Loudon and General St. Ignan followed Frederick closely; at Koningengratz their Pandours slew General Saldern, Colonel Blankenzee, and seventy men, but were checked by the sabres of Putkammer's hussars; and to prevent this harassing of the rear-guard, Frederick prepared an ambuscade on a narrow path which lies through a wood at Metau. In this defile he concealed ten battalions and twenty squadrons, under whose fire the Austrians were drawn by a few flying skirmishers. "Loudon, who was very easily heated," to quote Frederick, "resolved on an assault;" but the Prussian cavalry poured upon him like a torrent, a fire opened upon his men from every point of the rocks and pass, three hundred were shot dead, and he was forced to retire. Soon after this he was lured again, by the Volunteers of Le Noble, into a ravine near Skalitz, where he was suddenly assailed by six battalions in the night, and had to give way, with the loss of six officers and seventy men.
He took possession of Peitz, a town in the Duchy of Brandenburg, on the right bank of the Matx, and left no means untried to fulfil with signal success his duty of covering Daun's left flank during the whole of the Austrian advance and Prussian retreat. Daun posted himself at Stolpen, to the eastward of the Elbe, on one hand to preserve a communication with a column which he had detached to Koningstien, and on the other to favour the active operations of Marshal Loudon, who had advanced through Lower Lusatia to the frontier of Brandenburg.
At the battle of Hochkirchen, which was fought on the 13th October, the defeat of the Prussians was solely attributed to Loudon's skill and bravery. On the 12th he had attacked a great convoy, but was repulsed by Marshal the Honourable James Keith, with the loss of eighty men, among whom was the Prince de Lichenstien, lieutenant-colonel of the regiment of Löwenstien. After this Loudon assembled his dispersed troops and took ground in a woody mountain, which was a long quarter of a league, German measure, beyond the Prussian right, facing the village of Hochkirchen. A marsh separated the flank of Frederick from this height. Daun secretly prepared a road for four columns to form a junction with Loudon, who on the night of the 13th glided down with his swift Pandours to the rear of the Prussian position, and set on fire the village of Hochkirchen, driving out by the edge of the sabre the battalions quartered there, and seizing on a battery which defended an angle of the place; while the gallant Major Lang, with the regiment of the Margrave Charles, threw himself into the churchyard, and in the dark opened a blaze of musketry on the Pandours, whose light uniforms were soon too fatally visible by the flames of the burning village. Around this conflagration the whole tide of battle rolled at midnight. The aged Marshal Keith and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick were killed, and the Prussians were defeated with the loss of seven thousand men and most of their camp equipage.