At 11 o’clock the Prussian advance had been checked. The Army of the Elbe was slowly forming in rear of the line Hradek-Lubno. The First Army, advancing, as we have seen, by echelon of divisions from the left, had gained the position Maslowed-Sadowa Wood-Mokrowous, thus executing a wheel of about an eighth of a circle to the right. The immediate object of the advance had been practically gained, it is true, by the occupation of the line of the Bistritz, and the conversion of the strong advanced posts of the Austrians into good points of support for the Prussians. Yet Fransecky was sorely pushed on the left, and the 8th Division was suffering so severely from the fire of the Austrian guns, that Frederick Charles deemed it necessary to order the 5th and 6th Divisions to move up to the Sadowa wood. All attempts of these fresh troops to gain ground towards the heights of Lipa were repulsed, and the Prussian advance again came to a standstill. A counter-attack by a single Austrian brigade against the Sadowa wood (made without Von Benedek’s permission) was repulsed. The position of the First Army was now critical. The last battalion of the infantry reserves had been brought into action. Von Fransecky was on a desperate defensive. The other divisions were all subjected to a furious, crushing fire from nearly 250 pieces of artillery, which the Austrians had brought into action on the heights from Lipa to Problus; while, owing partly to the wooded ground, partly to the difficulty of crossing the stream, and partly to the inefficiency of the Prussian artillery officers, only 42 guns were on the left bank of the Bistritz to reply to this formidable cannonade. Only a portion of Frederick Charles’ guns were brought into action at all; and their long range fire from the positions west of the Bistritz was ignored by the Austrian batteries, whose entire energy was devoted to a merciless pelting of the Prussian infantry.