206 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63battle the left wing set out on the road to Parchwitz.
The triumph of Liegnitz was not complete until the evening of 16
August, a day which Frederick described as the most anxious of the
whole campaign. He feared that the troops of Chernyshev were
emplaced on the road to Breslau. Now came the blessed news that the
Russians had fallen back across the Oder. A cloud of dust to the south
seemed to indicate that Daun too was on the march to Breslau, but on
this same day the Austrians turned towards southern Silesia, where
Daun now intended to reduce Schweidnitz and establish himself in
the wooded border hills. When this news reached Vienna, Maria
Theresa appreciated at once how far Daun had fallen short of the
main objective, which had been to accomplish the union with the
Russians.
At Liegnitz king and army had regained their confidence in each
other, and Frederick had more than won back all the esteem he had
forfeited after a year of uninterrupted misfortune. The British minis-
try believed that The superior genius of that great prince never
appeared in a higher light than during this last expedition into
Silesia. The whole manoeuvre is looked upon here as the masterpiece
of military skill' (Lord Holdernesse, 9 September, PRO SP 90/76). In
the Austrian camp the French military plenipotentiary Montazet
sighed: 'I know that people were fond of saying that the king was
practically finished, that his troops were not as good as his old ones,
and that he had no generals left. That could be true, but his spirit,
which brings everything to life, is the same as it always was - and so,
unfortunately, is ours' (Gr. Gstb., 1901-14, XII, 226).
The battle had been lost for the Austrians by the unaccustomed
failures of their reconnaissance and staff work. Here it was perhaps
significant that Lacy was preoccupied with his responsibilities as a
corps commander, and that his highly esteemed young compatriot,
the Generalquartiermeisterlieutenant Major-General James Nugent,
had fallen into the hands of the Prussians during the 'Bernburg' action
at Dresden (Mitchell, 1850, II, 176; Lehndorff, 1910-13, I, 252-3).
As for the credit for the victory, Mitchell records that Frederick
awarded it to the bravery of his troops and claimed that everything
else was due to the operation of chance:
'Had I remained in the camp of Liegnitz, I should have been
surrounded on all sides. Had I arrived one quarter of an hour
sooner on the field of battle, the event would not have
happened, and a few days would have put an end to the whole
affair'... I took the liberty to reply, that it was plain to me, if
Providence had not given His Majesty a better understanding
than his enemies, he would not have been victorious that day.