FORE:On the night of the 14th Frederick had stationed his lines with the greatest care to guard against surprise. At midnight, wrapped in his cloak, and seated on a drum by a watch-fire, he had just fallen asleep. An Irish officer, a deserter from the Austrians, came blustering and fuming into the camp with the announcement that General Lacys army was on the march to attack Frederick by surprise. Frederick sprang to his horse. His perfectly drilled troops were instantly in motion. By a rapid movement his troops were speedily placed in battle array upon the heights of the Wolfsberg. They would thus intercept the enemys line of march, would take him by surprise, and were in the most admirable position to encounter superior numbers. To deceive the foe, all the Prussian camp-fires were left burning. General Loudon had resorted to the same stratagem to deceive Frederick.It will be remembered that Prince Charles was at the head of a strong Austrian army, on the western banks of the Rhine. It numbered over fifty thousand combatants. The King of France had pledged himself to press them closely, so that they could not recross the Rhine and rush into Bohemia to thwart the operations of Frederick; but, unfortunately, Louis XV. was seized with a malignant fever, which brought him near to the grave. Taking advantage of this, Prince Charles, on the night of the 23d of August, crossed the Rhine with his whole army. It was bright moonlight, so that every movement was as visible as if it had been made by day. But the French officers, glad thus to be rid of the Austrian army, preferring much that Frederick334 should encounter it in Bohemia than that they should struggle against it on the Rhine, went quietly to their beds, even forbidding the more zealous subalterns from harassing Prince Charles in his passage of the river. It was then the great object of the French to take Freyburg. The withdrawal of Prince Charles, with his fifty thousand men, was a great relief to them.
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