The high and steep face of the Loboschberg was covered by vines, and intersected by many stone walls. Among these Marshal Brown advanced a large body of Croats, with several battalions of Hungarians to sustain them; a deep ravine and rugged rivulet lay between the army of Frederick and the Austrians, which consisted of 72 squadrons, 52 battalions, and 98 pieces of ordnance, being 70,000 men. Brown formed them in two lines, with his horsemen on the wings. He planted cannon in the village of Lowositz, and in redoubts on the level ground before it.
At seven in the morning, and during a dense fog, the battle began between the Prussian left and the Croats on the Loboschberg, who continued firing till noon, when Frederick, seeing that Brown's right was his weakest point, marched from the summit of the mountain and drove down the Croats and Hungarians from the vineyards into the plain and ravine below. The marshal, believing that the fortune of the day depended on the retention of Lowositz, threw his retiring right wing into the village, where it soon gave way. He then led forward his left, but the infantry fell into confusion at the village of Sulowitz, being exposed to a dreadful fire of shot and shell from redoubts and field-pieces, grape, canister, hand-grenades, and musketry, which mowed them down like grass, and drove them back in disorder; the marshal then ordered a retreat, which he conducted in so masterly a manner, that no effort was made to harass him. He fell back at three in the afternoon to a new position, so well chosen that Frederick dared not follow, but contented himself with keeping his line behind the ravine of Lowositz, though by sending forward a body of cavalry under the Prince of Bavern, he turned the marshal's left flank, a manœuvre which compelled him to repass the Egra, and again occupy his old camp at Budyn.
Such was the battle of Lowositz, where the marshal left 4000 of his men dead on the field, and in his retreat had to blow up his magazine, while the Prussians had only 653 killed and 800 wounded. Having failed to relieve the Saxons, he marched to Lichtendorf, near Schandau, to join the King of Poland, and made an attempt to force back the Prussians at the head of 8000 chosen soldiers; but the effort proved ineffectual, and Augustus III. was compelled to capitulate, and deliver 17,000 men and eighty pieces of cannon into the hands of Frederick—a mortification as bitter to the marshal as it was to the Polish monarch.
On the 14th he retired towards Bohemia. The Prussian hussars followed his rear-guard, and put 300 Croats to the sword. For his services he now received the Collar of the Golden Fleece—one of the first of European knightly orders.
In 1757 a confederacy was completed to punish Frederick of Prussia for his invasion of Saxony. France sent 80,000 men to the Rhine, under the Marshal d'Estrees; 60,000 Russians threatened Livonia; the Swedes gathered on the Pomeranian frontier; and Maria Theresa mustered 150,000 soldiers, the most of whom were stationed in Prague, under Prince Charles of Lorraine and the Marshals Brown and Daun. The Austrians were then formed into four divisions—one under Marshal Brown, at Budyn; a second under the Duke d'Aremberg, at Egra; a third under Count Konigsegg, at Richtenberg; a fourth under Marshal Daun, in Moravia. Undeterred by this vast array against him, Frederick in April marched straight upon Prague, and driving before him a column under Marshal Schwerin, attacked Brown at Budyn, before Daun's division could join him from Moravia. On finding his flank turned, Brown fell back upon the Bohemian capital, and Frederick, leaving one division of his army under Marshal Keith, followed him fast with the rest, and gave battle to the Austrians on the 6th of May, at dawn in the morning.
The Imperialists under Marshal Brown were 80,000 strong; his left wing rested on the Ziskberg towards Prague; his right on the hill of Sterboli. In the front were steep and craggy mountains, which no cavalry could climb or artillery traverse; but the deep vale at their foot was lined by hussars and hardy Hungarian infantry. The battle was commenced by Lieutenant-General the Prince of Schonaich assailing the Austrian right with sixty-five squadrons of cavalry; a movement which Brown skilfully repulsed by drawing off his cavalry from the left, and overwhelming the prince by the united rush of one hundred and four squadrons. Thus outflanked, they were repulsed, after two charges, until General Zeithen hurled the Austrians back upon their infantry by a magnificent charge of twenty squadrons of hussars.
The battalions of Prussian grenadiers were routed by a discharge of twelve-pounders loaded with musket-shot, and the noble Marshal Schwerin, who, seizing the colours, placed himself on foot at their head, was shot through the heart; but his officers rallied the troops, and assailed the Austrian right, at the same moment that Frederick broke through their centre, and drove it towards Prague. A desperate struggle with the bayonet now ensued between the Austrian left and the Prussian right under Prince Henry: and Marshal Brown, while in act of issuing orders to an aid-de-camp, received a deadly wound in the body; and as he could ill brook the double mortification of a defeat and of resigning the command to Prince Charles of Lorraine, it became mortal. He was compelled to leave the field, from which his right wing fled to Maleschitz, while the left followed the centre in hopeless disorder to Prague, leaving the victory to the Prussians, who by their own account had 3000 killed and 6000 wounded (by another account, 18,000 killed), 397 officers fell, many of them high in rank; 8000 Austrians were slain, 9000 taken prisoners, and 50,000 were shut up in Prague, while all the cavalry fled to Beneschau, and joined Marshal Daun. Such was the terrible and disastrous battle of Prague, and seldom has the sun set upon such a scene of suffering or slaughter as the field presented, for there were more than twenty thousand killed and wounded men lying upon it at six in the evening!
Marshal Brown was conveyed by his soldiers into Prague, where he endured the greatest torture from his wound, which was aggravated by the bitterness of being disabled at such a critical time. Thus by the agitation and bitterness of his mind it became fatal, and fifty-one days after the battle he expired of mingled agony and chagrin, on the 26th of June, 1757, at the age of fifty-two.
Thus died Austria's most able general and diplomatist—and one of Ireland's greatest sons; one of whom she has every reason to be proud, for he was the military rival of Frederick of Prussia, and of France's most skilful marshals, and he filled all Europe with the fame of his exploits in the field and his talent in the cabinet.
A magnificent monument was erected to his memory, and his titles and estates were inherited by his sons, of whom he left two by his countess, Maria Philippina of Martinitz. One of these died at Vienna, on the 1st May, 1759, a major-general in the service of Austria: he expired in great torture, under wounds received in battle.