The army of Prince Charles was so utterly destroyed or dispersed by the battle of Leuthen that the morning after his terrible defeat he could rally around his banners, by count, but fifty thousand men. These were utterly disheartened. Stragglers were wandering all over the country. A few thousand of these again joined the ranks. Seventeen thousand men left in Breslau were soon captured. Prince Charles, abandoning guns and wagons, fled through rain, and mud, and sleet directly south toward Königgrätz, in Bohemia. The sufferings of the troops were awful. Several hundred sentinels, in one night, were frozen stiff at their posts. The dreadful retreat continued for ten days.
“The army,” writes Prince Charles, mournfully, “was greatly dilapidated. The soldiers were without clothes, and in a condition truly pitiable. So closely were we pursued by the enemy that at night we were compelled to encamp without tents.”
Having reached the shelter of Königgrätz, he counted his troops, and found that he had in rank and file but thirty-seven thousand men. Of these, twenty-two thousand, from sickness, exhaustion, and wounds, were in hospital. Thus, out of the army of ninety thousand men with which he had commenced the campaign early in December, at the close of the month he could array but fifteen thousand on any field of battle.
The astonishment and indignation in Vienna, in view of this terrible defeat, were intense. Prince Charles was immediately relieved of his command, and General Daun appointed in his stead. It is the testimony of all military men that the battle of Leuthen was one of the most extraordinary feats of war. Napoleon, speaking of it at St. Helena, said,
“This battle is a masterpiece of movements, of manœuvres, and of resolution. It is enough to immortalize Frederick, and to rank him among the greatest generals. It develops, in the highest degree, both his moral and his military qualities.”
Voltaire, in summing up a sketch of this campaign of 1757, writes in characteristic phrase:
“Even Gustavus Adolphus never did such great things. One must, indeed, pardon Frederick his verses, his sarcasms, and his little malices. All the faults of the man disappear before the glory of the hero.”
On the 19th of December, the day of the capitulation of Breslau, Frederick wrote from that place to his friend D’Argens as follows:
“Your friendship seduces you, mon cher. I am but a paltry knave in comparison with Alexander, and not worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of Cæsar. Necessity, who is the mother of industry, has made me act, and have recourse to desperate remedies in evils of a like nature.
“We have taken here from fourteen to fifteen thousand prisoners. In all, I have above twenty-three thousand of the queen’s troops in my hands, fifteen generals, and above seven hundred officers. It is a plaster on my wounds, but it is far enough from healing them.”