to Frederick, from being partly
the result of his own mistaken step of enrolling men bitterly
hostile in the ranks of the army. Still, disastrous as the news
was, it did not alter his resolution; and at even greater speed
than before he continued his march. Sometimes of an evening he sent
for Fergus, and chatted with him pleasantly for an hour or two,
asking him many questions of his life in Scotland, and discoursing
familiarly on such matters, but never making any allusion to
military affairs.

On the tenth day of the march they arrived at Gorlitz, where
another piece of bad news reached Frederick. Prince Karl, after
taking Schweidnitz, had fallen with sixty thousand men on Bevern.
He had crossed by five bridges across the Loe, but each column was
met by a Prussian force strongly intrenched. For the space of
fifteen hours the battles had raged, over seven or eight miles of
country. Five times the Austrians had attacked, five times had they
been rolled back again; but at nine o'clock at night they were
successful, more or less, in four of their attacks, while the
Prussian left wing, under the command of Ziethen, had driven its
assailants across the river again.

During the night Bevern had drawn off, marched through Breslau, and
crossed the Oder, leaving eighty cannon and eight thousand killed
and wounded--a tremendous loss, indeed, when the army at daybreak
had been thirty thousand strong. Bevern himself rode out to
reconnoitre, in the gray light of the morning, attended only by a
groom, and fell in with an Austrian outpost. He was carried to
Vienna, but being a distant relation of the emperor, was sent home
again without ransom.

It was the opinion of Frederick that he had given himself up
intentionally, and on his return he was ordered at once to take up
his former official post at Stettin; where he conducted himself so
well, in the struggle against the Russian armies, that two years
later he was restored to Frederick's favour.

As if this misfortune was not great enough, two days later came the
news that Breslau had surrendered without firing a shot; and this
when it was known that the king was within two days' march, and
pressing forward to its relief. Here ninety-eight guns and an
immense store and magazine were lost to Prussia.

Frederick straightway issued orders that the general who had
succeeded Bevern should be put under arrest, for not having at once
thrown his army into Breslau; appointed Ziethen i