Their sufferings were fearful:  They had nothing to eat but frozen bread, and at night they sought repose, tentless, and upon the drifted snow.  The whole distance was strewed with the bodies of the dead.  Each morning mounds of frozen corpses indicated the places of the night’s bivouac.  Twelve hundred perished during this dreadful march.  Of those who survived, many, at Egra, were obliged to undergo the amputation of their frozen limbs.  General Belleisle himself, during the whole retreat, was suffering from such a severe attack of rheumatism, that he was unable either to walk or ride.  His mind, however, was full of vigor and his energies unabated.  Carried in a sedan chair he reconnoitred the way, pointed out the roads, visited every part of the extended line of march, encouraged the fainting troops, and superintended all the minutest details of the retreat.  “Notwithstanding the losses of his army,” it is recorded, “he had the satisfaction of preserving the flower of the French forces, of saving every cannon which bore the arms of his master, and of not leaving the smallest trophy to grace the triumph of the enemy.”

In the citadel of Prague, Belleisle had left six thousand troops, to prevent the eager pursuit of the Austrians.  The Prince Sobcuitz, now in command of the besieging force, mortified and irritated by the escape, sent a summons to the garrison demanding its immediate and unconditional surrender.  Chevert, the gallant commander, replied to the officer who brought the summons,—­

“Tell the prince that if he will not grant me the honors of war, I will set fire to the four corners of Prague, and bury myself under its ruins.”

The destruction of Prague, with all its treasures of architecture and art, was too serious a calamity to be hazarded.  Chevert was permitted to retire with the honors of war, and with his division he soon rejoined the army at Egra.  Maria Theresa was exceedingly chagrined by the escape of the French, and in the seclusion of her palace she gave vent to the bitterness of her anguish.  In public, however, she assumed an attitude of triumph and great exultation in view of the recovery of Prague.  She celebrated the event by magnificent entertainments.  In imitation of the Olympic games, she established chariot races, in which ladies alone were the competitors, and even condescended herself, with her sister, to enter the lists.

All Bohemia, excepting Egra, was now reclaimed.  Early in the spring Maria Theresa visited Prague, where, on the 12th of May, 1743, with great splendor she was crowned Queen of Bohemia.  General Belleisle, leaving a small garrison at Egra, with the remnant of his force crossed the Rhine and returned to France.  He had entered Germany a few months before, a conqueror at the head of forty thousand men.  He retired a fugitive with eight thousand men in his train, ragged, emaciate and mutilated.

CHAPTER XXVIII.