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We found the limbs of these poor men and women lying about," reports old General Lehwald; who knew about it. A doggery well worthy of the gallows, think Lehwald and I. "Could n't help it; ferocity of wild men," says Nadasti. "Well; but why not attack, then, with your ferocity?"
Listen to their joyous shouts, look at their flashing swords! Karl von Lothringen, where are your troops which were intended to attack the enemy in the rear? Where is Trenck with his pandours? where General Nadasti, with his well-disciplined regiments? If your hope is in these, then despair, and thrust your sword in its sheath.
A detachment of their army, under the command of count Nadasti, had already invested Schweidnitz, and opened the trenches before it on the twenty-sixth of October.
Nadasti, with some thousands of Tolpatchery, was at Liebenthal, four miles to southeast of the action; Ruffian Trenck lay behind Eypel, perhaps as far to east, of it: Trenck and Nadasti were to rendezvous, to unite, and attack the Prussian Camp on its rear, "Camp," so ran the order, for it was understood the Prussians would all be there, we others attacking it in front and both flanks; which turned out otherwise, not for Nadasti alone!
They arrive on the ground flurried, blown; have not the least time to take breath and order: the fewest of them ever got fairly ranked, none of them ever stood above one push: all goes rolling wildly back upon the centre about Leuthen. Chaos come on us; and all for mere lack of time: could Nadasti but once stretch out one minute into twenty! But he cannot.
This single incident gained the battle, and deceived all time hopes of Prince Charles. Nadasti, Trenck, and the light troops, sent to attack our rear, were employed in pillaging the camp. The ferocious Croats met no opposition, while this their error made our victory more secure.
Outposts of theirs lie squatted in the bushes behind Deutsch Prausnitz, hardly 500 yards from Friedrich's Camp. And eastward, leftward of him, in the defiles about Eypel, lie Nadasti and Ruffian Trenck, with ten or twelve thousand, who are to take him in rear. His "Camp of Staudentz" will be at a fine pass to-morrow morning.
Nadasti does not himself lose head; skilfully covers the retreat, trying to rally once and again. Not for the first few furlongs, till the ditches, till the firwood, quagmires are all done, could Ziethen, now on the open ground, fairly hew in; "take whole battalions prisoners;" drive the crowd in an altogether stormy manner; and wholly confound the matter in this part.
Nadasti made a rare hand of the Camp; plundered everything, took all the King's Camp-furniture, ready money, favorite dog Biche, likewise poor Eichel his Secretary, who, however, tore the papers first. Tolpatchery exultingly gutted the Camp; and at last set fire to it, burnt even some eight or ten poor Prussian sick, and also "some women whom they caught.
At one o'clock Nadasti was attacked; at two he is tumbling in mid-career towards Leuthen: I guess the date of this Excerpt, or testimony by a Notable Eye-witness, may be half-past two; crisis of the agony just about to begin: and before four it was all finished again.
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