ONE:The heroic General Einsiedel struggled along through the snow and over the pathless hills, pursued and pelted every hour by the indomitable foe. He was often compelled to abandon baggage-wagons and ambulances containing the sick, while the wounded and the exhausted sank freezing by the way. At one time he was so crowded by the enemy that he was compelled to continue his march through the long hours of a wintry night, by the light of pitch-pine torches. After this awful retreat of twenty days, an emaciate, ragged, frostbitten band crossed the frontier into Silesia, near Friedland. They were soon united with the other columns of the discomfited and almost ruined army.
FORE:Then, writes Wilhelmina, as to his bride, I begged him to tell me candidly if the portrait the queen and my sister had been making of her were the true one.
FORE:As we have mentioned, the agents of the King of Prussia were45 eager to kidnap tall men, in whatever country they could find them. This greatly exasperated the rulers of the various realms of all sizes and conditions which surrounded the Prussian territory. Frederick William was always ready to apologize, and to aver that each individual act was done without his orders or knowledge. Still, there was no abatement of this nuisance. Several seizures had been made in Hanover, which was the hereditary domain of George I., King of England. George was very angry. He was increasingly obstinate in withholding his assent to the double marriage, and even, by way of reprisal, seized several of the subjects of Frederick William, whom he caught in Hanover.Thus far the enemy had no suspicion of the movement. But now the sun was rising, and, almost simultaneously on both sides, the roar of battle commenced. The positions had been so adroitly taken as to bring three Prussian guns to bear upon each gun of the Austrians. The Prussian gunners, drilled to the utmost possible accuracy and precision of fire, poured into the city a terrific tempest of shot and shells. Every thing had been so carefully arranged that, for six days and nights, with scarcely a moments intermission, the doomed city was assailed with such a tornado of cannonading and bombardment as earth had seldom, if ever, witnessed before.
