t last, in such an overawing manner.

Friedrich, judging that nothing now can be made of the affair, orders
retreat. Retreat, which had been getting schemed, I suppose, and planned
in the gloom of the royal mind, ever since loss of that big Battery
at Rodewitz. Little to occupy him, in this interim; except indignant
waiting, rigorously steady, and some languid interchange of cannon-shot
between the parties. Retreat is to Klein-Bautzen neighborhood (new
head-quarter Doberschutz, outposts Kreckwitz and Purschwitz); four miles
or so to northwest. Rather a shifting of your ground, which astonishes
the military reader ever since, than a retreating such as the common
run of us expected. Done in the usual masterly manner; part after part
mending off, Retzow standing minatory here, Mollendorf minatory there,
in the softest quasi-rhythmic sequence; Cavalry all drawn out between
Belgern and Kreckwitz, baggage-wagons filing through the Pass of
Drehsa;--not an Austrian meddling with it, less or more; Daun and his
Austrians standing in their ring of five miles, gazing into it like
stone statues; their regiments being still in a confused state,--and
their Daun an extremely slow gentleman. [Tempelhof, ii. 319-336;
Seyfarth, _Beylagen,_ i. 432-453; _Helden-Geschichte,_ v. 241-257;
Archenholtz, &c. &c.]

And in this manner Friedrich, like a careless swimmer caught in the
Mahlstrom, has not got swallowed in it; but has made such a buffeting
of it, he is here out of it again, without bone broken,--not, we hope,
without instruction from the adventure. He has lost 101 pieces of
cannon, most of his tents and camp-furniture; and, what is more
irreparable, above 8,000 of his brave people, 5,381 of them and 119
Officers (Keith and Moritz for two) either dead or captive. In men the
Austrian loss, it seems, is not much lower, some say is rather a shade
higher; by their own account, 325 Officers, 5,614 rank and file, killed
and wounded,--not reckoning 1,000 prisoners they lost to us, and "at
least 2,000" who took that chance of deserting in the intricate dark
woods. [Tempelhof, ii. 336; but see Kausler, p. 576.]

Friedrich, all say, took his punishment in a wonderfully cheerful
manner. De Catt the Reader, entering to him that evening as usual, the
King advanced, in a tragic declamatory attitude; and gave him, with
proper voice and gesture, an appropriate passage of Racine:--

"Enfin apres un an, tu me revois, Arbate,
Non plu