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Friedrich, in astonishment and indignation, sends a messenger to Dresden: "Would the Polish Majesty BE 'King of Moravia, then, or not be?" Remonstrances at Budischau rise higher and higher; Valori, to prevent total explosion, flies over once, in the dead of the night, to deal with Rutowsky and Brothers. Rutowsky himself seems partly persuadable, though dreadfully ill of rheumatism.
A corps of Austrians, who were also equally unprepared to take the field, hastened, under the command of Browne, to their relief, but were, on October 1st, defeated at Lowositz, and the fourteen thousand Saxons under Rutowsky at Pirna were in consequence compelled to lay down their arms, the want to which they were reduced by the failure of their supplies having already driven them to the necessity of eating hair-powder mixed with gunpowder.
And so, "SATURDAY NIGHT, 25th NOVEMBER, 1741, brightest of moonshiny nights, our dispositions are all made: Several attacks, three if I remember; one of them false, under some Polastron, Gaisson, from the south side; a couple of them true, from the northwest and the southeast sides, under Maurice with his French, and Rutowsky with his Saxons, these two.
It fell chiefly on Rutowsky; who met it with creditable vigor, till relieved by the others. Comte Maurice, too, did a shifty thing. Circling round by the outside of the Wischerad, by rural roads in the bright moonshine, he had got to the Wall at last, hollow slope and sheer wall; and was putting-to his scaling-ladders, when, by ill luck, they proved too short! Ten feet or so; hopelessly too short.
Who cost us more distinguishing than they are worth! Chief General of these Saxons, says an Authentic Author, is Rutowsky; got from a Polish mother, I should guess: he commands in chief here; once had a regiment under Friedrich Wilhelm, for a while; but has not much head for strategy, it may be feared. But mark that Fourth individual of the Three Hundred and Fifty-four, who has a great deal.
'By escalade, by surprise, and sword in hand, answers he: 'Ogilvy their General has but 3,000, and is perhaps no wizard at his trade: we can do it, thus and thus, and then farther thus; and I perceive we are a lost Army if we don't! So counsels Maurice Comte de Saxe, brilliant, fervent in his military views; and, before it is quite too late, Schmettau and he persuade Karl Albert, persuade Rutowsky chief of the Saxons; and Count Polastron, Gaisson or whatever subaltern Counts there are, of French type, have to accede, and be saved in spite of themselves.
With them go certain other Bavarians; accompanying or preceding, as in the Vanward case. Comte de Rutowsky, Comte de Saxe's Half-Brother, one of the Three Hundred and Fifty-four: with whom is CHEVALIER de Saxe, a second younger ditto; and I think there is still a third, who shall go unnamed. In this grand Oriflamme Expedition, Four of the Royal-Saxon Bastards altogether."
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