HASTY RETREAT OF THE RUSSIANS OUT OF PRUSSIA.
After this engagement, mareschal Lehwald changed the position of his army, by drawing towards Peters-wald; and the Russians, after remaining quite inactive till the thirteenth of September, on a sudden, to the great surprise of every one, retreated out of Prussia with such precipitation, that they left all their sick and wounded behind them, to the amount of fifteen or sixteen thousand men, together with eighty pieces of cannon, and a considerable part of their military stores. Mareschal Apraxin masked his design by advancing all his irregulars towards the Prussian army; so that mareschal Lehwald was not informed of it till the third day, when he detached prince George of Plolstein with ten thousand horse to pursue them but with little hopes of coming up with them as they made forced marches, in order to be the sooner in their own country. However, the Prussians took some of them prisoners, and many stragglers were killed by the country people in their flight towards Tilsit, which they abandoned, though they still kept Memel, and shortly after added some new fortifications to that place. They made their retreat in two columns, one of which directed its course towards Memel; while the other took the nearest way through the bailiwick of Absternen, and threw bridges over the river Jura. Both columns burnt every village they passed through without distinction. The Prussians were obliged to desist from the pursuit of these barbarians, because the bridges, thrown over the river Memel, had been destroyed by the violence of the stream. The Russian army suffered greatly for want of bread, as all the countries were ruined through which it passed, so that they could procure no sort of subsistence but herbage and rye-bread. All the roads were strewed with dead bodies of men and horses. The real cause of this sudden retreat is as great a mystery as the reason of stopping so long, the year before, on the borders of Lithuania; though the occasion of it is said to have been the illness of the czarina, who was seized with a kind of apoplectic fit, and had made some new regulations in case of a vacancy of the throne, which rendered it expedient that the regular forces should be at hand to support the measures taken by the government.
FRENCH AND IMPERIALISTS TAKE GOTHA.
The king of Prussia, after remaining for some time encamped between Bautzen and Goerlitz, removed his head-quarters to Bernstedel; and on the fifteenth of August his army came in sight of the Austrian camp, and within cannon-shot of it: upon which the Austrians struck their tents, and drew up in order of battle before their camp. The king formed his army over against them, and immediately went to reconnoitre the ground between the armies; but, as it was then late, he deferred the more exact examination of that circumstance till the next day. The two armies continued under arms all night. Next morning at break of day, the king found the Austrians encamped with their right at the river Weisle; the rest of their army extended along a rising ground, at the foot of a mountain covered with wood, which protected their left; and before their front, at the bottom of the hill on which they were drawn up, was a small brook, passable only in three places, and for no more than four or five men a-breast. Towards the left of their army was an opening, where three or four battalions might have marched in front; but behind it they had placed three lines of infantry, and on a hill which flanked this opening, within musket-shot, were placed four thousand foot, with forty or fifty pieces of cannon; so that, in reality, this was the strongest part of their camp. The king left nothing undone to bring the Austrians to battle; but finding them absolutely bent on avoiding it, after lying four days before them, he and his army returned to their camp at Bernstedel. They were followed by some of the enemy’s hussars and pan-dours, who, however, had not the satisfaction to take the smallest booty in this retreat. The Austrian army, which thus declined engaging, was, by their own account, an hundred and thirty thousand strong, more than double the number of the king of Prussia, who, the day he returned to Bernstedel, after he had retired about two thousand yards, again drew up his army in line of battle, and remained so upwards of an hour, but not a man stirred from the Austrian camp. The army of the empire, commanded by the prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen, and that of the French under the prince de Soubise, making together about fifty thousand men, half of which were French, had by this time joined, and advanced as far as Erfurth in Saxony; upon which his Prussian majesty, finding that all his endeavours could not bring the Austrians to an engagement, set out from Lusatia, accompanied by mareschal Keith, with sixteen battalions and forty squadrons of his troops, and arrived at Dresden on the twenty-ninth of August, leaving the rest of the army in a strong camp, under the prince of Bevern. With this detachment, which, by the junction of several bodies of troops, amounted to about forty thousand men, he made a quick march, by the way of Leipsic towards Erfurth, to give battle to the united army of the French and the empire. But by the time he arrived at Erfurth, which was on the fourteenth of September, the enemy had retreated towards Gotha; and upon his further approach, they retired to Eyesenach, where they intrenched themselves in a very strong camp. His majesty’s headquarters were at Kirschlaben, near Erfurth. While the two armies were thus situated, major-general Seydelitz, who occupied the town of Gotha, being informed, on the nineteenth, that a large body of the enemy was coming towards him, and that it consisted of two regiments of Austrian hussars, one regiment of French hussars, and a detachment made up of French grenadiers, troops of the army of the empire, and a great number of croats and pandours, retired, and posted himself at some distance. The enemy immediately took possession of the town and castle; but general Seydelitz, having been reinforced, attacked the enemy with such vigour, that he soon obliged them to abandon this new conquest, and to retire with great precipitation; a report having been spread, that the Prussian army was advancing against them, with the king himself in person. The Prussian hussars took a considerable booty on this occasion, and general Seydelitz sent prisoners to the camp, one lieutenant-colonel, three majors, four lieutenants, and sixty-two soldiers of the enemy, who had also about an hundred and thirty killed. After this action his Prussian majesty advanced near Eyesenach, with a design to attack the combined army; but they were so strongly intrenched, that he found it impracticable. His provisions falling short, he was obliged to retire towards Erfurth, and soon after to Naumburgh, on the river Sala; whereupon the combined army inarched, and again took possession of Gotha, Erfurth, and Weiman: which last place, however, they soon after quitted.
ACTION BETWEEN THE PRUSSIANS AND AUSTRIANS NEAR GOERLITZ.
Upon the king of Prussia’s leaving Bernstedel, the Austrians took possession of it on the sixth of September, and made prisoners a Prussian battalion which had been left there. The next day fifteen thousand Austrians attacked two battalions of general Winterfield’s troops, being part of the prince of Bevern’s army, who were posted on a high ground on the other side of the Neiss, near Hennersdorff, in the neighbourhood of Goerlitz; and, after being repulsed several times, at last made themselves masters of the eminence. The loss, in this action, was considerable on both sides, but greatest on that of the Prussians, not so much by the number of their slain, which scarcely exceeded that of the Austrians, as by the death of their brave general Win-terfield, who, as he was leading up succours to the battalions that were engaged, received a shot from a cannon, of which he died the night following. The-generals Nadasti and Clerici, count d’Arberg, colonel Elrickhausen, and several other persons of distinction, were wounded, and the young count of Groesbeck and the marquis d’Asque killed, on the side of the Austrians, who took six pieces of the Prussian cannon, six pair of their colours, and made general Kemeke, the count d’Anhalt, and some other officers, prisoners. After this skirmish, the prince of Bevern, with the Prussian army under his command, retreated from Goerlitz to Rothen-berg, then passed the Queiss at Sygersdorff, from whence he marched to Buntzlau, in Silesia, and on the first of October reached Breslau, without suffering any loss, though the numerous army of the Austrians followed him for some days. Upon his arrival there, he chose a very strong camp on the other side of the Oder, in order to cover the city of Breslau, to the fortifications of which he immediately added several new works. Though neither side had any very signal advantage in this engagement, more than that the Austrians remained masters of the field, yet great rejoicings were made at Vienna on account of it. The death of general Win-terfield was, indeed, an irreparable loss to his Prussian majesty, who received at the same time the news of this misfortune, and of the Swedes having now actually begun hostilities in Pomerania.