April, it is said, is the cruelest month. This is certainly true for the Prussian troops stationed at Freiberg, who are woken from their sleep one night by the sound of musket fire. In some cases, the dazed troops stumble out of tents and barns, trying to assemble into their units, only to be cut down by the curved sabres of Austrian pandours or gutted by bayonets wielded by fiercely mustachioed grenzers. A brutal surprise attack on the army of Prince Maurice of Anhalt-Dessau by light troops of the Imperial Army is beaten off, but only with heavy losses.
Perhaps the newly-raised regiments of Prussian light troops might have been able to detect this attack and foil it before it happened, but they seem to have been far away, trying to reconnoiter the lines of the Kaiserlich und Königlich forces under Königsegg at Reichenberg. Still raw and uncertain at this new form of warfare, however, the Prussian scouts are beaten off by the Austrian screening forces.
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