that of Grand-Duke Franz, who has left Presburg, with say 30,000(including the Pandour element); and duly meets the Neipperg, or late Silesian Army;--well capable, now, to do a stroke upon the Three Armaments, if he be speedy? 'November 7th' it was when Grand-Duke Franz picked up Neipperg, 'at Frating' deep in Moravia (November 7th, the very day while Friedrich was getting homaged in Breslau), and turned him northwestward again. The Grand-Duke, in such strength, marches Rag-ward what he can; might be there before the French, were he swift; and is at any rate in disagreeable proximity to that Budmeis-Tabor Country, appointed as one's halting-place."And Belleisle, in these critical days, is--consider it!--"Poor Belleisle, he has all the Election Votes ready; he has done unspeakable labors in the diplomatic way; and leaves Europe in ebullition and conflagration behind him. He has all these Armies in motion, and has got rid of 'that Moravia,'--given it to Saxony, who adds the title 'King of Moravia' to his other dignities, and has set on march those 21,000 men. 'Would he were ready with them!'
Belleisle had been saying, ever since the Treaty for them,--Treaty was, September 19th. Belleisle, to expedite him, came to Dresden [what day is not said, but deep in October]; intending next for the Prag Country, there to commence General, the diplomacies being satisfactorily done. Valori ran over from Berlin to wait upon him there. Alas, the Saxons are on march, or nearly so; but the great man himself, worn down with these Herculean labors, has fallen into rheumatic fever; is in bed, out at Hubertsburg (serene Country Palace of his Moravian Polish Majesty); and cannot get the least well, to march in person with the Three Armaments, with the flood of things he has set reeling and whirling at such rate.
"The sympathies of Valori go deep at this spectacle. The Alcides, who was carrying the axis of the world, fallen down in physical rheumatism! But what can sympathies avail? The great man sees the Saxons march without him. The great man, getting no alleviation from physicians, determines, in his patriotic heroism, to surrender glory itself; writes home to Court, 'That he is lamed, disabled utterly; that they must nominate another General.' And they nominate another; nominate Broglio, the fat choleric Marshal, of Italian breed and physiognomy, whom we saw at Strasburg last year, when Friedrich was there. Broglio will quit Strasburg too soon, and come. A man fierce in fighting, skilled too in tactics; totally incompetent in strategy, or the art of LEADING armies, and managing campaigns;--defective in intelligence indeed, not wise to discern;dim of vision, violent of temper; subject to sudden cranks, a headlong, very positive, loud, dull and angry kind of man; with whose tumultuous imbecilities the great Belleisle will be sore tried by and by. 'I reckon this,' Valori says, 'the root of all our woes;' this Letter which the great Belleisle wrote home to Court.
Let men mark it, therefore, as a cardinal point,--and snatch out the date, when they have opportunity upon the Archives of France.
[See Valori, i. 131.]
"Monseigneur the Comte de Saxe, before quitting the Vienna Countries, had left some 10,000 French and Bavarians, posted chiefly in Linz, under a Comte de Segur, to maintain those Donau Conquests, which have cost only the trouble of marching into them.
Count Khevenhuller has ceased working at the ramparts of Vienna, nothing of siege to be apprehended now, civic terror joyfully vanishing again; and busies himself collecting an Army at Vienna, with intent of looking into those same French Segurs, before long.
It is probable the so-called Conquests on the Donau will not be very permanent.
"NOVEMBER 19th-21st, The Three Belleisle Armaments, Karl Albert's first, have, simultaneously enough for the case, arrived on three sides of Prag; and lie looking into it,--extremely uncertain what to do when there. To Comte de Saxe, to Schmettau, who is still here, the outlook of this grand Belleisle Army, standing shelterless, provisionless, grim winter at hand, long hundreds of miles from home or help, is in the highest degree questionable, though the others seem to make little of it: 'Fight the Grand-Duke when he comes,' say they; 'beat him, and--' 'Or suppose, he won't fight? Or suppose, we are beaten by him?' answer Saxe and Schmettau, like men of knowledge, in the same boat with men of none. (We have no strong place, or footing in this Country:
what are we to do? Take Prag!' advises Comte de Saxe, with earnestness, day after day. [His Letters on it to Karl Albert and others (in Espagnac, i. 94-99).] 'Take Prag: but how?' answer they.
'By escalade, by surprise, and sword in hand, answers he: 'Ogilvy their General has but 3,000, and is perhaps no wizard at his trade: