"I can find no trace in the office books of any particular allowance made to Foreign Ministers for such sort of expeditions; but I am persuaded I shall adjust it easily with the Duke of Newcastle. Once more, adieu. Our constant toast now here is, 'Success to the King of Prussia.' He grows vastly popular among us. For my part, I always add a gulp more to my old friend Mitchell."
A letter from the envoy, addressed to the King of Prussia, makes the formal request that he may be allowed to follow the headquarters--a permission which was immediately conceded by the king. The object of this request, (suggested by the English Ministry,) was twofold--to have an intelligent observer of the politics of Prussia on the spot; and to supply George II. with anecdotes of war, for which he conceived himself to have a peculiar talent; and on which subject the despatches of the envoy were always read by him with peculiar interest.
The envoy was not long without material. Before he left Berlin, he had the following despatch to write to the Earl of Holdernesse--
"My Lord,--This morning, about seven o'clock, Monsieur Oppen, an officer in the Guards, arrived here from the Prussian army. He had no letters, only a scrap of paper without date, which he was directed to deliver to the queen-mother, in which was written with a pencil, in the king's own hand, that his troops had beaten the Austrians, _platte couture_, that he reckoned his loss about two thousand, and that of the Austrians at four thousand men."
This was a hard-fought but indecisive action. The Austrians, under Marshal Browne, were the assailants; and the engagement continued from morning till past midday, when they retreated; but they numbered two-thirds more than the Prussians, their force being nearly seventy thousand to about forty thousand.
But a more important success immediately followed. The Saxon army, amounting to sixteen thousand, had been surrounded in their fortified camp at Pirna; the fortifications were so strong that the only hope of reducing them was by famine. To the universal astonishment, they suddenly quitted this impregnable position, and marched into a defile, where they could neither advance nor retreat. The king offered them conditions, which they accepted; and Mitchell, who had waited at Berlin only for the royal permission to join the army, arrived just in time to see the surrender; and what was more curious still, the quiet transfer of their allegiance to the Prussian service. He thus writes--