While this Subsidy Treaty is getting settled in England, Duke Ferdinand has his French in full cackle of universal flight;and before the signing of it (April 11th), every feather of them is over the Rhine; Duke Ferdinand busy preparing to follow. Glorious news, day after day, coming in, for Pitt, for Miss Barbara and for all English souls, Royal Highness of Cumberland hardly excepted!
The "Descent on Rochefort," last Autumn, had a good deal disappointed Pitt and England;--an expensively elaborate Expedition, military and naval; which could not "descend" at all, when it got to the point; but merely went groping about, on the muddy shores of the Charente, holding councils of war yonder;"cannonaded the Isle of Aix for two hours;" and returned home without result of any kind, Courts-martial following on it, as too usual. This was an unsuccessful first-stroke for Pitt. Indeed, he never did much succeed in those Descents on the French Coast, though never again so ill as this time. Those are a kind of things that require an exactitude as of clockwork, in all their parts:
and Pitt's Generalcies and War-Offices,--we know whether they were of the Prussian type or of the Swedish! A very grievous hindrance to Pitt;--which he will not believe to be quite incurable.
Against which he, for his part, stands up, in grim earnest, and with his whole strength; and is now, and at all times, doing what in him lies to abate or remedy it:--successfully, to an unexpected degree, within the next four years. From America, he has decided to recall Lord Loudon, as a cunctatory haggling mortal, the reverse of a General; how very different from his Austrian Cousin!
[Cousins certainly enough; their Progenitors were Brothers, of that House, about 1568,--when Matthew, the cadet, went "into Livonia,"into foreign Soldiering (Papa having fallen Prisoner "at the Battle of Langside," 1568, and the Family prospects being low); from this Matthew comes, through a scrips of Livonian Soldiers, the famed Austrian Loudon. Douglas, Peerage of Scotland, p. 425; &c. &c. VIE DE LOUDON (ill-informed on that point and some others) says, the first Livonian Loudon came from Ayrshire, "in the fourteenth century".] "Abercrombie may be better," hopes he;--was better, still not good. But already in the gloomy imbroglio over yonder, Pitt discerns that one Amherst (the son of people unimportant at the hustings) has military talent:
and in this puddle of a Rochefort Futility, he has got his eye on a young Officer named Wolfe, who was Quartermaster of the Expedition;a young man likewise destitute of Parliamentary connection, but who may be worth something. Both of whom will be heard of! In a four years' determined effort of this kind, things do improve: and it was wonderful, to what amount,--out of these chaotic War-Offices little better than the Swedish, and ignorant Generalcies fully worse than the Swedish,--Pitt got heroic successes and work really done.
On Pitt, amid confused clouds, there is bright dawn rising;and Friedrich too, for the last month, in Breslau, has a cheerful prospect on that Western side of his horizon. Here is one of his Postscripts, thrown off in Autograph, which Duke Ferdinand will read with pleasure: "I congratulate you, MON CHER, with my whole heart! May you FLEUR-DE-LYS every French skin of them; cutting out on their"--what shall we say (LEUR IMPRIMANT SUR LE CUE)!--"the Initials of the Peace of Westphalia, and packing them across the Rhine," tattooed in that latest extremity of fashion! [Friedrich to Duke Ferdinand, "Grussau, 19th March, 1758:" in Knesebeck,
Herzog Ferdinand, i. 64. Herzog Ferdinand wahrend des 7-jahrigen Krieges ("from the English aud Prussian Archives") is the full Title of Knesebeck's Book:
LETTERS altogether; not very intelligently edited, but well worth reading by every student, military and civil: 2 vols. 8vo.
Hannover, 1857.]
Friedrich, grounding partly on those Rhine aspects, has his own scheme laid for Campaign 1758. It is the old scheme tried twice already: to go home upon your Enemy swiftly, with your utmost collective strength, and try to strike into the heart of him before he is aware. Friedrich has twice tried this; the second time with success, respectable though far short of complete. Weakened as now, but with Ferdinand likely to find the French in employment, he means to try it again; and is busy preparing at Neisse and elsewhere, though keeping it a dead secret for the time. There is, in fact, no other hopeful plan for him, if this prove feasible at all. Double your velocity, you double your momentum. One's weight is given,--weight growing less and less;--but not, or not in the same way and degree, one's velocity, one's rightness of aim.
Weight given: it is only by doubling or trebling his velocity that a man can make his momentum double or treble, as needed!
Friedrich means to try it, readers will see how,--were the Fort of Schweidnitz once had; for which object Friedrich watches the weather like a very D'Argens, eager that the frost would go.
Recapture of Schweidnitz, the last speck of Austrianism wiped away there; that is evidently the preface to whatsoever day's-work may be ahead.
March 15th, frost being now off, Friedrich quits Breslau and D'Argens,--his Head-quarter thenceforth Kloster-Grussau, near Landshut, troops all getting cantoned thereabout, to keep Bohemia quiet,--and goes at once upon Schweidnitz. With the top of the morning, so to speak; means to have Schweidnitz before campaigning usually can begin, or common laborers take their tools in this trade. The Austrian Commandant has been greatly strengthening the works; he had, at first, some 8,000 of garrison; but the three months' blockade has been tight upon him and them; and it is hoped the thing can be done.