A very desperate bout, this Second one; probably the toughest of the Battle: but the result again is Daun's; the Prussians palpably obliged to draw back. Friedrich himself got wounded here;--poor young Archenholtz too, ONLY wounded, not killed, as so many were:--Friedrich's wound was a contusion on the breast; came of some spent bit of case-shot, deadened farther by a famed pelisse he wore,--"which saved my life," he said afterwards to Henri. The King himself little regarded it (mentioning it only to Brother Henri, on inquiry and solicitation), during the few weeks it still hung about him. The Books intimate that it struck him to the earth, void of consciousness for some time, to the terror of those about him;and that he started up, disregarding it altogether in this press of business, and almost as if ashamed of himself, which imposed silence on people's tongues. In military circles there is still, on this latter point, an Anecdote; which I cannot confirm or deny, but will give for the sake of Berenhorst and his famed Book on the ARTOF WAR. Berenhorst--a natural son of the Old Dessauer's, and evidently enough a chip of the old block, only gone into the articulate-speaking or intellectual form--was, for the present, an Adjutant or Aide-de-camp of Friedrich's; and at this juncture was seen bending over the swooned Friedrich, perhaps with an over-pathos or elaborate something in his expression of countenance:
when Friedrich reopened his indignant eyes: "WAS MACHT ER HIER?"cried Friedrich: "ER SAMMLE FUYARDS! What have you to do here? Go and gather runaways" (be of some real use, can't you)!--which unkind cut struck deep into Berenhorst, they say; and could never after be eradicated from his gloomy heart. It is certain he became Prince Henri's Adjutant soon after, and that in his KRIEGSKUNST, amidst the clearest orthodox admiration, he manifests, by little touches up and down, a feeling of very fell and pallid quality against the King; and belongs, in a peculiarly virulent though taciturn way, to the Opposition Party. H1s Book, next to English Lloyd's (or perhaps superior, for Berenhorst is of much the more cultivated intellect, highly condensed too, though so discursive and far-read, were it not for the vice of perverse diabolic temper), seemed, to a humble outsider like myself, greatly the strongest-headed, most penetrating and humanly illuminative I had had to study on that subject. Who the weakest-headed was (perhaps JOMINI, among the widely circulating kind?), I will not attempt to decide, so great is the crush in that bad direction. To return.
This Second Attack is again a repulse to the indignant Friedrich;though he still persists in fierce effort to recover himself:
and indeed Daun's interior, too, it appears, is all in a whirl of confusion; his losses too having been enormous:--when, see, here at length, about half-past 4, Sun now down, is the tardy Holstein, with his Cavalry, emerging from the Woods. Comes wending on yonder, half a mile to north of us; straight eastward or Elbe-ward (according to the order of last night), leaving us and our death-struggles unregarded, as a thing that is not on his tablets, and is no concern of Holstein's. Friedrich halts him, not quite too late;organizes a new and third Attack. Simultaneous universal effort of foot and horse upon Daun's Front; Holstein himself, who is almost at Zinna by this time, to go upon Daun's right wing. This is Attack Third; and is of sporadic intermittent nature, in the thickening dusk and darkness: part of it successful, none of it beaten, but nowhere the success complete. Thus, in the extreme west or leftmost of Friedrich's attack, SPAEN Dragoons,--one of the last Horse Regiments of Holstein's Column,--SPAEN Dragoons, under their Lieutenant-Colonel Dalwig (a beautiful manoeuvrer, who has stormed through many fields, from Mollwitz onwards), cut in, with an admired impetuosity, with an audacious skill, upon, the Austrian Infantry Regiments there; broke them to pieces, took two of them in the lump prisoners; bearded whole torrents of Austrian cavalry rushing up to the rescue,--and brought off their mass of prisoner regiments and six cannon;--the Austrian rescuers being charged by some new Prussian party, and hunted home again. [Tempelhof, iv.
305.] "Had these Prussian Horse been on their ground at 2 o'clock, and done as now, it is very evident," says Tempelhof, "what the Battle of Torgau had by this time been!"Near by, too, farther rightwards, if in the bewildering indistinctness I might guess where (but the where is not so important to us), Baireuth Dragoons, they of the 67 standards at Striegau long since, plunged into the Austrian Battalions at an unsurpassable rate; tumbled four regiments of them (Regiment KAISER, Regiment NEIPPERG,--nobody now cares which four) heels over head, and in few minutes took the most of them prisoners;bringing them home too, like Dalwig, through crowds of rescuers.
Eastward, again, or Elbe-ward, Holstein has found such intricacies of ground, such boggy depths and rough steeps, his Cavalry could come to no decisive sabring with the Austrian; but stood exchanging shot;--nothing to be done on that right wing of Daun.