The whole of this Austrian Right Wing, horse and foot, batteries and redoubts, which was put EN POTENCE, or square-wise, to the main battle, is become a ruin; gone to confusion; hovers in distracted clouds, seeking roads to run away by, which it ultimately found. Done all this surely was; and poor Browne, mortally wounded, is being carried off the ground; but in what sequence done, under what exact vicissitudes of aspect, special steps of cause and effect, no man can say; and only imagination, guided by these few data, can paint to itself. Such a chaotic whirlwind of blood, dust, mud, artillery-thunder, sulphurous rage, and human death and victory,who shall pretend to describe it, or draw, except in the gross, the scientific plan of it?
For, in the mean time,I think while the dispute at Sterbohol, on the extreme of the Austrian right wing "in joiner's-square form," was past the hottest (but nobody will give the hour),there has occurred another thing, much calculated to settle that. And, indeed, to settle everything;as it did. This was a volunteer exploit, upon the very elbow or angle of said "joiner's-square;" in the wet grounds between Hlaupetin and Kyge, a good way north of Sterbohol. Volunteer exploit; on the part of General Mannstein, our old Russian friend; which Friedrich, a long way off from it, blames as a rash fault of Mannstein's, made good by Prince Henri and Ferdinand of Brunswick running up to mend it; but which Winterfeld, and subsequent good judges, admit to have been highly salutary, and to have finished everything. It went, if I read right, somewhat as follows.
In the Kyge-Hlaupetin quarter, at the corner of that Austrian right wing EN POTENCE, there had, much contrary to Browne's intention, a perceptible gap occurred; the corner is open there; nothing in it but batteries and swamps. The Austrian right wing, wheeling southward, there to form POTENCE; and scrambling and marching, then and subsequently, through such ground at double-quick, had gone too far (had thinned and lengthened itself, as is common, in such scrambling, and double-quick movement, thinks Tempelhof), and left a little gap at elbow; which always rather widened as the stress at Sterbohol went on. Certain enough, a gap there is, covered only by some half-moon battery in advance: into this, General Mannstein has been looking wistfully a long time: "Austrian Line fallen out at elbow yonder; clouted by some battery in advance?"and at length cannot help dashing loose on it with his Division. A man liable to be rash, and always too impetuous in battle-time.
He would have fared ill, thinks Friedrich, had not Henri and Ferdinand, in pain for Mannstein (some think, privately in preconcert with him), hastened in to help; and done it altogether in a shining way; surmounting perilous difficulties not a few. Hard fighting in that corner, partly on the Sterbohol terms; batteries, mud-tanks; chargings, rechargings: "Comrades, you have got honor enough, KAMERADEN, IHR HABT EHRE GENUG [the second man of you lying dead]; let us now try!" said a certain Regiment to a certain other, in this business. [Archenholtz, i. 75; Tempelhof, &c.] Prince Henri shone especially, the gallant little gentleman: coming upon one of those mud-tanks with battery beyond, his men were spreading file-wise, to cross it on the dams; "BURSCHE, this way!" cried the Prince, and plunged in middle-deep, right upon the battery; and over it, and victoriously took possession of it. In a word, they all plunge forward, in a shining manner; rush on those half-moon batteries, regardless of results; rush over them, seize and secure them. Rush, in a word, fairly into that Austrian hole-at-elbow, torrents more following them,and irretrievably ruin both fore-arm and shoulder-arm of the Austrians thereby.
Fore-arm (Austrian right wing, if still struggling and wriggling about Sterbohol) is taken in flank; shoulder-arm, or main line, the like; we have them both in flank; with their own batteries to scour them to destruction here:the Austrian Line, throughout, is become a ruin. Has to hurl itself rapidly to rightwards, to rearwards, says Tempelhof, behind what redoubts and strong points it may have in those parts; and then, by sure stages (Tempelhof guesses three, or perhaps four), as one redoubt after another is torn from the loose grasp of it, and the stand made becomes ever weaker, and the confusion worse,to roll pell-mell into Prag, and hastily close the door behind it. The Prussians, Sterbohol people, Mannstein-Henri people, left wing and right, are quite across the Zisca Back, on by Nussel (Prince Earl's head-quarter that was), and at the Moldau Brink again, when the thing ends. Ziethen's Hussars have been at Nussel, very busy plundering there, ever since that final charge and chase from Sterbohol. Plundering; and, I am ashamed to say, mostly drunk: "Your Majesty, I cannot rank a hundred sober," answered Ziethen (doubtless with a kind of blush), when the King applied for them. The King himself has got to Branik, farther up stream. Part of the Austrian foot fled, leftwards, southwards, as their right wing of horse had all done, up the Moldau. About 16,000 Austrians are distractedly on flight that way. Towards, the Sazawa Country; to unite with Daun, as the now advisable thing. Near 40,000 of them are getting crammed into Prag; in spite of Prince Karl, now recovered of his cramp, and risen to the frantic pitch; who vainly struggles at the Gate against such inrush, and had even got through the Gate, conjuring and commanding, but was himself swum in again by those panic torrents of ebb-tide.
Rallying within, he again attempted, twice over, at two different points, to get out, and up the Moldau, with his broken people; but the Prussians, Nussel-Branik way, were awake to him: "No retreat up the Moldau for you, Austrian gentlemen!" They tried by another Gate, on the other side of the River; but Keith was awake too: "In again, ye Austrian gentlemen! Closed gates here too. What else?" Browne, from his bed of pain (death-bed, as it proved), was for a much more determined outrush: "In the dead of night, rank, deliberately adjust yourselves; storm out, one and all, and cut your way, night favoring!" That was Browne's last counsel; but that also was not taken. A really noble Browne, say all judges; died here in about six weeks,and got away from Kriegs-Hofraths and Prince Karls, and the stupidity of neighbors, and the other ills that flesh is heir to, altogether.
At Branik the victorious King had one great disappointment: Prince Moritz of Dessau, who should have been here long hours ago, with Keith's right wing, a fresh 15,000, to fall upon the enemy's rear;no Moritz visible; not even now, when the business is to chase! "How is this?" "Ill luck, your Majesty!" Moritz's Pontoon Bridge would not reach across, when he tried it. That is certain: "just three poor pontoons wanting," Rumor says:three or more; spoiled, I am told, in some narrow road, some short-cut which Moritz had commanded for them: and now they are not; and it is as if three hundred had been spoiled. Moritz, would he die for it, cannot get his Bridge to reach: his fresh 15,000 stand futile there; not even Seidlitz with his light horse could really swim across, though he tried hard, and is fabled to have done so. Beware of short-cuts, my Prince: your Father that is gone, what would he say of you here! It was the worst mistake Prince Moritz ever made. The Austrian Army might have been annihilated, say judges (of a sanguine temper), had Moritz been ready, at his hour, to fall on from rearward;and where had their retreat been? As it is, the Austrian Army is not annihilated; only bottled into Prag, and will need sieging. The brightest triumph has a bar of black in it, and might always have been brighter. Here is a flying Note, which I will subjoin: