Loudon and General St. Ignan followed Frederick closely; at Koningengratz their Pandours slew General Saldern, Colonel Blankenzee, and seventy men, but were checked by the sabres of Putkammer's hussars; and to prevent this harassing of the rear-guard, Frederick prepared an ambuscade on a narrow path which lies through a wood at Metau. In this defile he concealed ten battalions and twenty squadrons, under whose fire the Austrians were drawn by a few flying skirmishers. "Loudon, who was very easily heated," to quote Frederick, "resolved on an assault;" but the Prussian cavalry poured upon him like a torrent, a fire opened upon his men from every point of the rocks and pass, three hundred were shot dead, and he was forced to retire. Soon after this he was lured again, by the Volunteers of Le Noble, into a ravine near Skalitz, where he was suddenly assailed by six battalions in the night, and had to give way, with the loss of six officers and seventy men. He took possession of Peitz, a town in the Duchy of Brandenburg, on the right bank of the Matx, and left no means untried to fulfil with signal success his duty of covering Daun's left flank during the whole of the Austrian advance and Prussian retreat. Daun posted himself at Stolpen, to the eastward of the Elbe, on one hand to preserve a communication with a column which he had detached to Koningstien, and on the other to favour the active operations of Marshal Loudon, who had advanced through Lower Lusatia to the frontier of Brandenburg.