While he thus rested on his arms, glorying in his
soul on the annihilation to which the pestilent Prussians were doomed,
his ally was making a desperate struggle for life, on those very heights
which he counted on taking without a shot. Truly, the Austrians had
reckoned without their foe in laying their cunning plot.
Three hours of daylight finished the affray. Taken by surprise as they
were, the Austrians proved unable to sustain the vigorous Prussian
assault, and were utterly routed, leaving ten thousand dead and wounded
on the field, and eighty-two pieces of artillery in the enemy's hands.
Shortly afterwards Daun, advancing to carry out his share of the scheme
of annihilation, fell upon the right wing of the Prussians, commanded by
General Ziethen, and was met with so fierce an artillery fire that he
halted in dismay. And now news of Laudon's disaster was brought to him.
Seeing that the game was lost and himself in danger, he emulated his
associate in his hasty retreat.
Fortune and alertness had saved the Prussian king from a serious danger,
and turned peril into victory.
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