120
THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63our anxiety.. • the cannon shot were ploughing the earth around
him which kept his horse in restless motion, but he seemed to find the
experience amusing' (Warnery, 1788, 118-9). The following scene is
added by the Garde du Corps Kalkreuth:I do not know where the king was during the battle but between
four and five he came straight to Prince Henry. The king was in
a pitiable state. He dismounted and sat on one of those turf
banks which enclose the fields. He then opened himself to the
prince in agonised lamentations: 'Our losses are frightful. Field-
Marshal Schwerin is dead!' He went on to enumerate the other
casualties, and he was so distressed that he could scarcely
speak. (Kalkreuth, 1840, II, 155)Frederick told his reader Catt that 'the battle at Prague must be
the greatest and bloodiest in history' (Catt, 1884, 236). He had
overcome by far the most powerful concentration of force which the
Austrians had yet put in his way, and to all appearances he had left
them with no means of recovery. The enemy losses approached
14,000, of whom about 5,000 were prisoners, and Field-Marshal
Browne had been mortally wounded in the counter-attack at Sterbo-
hol.
With hindsight the Prussians appreciated that they ought to have
done better still. It was now seen that Schwerin's infantry had been
set an impossible task - to march with shouldered muskets against
heavy guns and grenadiers - and Frederick noted that the flanking
march ought to have been prolonged by at least another 2,000 paces
(Warnery, 1788, 121). Zieten had certainly done magnificent work
with the cavalry of the left wing, but during the battle the cavalry on
the far right had been stranded uselessly facing the north side of the
Austrian camp, from which it was separated by the valley of the
Rockenitzer-Bach.
Some commentators apply the criticism of unused resources still
more strongly to the 32,000-man-strong corps of Field-Marshal Keith,
which had been left on the west bank of the Moldau. In response to an
order from Frederick, Keith had dispatched Prince Moritz on the
morning of the battle with four battalions and thirty squadrons to
pass the Moldau above Prague. If these forces had arrived on the
scene, they might well have prevented any of the Austrians from
escaping to Beneschau. In the event the bridging train stuck for a time
in a sunken road, and when the carts reached the river in the early
afternoon Moritz discovered that there were not enough pontoons to
reach the far bank. Nobody was inclined to follow the example of
Colonel Seydlitz, who tried to ford the river and became stuck in