March began, soon after midnight, SATURDAY, 16th, Schmettau as vanguard; and"-- And, in fine, by FRIDAY, 22d, after not quite a week of it, the Prince, curving from northward (in parabolic course, LESS speedy than the cannon-ball's would have been) into sight of Zittau,--behold, there are the Austrians far and wide to left of us, encamped impregnable behind the Neisse River there! They have got the Eckart's Hill, which commands Zittau:--and how to get into Zittau and our magazines, and how to subsist if we were in?
The poor Prince takes post on what Heights there are, on his own side of the Neisse; looks wistfully down upon Zittau, asking How?
About stroke of noon the Austrians, from their Eckartsberg, do a thing which was much talked of.

They open battery of red-hot balls upon Zittau; kindle the roofs of it, shingle-roofs in dry July; set Zittau all on blaze, the 10,000 innocent souls shrieking in vain to Heaven and Earth; and before sunset, Zittau is ashes and red-hot walls, not Zittau but a cinder-heap,--Prussian Garrison not hurt, nor Magazine as yet; Garrison busy with buckets, I should guess, but beginning to find the air grow very hot.

On the morrow morning, Zittau is a smouldering cinder-heap, hotter and hotter to the Prussian Garrison; and does not exist as a City.
One of the most inhuman actions ever heard of in War, shrieks universal Germany; asks itself what could have set a chivalrous Karl upon this devil-like procedure?
"Protestants these poor Zittauers were; shone in commerce; no such weaving, industrying, in all Teutschland elsewhere: Hah! An eye-sorrow, they, with their commerce, their weavings and industryings, to Austrian Papists, who cannot weave or trade ?" that was finally the guess of some persons;--wide of the mark, we may well judge.
Prince Xavier of Saxony, present in the Camp too, made no remonstrance, said others.

Alas, my friends, what could Xavier probably avail, the foolish fellow, with only three regiments?
Prince Karl, it was afterwards evident, could have got Zittau unburnt; and could even have kept the Prussians out of Zittau altogether.

Zittau surely would have been very useful to Prince Karl.