ds rallied, they returned to the charge; they
miscarried again, and their loss was redoubled. Being thus rendered
unfit for further service, the cavalry succeeded to the attack, and
repeated their unsuccessful efforts, until they were almost broke, and
entirely exhausted. At this critical juncture, the whole body of the
Austrian and Russian cavalry, which had hitherto remained inactive, and
were therefore fresh and in spirits, fell in among the Prussian horse
with great fury, broke their line at the first charge, and forcing them
back upon the infantry, threw them into such disorder as could not be
repaired. The Prussian army being thus involved in confusion, was seized
with a panic, and in a few minutes totally defeated and dispersed,
notwithstanding the personal efforts of the king, who hazarded his life
in the hottest parts of the battle, led on his troops three times to
the charge, had two horses killed under him, and his clothes in several
parts penetrated with musket-balls. His army being routed, and the
greater part of his generals either killed or disabled by wounds,
nothing but the approach of night could have saved him from total ruin.
When he abandoned the field of battle, he despatched another billet to
the queen, couched in these terms: "Remove from Berlin with the royal
family. Let the archives be carried to Potsdam. The town may make
conditions with the enemy." The horror and confusion which this
intimation produced at Berlin may be easily conceived: horror the
more aggravated, as it seized them in the midst of their rejoicings
occasioned by the first despatch; and this was still more dreadfully
augmented, by a subsequent indistinct relation, importing that the army
was totally routed, the king missing, and the enemy in full march to
Berlin. The battle of Cunersdorf was by far the most bloody action which
happened since the commencement of hostilities. The carnage was truly
horrible: above twenty thousand Prussians lay dead on the field; and
among these general Putkammer. The generals Seydlitz, Itzenplitz,
Hulsen, Finck, and Wedel, the prince of Wirtemberg, and five
major-generals, were wounded. The loss of the enemy amounted to ten
thousand. It must be owned, that if the king was prodigal of his own
person, he was likewise very free with the lives of his subjects. At no
time, since the days of ignorance and barbarity, were the lives of men
squandered away with such profusion as in the course of this German