A very sore stroke, in his present condition; a signal loss and affront.

And most of all, unbearable to think how narrowly it has missed being a signal triumph;--missed actually by a single hair's-breadth, which is as good as by a mile, or by a thousand miles! Soon after 9 o'clock that evening, Durchlaucht in person came rolling through our battery and the herring-bone balks, to visit Electoral Highness,--which was not quite the legal time either, Durchlaucht had not been half an hour with Electoral Highness, when a breathless Courier came in: "General Wunsch within ten miles [took Torgau in no time, as Durchlaucht well knows, for a week past]; and will be here before we sleep!" Durchlaucht plunged out, over the herring-bone balks again (which many carpenters are busy lifting); and the Electoral Highnesses, in like manner, hurry off to Toplitz that same night, about an hour after.

What a Tuesday Night! Poor Hoffman is dead at 8 o'clock; the Saxon Royalties, since 11, are galloping for Pirna, for Toplitz; Durchlaucht of Zweibruck we saw hurry off an hour before them,--Capitulation signature not yet dry, and terms of it beginning to be broken; and Wunsch reported to be within ten miles! The Wunsch report is perfectly correct.

Wunsch is at Grossenhayn this evening; all in a fiery mood of swiftness, his people and he;--and indeed it is, by chance, one of Wolfersdorf's impetuosities that has sent the news so fast.

Wunsch had been as swift with Torgau as he was with Wittenberg: he blew out the poor Reichs Garrison there by instant storm, and packed it off to Leipzig, under charge of "an Officer and Trumpet:"-- he had, greatly against his will, to rest two days there for a few indispensable cannon from Magdeburg.