the prince of Bevern, going to
reconnoitre the enemy, with only a single groom to attend him, fell in
among a party of croats, who took him prisoner.*

* We are told, that he mistook these croats for Prussian
hussars. But some of the circumstances of this mysterious
affair were interpreted into a premeditated design in the
prince to be taken prisoner. It cannot otherwise he supposed
that a man of his rank, a prince, a commander-in-chief,
should officiously undertake the always dangerous task of
reconnoitering the enemy with so slight an attendance as
only one man, and that but a groom, even if he had judged it
necessary to see things with his own eyes. Some secret
dissatisfaction, hitherto unknown to us, may possibly have
been the cause of his taking this step; or, which seems
still more probable, he might he ashamed, or, perhaps, even
afraid, to see the king his master, after having so
injudiciously abandoned the defence of Breslau, by quitting
his lines, which, it is asserted, his Prussian majesty had
sent him express orders not to quit on any account whatever,
for that he would certainly be with him by the fifth of
December, in which we shall find he kept his word.

His army, thus deprived of their general, retreated northward that
night, leaving in Breslau only fou