The routed allies, exasperated and starving, and hating the Protestant inhabitants of the region through which they retreated, robbed and maltreated them without mercy. The woes which the defenseless inhabitants endured from the routed army in its flight no pen can adequately describe.
An eye-witness writes from near Weissenfels, in a report to the King of Poland, whose allies the French were, and whose territories they were ravaging:
“The French army so handled this place as not only to take from its inhabitants, by open force, all bread and articles of food, but likewise all clothes, bed-linens, and other portable goods. They also broke open, split to pieces, and emptied out all chests, boxes, presses, drawers; shot dead in the back-yards and on the roofs all manner of feathered stock, as hens, geese, pigeons. They carried off all swine, cows, sheep, and horses. They laid violent hands on the inhabitants, clapped swords, guns, and pistols to their breasts, threatening to kill them unless they brought out whatever goods they had; or hunted them out of their houses, shooting at them, cutting, sticking, and at last driving them away, thereby to have freer room to rob and plunder. They flung out hay and other harvest stock into the mud, and had it trampled to ruin under the horses’ feet.”
“For a hundred miles around,” writes St. Germain, “the country is plundered and harried as if fire from heaven had fallen on it. Scarcely have our plunderers and marauders left the houses standing.”
This signal achievement raised the military fame of Frederick higher than ever before. Still it did not perceptibly diminish the enormous difficulties with which he was environed. Army after army was marching upon him. Even by a series of successful battles his forces might be annihilated. But the renown of the great victory of Rossbach will ever reverberate through the halls of history.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE LEUTHEN CAMPAIGN.
Results of the Battle of Rossbach.—The Attack upon Breslau.—Extraordinary Address of the King to his Troops.—Confidence of the Prussians in their Commander.—Magnificent Array of the Austrians at Leuthen.—Tactics of Frederick.—The Battle Hymn.—The Battle and the Victory.—Scenes after the Battle.—Recapture of Breslau by Frederick.
The battle of Rossbach was fought on the 5th of November, 1757. Frederick had but little time to rejoice over his victory. The Austrians were overrunning Silesia. On the 14th of the month, the important fortress of Schweidnitz, with all its magazines, fell into their hands. Then Prince Charles, with sixty thousand Austrian troops, marched upon Breslau, the principal city of Silesia, situated on the Oder. The Prince of Bevern held the place with a little over twenty thousand Prussian troops. His army was strongly intrenched outside of the walls, under the guns of the city.
On the 22d of November the Austrians commenced their attack from five different points. It was a terrific conflict. Sixty thousand men stormed ramparts defended by twenty thousand as highly disciplined troops, and as desperate in valor, as ever stood upon a battle-field. The struggle commenced at three o’clock in the morning, and raged, over eight miles of country, until nine o’clock at night. Darkness and utter exhaustion terminated the conflict. The Austrians had lost, in killed and wounded, six thousand men, the Prussians eight thousand.