217 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63wounded officers he repaired to the village church, where he spent
the rest of the night on the brick step of the diminutive altar, writing
by candlelight. Frederick had most probably reached Elsnig at 9 p.m.
at the earliest, by which time the battle had been convincingly won
(Koser, 1901, 274-5; Herrmann, 1912, 590-1). Warnery, however,
draws our attention to a hostile account according to which
Frederick had abandoned the field after the first repulse of the royal
army: 'He believed that all was lost. People saw him in tears at the
very time when, unknown to him, Zieten had gained the heights of
Siiptitz' (Warnery, 1788, 439).
Early on 4 November the royal adjutant Berenhorst assembled six
dragoons outside Elsnig church, each bearing a captured Austrian
colour, but Frederick came out of the low door in 'a gloomy and
earnest mood, and he mounted horse without casting so much as a
glance in the direction of those dearly won trophies' (Berenhorst,
1845-7, I, xv).
Frederick's ill-humour was occasioned by what he knew must be
the appalling cost of the battle. He pressed Berenhorst for an accurate
computation of the butcher's bill, 'and finally, several days after the
battle... Berenhorst finished his sums and carried the completed list
to the royal chamber. Frederick emerged from behind the stove and
snatched the paper from his hand. He reviewed the numbers of the
losses... and told him sharply "It will cost you your head, if this
figure ever gets out!" ' (Berenhorst, 1845-7, I, xv).
It was said that Berenhorst's assessment exceeded 20,000, which
accords with Hans Bleckwenn's figures of 24,700 for the total Prussian
dead, wounded and missing (Bleckwenn, 1978, 203). Even Curt Jany's
much more modest estimate of 16,670 exceeds the Austrian losses by
1,000 men, and the disproportion in actual casualties was greater
still, for the Austrian total comprised 7,000 prisoners left alive in the
hands of the Prussians. The king had certainly pushed the Austrians
from their position, 'but this success was purchased by huge sacri-
fices, and Frederick failed to attain that decisive triumph which
alone might have offered a compensation' (Anon., 1886, 42). More
than anything else Frederick must have regretted the virtual destruc-
tion of his first ten battalions of grenadiers.
Torgau emerges as a mid-eighteenth-century Borodino, which
was huge in scale and bloodletting but left the two embattled parties
with a sense of having fallen well short of their objectives. In Vienna,
the chancellor Kaunitz despaired of being able to recover even so
little as the County of Glatz for the Austrians, and he began to
consider the advisability of making peace. The court of Versailles was
disconcerted by the news of the defeat of their allies, 'and nobody
more so than the Dauphiness [a Saxon princess], who is inconsolable,