SECOND SIEGE, A.D. 1762.
The principal object of the next campaign was, for the king of Prussia, the recapture of Schweidnitz. Frederick had not one man more than was requisite for the execution of this important enterprise. Seventy thousand Austrians composed the army of Marshal Daun and the corps of Laudon, Hadduck, Brentano, De Beck, and Ellershausen. The Prussian army was not inferior, but troops must be detached from it for the siege, of which M. de Tauziern had the direction. He invested the place on the 4th of August, and opened the trenches on the 7th; they commenced at Briqueterie, and turned towards Warben, to embrace the polygon of Jauernick, upon which the principal attack was directed. M. de Guasco made a sortie, but it did not answer his expectations; the Prussian dragoons beating the Austrians back into the place. The king of Prussia thought that Laudon, in order to succour the place, would take the route of Sibelberg, Warther, and Langen-Brelau; he went, therefore, to place himself at Pfaffendorff, whilst he caused the post of Peila to be taken by the prince of Bevern. Everything happened as the king of Prussia had foreseen. Marshal Daun took the route of Langen-Brelau, attacked the Prussians at Peila, was beaten and retreated. The check experienced by Marshal Daun gave M. de Guasco a bad augury of the fate of the place, and he made an attempt to obtain an advantageous capitulation, with a free departure for his garrison. The king of Prussia refused to comply, because it would have been a capital error to allow ten thousand men to march out of a city, of which, with a little patience, he should render himself master; the Prussian army would be weakened at least by four thousand men necessary to garrison Schweidnitz, and the Prussian strength would be lessened to the amount of fourteen thousand men. The king of Prussia repaired in person, on the 20th of September, before Schweidnitz, in order to push on the works with more vigour. Lefebvre, the chief engineer, was opposed to Gribeauvel, esteemed one of the first men of the age for the defence of places. Lefebvre was soon outwitted by the activity of the French engineer, who countermined his mines and thwarted all his plans. Frederick was obliged to take the details of the siege upon himself; the third parallel was lengthened; a battery in breach was placed there; ricochets were there established against Briqueterie, with another battery upon Kuhberg; and the works of the Austrians were taken in rear. Some branches of the mines of the besieged were likewise sprung. The garrison made two sorties, and dislodged the Prussians from a crowned tunnel, from which they wished to debouch by fresh branches. These manœuvres prolonged the duration of the siege, because they rendered a subterranean war necessary. All the cannon of the place were, however, either évasés[17] or dismounted; provisions were beginning to be scarce, and the enemy would have been compelled to surrender on that account, if a bomb, falling in front of the powder-magazine of Jauernick, had not set fire to it, knocked down a part of that fort, and killed three hundred Austrian grenadiers. This accident, which laid the place open, obliged M. de Guasco to beat a parley; he surrendered himself and his garrison prisoners of war, on the 9th of October, and they were marched away into Prussia.
The palpable lessons in these two sieges are—in the first, the imprudence of the governor in granting opportunities for treachery in prisoners; and in the second, the consummate prudence of the king of Prussia in not allowing the garrison to march out free, for the sake of quickly terminating the siege.