Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/30

 by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland; this army was posted on the Weser, to watch the motions of M. d'Etrees. The vast and unwieldy body of the French, encumbered as the French armies always are by an immense baggage, and an innumerable multitude of mouths without hands, made a very slow progress through the rough and barren country that lies between the Rhine and the Weser. All the abilities of the French general were employed in finding subsistence for his troops. His Royal Highness, on the other hand, displayed great abilities in throwing all possible impediments in his way. But when these impediments were removed by the superiority of numbers, the Hanoverian army gradually gave way, yielding to that superiority, and the French troops passed the Wefer without opposition.

In the mean time, his Prussian majesty being determined according to his maxim to lay the cloth as far from home as possible; made his dispositions for carrying the war into Bohemia as speedily as the season would admit. Three great bodies of his troops entered into that kingdom by three very different ways, but nearly at the same time. M. Schwerin penetrated into it from Silesia. The Prince of Bevern entered with the corps under his command from Lusatia, and defeated, as a preliminary to a more decisive victory, a body of 28,000 Austrians who opposed him.

The king himself prepared to enter Bohemia at a great distance from the corps commanded by these generals, and as he seemed disposed to march towards Egra, the enemy imagined he intended to execute some design distinct from the object of his other armies. With this idea they detached a body of 20,000 men to observe his motions. The King of Prussia, finding that this feint had all its effects, made a sudden and masterly movement to his left, by which he cut off all communication between that detachment and the main army of the Austrians. Spirited with this advantage, he pushed onwards with the utmost rapidity to Prague, where he joined the corps under the Prince of Bevern and M. Schwerin, who had advanced with inconceivable diligence to meet him. Never were operations executed with more judgment, celerity and success.

The Austrian army was little short of 100,000 men, and the situation of their camp, fortified by every advantage of nature, and every contrivance of art, such as on common occasions might justly be considered as impregnable; but the Prussians, being nearly as numerous as the enemy, inspired by a society of danger with their King, and filled with that noble enthusiasm, which, whilst it urges to daring enterprises, almost ensures their success, passed morasses, climbed precipices, faced batteries, and after a bloody and obstinate resistance, totally defeated the Austrians. They took their camp, military chest, cannon, all the trophies of a complete victory. The loss on the side of the victor, as well as the vanquished, was very great; but both sides had yet a greater loss in the death of two of the best generals in Europe. M. Schwerin was killed at the age of eighty-two with the colonel's standard in his hand at the head of his regiment. M. Brown received a wound, which, from the chagrin he suffered rather than from its own nature, proved mortal.