exploded into mere imbroglio of
distraction; become one knows not what! Daun's watch-fires too had
all been left burning; universal stratagem, on both sides, going on;
producing--tragically for some of us--a TRAGEDY of Errors, or the
Mistakes of a Night! Daun sallied out again, in his collapsed, upset
condition, as soon as possible: pushed on, in the track of Friedrich;
warning Lacy to push on. Daun, though within five miles all the while,
had heard nothing of the furious Fight and cannonade; "southwest wind
having risen," so Daun said, and is believed by candid persons,--not by
the angry Vienna people, who counted it impossible: "Nonsense; you were
not deaf; but you loitered and haggled, in your usual way; perhaps not
sorry that, the brilliant Loudon should get a rebuff!"

Emerging out of Liegnitz, Daun did see, to northeastward, a vast pillar
or mass of smoke, silently mounting, but could do nothing with it.
"Cannon-smoke, no doubt; but fallen entirely silent, and not wending
hitherward at all. Poor Loudon, alas, must have got beaten!" Upon which
Daun really did try, at least upon Ziethen; but could do nothing.
Poured cavalry across the Stone-bridge at the Topferberg: who drove in
Ziethen's picket there; but were torn to pieces by Ziethen's cannon.
Ziethen across the Schwartzwasser is alert enough. How form in order
of battle here, with Ziethen's batteries shearing your columns
longitudinally, as they march up? Daun recognizes the impossibility;
wends back through Liegnitz to his Camp again, the way he had come.
Tide-hour missed again; ebb going uncommonly rapid! Lacy had been about
Waldau, to try farther up the Schwartzwasser on Ziethen's right: but the
Schwartzwasser proved amazingly boggy; not accessible on any point to
heavy people,--"owing to bogs on the bank," with perhaps poor prospect
on the other side too!

And, in fact, nothing of Lacy more than of Daun, could manage to get
across: nothing except two poor Hussar regiments; who, winding up far to
the left, attempted a snatch on the Baggage about Hummeln,--Hummeln,
or Kuchel of the Scrubs. And gave a new alarm to Mitchell, the last of
several during this horrid night; who has sat painfully blocked in
his carriage, with such a Devil's tumult, going on to eastward, and no
sight, share or knowledge to be had of it. Repeated hussar attacks there
were on the Baggage here, Loudon's hussars also trying: but Mitchell's
Captain was miraculously equal to the occasion;