sake, as appears, but for his own: 'Hitherward, you alert Lacy; to cover my right flank here, my Hill of Reichenberg,—lest it be not impregnable enough against that feline enemy!' And there they have taken post, say 60,000 against 30,000; and are palisading to a quite extraordinary degree. No fight possible with Lacy or Daun."

This is what Mitchell counts the failure of Friedrich's enterprise: and certainly it grieved Friedrich a good deal. Who, on riding out to reconnoitre Reichenberg (Quintus Icilius and Battalion QUINTUS part of his escort, if that be an interesting circumstance), finds Reichenberg a plainly unattackable post; finds, by Daun's rate of palisading, that there will be no attack from Daun either. No attack from Daun;—and, therefore, that Hulsen's people may be sent home to Schlettau again; and that he, Friedrich, will take post close by, and wearisomely be content to wait for some new opportunity.

Which he does for a week to come; Daun sitting impregnable, intrenched and palisaded to the teeth,—rather wishing to be attacked, you would say; or hopeful sometimes of doing something of the Hochkirch sort again (for the country is woody, and the enemy audacious);—at all events, very clear not to attack. A man erring, sometimes to a notable degree, by over-caution. "Could hardly have failed to overwhelm Friedrich's small force, had he at once, on Friedrich's crossing the Elbe, joined Lacy, and gone out against him," thinks Tempelhof, pointing out the form of operation too. [Tempelhof, iv. 42, 48.] Caution is excellent; but not quite by itself. Would caution alone do it, an Army all of Druidic whinstones, or innocent clay-sacks, incapable of taking hurt, would be the proper one!—Daun stood there; Friedrich looking daily into him,—visibly in ill humor, says Mitchell; and no wonder; gloomy and surly words coming out of him, to the distress of his Generals: "Which I took the liberty of hinting, one evening, to his Majesty;" hint graciously received, and of effect perceptible, at least to my imagining.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25th, After nearly a week of this, there rose, towards sunset, all over the Reichenberg, and far and wide, an exuberant joy-firing: "For what in the world?" thinks Friedrich. Alas, your Majesty,—since your own messenger has not arrived, nor indeed ever will, being picked up by Pandours,—here, gathered from the Austrian outposts or deserters, are news for you, fatal enough! Landshut is done; Fouquet and his valiant 13,000 are trodden out there. Indignant Fouquet has obeyed you, not wisely but too well. He has kept Landshut six nights and five days. On the morning of the sixth day, here is what befell:—

"LANDSHUT, MONDAY, 23d JUNE, About a quarter to two in the morning, Loudon, who had gathered 31,000 horse and foot for the business, and taken his measures, fired aloft, by way of signal, four howitzers into the gray of the summer morning; and burst loose upon Fouquet, in various columns, on his southward front, on both flanks, ultimately in his rear too: columns all in the height of fighting humor, confident as three to one,—and having brandy in them, it is likewise said. Fouquet and his people stood to arms, in the temper Fouquet had vowed they would: defended their Hills with an energy, with a steady skill, which Loudon himself admired; but their Hill-works would have needed thrice the number;—Fouquet, by detaching and otherwise, has in arms only 10,680 men. Toughly as they strove, after partial successes, they began to lose one Hill, and then another; and in the course of hours, nearly all their Hills. Landshut Town Loudon had taken from them, Landshut and its roads: in the end, the Prussian position is becoming permeable, plainly untenable;—Austrian force is moving to their rearward to block the retreat.

"Seeing which latter fact, Fouquet throws out all his Cavalry, a poor 1,500, to secure the Passes of the Bober; himself formed square with the wrecks of his Infantry; and, at a steady step, cuts way for himself with bayonet and bullet. With singular success for some time, in spite of the odds. And is clear across the Bober; when lo, among the knolls ahead, masses of Austrian Cavalry are seen waiting him, besetting every passage! Even these do not break him; but these, with infantry and cannon coming up to help them, do. Here, for some time, was the fiercest tug of all,—till a bullet having killed Fouquet's horse, and carried the General himself to the ground, the spasm ended. The Lichnowski Dragoons, a famed Austrian regiment, who had charged and again charged with nothing but repulse on repulse, now broke in, all in a foam of rage; cut furiously upon Fouquet himself; wounded Fouquet thrice; would have killed him, had it not been for the heroism of poor Trautschke, his Groom [let us name the gallant fellow, even if unpronounceable], who flung himself on the body of his Master, and took the bloody strokes instead of him; shrieking his loudest, 'Will you murder the Commanding General, then!' Which brought up the Colonel of Lichnowski; a Gentleman and Ritter, abhorrent of such practices. To him Fouquet gave his sword;—kept his vow never to draw it again.

"The wrecks of Fouquet's Infantry were, many of them, massacred, no quarter given; such the unchivalrous fury that had risen. His Cavalry, with the loss of about 500, cut their way through. They and some stragglers of Foot, in whole about 1,500 of both kinds, were what remained of those 10,680 after this bloody morning's work. There had been about six hours of it; 'all over by 8 o'clock.'" [Hofbericht von der am 23 Junius, 1760, bey Landshuth vorgefallenen Action (in Seyfarth, Beylagen, ii. 669-671); Helden-Geschichte, vi. 258-284; Tempelhof, iv. 26-41; Stenzel, v. 241 (who, by oversight,—this Volume being posthumous to poor Stenzel,—protracts the Action to "half-past 7 in the evening").]

Fouquet has obeyed to the letter: "Did not my King wrong me?" Fouquet may say to himself. Truly, Herr General, your King's Order was a little unwise; as you (who were on the ground, and your King not) knew it to be. An unwise Order;—perhaps not inexcusable in the sudden circumstances. And perhaps a still more perfect Bayard would have preferred obeying such a King in spirit, rather than in letter, and thereby doing him vital service AGAINST his temporary will? It is not doubted but Fouquet, left to himself and his 13,000, with the Fortresses and Garrisons about him, would have maintained himself in Silesia till help came. The issue is,—Fouquet has probably lost this fine King his Silesia, for the time being; and beyond any question, has lost him 10,000 Prussian-Spartan fighters, and a fine General whom he could ill spare!—In a word, the Gate of Silesia is burst open; and Loudon has every prospect of taking Glatz, which will keep it so.

What a thunder-bolt for Friedrich! One of the last pillars struck away from his tottering affairs. "Inevitable, then? We are over with it, then?" One may fancy Friedrich's reflections. But he showed nothing of them to anybody; in a few hours, had his mind composed, and new plans on the anvil. On the morrow of that Austrian Joy-Firing,—morrow, or some day close on it (ought to have been dated, but is not),—there went from him, to Magdeburg, the Order: "Have me such and such quantities of Siege-Artillery in a state of readiness." [Tempelhof, iv. 51.] Already meaning, it is thought, or contemplating as possible a certain Siege, which surprised everybody before long! A most inventive, enterprising being; no end to his contrivances and unexpected outbreaks; especially when you have him jammed into a corner, and fancy it is all over with him!

"To no other General," says Tempelhof, "would such a notion of besieging Dresden have occurred; or if it had suggested itself, the hideous difficulties would at once have banished it again, or left it only as a pious wish. But it is strokes of this kind that characterize the great man. Often enough they have succeeded, been decisive of great campaigns and wars, and become splendid in the eyes of