On coming up with the troops of the Crown Prince, the King had been nearly swallowed up by them for sheer joy. At sight of the venerable monarch, who had been exposing his person throughout the bloody fray like the most dutiful of his soldiers, battalion after battalion--some the mere shadows of their former selves--burst into frenzied cheering and rushed forward, officers and men, to kiss the hand, the boot, the stirrup of their beloved leader. But presently a scene more touching still was presented to the victorious Prussian troops, when the heroic Crown Prince rode up and met his father. “I reported to the King,” wrote the Crown Prince, “the presence of my army on the battle-field, and kissed his hand, on which he embraced me. Neither of us could speak for a time. He was the first to find words, and then he said he was pleased that I had been successful, and had proved my capacity for command, handing me at the same time the order ‘_Pour le mérite_’ (highest of Prussian war decorations) for my previous victories.” Earlier in the day “Unser Fritz” had met his cousin the Red Prince. “We waved our caps to one another from afar, and then fell into one another’s arms amid the cheering of the troops of my extreme right and his extreme left wing.... Two years ago I embraced him as victor at Düppel; to-day we were both victors: for, after the stubborn stand made by his troops, I had come to decide the day with my army.” The battle had been won, but at what a terrible cost! Even the victors shuddered at the sight of the multitudes of bodies which heaped the bloody field. By superior arms, superior numbers, and superior strategy, Prussia, at the cost of 10,000 of her bravest sons, had won a crowning victory over her Austrian rival, who lost 40,000 men (including 18,000 prisoners), 11 standards, and 174 guns. “I have lost all,” exclaimed the defeated Benedek, “except, alas! my life!” The highest proportion of the Prussian loss of 10,000 had fallen on Franzecky’s Division, whereof 2,000, out of 15,000, had bitten the Bohemian dust. But “_Franzecky vor!_” (“Franzecky to the front!”) will always live in the Prussian soldier’s song as a memory of the ever-ready leader who bore the brunt of the awful struggle on the line of the Bistritz. That same night the King slept at Horitz--not upon a bed, but on his carriage cushions spread out on a sofa. Bismarck’s couch was at first formed by a wisp of straw under the open colonnade of the same townlet, though afterwards he was invited to share the wretched room of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg. Moltke rode back to Gitschin, a distance of about twenty miles from the battle-field, where a cup of weak tea was all the refreshment that could be got for him; and then, in a fever of fatigue, he threw himself down to sleep in his clothes, as he had to be up betimes and return to Horitz to procure the King’s sanction for his further plans. [Illustration: “THE CROWN PRINCE RODE UP AND MET HIS FATHER” (_p._ 83).]