82-85.] Saxon-Austrian battalions, four or five, with unlimited artillery going, VERSUS Wedell's one battalion, with musketry and Ziethen's hussars: it is fearful odds.

The Prussians stand to it like heroes; doggedly, for four hours, continue the dispute,--till it is fairly desperate; "two bridges of the enemy's now finished;"-- whereupon they manoeuvre off, with Parthian or Prussian countenance, into the woods, safe, towards Kolin; "despatching definite news to Friedrich, which does arrive about 11 A.M., and sets him at once on new measures." This is a great feat in the Prussian military annals; for which, sad as the news was, Wedell got the name of Leonidas attached to him by Friedrich himself.

And indeed it is a gallant passage of war; "Forcing of the Elbe at Teinitz;" of which I could give two Narratives, one from the Prussian, and one from the Saxon side; [Seyfarth, _Beylage,_ i.
595-598; _Helden-Geschichte,_ ii.

1175-1181.] didactic, admonitory to the military mind, nay to the civic reader that has sympathy with heroisms, with work done manfully, and terror and danger and difficulty well trampled under foot.

Leonidas Wedell has an admirable silence, too; and Ziethen's lazily hanging under-lip is in its old attitude again, now that the spasm is over.