Surely to him it was no luxury, and he paid the smart for it in skin and soul: "badly wounded in this business;" nay, in direct sequel, not many weeks after, killed by it, as we shall see!-- To Mannstein's mistake, Friedrich himself, in his account of Kolin, mainly imputes the disaster that followed; and such, then and afterwards, was the universal judgment in military circles; loading the memory of too impetuous Mannstein with the whole.

[See Retzow, i.
135; Templehof, i.

214, 220.] Much talk there was in Prussian military circles; but there must also have been an admirable silence on the part of some.

To Three Persons it was known that another strange incident had happened far ahead, far eastward, of Mannstein's position: incident which did not by any means tend to alleviate, which could only strengthen and widen, the evil results of Mannstein; and which might have lifted part of the load from Mannstein's memory! Not till the present Century, after the lapse of almost fifty years, was this secret slowly dug out of silence, and submitted to modern curiosity.
The incident is this;--never whispered of for near fifty years (so silent were the three); and endlessly tossed about since that; the sense of it not understood till almost now.

[See Retzow, i.