A.D. 1743.]

DEATH OF CARDINAL FLEURY.

471

the queen of Hungary. No sooner had parliament closed, of the French living at an inn in Franconia; and the beauthan George, accompanied by his son, the duke of Cumber-tiful queen of Hungary laughing at this epiphany. land, and lord Carteret, hastened off to Germany. The pacific cardinal Fleury had died the preceding January, and that check which he had so long imposed on the martial spirit of France was withdrawn. The young king, absorbed by his own pleasures, left public affairs to his ministers, who were now count D'Argenson, as minister of war, and cardinal Tencin, an ambitious priest of an indifferent character, and who was strongly devoted to the interests of the Stuart family. His sister, Madame de Tencin, who had been a nun, but had soon found conventual restraints totally opposed to her tastes, led a gay and dissipated life, having generally more than one paramour. Chief in her favour had for a long time been Bolingbroke, who was strongly asserted to be, by her, the father of the celebrated revolutionary philosopher, D'Alembert. Bolingbroke had now quitted France and returned to England, where he located himself near Battersea, and still drew

The forces which France sent under marshal de Noailles to support Broglie, only arrived just in time. Broglie, keenly pursued by the brave Hungarian cavalry, was still in anxious retreat, when a detachment of the troops of Noailles, twelve thousand in number, came up. He then faced about and endeavoured to keep in check the Austrians under prince Charles of Lorraine. The British army, which the king had ordered to march from Flanders into Germany, to aid the Austrians, had set out at the end of February. They were commanded by lord Stair, and on their route were joined by several Austrian regiments under the duke of Aremberg and the sixteen thousand Hanoverians in British pay, which had wintered at Liege. They marched so slowly that they only crossed the Rhine in the middle of May. They halted at Hochst, betwixt Mayence and Frankfort, awaiting the six thousand Hanoverians in electoral pay, and by an equal number of Hessians, who had

tion;

been garrisoning the fortresses of Flanders, but who were now relieved by Dutch troops. Stair had now forty thousand men, and might easily have seized the emperor at Frankfort. All parties had respected, however, the neutrality of Frankfort, and Stair did the same, probably because the emperor, having no subjects to ransom him, might have proved rather a burden on his hands, than of any advantages in prosecuting the war.

round him, and secretly pointed, the efforts of the opposi-
but he had long abandoned in disgust the party of
the pretender.
Under D'Argensen and Tencin a new stimulus was given
to the war. The rebuff which the French arms had met
with in Germany, roused them to make fresh efforts. The
army of De Broglie, in the command of which he had
superseded Maillebois, had retreated to the banks of the
Neckar, and their unfortunate ally, the old elector of
Bavaria, but now emperor of Germany, a sovereign de-
prived of his only territory of Bavaria, and destitute of
revenue, had taken refuge in the free city of Frankfort-on-
Maine. Voltaire, in his "Twelfth Night Verses" for this
year, ridiculed the position of the various exiled kings.
"The Epiphany; or, Twelfth day," is, in French, called
Le Jour de Rois, the Day of Kings; and the witty infidel
seized on this idea to laugh at the pretender, rejected by
England, telling his beads in Italy; Stanislaus, ex-king of
Poland, smoking pipes in Austrasia; the emperor beloved

De Noailles, on his part, had sixty thousand men, independent of the twelve thousand furnished to Broglie. He kept an active eye on the motions of the allied army, and as Stair encamped on the northern bank of the Maine, he also passed the Rhine and encamped on the southern bank of the Maine. The two camps lay only four leagues from each other, presenting a most anomalous aspect. There was still no declaration of war. France had still its ambassador at London, and England at Paris, yet they were fighting against each other as auxiliaries. A ridiculous situation, as Horace Walpole truly styled it, saying, "We had the name

of war with Spain without the thing, and war with France anticipated their movements, and galloping to the head of without the name!" his column, he reversed the order of his march, placing the infantry in front and the cavalry in the rear. His right extended to the bosky hills of the Spessart, and his left to the river. He saw at once the difficulty of their situation. Grammont occupied a strong position in the village of Dettingen, which was covered by a swamp and a ravine. There was no escape but by cutting right through De Grammont's force, no easy matter; and whilst they were preparing for the charge, the batteries of the French on the opposite bank of the Maine, of which they were previously unaware, began to play murderously on their flank. With this unpleasant discovery came at the same instant the intelligence that Noailles had secured Aschaffenburg in their rear, with twelve thousand men, and was sending fresh reinforcements to De Grammont in front. Thus they were completely hemmed in by the enemy, who were confidently calculating on the complete surrender of the British army, and the capture of the king.

