The First Army and the Army of the Elbe made a combined attack upon Count Clam-Gallas at Münchengrätz, the Austrians being assailed in front and on both flanks. The Austrian commander had begun his retreat before the Prussian attack commenced; and after a brief resistance, he fell back upon Gitschin, with a loss of about 2,000 men, killed, wounded and prisoners. The Prussian loss was only 341. The armies of Frederick Charles were now completely united. One division was pushed forward to Rowensko, and the remaining eight, numbering, with the cavalry, upwards of 100,000 men, were concentrated upon an area of about twenty square miles. Some distress began to be felt because of the short supply of food and the difficulty of getting water; for only part of the provision trains had come up, and the Austrian inhabitants, when they abandoned their homes, had filled up the wells. Two roads led east from the Prussian position; one _via_ Podkost, and the other _via_ Fürstenbrück, but both united at Sobotka. The Austrian rear guard was driven from Podkost during the night, and both roads were open for the Prussian advance on the following morning. Frederick Charles has been severely (and it would seem justly) criticised for his inaction on the 27th of June. His explicit instructions from Von Moltke should have been enough to cause him to hasten forward, and so threaten the Austrian left as to relieve the pressure on the Crown Prince. And there was another reason for prompt action. As already mentioned, the victory of Podol had opened to Frederick Charles the shortest line to Gitschin, from which place he was now distant only fifteen miles, while Clam-Gallas, at Münchengrätz, was twenty miles away from the same point. The town of Gitschin, like Ivrea in 1800, or Sombref and Quatre-Bras in 1815, had accidentally become a strategic point of the first importance by reason of the relative positions of the opposing armies and the direction of the roads necessary for the concentration of each. All the roads leading from the Iser, from Turnau to Jung Bunzlau, center at Gitschin, whence other roads branch out to Neu Bidsow, Königgrätz, Josephstadt, Königinhof, and other important points. The possession of Gitschin by either army would seriously delay, and perhaps eventually prevent, the concentration of the other. A prompt movement to Gitschin by Frederick Charles would have cut off Clam-Gallas, who could then have effected a junction with Von Benedek only by a circuitous march of such length as to make it probable that his two corps would have been eliminated altogether from the problem solved on the field of Königgrätz. As the Austro-Saxons at Münchengrätz, covering the roads to Prague, could have protected their communications with that city, while menacing the communications of the Prussians with their base, it was, doubtless, necessary to dislodge them from that position; but Frederick Charles