The Prussian works being completed, and heavy artillery arrived, four batteries, erected on the banks of the Moldaw, began to play with great fury. Near three hundred bombs, besides an infinity of ignited balls, were thrown into the city in the space of twenty-four hours. The scene was lamentable, houses, men, and horses wrapped in flames and reduced to ashes. The confusion within, together with the want of proper artillery and ammunition, obliged the Austrians to cease firing, and furnished his Prussian majesty with all the opportunity he could wish of pouring destruction upon this unfortunate city. The horrors of war seemed to have extinguished the principles of humanity. No regard was paid to the distress of the inhabitants; the Austrians obstinately maintained possession, and the Prussians practised every stratagem, every barbarous refinement, that constitutes the military art, to oblige them to capitulate. After the conflagration had lasted three days, and consumed a prodigious number of buildings, the principal inhabitants, burghers, and clergy, perceiving their city on the point of being reduced to a heap of rubbish, besought the commander, in a body, to hearken to terms; but he was deaf to the voice of pity, and, instead of being moved with their supplications, drove out twelve thousand persons, the least useful in defending the city. These, by order of his Prussian majesty, were again forced back, which soon produced so great a scarcity of provisions within the walls, that the Austrians were reduced to the necessity of eating horseflesh, forty horses being daily distributed to the troops, and the same food sold at four-pence a pound to the inhabitants. However, as there still remained great abundance of corn, they were far from being brought to the last extremity. Two vigorous and well-conducted sallies were made, but they proved unsuccessful. The only advantage resulting from them, was the perpetual alarm in which they kept the Prussian camp, and the vigilance required to guard against the attacks of a numerous, resolute, and desperate garrison.
GEORGE II. 1727-1760
COUNT DAUN COMMANDS THE AUSTRIANS.
Whatever difficulties might have attended the conquest of Prague, certain it is, that the affairs of the empress-queen were in the most critical and desperate situation. Her grand army dispersed in parties, and dying for subsistence in small corps; their princes and commanders cooped up in Prague; that capital in imminent danger of being taken, the flourishing kingdom of Bohemia ready to fall into the hands of the conqueror; a considerable army on the point of surrendering prisoners of war; all the queen’s hereditary dominions open and exposed, the whole fertile tract of country from Egra to the Moldaw in actual possession of the Prussians, the distance to the archduchy of Austria not very considerable, and secured only by the Danube; Vienna under the utmost apprehensions of a siege, and the imperial family ready to take refuge in Hungary; the Prussian forces deemed invincible, and the sanguine friends of that monarch already sharing with him, in imagination, the spoils of the ancient and illustrious house of Austria. Such was the aspect of affairs, and such the difficulties to be combated, when Leopold, count Daun, was appointed to the command of the Austrian forces, to stem the torrent of disgrace, and turn the fortune of the war. This general, tutored by long experience under the best officers of Europe, and the particular favourite of the great Kevenhuller, was now, for the first time, raised to act in chief, at the head of an army, on which depended the fate of Austria and the empire. Born of a noble family, he relied solely upon his own merit, without soliciting court favour; he aspired after the highest preferment, and succeeded by mere dint of superior worth. His progress from the station of a subaltern was slow and silent; his promotion to the chief command was received with universal esteem and applause. Cautious, steady, penetrating, and sagacious, he was opposed as another Fabius to the modern Hannibal, to check the fire and vigour of that monarch by prudent foresight and wary circumspection. Arriving at Romischbrod, within a few miles of Prague, the day after the late defeat, he halted to collect the fugitive corps and broken remains of the Austrian army, and soon drew together a force so considerable as to attract the notice of his Prussian majesty, who detached the prince of Bevern, with twenty battalions, and thirty squadrons, to attack him before numbers should render him formidable. Daun was too prudent to give battle, with dispirited troops, to an army flushed with victory. He retired on the first advice that the Prussians were advancing, and took post at Kolin, where he intrenched himself strongly, opened the way for the daily supply of recruits sent to his army, and inspired the garrison of Prague with fresh courage, in expectation of being soon relieved. Here he kept close within his camp, divided the Prussian force, by obliging the king to employ near half his army in watching his designs, weakened his efforts against Prague, harassed the enemy by cutting off their convoys, and restored by degrees the languishing and almost desponding spirits of his troops. Perfectly acquainted with the ardour and discipline of the Prussian forces, with the enterprising and impetuous disposition of that monarch, and sensible that his situation would prove irksome and embarrassing to the enemy, he improved it to the best advantage, seemed to foresee all the consequences, and directed every measure to produce them. Thus he retarded the enemy’s operations, and assiduously avoided precipitating an action until the Prussian vigour should be exhausted, their strength impaired by losses and desertion, the first fire and ardour of their genius extinguished by continual fatigue and incessant alarms, and until the impression made on his own men, by the late defeat, should in some degree be effaced. The event justified Daun’s conduct. His army grew every day more numerous, while his Prussian majesty began to express the utmost impatience at the length of the siege. When that monarch first invested Prague, it was on the presumption that the numerous forces within the walls would, by consuming all the provisions, oblige it to surrender in a few days; but perceiving that the Austrians had still a considerable quantity of corn, that count Daun’s army was daily increasing, and would soon be powerful enough not only to cope with the detachment under the prince of Bevern, but in a condition to raise the siege, he determined to give the count battle with one part of his army, while he kept Prague blocked up with the other. The Austrians, amounting now to sixty thousand men, were deeply intrenched, and defended by a numerous train of artillery, placed on redoubts and batteries erected on the most advantageous posts. Every accessible part of the camp was fortified with lines and heavy pieces of battering cannon, and the foot of the hills secured by difficult defiles. Yet, strong as this situation might appear, formidable as the Austrian forces certainly were, his Prussian majesty undertook to dislodge them with a body of horse and foot not exceeding thirty-two thousand men.