The genius of lord Stair was anything but military, and soon led him into a dilemma. Instead of waiting, as he had first determined, for the reinforcements of Hessians and Hanoverians, he recalled the forces which he had sent across the Maine, and advanced up the river on the same side as the French, with the intention of drawing supplies from Franconia. He advanced to Aschaffenburg, which he reached on the 16th of June; but Noailles had rapidly followed him, and adroitly seized on the fords of both the Upper and Lower Maine, thus cutting off Stair both from his own stores at Hanau, and from the expected supplies of Franconia. At this critical moment king George arrived at the camp, and found Noailles lying in a strong position near Gross Ostheim, and Stair cooped up with his army in a narrow valley betwixt the wild and hilly forest of Spessart, which extends from Aschaffenburg to Dettingen and the river Maine. To render his case the more desperate, he had quarrelled with Aremberg, who had let him pursue his march alone; and Stair now lay, with only thirty-seven thousand men, in the very grasp, as it were, of Noailles and his sixty thousand men. The Hessians and Hanoverians had now reached Hanau, and had Stair lain still there, he would have had them united to his army. As it was, they were not only prevented joining him, but were in danger of being surrounded and taken by the French. "England is famous for negligence," Marlborough had said in one of his letters, but the fact was never more conspicuous than now. The position of the English army was enough to have driven troops of any less determined nation to despair. They were not only hemmed in between the Spessart woods and the Maine, with a superior army ready to attack them, move which way they would, but they were totally cut off from supplies, and so destitute of forage, that in two more days they must sacrifice their horses.

George and his soldiers, however, lost no atom of heart; they determined to cut a way through the enemy or die on the ground; and luckily at this moment the enemy committed almost as great an error as Stair had before. Noailles quitted his post in front of the king's army, and crossed the Maine bridge to give some further orders on that side; and no sooner did he depart than his nephew, De Grammont, eager to seize the glory of defeating the English, and not aware that the whole British army were at that moment about to bear down upon him, ordered his troops to cross the ravite in their front, and assault the English on their own side. The order was executed, and had instantly the unforeseen effect of silencing their own batteries on the other side ef the river, for, by this movement, the French came directly betwixt their fire and the English, which it had been t that moment mercilessly mowing down.

At this moment, the horse which George II. was riding, taking fright at the noise made by the French in their advance, became unmanageable, and plunged forward fariously, nearly carrying the king into the midst of the French lines. Being, however, stopped just in time, the king dismounted, and placing himself at the head of the British and Hanoverian infantry on the right, he flourishel his sword and said, "Now, boys! now for the honour of England! Fire, and behave bravely, and the French will soon: run!"

In this awkward dilemma the king resolved to cut his way through the French, superior as they were, and regain communication with their magazines and their auxiliaries at Hanau. But Noailles was closely watching their movements; and being aware of what was intended, took instant measures to prevent the retreat. He immediately advanced from their front to their rear; threw two bridges over the Maine at Selingenstadt, and dispatched his nephew, the duke de Grammont, to secure the defile of Dettingen, through which the English must pass in their retreat. He The first charge, however, was not so encouraging. The also raised strong batteries on the opposite bank of the French made an impetuous onset, and threw the advanced Maine, so as to play on the English as they marched along guard of the English into confusion; but the king and his the river. These preparations being unknown to the Eng-son, the duke of Cumberland, who commanded on the left, lish, and still supposing Noailles' principal force lay betwixt and, like his father, took his stand in the front line, disthem and Aschaffenburg, instead of betwixt them and played the highest courage, and inspired their troops with Dettingen, on the 27th of June, at daybreak, the king wonderful courage. The duke of Cumberland was wounded struck his tents, and the march on Dettingen began. in the leg, but refused to quit the field. The tide of battle George showed a stout heart in the midst of these startling was quickly turned, and Noailles, from the other side, saw circumstances, and the soldiers, having the presence of their with astonishment and alarm his troops in action contrary king, were full of spirits. George took up his position in to his plans. He returned in all haste to give fresh support the rear of his army, expecting the grand attack to come to his soldiers, but it was too late. Gallantly as the French from that quarter; but presently he beheld his advanced posts fought, the presence of the king and prince on the other repulsed from Dettingen, and the French troops pouring over side made the English and Hanoverians irresistible. King the bridge of the Maine. He then perceived that Noailles had and prince, and army, all showed an enthusiastic courage a

e and

THE BATTLE OF DETTINGEN.

steadiness, which bore down everything before it. The dense Voltaire saw him at the Hague and asked him about the column of infantry, led on by the king, broke the French ranks, and cut through them with terrible slaughter. Noailles, seeing the havoc, gave a command which completed the disaster. To shield his men, he ordered them to repass the Maine; but a word of retreat, in all such cases, is a word of defeat. The retrograde movement produced dismay and disorder; the whole became a precipitate route. The French were driven in confused masses against the bridges, the bridges were choked up with the struggling throng, and numbers were forced into the river, or jumped in for escape, and were drowned. There was a wild flinging down of arms and a rush to get into the woody hills. Of these fugitives, great numbers were compelled to surrender. The battle, however, did not cease till four o'clock in the afternoon, when the French drew off, leaving the king of England in possession of the field, where he continued till night.

battle, he replied, "I think the French made one mistake and the English two. Yours was, not standing still; and ours-first, in entangling ourselves in a most perilous position; and secondly, in failing to pursue our victory."