"Your Royal Highness will at once make the arrangements necessary to be able to move with all your forces in support of the first army against the right flank of the enemy's expected advance, and to come into action as soon as possible. The orders sent from here this afternoon under other conditions are no longer valid. "V. MOLTKE." [Illustration: Sketch Map 1--THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF KÖNIGGRÄTZ.] This note, with a shorter note to the commander of one of the corps lying between Gitschin and Königinhof (the only part of the second army at this time west of the Elbe), telling him to be ready for the Crown Prince's orders, was despatched at midnight. The whole Austro-Saxon army (eight corps) was in fact concentrated between the Elbe and the Bistritz, not indeed for attack but for the defence of a strong position on the left bank of the brook, facing westwards. Had the arrangements of Prince Frederick Charles not been supplemented, the 3rd of July might have been an unfortunate day for Prussia. The first army would have been engaged against an enemy strongly posted and counting nearly double its numbers. The detachment by the second army of one corps towards Josephstadt could hardly have produced a decisive effect, and the rest of the second army would have been too far away to co-operate in time. But the order sent from Gitschin entirely met the situation. Without interfering with Prince Frederick Charles's attack it brought the entire second army to his help in the direction where its action would produce the greatest effect--on the enemy's flank. When the morning came, the attack of the first army as it developed, disclosed the great strength of the Austrian position and the numbers by which it was defended. Prince Frederick Charles was unable to do much more than keep the Austrians engaged until the second army came up. The attack of the Crown Prince's leading divisions decided the day. With their capture and maintenance of Chlum, the key of the position, the situation of the Austrian army became critical, and the issue not only of the fight but of the whole campaign was practically settled. The resolution formed between eleven and twelve at night on July 2nd, in the Lion Inn at Gitschin, had secured the victory of Königgrätz, perhaps the greatest battle of modern times,[3] and without exception the most decisive in its results. [1] See sketch map 1. [2] _Der Feldzitg von_ 1866 _in Deutschland_. Redigirt von der Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abtheilung des groszen Generalstabes, p. 249. [3] There is a doubt whether the number of combatants was greater at Leipsic or at Königgrätz. According to the Belgian Précis (_Bibliothèque Internationale d'Histoire militaire_) the figures are:-- At Leipsic: Allies . . . . . . . . . 300,000 " French . . . . . . . . . 180,000 ------- Total . . . . . . . 480,000 =======