fore daybreak, Karl, with
his 60,000, all learnedly arranged, comes rolling over upon hapless
Bevern: with no end of cannonading and storm of war: BATTLE OF
BRESLAU, they call it; ruinous to Bevern. Of which we shall attempt no
description: except to say, that Karl had five bridges on the Lohe,
came across the Lohe by five Bridges; and that Bevern stood to his arms,
steady as the rocks, to prevent his getting over, and to entertain
him when over; that there were five principal attacks, renewed and
re-renewed as long as needful, with torrents of shot, of death and
tumult; over six or eight miles of country, for the space of fifteen
hours. Battle comparable only to Malplaquet, said the Austrians; such a
hurricane of artillery, strongly intrenched enemy and loud doomsday of
war. Did not end till nine at night; Austrians victorious, more or
less, in four of their attacks or separate enterprises: that is to say,
masters of the Lohe, and of the outmost Prussian villages and posts in
front of the Prussian centre and right wing; victorious in that northern
part;--but plainly unvictorious in the southeast or Prussian left
wing,--farthest off from Breslau, and under Ziethen's command,--where
they were driven across the Lohe again, and lost prisoners and cannons,
or a cannon. [In Seyfarth, Three Accounts; _ Beylagan,_ ii. 198, 221,
234 et seq.]

Some of Bevern's people, grounding on this latter circumstance, and that
they still held the Battle-field, or most part of it, wrote themselves
victorious;--though in a dim brief manner, as if conscious of the
contrary. Which indeed was the fact. At the council of war, which he
summoned that evening, there were proposals of night-attack, and other
fierce measures; but Bevern, rejecting the plan for a night attack on
the Austrian camp as too dubious, did, in the dark hours, through the
silent streets of Breslau, withdraw himself across the Oder, instead;
leaving 80 cannon, and 5,000 killed and wounded; an evidently beaten man
and Army. And indeed did straightway disappear personally altogether, as
no longer equal to events. Rode out, namely, to reconnoitre in the gray
of his second sad morning, on this new Bank of the Oder; saw little
except gray mist; but rode into a Croat outpost, only one poor groom
attending him; and was there made prisoner:--intentionally, thought
mankind; intentionally, thinks Friedrich, who was very angry with the
poor man. [Preuss, ii. 102. More exact in Kutzen, DER