133 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63These sentiments reach out to us over the gap of more than two
centuries, yet, through his gratuitous cruelty, our suffering hero was
shortly to be responsible for the ruin of a member of his fast-
diminishing family circle. We left Prince August Wilhelm in com-
mand of the Prussian forces on the eastern side of the Elbe. The
Austrians. contrary to what Frederick had expected, made their main
effort in that direction, and threw the Prussians into confusion.
Winterfeldt was at loggerheads with the other generals in the force,
and August Wilhelm looked in vain for some guidance from the king.
The fast-moving Austrians seized the important road junction at
Gabel on 15 July, and on the 23rd they burst into Zittau and deprived
the Prussians of the carefully garnered provisions which could have
sustained 40,000 men for three weeks.
The loss of Gabel convinced Frederick that his presence was
needed in Saxony. He left Keith to evacuate the royal army from
Bohemia, and departed from Leitmeritz on 21 July. Frederick met the
army of August Wilhelm at Bautzen on the 29th, and the next day he
interviewed its exhausted and wilting commander in person. The
prince rode away from the meeting in tears, and Frederick pursued
him with a letter which heightened his humiliation. Never again, he
wrote, would he give him another army to ruin: 'to my way of
thinking your splendid expedition was nothing more than the im-
pulse of some superannuated spoiled child, from whom we take a
knife lest he should cut himself and injure others' (26 August, PC
9291).
The broken August Wilhelm retired from the army. He wrote to
his sister-in-law, the wife of Prince Henry:
Our great man is in the grip of inordinate conceit. He asks
nobody for advice, his thoughtlessness is beyond belief, and he
is so moody that he refuses to credit the most solid intelligence.
When misfortune overtakes him he distances himself from what
has happened, and puts the blame on somebody who is
innocent. (Volz, 1926-7, II, 33)
August Wilhelm died of a cerebral haemorrhage in June the next
year. The generals had liked him for his accessibility, and 'his loss was
regretted in the army. After a couple of days he was forgotten, just
like Schwerin after his death' (Warnery, 1788, 200).
Meanwhile in the high summer of 1757 Frederick was determined
to confront the Austrians who had so impudently emerged into
Lusatia. His reassembled force comprised 50,600 men and seventy-
two heavy pieces. The hussar Warnery claims that the troops were
restored to life by the galvanising presence of their master (Warnery,
1788, 185), but the British envoy Mitchell describes an army that was