The power of France drew as near to a period in the East Indies. Colonel Coote, Major Brereton, who fell in the contest, Major Monson, and others, carried on the war triumphantly. Lally, who left no valour unexerted, no stratagem unattempted, was constantly defeated. Sir George Pococke entirely dispersed their Navy in those seas after three repeated engagements.
The German war was far from drawing to a conclusion. It was next to a miracle, considering how gloomily the last campaign had terminated for the King of Prussia, that the present did not complete his ruin. The Empress Queen’s hatred and resources were by no means exhausted. She contrived, too, to keep up to the same mark the implacability of the Czarina, who, having less both to hope and to fear, may well be believed to have been actuated by bribes and pensions to her Ministers. Immersed in pleasure and cool to ambition, gentle, too, to her subjects, it is not credible that the Armies she poured on the King of Prussia’s dominions were dispatched by feelings of her own. The danger was not the less pressing to the King. The Russians again threatened him; advanced again. The desultory Swedes still hovered over him. The Austrian force was complete and numerous; and, if Daun was too cautious, Laudohn promised to repair by activity the Marshal’s circumspection.
The Court of Vienna seemed to applaud Laudohn’s vigour, whether to animate Daun by giving him a rival, or really wishing for an opportunity to fling the command into hands more alert. The Marshal, who preferred the interests of his mistress to his own glory, was not to be provoked out of his prudence. Inferior forces, he seemed to think, might be justified in rashness: superior strength, that could command time, could also ensure success; and, as his conduct had already brought the King of Prussia to the verge of ruin, he saw no cause to precipitate measures which had and did tend so naturally to complete the work. The King, whom experience had successively taught to be brave, to be desperate, to be circumspect, was not impatient to advance his fate. His whole conduct in this campaign evidenced that he looked on his situation as little less than hopeless; firm, however, to find an issue, if art or industry could furnish one. He entrenched himself strongly between the Elbe and the Multa, covering Saxony. Prince Henry defended Silesia; General Fouquet, preserving a communication with the latter, was posted near Glatz. Daun watched the King in a camp no less strong; while Laudohn, with a light army, shifted his quarters, and by turns threatened Silesia and Berlin—sometimes hovered over the strong places in Silesia, at others made a feint of attacking Prince Henry. The storm, however, at length seemed levelled against Schweidnitz. General Fouquet was the dupe of that mouvement; and, marching to cover the town, was drawn into an engagement by Laudohn near Landshut, in which the Prussians were not only totally defeated, but Fouquet himself, with two other Generals, four Colonels, two hundred and thirteen officers, and seven thousand men, were obliged to lay down their arms and surrender themselves prisoners.
Laudohn, eager to improve his victory, besieged Glatz and took it. He was of a nature not to stop in the career of success. The King trembled for Silesia; while, at the same time, he was kept in check by Daun’s superior force. He had no longer leisure to temporize. By a secret and rapid march he crossed the Elbe before the Marshal had notice of his departure. But Daun, however wary, was not dilatory. He followed the King with an expedition which, being assisted by having a shorter cut to make, soon gave him the start of his Majesty. This was the point at which the King had pushed. When he found that the Marshal was advanced before him by a march of two days, the King turned suddenly back, and, while he was supposed on the borders of Silesia, appeared before the walls of Dresden. He commenced the siege with ardour; for it would admit of no delay. The glory of outwitting Daun was all the fruit reaped by this stratagem; and, unless the King flattered himself with a prospect of carrying Dresden by surprise or storm, his manœuvre was, in his circumstances, a puerile stratagem, a game of generalship not adequate to the crisis of his fortune. It seemed one of those vainglorious littlenesses which too often entered into his composition. The same mistaken appetite of applause tempted him in this very campaign to publish his poems; a superficial medley, ungrateful to the Deity that had given him such talents, and who had not given him a genius for poetry. Achilles was a subject for Pindar’s lyre, but could not strike it like Pindar.
