right and ordered retreat. Of 31,000 Prussians little more than 17,000 were left. As at Prague, it was the infantry whose loss was the greatest. Of 18,000, more than two-thirds were killed or captured. It was true that they had inflicted upon the enemy a loss of more than 8000 men, and that Daun, “like a good Christian who would not suffer the sun to go down on his wrath,” did nothing by way of pursuit. But Frederick saw at a glance that the conquest of Bohemia was now beyond his strength. On June 20, 1757, the very day on which Prince Charles had announced that he would be compelled to surrender, the besiegers quitted Prague. Frederick’s plan was to retreat slowly through north-eastern Bohemia into Saxony, exhausting the country as he went. “My heart is torn in pieces,” he wrote to Prince Maurice two days after the battle, “but I am not cast down and will try on the first opportunity to wipe out this disgrace.” Perhaps because, in his own phrase, “a certain Hungarian rabble has taken kennel on the highways,” his letter to his sister makes light of Kolin. “I attacked Daun on the 18th. In spite of all our efforts, we found the country so difficult that I believed myself bound to abandon the enterprise in order not to lose my army.” For the information of Berlin, Eichel magnified the gentle slopes which are all that the battle-field can show into “a steep mountain, cut by many ravines and defiles at its base.” But to London the King sent a franker statement. “After winning eight battles in succession, we have for the first time been beaten, and that because the enemy had three posts on a tolerably high hill fortified by strong batteries one behind another. After taking two of them, the attacking battalions and their supports had suffered so much that they were too few to force the third post, and so the battle ended for lack of combatants.” The transports of the Queen and the exaggerated caution with which Daun and Prince Charles neglected to follow up their advantage attested the truth of Frederick’s assurance that his situation was by no means desperate. From day to day however, it altered for the worse. Disaster in the field was followed by affliction in the home. Within a fortnight of Kolin, Frederick suddenly learned that his mother was no more. The crushing news was blurted out by a letter from his wife, whose thoughtless use of a red seal in place of a black one frustrated the kindly machinery which Podewils and Eichel had devised for preparing the mind of the King. He had just written to Wilhelmina a letter full of confidence.