ome posture about Leuthen, to get up some
defences there. Leuthen itself, the churchyard of it especially, is on
the defensive. Men are bringing cannon to the windmills, to the
swelling ground on the north side of Leuthen; they dig ditches, build
batteries,--could they but make Time halt, and Friedrich with him, for
one quarter of an hour. But they cannot. By the extreme of diligence,
the Austrians have in some measure swung themselves into a new position,
or imperfect Line round Leuthen as a centre,--Lucchesi, voluntarily
or by order, swinging southwards on the one hand; Nadasti swinging
northwards by compulsion;--new Line at an angle say of 75 degrees to
the old one. And here, for an hour more, there was stiff fighting,
the stiffest of the day;--of which, take one direct glimpse, from the
Austrian side, furnished by a Young Gentleman famous afterwards:--

Leuthen, let us premise, is a long Hamlet of the usual littery
sort; with two rows, in some parts three, of farm-houses, barns,
cattle-stalls; with Church, or even with two Churches, a Protestant
and a Catholic; goes from east to west above a mile in length. With the
wrecks of Nadasti tumbling into it pell-mell from the southeast, and
Lucchesi desperately endeavoring to swing round from the northwest,
not quite incoherently, and the Prussian fire-storm for accompaniment,
Leuthen is probably the most chaotic place in the Planet Earth during
that hour or so (from half-past two to half-past three) while the agony
lasted. At one o'clock Nadasti was attacked; at two he is tumbling
in mid-career towards Leuthen: I guess the date of this Excerpt, or
testimony by a Notable Eye-witness, may be half-past two; crisis of the
agony just about to begin: and before four it was all finished again.
Eye-witness is the young Prince de Ligne, now Captain in an Austrian
Regiment of Foot; and standing here in this perilous posture, having
been called in as part of the Reserve. He says:--

"Cry had risen for the Reserve," in which was my regiment, "and that it
must come on as fast as possible,"--to Leuthen, west of us yonder. "We
ran what we could run. Our Lieutenant-Colonel fell killed almost at the
first; beyond this we lost our Major, and indeed all the Officers but
three,--three only, and about eleven or twelve of the Voluuteer or Cadet
kind. We had crossed two successive ditches, which lay in an orchard to
left of the first houses in Leuthen; and were beginning to form in
front of th