Daun soon compensated for his error, and reached Dresden in six days after the siege was formed. He flung sixteen battalions into the town; and in three days more the King abandoned the siege. He had astonished Europe—and he was satisfied. His brother’s glory was more solid. Laudohn had invested Breslau, and expected to be joined by seventy thousand Russians. The town in the meantime was battered with incredible fury. The Russians did not appear—but Prince Henry did. He had marched from Glogau with surprising expedition, and arrived in time to save the place. Laudohn thought fit to decamp without risking a battle; but he blocked up Neisse and Schweidnitz; and the Russians at last advanced. Three bodies of Austrians also joined, commanded by Daun, Laudohn, and Lacy. The King by large strides hastened to the defence of Silesia, and encamped at Lignitz. His own superiority of force, and the approach of the Russians, appeared to Marshal Daun the favourable moment for determining the contest. He disposed his plan for attacking the King in different quarters with all the three Armies; and, to leave as little as possible to chance, he meant to surprise him in the night. Measures so wisely taken were frustrated by the vivacity of the King. He had learned the approach of a body of Russians, and saw himself in a net. In vain had he already attempted to divide the Austrian Armies; but what his stratagems could not effect, their own disposition offered to him. Meaning to surround him, they necessarily were to act in detached bodies. He seized the lucky hour with vigour and sagacity; and, on the evening before the destined general attack, he silently quitted his position, and seized a post through which Laudohn was to pass. Daun had begun to move, when, to his inexpressible surprise, he found no enemy to encounter. The astonishment of Laudohn was not less, when, at three in the morning, he found himself opposed to the whole force of the King of Prussia. He was fallen into the snare, and it was too late to retreat. For three hours he sustained the redoubled onsets of the Prussian; but the King, who fought to avoid a battle, as well as to gain one, exerted such desperate heroism, that at length he totally routed the Austrians. They fled, leaving the Monarch in possession of every mark of victory, but expecting each moment to have it ravished from him.
Here, if ever, Marshal Daun seems to have hesitated unwisely. The Prussians were flushed with success; but such a victory was not gained without fatigue. Daun suspended his blow, and never recovered the opportunity: he lost it by waiting to ensure it. Never trusting to chance, while additional strength was in view, he detached a strong corps to meet the Russians and press them to advance. Great as the reinforcement was, it did not counterbalance the panic with which they were struck by Laudohn’s defeat. They repassed the Oder with precipitation, and left the King at liberty to join Prince Henry. Marshal Daun, who was more lessened by his competitor’s defeat than he could have been by any triumph of Laudohn, descended from the lofty hopes he had so reasonably entertained, and blockaded Schweidnitz. But the honour of forming a single siege was soon ravished from him by Frederick, who, having surprised and vanquished a corps under General Beck, obliged the Marshal to raise the blockade and retreat precipitately to the mountains.
Still dangers crowded on the King as fast as he dispersed them. While he was defending Silesia, the Russians, seeing Brandenburg open, turned their invasion towards that province. Count Czernichew led on a considerable body; Daun sent them 15,000 Austrians, and the Imperial Army in Saxony was ordered to meet them at the gates of Berlin. Count Halsen had upheld the sinking fortune of the King in Saxony: he was now commanded to make an effort for saving Berlin; but when he had assembled all possible force, it amounted but to 15,000 men. With such scanty means, he could only be witness to the reduction of the capital, which immediately capitulated. The Allied Army laid the town under heavy contribution; but the Russians, who had not distinguished themselves in that war by lenity, blushed to see themselves surpassed by the excesses of the Austrians; so much did animosity surpass barbarism. Even the Swedes had hoped to come in for share of the plunder of Berlin, and were stretching thither.
The King, whose fortune sunk wherever he was not in person to sustain it, marched to relieve his capital. The plunderers did not await him, but, after wasting the country, retired; the Imperialists, to profit of the King’s absence, and to seize Saxony, which lay at their mercy; the Russians, to form the siege of Colberg, which, however, they abandoned, and retreated. Laudohn had no better success before Cosel: and before the end of the campaign, the Swedes, too, were driven back by the alertness of General Werner.
Still Marshal Daun’s Army remained entire, and superior to the King’s. He had followed and watched every motion of that Prince, and both passed the Elbe on the same day. The two Armies encamped near Torgau; the Marshal with every advantage of position. The King’s situation was tremendous. The enemy was not to be forced from a post so judiciously chosen. Winter advanced; and Frederic had nothing but a ruined country to receive him, if defeated. The King saw the gulph that surrounded him. He saw the fruitlessness of disguising their danger to his Army. He determined to fight, and told his troops that he was resolved to conquer or die. Under the awfulness of despair, they attacked the enemy. The onset and the reception became the renown of such Armies and such Commanders. Fury animated the Prussians; intrepidity sustained the Austrians. The King’s valour was correspondent to his declaration. The Marshal showed that his fire had been restrained by wisdom alone—not by want of heroism. The event was long in suspense, and fluctuated alternately, each side being often repulsed, and returning to the charge with fresh alacrity. The Prussians at last threw the enemy into disorder; and the Marshal himself receiving a dangerous wound in the thigh, and being borne from the field, Count O’Donnel, who succeeded to the command, found it vain to dispute the field any longer. It was nine at night in the month of November; the battle had lasted from two in the afternoon. A retreat was sounded, and made in good order by the Austrians.
Dearly did the Prussians buy their victory; but in such a crisis what was too dear a price for Frederic to pay? His loss was computed at 13,000 men. The Austrians had not suffered less; in prisoners abundantly. Four Generals, 216 officers, and 8000 private men taken, with possession of the field, were decisive in favour of the Prussians. The recovery of all Saxony, but Dresden, made the victory indisputable.