At this startling crisis Count Brown was in command at Breslau. The first blow of this new and general contest was struck by Frederick III. of Prussia, who, having at his disposal all the immense treasure which had been accumulated by the rigid economy of his politic father, together with 76,000 idle troops, for whom he had been left to find employment, now revived an ancient claim to Silesia, based upon such pretensions as the English kings of old advanced to the thrones of Scotland and France; and suddenly marching twenty battalions of infantry and thirty-six squadrons of horse into the duchy, he took possession of Breslau, its capital, from which Count Brown was forced to retire, having only 3000 men, with whom he retreated towards Moravia, leaving small garrisons in Glogau and Breig, which Frederick blockaded with six battalions. This was in the January of 1741. Frederick now offered to supply the Queen of Hungary (as Maria Theresa was styled) with money and troops to support her claims against _the other_ violators of the Pragmatic Sanction, provided she would cede to him the Silesian province. Aware of the danger of yielding to one pretender, she sent Count Neuperg (who, since the Peace of Belgrade, had been a captive) with an army to the assistance of the faithful Brown, who, after disputing every inch of Frederick's progress, had maintained the contest with him single-handed for two months. The King of Prussia sent a detachment of infantry across the Oder to attack Brown's garrison of 300 men in Namslau, where they surrendered in a fortnight. Leaving one regiment in Breslau, he marched against Brown's next garrison, consisting of 400 men, in Ohlau, under Colonel Formentini, who finding the place ruinous, and the Prussians overwhelming, capitulated. Then General Kleist invested Breig with five battalions and four squadrons. Count Neuperg, one of Austria's best generals, being a senior officer, assumed the command of the whole force, which he had first assembled in the environs of Olmutz, and sent General Lentulus to occupy the narrow defiles of Glatz in Silesia, and thus protect Bohemia. Neuperg, meanwhile, meditated operations on the Neiss, and his hussars cut off the King of Prussia's convoys and outposts in every direction. The skirmishes around Neiss were incessant, and in one cavalry encounter Frederick was nearly taken prisoner--a stroke which would have ended the war at once. After many manoeuvres and encounters, the armies of Neuperg and Frederick drew near each other, on the 10th of April, 1741, at Molowitz, a village in the neighbourhood of Neiss, where a desperate battle was fought.