Here, if ever, Marshal Daun seems to have hesitated unwisely. The Prussians were flushed with success; but such a victory was not gained without fatigue. Daun suspended his blow, and never recovered the opportunity: he lost it by waiting to ensure it. Never trusting to chance, while additional strength was in view, he detached a strong corps to meet the Russians and press them to advance. Great as the reinforcement was, it did not counterbalance the panic with which they were struck by Laudohn’s defeat. They repassed the Oder with precipitation, and left the King at liberty to join Prince Henry. Marshal Daun, who was more lessened by his competitor’s defeat than he could have been by any triumph of Laudohn, descended from the lofty hopes he had so reasonably entertained, and blockaded Schweidnitz. But the honour of forming a single siege was soon ravished from him by Frederick, who, having surprised and vanquished a corps under General Beck, obliged the Marshal to raise the blockade and retreat precipitately to the mountains. Still dangers crowded on the King as fast as he dispersed them. While he was defending Silesia, the Russians, seeing Brandenburg open, turned their invasion towards that province. Count Czernichew led on a considerable body; Daun sent them 15,000 Austrians, and the Imperial Army in Saxony was ordered to meet them at the gates of Berlin. Count Halsen had upheld the sinking fortune of the King in Saxony: he was now commanded to make an effort for saving Berlin; but when he had assembled all possible force, it amounted but to 15,000 men. With such scanty means, he could only be witness to the reduction of the capital, which immediately capitulated. The Allied Army laid the town under heavy contribution; but the Russians, who had not distinguished themselves in that war by lenity, blushed to see themselves surpassed by the excesses of the Austrians; so much did animosity surpass barbarism. Even the Swedes had hoped to come in for share of the plunder of Berlin, and were stretching thither. The King, whose fortune sunk wherever he was not in person to sustain it, marched to relieve his capital. The plunderers did not await him, but, after wasting the country, retired; the Imperialists, to profit of the King’s absence, and to seize Saxony, which lay at their mercy; the Russians, to form the siege of Colberg, which, however, they abandoned, and retreated. Laudohn had no better success before Cosel: and before the end of the campaign, the Swedes, too, were driven back by the alertness of General Werner.