l? Luck did not favor; Britannic Majesty, neither
in the Netherlands over seas, nor at home (strange new domestic wool, of
a tarry HIGHLAND nature, being thrown him to card, on the sudden!), made
a good Campaign, but a bad. And again a bad (1746) and again (1747),
ever again, till he pleased to cease altogether. Of which distressing
objects we propose that the following one glimpse be our last.

BATTLE OF FONTENOY (11th May, 1745).

... "In the end of April, Marechal de Saxe, now become very famous for
his sieges in the Netherlands, opened trenches before Tournay; King
Louis, with his Dauphin, not to speak of mistresses, play-actors and
cookery apparatus (in wagons innumerable), hastens to be there. A
fighting Army, say of 70,000, besides the garrisons; and great things,
it is expected, will be done; Tournay, in spite of strong works and
Dutch garrison of 9,000, to be taken in the first place.

"Of the Siege, which was difficult and ardent, we will remember nothing,
except the mischance that befell a certain 'Marquis de Talleyrand'
and his men, in the trenches, one night. Night of the 8th-9th May, by
carelessness of somebody, a spark got into the Marquis's powder, two
powder-barrels that there were; and, with horrible crash, sent eighty
men, Marquis Talleyrand and Engineer Du Mazis among them, aloft into the
other world; raining down their limbs into the covered way, where
the Dutch were very inhuman to them, and provoked us to retaliate.
[Espagnac, ii. 27.] Du Mazis I do not know; but Marquis de Talleyrand
turns out, on study of the French Peerages, to be Uncle of a lame little
Boy, who became Right Reverend Tallyrand under singular conditions, and
has made the name very current in after-times!--

"Hearing of this Siege, the Duke of Cumberland hastened over from
England, with intent to raise the same. Mustered his 'Allied Army' (once
called 'Pragmatic'),--self at the head of it; old Count Konigseck,
who was NOT burnt at Chotusitz, commanding the small Austrian quota
[Austrians mainly are gone laggarding with D'Ahremberg up the Rhine];
and a Prince of Waldeck the Dutch,--on the plain of Anderlecht near
Brussels, May 4th; [Anonymous, _Life of Cumberland,_ p. 180; Espagnac,
ii. 26.] and found all things tolerably complete. Upon which,
straightway, his Royal Highness, 60,000 strong let us say, set forth; by
slowish marches, and a route somewhat leftward of the great Tournay Road
[no place on it, except perhaps STE