That they accomplished what they did proves that the Prussians were heroes. Frederick’s design was, as at Zorndorf, to cross the Oder below the Russian camp, to march round it, and then to strike. But the barren waste east of Frankfurt was to him unfamiliar country. At Leuthen and at Zorndorf he had profited greatly by his knowledge of the field. But at Kunersdorf he knew neither the difficulties of the ground nor the extent to which, in one most important particular, those difficulties had been surmounted by the enemy. When he scanned their position from the north-east before completing his plan of attack, he could discern Laudon’s force encamped in a seemingly isolated peninsula in the great marsh which protected the left. He was informed that Laudon and Soltykoff could communicate only by a roundabout way. Not till the issue of the day was dubious did he learn that a new causeway connected the Austrians with the main body of the enemy, and the error proved fatal. Twice in his life Frederick paid dear for imperfect information, but the price of the blunder at Prague was a trifle by the side of the price paid here. The beginning of the fray was such as to make the end a doubly crushing blow to the King. After long and toilsome preparations it seemed as though victory was assured. When the Prussian van went into action they advanced like fresh men and turned the Russians out of their entrenchments at the point of the bayonet. A second onslaught, better supported, took the enemy in flank and by two o’clock the Russian left was beaten, with a loss of seventy guns. Frederick sent off a courier to carry the tidings of victory to Berlin. The third attack, however, made on difficult ground in the face of cannon at 800 yards and musketeers at fifty, did not succeed until the Prussian infantry had been decimated and its strength almost spent. At this point Frederick’s generals cried “Enough”; but the King, as at Hochkirch, preferred his own opinion. Once more the Prussians stormed forward and for the fourth time they annihilated the Russian line. If one knoll more, the Spitzberg, and the battery upon it were taken, the victory, it seemed, would be complete.