But in less than two hours the tide of victory turned. The day was one of excessive heat. An unclouded sun poured its burning rays upon the field, and at midday the troops and the horses, having been engaged for six hours in one of the severest actions which was ever known, were utterly beat out and fainting with exhaustion. Just then the whole body of the Russian and Austrian cavalry, some fourteen thousand strong, which thus far had remained inactive, came rushing upon the plain as with the roar and the sweep of the whirlwind. The foe fell before them as the withered grass before the prairie fire. Frederic was astounded by this sudden reverse, and in the anguish of his spirit plunged into the thickest of the conflict. Two horses were shot beneath him. His clothes were riddled with balls. Another courier was dispatched to the empress from the sanguinary field, in the hottest speed. The note he bore was as follows: "Remove from Berlin with the royal family. Let the archives be carried to Potsdam, and the capital make conditions with the enemy." As night approached, Frederic assembled the fragments of his army, exhausted and bleeding, upon some heights, and threw up redoubts for their protection. Twenty thousand of his troops were left upon the field or in the hands of the enemy. Every cannon he had was taken. Scarcely a general or an inferior officer escaped unwounded, and a large number of his most valuable officers were slain. It was an awful defeat and an awful slaughter. Fortunately for Frederic the losses of the Russians had also been so terrible that they did not venture to pursue the foe. Early the next morning the Prussian king crossed the Oder; and the Russians, encumbered with the thousands of their own mutilated and dying troops, thought it not prudent to march upon Berlin. The war still raged furiously, the allies being inspirited by hope and Frederic by despair. At length the affairs of Prussia became quite hopeless, and the Prussian monarch was in a position from which no earthly energy or sagacity could extricate him. The Russians and Austrians, in resistless numbers, were spread over all his provinces excepting Saxony, where the great Frederic was entirely hemmed up.