Till dawn the stillness was unbroken. Then in a moment blazed up one of the shortest and most brilliant fights of the whole war. A breathless messenger cried that the enemy—Laudon—was attacking in force on the extreme left. Frederick hurried off to oppose him. Had the attack been made fifteen minutes earlier, he declared, the issue would have been far different. But the Prussians profited much by their stealthy change of camp. Laudon’s march was a part of Daun’s concerted attack upon the position that they had quitted seven hours before. The result of their movement was that Daun hardly reached them, while Laudon, who expected to surprise their baggage, was himself surprised. Marching without a vanguard, he found himself committed to an uphill fight without support from Daun. None the less he attacked with such swing and dash that the Prussian left was well-nigh cut in two, It was saved by the infantry, who first valiantly held Panten and then set it on fire. This checked the Austrian advance and enabled the Prussians to make good use of their position. About an hour and a half after the first onset Laudon retired across the Katzbach unpursued. The Prussians claimed to have killed or wounded 6000 men and captured 4000—a total loss thrice as great as their own. They had thus annihilated nearly one-third of Laudon’s force, and—what was even more important—they had rent the net that was closing round them. Daun had appeared in sight of the Prussians only to learn of Laudon’s disaster and to retire. Henceforward it was beyond the power of the Empress to induce her favoured field-marshal to attack. The moral gain was perhaps the greatest of all the advantages that Frederick derived from Liegnitz. “A second edition of Rossbach,” as he called the battle, was the best proof that Prussian valour and leadership and luck had none of them vanished from the earth. The King, who had his coat torn by one ball and his horse wounded by another, ascribed the victory to the favour of fortune and the bravery of his men. No other judge, whether Prussian, Austrian, or Russian, could fail to ascribe a great share in it to the King. The value of this renewal of prestige was apparent almost every day that the war had yet to run. However huge the masses of Austrians and Russians might be, they were usually content to watch Frederick at a respectful distance. The initiative was thus often abandoned to the weaker side and the value of Frederick’s army enhanced threefold. Yet nothing could demonstrate more clearly than their movements after Liegnitz how weak the Prussians were. Frederick’s departure from the field of victory was in truth a flight, but a flight which covered the fugitives with glory. Young Lieutenant Archenholtz, who was among the victors, tells the astounding tale of how