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Updated: May 17, 2025
While the action was obstinately and desperately maintained in this place, amidst all the horrors of darkness, carnage, and confusion, the king being alarmed, exerted all his personal activity, address, and recollection, in drawing regularity from disorder, arranging the different corps, altering positions, reinforcing weak posts, encouraging the soldiery, and opposing the efforts of the enemy; for although they made their chief impression upon the right, by the village of Hochkirchen, mareschal Daun, in order to divide the attention of the king, made another attack upon the left, which was with difficulty sustained, and effectually prevented him from sending reinforcements to the right, where mareschal Keith, under the greatest disadvantages, bore the brunt of the enemy's chief endeavours.
The soldiers had never been properly drawn up in order; the enemy still persevered in their attack with successive reinforcements and redoubled resolution; and a considerable slaughter was made by their artillery, which they had brought up to the heights of Hochkirchen.
In this situation mareschal Daun resolved to act offensively; and formed a scheme for attacking the right flank of the Prussians by surprise. This measure was suggested to him by an oversight of the Prussians, who had neglected to occupy the heights that commanded the village of Hochkirchen, which was only guarded by a few free companies.
His aim having been frustrated at Hochkirchen, where he fought with many advantages on his side, he would not hazard another battle upon equal terms, with such an enterprising enemy, rendered more vigilant by the check he had received, already reinforced from the army of prince Henry, and eager for an opportunity to retrieve the laurel which had been snatched from him by the wiles of stratagem, rather than by the hand of valour.
The king having detached general Ratzow on his left, to take possession of Weissenberg, marched forwards with the body of his army, and posted himself in the neighbourhood of Hochkirchen, after having dislodged the Austrians from that village.
One can hardly without astonishment recollect, that in the course of a few months he invaded Moravia, invested Olmutz, and was obliged to relinquish that design, that he marched through an enemy's country, in the face of a great army, which, though it harassed him in his retreat, could not, in a route of an hundred miles, obtain any advantage over him; that in spite of his disaster at Olmutz, and the difficulties of such a march, he penetrated into Bohemia, drove the enemy from Koningsgratz, executed another dangerous and fatiguing march to the Oder, defeated a great army of Russians, and returned by the way of Saxony, from whence he drove the Austrian and Imperial armies; that after his defeat at Hochkirchen, where he lost two of his best generals, and was obliged to leave his tents standing, he baffled the vigilance and superior number of the victorious army, rushed like a whirlwind to the relief of Silesia, invaded by an Austrian army, which he compelled to retire with precipitation from that province; that, with the same rapidity of motion, he wheeled about to Saxony, and once more rescued it from the hands of his adversaries; that in one campaign he made twice the circuit of his dominions, relieved them all in their turns, and kept all his possessions entire against the united efforts of numerous armies, conducted by generals of consummate skill and undaunted resolution.
These two celebrated commanders agreed on a scheme, in which the prudence of the one and the vigour of the other seem to have been happily combined. At dead of night they surprised the King in his, camp at Hochkirchen. His presence of mind saved his troops from destruction; but nothing could save them from defeat and severe loss. Marshal Keith was among the slain.
At the high mass on Christmas-day, a sword with a rich belt and scabbard, a hat of crimson velvet lined with ermine, and a dove of pearls, the mystic symbol of the Divine Comforter, were solemnly blessed by the supreme pontiff, and were sent with great ceremony to Marshal Daun, the conqueror of Kolin and Hochkirchen.
On the fourteenth of October, the day on which he was defeated at Hochkirchen, the day on the anniversary of which, forty-eight years later, a defeat far more tremendous laid the Prussian monarchy in the dust, died Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth.
I had won five hundred thousand pounds at play; I was the favourite of the Empress Catherine of Russia; the confidential agent of Frederick of Prussia; it was I won the battle of Hochkirchen; I was the cousin of Madame Du Barry, the French King's favourite, and a thousand things beside.
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