152 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63
central churchyard, where the thick surrounding wall had four round
corner towers. One of the battalions of Pannwitz (10) was beaten
back in an initial assault, and ultimately the Prussians were forced to
make a breach in the wall with their artillery.
Leuthen was carried after some thirty minutes of fighting. Be-
hind the village, however, the Austrians stood their ground once
more, and the cavaliy generals Lucchese and Serbelloni swept down
from their right with a force of about seventy squadrons. If the mass of
Austrian cavaliy had reached the open left flank of the Prussian
infantry, it might yet have turned the balance of the day against
Frederick.
This dangerous move was noticed by Lieutenant-General Georg
Wilhelm von Driesen, whom we last encountered in the thick of the
fighting at Chotusitz. Now at Leuthen he held under his command
the forty uncommitted squadrons of the Prussian left, standing in
dead ground near Radaxdorf, and on his own initiative he decided to
intervene against the right flank of the Austrian cavalry as it flowed
past him. The celebrated Bayreuth Dragoons (D 5) opened the attack,
watched by the cuirassiers of Bevern's old army, who were still under
something of a cloud. They were not altogether sorry to see the
magnificent dragoons being mauled in the first clash with the Aus-
trians. 'It is true that the cuirassiers in the second line could have
given immediate support, but their best officers said: "Let the king's
favourite dragoons stew a little first!" Finally, when the danger for
the dragoons became too great, the cuirassiers arrived and saved
them' (Kalkreuth, 1840, IV, 128).
The Puttkamer Hussars (H 4) came up in the rear and collided
with the enemy Kollowrath Dragoons while the Austrians were still
in the process of deploying, and overthrew them completely. The
thousands of struggling cavalrymen bore down on the Austrian
infantry north of Leuthen, and whole battalions of the enemy threw
down their muskets and fled. Such troops as sought to make a stand
were swept away in the stream of fugitives.
In these confused minutes Frederick was intent only on gather-
ing, in the fast-descending darkness, a force with which he might gain
the bridge five miles behind the field at Lissa, and so prevent the
enemy from establishing themselves for a new battle behind the line
of the Schweidnitzer-Wasser (Weistritz). The Seydlitz Cuirassiers
and three battalions of grenadiers responded to the royal summons
and set off with Frederick into the night of gently falling snow. On the
Breslau highway Frederick was joined by Zieten and a dozen hussars,
and at the isolated settlement of Saara he picked up a garrulous
innkeeper who strode along by his stirrups with a lantern. The hussars
closed in on the king to overhear the conversation, and three hundred