anded the immediate
payment of eight hundred thousand guilders; and afterwards exacted a
contribution of one million nine hundred thousand German crowns. Many
outrages were committed by the licentious soldiery, in spite of all the
precautions which the officers could take to preserve the most exact
discipline. The houses of the private inhabitants were tolerably
protected, but the king's palaces were subjected to the most rigorous
treatment. In the royal palace of Charlottenburg they pillaged and
spoiled the rich furniture: they defaced and mutilated the valuable
pictures and antique statues collected by cardinal de Polignac, and
purchased by the house of Brandenburgh. The castle of Schonhausen,
belonging to the queen, and that of Fredericksfeldt, the property of the
margrave Charles, were pillaged of effects to a very considerable value.
The palace of Potsdam was effectually protected by prince Esterhasi,
who would not suffer one article of furniture to be touched; but desired
leave to take one picture of the king, and two of his German flutes,
that he might preserve them as memorials of an illustrious prince, whose
heroic character he admired. The Austrian and Russian troops entered
Berlin on the ninth day of October, and quitted it on the thirteenth, on
hearing that the king was in full march to the relief of his capital. In
their retreat, by different routes, from Brandenburgh, they drove away
all the cattle and horses they could find, ravaged the country, and
committed brutal outrages on the inhabitants, which the pretence of
retaliation could never excuse. The body of Russians which entered
Berlin marched from thence into Poland, by the way of Furstenwalde;
while the Austrians took the route of Saxony, from whence they had
advanced into Brandenburgh. Meanwhile the town of Wirtem-berg, in that
electorate, was reduced by the duke de Deux-Ponts, commander of the
imperial army, which, in conjunction with the Austrians, made themselves
masters also of Torgau and Leipsic.

KING OF PRUSSIA DEFEATS THE AUSTRIANS AT TORGAU.

The king of Prussia, in his march through Lusatia, was still attended
by count Daun, at the head of his grand army, and both passed the Elbe
about the latter end of October. The Prussian crossed the river at
Coswick, where he was joined by the troops under prince Eugene of
Wirtemberg and general Ilulsen, so that his army now amounted to eighty
thousand fighting men, with whom he resolved to stri