The advanced guard was soon driven off by the terrible fire of the Prussians, whose heavy guns now and throughout the battle tore frightful gaps in the crowded ranks of the enemy. But the village proved a formidable obstacle to their progress. House after house had to be stormed, and the churchyard was most difficult of all. At last the Prussians carried Leuthen. Then, however, they were exposed to the batteries behind and for perhaps an hour a furious conflict raged on something like equal terms. Frederick sent his left wing into action, but still the Austrians stood firm. But again, when already three of the four hours of daylight were spent, Luchesi proved to be the evil genius of his side. Coming up with his cavalry, he took the Prussian infantry in flank, only to be himself outflanked, crushed, and killed by a concealed reserve of Prussian cavalry. The panic produced by this sudden onslaught spread to the infantry, and the Prussians pressed home their advantage with a bayonet charge. At last the Austrians were beaten. They flung away their muskets, forsook their guns, and fled wildly towards Breslau. A regiment which strove to cover their flight was reduced to one officer and eight men. As at Rossbach, darkness robbed the victors of the full fruit of their success. The Prussian loss of one man in five proved that Leuthen was no easy triumph. But they struck down 10,000 men and captured 12,000, they put to flight an army nearly three times as great as their own, and they won Silesia and undying fame. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR (_continued_) LEUTHEN TO MAXEN (DECEMBER, 1757, TO DECEMBER, 1759.) What profit would Leuthen bring to Prussia? was Frederick’s first thought after the glorious fifth of December, and may well be ours. He himself was worn and ill. In the excitement of victory he had closed the long day of Leuthen with a jest. Pressing on to the castle of Lissa, he found it full of Austrian officers. “Bonjour, Messieurs,” cried the King, suddenly appearing out of the darkness, “can you find room for me?” But reaction and depression followed the strain of 1757. “If the year upon which I am entering,” he wrote on his birthday (January 24, 1758), “is to be as cruel as that which is at an end, I hope it will be my last.” Every kind of anxiety, public and private alike, pressed at the same time upon the hero of Rossbach and Leuthen. His brother, Augustus William, for whom a chance bullet might at any moment clear the throne, had not yet succumbed under the burden of disgrace, and wearied Frederick with complaints and acid congratulations. His brother-in-law, Ferdinand of Brunswick, was stricken with fever, and the King’s mind was full of vague fears which he confessed but could not account for. Upon his sister, Wilhelmina, who had more need of it, he lavished sympathy and encouragement in a flood of tender messages.