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.