United States or Romania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Some of the captured Cossacks were presented by Frederick to some of his friends with the remark, "See with what vagabonds I am reduced to fight!" He had scarcely recovered from this bloody victory when he was again compelled to take the field against the Austrians, who, under Daun and Laudon, had invaded Lusatia.
Fouquet, one of his favorites, was, with eight thousand men, surprised and taken prisoner by Laudon in the Giant Mountains near Landshut; the mountain country was cruelly laid waste. The important fortress of Glatz fell, and Breslau was besieged. This city was defended by General Tauenzien, a man of great intrepidity. The celebrated Lessing was at that time his secretary.
Field-Marshal Daun attempted in the year 1760 to come to the assistance of General Laudon at Leignitz, whilst the battle lasted; but when he failed, he did not attack the King next day, although he did not want for means to do so. A vigorous attack of his advance guard he held to be necessary always, to fix the enemy's attention and "paralyse his independent will-power."
Marshal Daun, however, had followed the King into Lusatia. He then approached Torgau, and, as it was known that he had left Laudon at Loewenberg, General Goltz had orders to return into Silesia, to oppose the attempts of the Austrians with his utmost abilities. On the 22d the army of the King arrived at Jessen. The troops of the Prince de Deuxponts extended wholly along the left shore of the Elbe.
The wind blew freshly in the opposite direction, and carried the sound of the cannon away from Daun's hearing. Not the roar of a piece of artillery came to him, and his army lay moveless during the battle, he deeming that Laudon must now be in full possession of the heights, and felicitating himself on the neat trap into which the King of Prussia had fallen.
The simplest, like old Lanze and his daughter Lina, are intrinsically commonplace; the most elaborated, like Madame Tonska and the duke Jean-Théodore, waver between familiar types and questionable shadows; and those that, like Laudon and the Gennevilliers, promise better results, are imperfectly developed. Such defects would be fatal in a novel of the ordinary kind.
The Austrians gained an excellent general in the Livonian, Gideon Laudon, whom Frederick had refused to take into his service on account of his extreme ugliness, and who now exerted his utmost endeavors to avenge the insult. The great Russian army, which had until now remained an idle spectator of the war, also set itself in motion.
General Laudon, the Austrian commander on the Tyrol frontier, had descended thence with forces sufficient to overwhelm Buonaparte's lieutenants on the upper Adige, and was already in possession of the whole Tyrol, and of several of the Lombard towns.
The Austrians almost surrounded him. On one side was the army of Field-Marshal Daun, on the other that of General Lasci; in front was General Laudon. Fighting day and night he advanced, and finally took up his position at Liegnitz, where he found his forward route blocked, Daun having formed a junction with Laudon.
Have, then, the Austrian heroes a Prince Eugene, a Laudon, a Lasci, a Beaulieu, a Haddick, a Bender, a Clairfayt, and numerous other valiant and great warriors left no posterity behind them; or has the presumption of General von Mack imposed upon the judgment of the Counsellors of his Prince?
Word Of The Day