166 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63
fire. The Russian gunners sought to reply, but they were facing
slightly uphill and into the sun, and they were blinded by the dust and
smoke which were blowing into their faces. To civilians standing
miles away it appeared that 'the ground was shaking in response to a
continuous peal of thunder. The windows in the houses were rattling,
and the sky was darkened by the dense cloud of smoke which arose
from the battlefield and the burning villages' (Bertuch, in Kalisch,
1828, 51-2). The missiles ploughed through the deep files of the
Russian infantry, and some of the shot rolled as far as the train of light
baggage, causing panic among the drivers and horses. 'What added to
the horror of this spectacle was that the Cossacks and Calmucks had
set fire to the villages all round, and a great number of Russian
powder waggons blew up in the woods which surrounded the field of
battle' (Mitchell, 1850, I, 429).
The Prussian army began to march:
A peculiarly plangent melody was being sounded by the
woodwind of one of the regiments, and Frederick asked one of
his generals whether he could identify it for him. He replied 'It's
the tune of the hymn "Ich bin ja, Heer, in deiner Macht!"
("Now Lord, I am in Thy Keeping").' Frederick repeated these
words with some emotion, and he listened with acute attention
as the music receded gradually in the distance. (Hildebrandt,
1829-35, II, 15)Ensign Prittwitz of Alt-Bevern (7; see Map 18, p. 364) noted that the
players made themselves scarce as soon as the advance of the left
wing took it through and around the burning village of Zorndorf.
Beyond Zorndorf the dust hung so thickly that the advance guard
came within forty paces of the Russian lines before the rival infantry
exploded in a fire-fight. It was about 11.15 a.m. Manteuffel had some
of the best units of the army under his command, namely six bat-
talions of grenadiers and the highly regarded East Prussian regiment
of Kanitz (2). However, the troops suffered heavily from the blasts of
musketry and canister that were delivered in their faces. Worse still,
their left wing lost contact with the protection of the Zabern-Grund,
a mistake which gave the Russian cavalry the space to throw fourteen
squadrons against its flank. The Kanitz regiment lost more than 60
per cent of its effectives, and the survivors and the rest of the advance
guard fled in panic.
The left wing of the main army was itself going badly astray.
Frederick had failed to convey to Lieutenant-General Kanitz the
essence of his task, which was to act in close support of the advance
guard. Kanitz instead conceived that he must maintain contact with
Dohna on the right wing, and instead of following on the heels of