The Prussians were therefore involved in a frontal attack, and their inferiority in numbers at once began to tell against them. Yet still, though Frederick had only the reserves of cavalry in hand and these, even when he put himself at their head, refused to pass through the fire to aid them, the dauntless Prussian left achieved fresh triumphs. When the deadly wrestle reached its fourth hour they still maintained their hold upon the heights. Daun hurled his light Saxon cavalry upon them, but with a heroism worthy of Mollwitz field they formed into groups and drove back the foe. But at this moment the Count de Thiennes, colonel of a regiment of young dragoons from the Netherlands, begged for leave to attack. He won a grudging assent, at first refused, “but,” said Daun, “you won’t do much good with your beardless boys.” “You will see,” answered Thiennes and galloped back to his regiment. “Boys,” he cried, after repeating the field-marshal’s taunt, “show that though you are beardless you can bite.” Uniting with the Saxons, the “boys” swept the enemy’s horse from the field, then flung themselves on the grim square of tattered heroes, broke it, and drove it from the heights. This was the prelude to a general flight of the exhausted remnants of the Prussian infantry. Almost beside himself with rage and disappointment, Frederick collected some forty men and led them against the foe. But even the King could not persuade them to suicide. One by one they slunk away till at last his adjutant put the question, “Will your Majesty take the battery alone?” Frederick once more gazed at the enemy through his glass, then rode to Bevern on the right and ordered retreat.
Of 31,000 Prussians little more than 17,000 were left. As at Prague, it was the infantry whose loss was the greatest. Of 18,000, more than two-thirds were killed or captured. It was true that they had inflicted upon the enemy a loss of more than 8000 men, and that Daun, “like a good Christian who would not suffer the sun to go down on his wrath,” did nothing by way of pursuit. But Frederick saw at a glance that the conquest of Bohemia was now beyond his strength. On June 20, 1757, the very day on which Prince Charles had announced that he would be compelled to surrender, the besiegers quitted Prague.
Frederick’s plan was to retreat slowly through north-eastern Bohemia into Saxony, exhausting the country as he went. “My heart is torn in pieces,” he wrote to Prince Maurice two days after the battle, “but I am not cast down and will try on the first opportunity to wipe out this disgrace.” Perhaps because, in his own phrase, “a certain Hungarian rabble has taken kennel on the highways,” his letter to his sister makes light of Kolin. “I attacked Daun on the 18th. In spite of all our efforts, we found the country so difficult that I believed myself bound to abandon the enterprise in order not to lose my army.” For the information of Berlin, Eichel magnified the gentle slopes which are all that the battle-field can show into “a steep mountain, cut by many ravines and defiles at its base.” But to London the King sent a franker statement.
“After winning eight battles in succession, we have for the first time been beaten, and that because the enemy had three posts on a tolerably high hill fortified by strong batteries one behind another. After taking two of them, the attacking battalions and their supports had suffered so much that they were too few to force the third post, and so the battle ended for lack of combatants.”
The transports of the Queen and the exaggerated caution with which Daun and Prince Charles neglected to follow up their advantage attested the truth of Frederick’s assurance that his situation was by no means desperate.
From day to day however, it altered for the worse. Disaster in the field was followed by affliction in the home. Within a fortnight of Kolin, Frederick suddenly learned that his mother was no more. The crushing news was blurted out by a letter from his wife, whose thoughtless use of a red seal in place of a black one frustrated the kindly machinery which Podewils and Eichel had devised for preparing the mind of the King. He had just written to Wilhelmina a letter full of confidence.
“You have nothing to fear on my account, dear sister, men are always in the hands of what is called destiny.... Germany is passing through a terrible crisis. I am obliged to stand alone in defending her liberties and her faith. If I fall, there will be an end of them. But I have good hope. However great may be the number of my enemies, I trust in the goodness of my cause, in the admirable courage of my troops and in the goodwill which exists from the marshals down to the humblest soldier.”
Then the blow fell and for two days, even at such a crisis, the flow of political correspondence is checked. His grief finds utterance in an agonised note to his sister Amelia.
“All kinds of misfortune are overwhelming me at once.... I am more dead than alive.... Perhaps Heaven has taken away our dear Mother that she may not see the misfortunes of our House.” “Yesterday and the day before,” writes Eichel on July 3d, “His Majesty’s grief has been very great and violent, but today it is somewhat lessened, because his Majesty has taken into consideration his duty to his state, his army and his faithful subjects at the present crisis, and the necessary orders have somewhat relieved his depression, though there is no lack of gloomy moments and intervals.”
On the same day the King began to pour out his soul to Mitchell, who owns himself “most sensibly affected to see him indulging his grief and giving way to the warmest filial affections.”