KING OF PRUSSIA DEFEATED AT KOLIN.
On the thirteenth day of June, the king of Prussia quitted the camp before Prague, escorted by a few battalions and squadrons, with which he joined the prince of Bevern at Milkowitz, Mareschal Keith, it is said, strenuously opposed this measure, and advised either raising the siege entirely, and attacking the Austrians with the united forces of Prussia, or postponing the attack on the camp at Kolin, until his majesty should either gain possession of the city, or some attempts should be made to oblige him to quit his posts. From either measure an advantage would have resulted. With his whole army he might probably have defeated count Daun, or at least have obliged him to retreat. Had he continued within his lines at Prague, the Austrian general could not have constrained him to raise the siege without losing his own advantageous situation, and giving battle upon terms nearly equal. But the king, elated with success, impetuous in his valour, and confident of the superiority of his own troops in point of discipline, thought all resistance must sink under the weight of his victorious arm, and yield to that courage which had already surmounted such difficulties, disregarded the mareschal’s sage counsel, and inarched up to the attack undaunted, and even assured of success. By the eighteenth the two armies were in sight, and his majesty found that count Daun had not only fortified his camp with all the heavy cannon of Olmutz, but was strongly reinforced with troops from Moravia and Austria, which had joined him after the king’s departure from Prague. He found the Austrians drawn up in three lines upon the high grounds between Gen-litz, and St. John the Baptist. Difficult as it was to approach their situation, the Prussian infantry marched up with firmness, while shot was poured like hail from the enemy’s batteries, and began the attack about three in the afternoon. They drove the Austrians with irresistible intrepidity from two eminences secured with heavy cannon, and two villages defended by several battalions; but, in attacking the third eminence, were flanked by the Austrian cavalry, by grape-shot poured from the batteries; and, after a violent conflict, and prodigious loss of men, thrown into disorder. Animated with the king’s presence, they rallied, and returned with double ardour to the charge, but were a second time repulsed. Seven times successively did prince Ferdinand renew the attack, performing every duty of a great general and valiant soldier, though always with the same fortune. The inferiority of the Prussian infantry, the disadvantages of ground, where the cavalry could not act, the advantageous situation of the enemy, their numerous artillery, their intrenchments, numbers, and obstinacy, joined to the skill and conduct of their general, all conspired to defeat the hopes of the Prussians, to surmount their valour, and oblige them to retreat. The king then made a last and furious effort, at the head of the cavalry, on the enemy’s left wing, but with as little success as all the former attacks. Every effort was made, and every attempt was productive only of greater losses and misfortunes. At last, after exposing his person in the most perilous situations, his Prussian majesty drew off his forces from the field of battle, retiring in such good order, in sight of the enemy, as prevented a pursuit, or the loss of his artillery and baggage. Almost all the officers on either side distinguished themselves; and count Daun, whose conduct emulated that of his Prussian majesty, received two slight wounds, and had a horse killed under him. The losses of both armies were very considerable; on that of the Prussians, the killed and wounded amounted to eight thousand; less pernicious, however, to his majesty’s cause than the frequent desertion, and other innumerable ill consequences that ensued.
When the Prussian army arrived at Nimburgh, his majesty, leaving the command with the prince of Be-vern, took horse, and, escorted by twelve or fourteen hussars, set out for Prague, where he arrived next morning without halting, after having been the whole preceding day on horseback. Immediately he gave orders for sending off all his artillery, ammunition, and baggage; these were executed with so much expedition, that the tents were struck, and the army on their march, before the garrison were informed of the king’s defeat. Thus terminated the battle of Kolin and siege of Prague, in which the acknowledged errors of his Prussian majesty were, in some measure, atoned by the candour with which he owned his mistake, both in a letter to the earl mareschal, [419] [See note 3 I, at the end of this Vol.] and in conversation with several of his general officers. Most people, indeed, imagined the king highly blameable for checking the ardour of his troops to stop and lay siege to Prague. They thought he should have pursued his conquests, over-run Austria, Moravia, and all the hereditary dominions, from which alone the empress-queen could draw speedy succours. A body of twenty or thirty thousand men would have blocked up Prague, while the remainder of the Prussian forces might have obliged the imperial family to retire from Vienna, and effectually prevented count Daun from assembling another army. It was universally expected he would have bent his march straight to this capital; but he dreaded leaving the numerous army in Prague behind, and it was of great importance to complete the conquest of Bohemia. The prince of Prussia marched all night with his corps to Nimburgh, where he joined the prince of Bevern, and mareschal Keith retreated next day. Count Brown having died before, of the wounds he received on the sixth of May, prince Charles of Lorraine sallied out with a large body of Austrians, and attacked the rear of the Prussians; but did no further mischief than killing about two hundred of their men. The siege of Prague being thus raised, the imprisoned Austrians received their deliverer, count Daun, with inexpressible joy, and their united forces became greatly superior to those of the king of Prussia, who was in a short time obliged to evacuate Bohemia, and take refuge in Saxony. The Austrians harassed him as much as possible in his retreat; but their armies, though superior in numbers, were not in a condition, from their late sufferings, to make any decisive attempt upon him, as the frontiers of Saxony abound with situations easily defended.