THE AUSTRIANS TAKE SCHWEIDNITZ.

Whilst his Prussian majesty was thus successful against the French and Imperialists, the Austrians, who had carefully avoided coming to an open engagement with him, gained ground apace in Silesia. A detachment of their army, under the command of count Nadasti, had already invested Schweidnitz, and opened the trenches before it on the twenty-sixth of October. The Prussian garrison, commanded by general de la Motte Fouquet, determined to defend the place as long as possible; and accordingly on the thirtieth they made a sally, in which they killed, wounded, and took prisoners, eight hundred of the besiegers, and did some damage to their works; but on the sixth of November the Austrians began to cannonade the city furiously, and on the eleventh made themselves masters of the ramparts by assault. The garrison, however, having taken care, during the siege, to throw up a strong in-trenchment in the market-place, retreated thither, and held out till the next day, when they surrendered themselves prisoners of war. After the reduction of this place, general Nadasti, leaving in it a sufficient garrison, marched with the remainder of his troops, and joined the main army of the Austrians, under the command of prince Charles of Lorraine and mareschal Daun, who, whilst he was busied in the siege of Schweidnitz, had invested Breslau on the left of the Oder; the prince of Bevern defending it on the right, where he was strongly encamped, with his little army, under the cannon of the city. The whole army of the Austrians being now re-assembled, and intelligence having been brought not only of the king of Prussia’s late victory near Leipsic, but also that he was advancing to the relief of the prince of Bevern, it was resolved immediately to attack the last in his intrenchments. Accordingly, on the twenty-second of November, about nine in the morning, the Austrians began a most furious discharge of their cannon, forty of which were twenty-four pounders, and this continued without ceasing till one, when it was succeeded by a severe fire of their small arms, which lasted till five in the evening. The Prussians, with undaunted resolution, stood two of the most violent attacks that were ever made; but at the third, overpowered by numbers, and assailed on both sides, they began to lose ground, and were forced to retire from one intrenchment to another. In this extremity, night coming on, the Prussian generals fearing their intrenchments would be entirely forced, and that they should then be totally defeated, thought proper to retreat. The prince of Bevern, with the greatest part of the army, retired to an eminence on the banks of the Oder, whilst the rest of the troops threw themselves into Breslau, which they might have defended, in all probability, till the king had come to its relief. But, on the twenty-fourth, their commander-in-chief, the prince of Bevern, going to reconnoitre the enemy, with only a single groom to attend him, fell in among a party of croats, who took him prisoner.*

* We are told, that he mistook these croats for Prussian
hussars. But some of the circumstances of this mysterious
affair were interpreted into a premeditated design in the
prince to be taken prisoner. It cannot otherwise he supposed
that a man of his rank, a prince, a commander-in-chief,
should officiously undertake the always dangerous task of
reconnoitering the enemy with so slight an attendance as
only one man, and that but a groom, even if he had judged it
necessary to see things with his own eyes. Some secret
dissatisfaction, hitherto unknown to us, may possibly have
been the cause of his taking this step; or, which seems
still more probable, he might he ashamed, or, perhaps, even
afraid, to see the king his master, after having so
injudiciously abandoned the defence of Breslau, by quitting
his lines, which, it is asserted, his Prussian majesty had
sent him express orders not to quit on any account whatever,
for that he would certainly be with him by the fifth of
December, in which we shall find he kept his word.

His army, thus deprived of their general, retreated northward that night, leaving in Breslau only four battalions, who, the next day, surrendered the place by capitulation, one of the articles of which was, that they should not serve against the empress, or her allies, for two years. All the magazines, chests, artillery, &c, remained in the hands of the Austrians. The garrison marched out with all military honours, conducted by general Leswitz, governor of Breslau. Though the Austrians sung Te Deum for this victory, they owned that such another would put an end to their army, for it cost them the lives of twelve thousand men; a number almost equal to the whole of the Prussian army before the battle. They had four almost inaccessible intrenchments to force, planted thick with cannon, which fired cartridge shot from nine in the morning till the evening, and the Prussians, when attacked, were never once put into the least confusion. Among the slain on the side of the Austrians, were general Wurben, and several other officers of distinction. The loss of the Prussians did not much exceed three thousand men, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, of which last there were about sixteen hundred. Their general Kleist was found dead on the field of battle.