er a month's siege under the best
of Siege-Captains; Ziegenhayn still less under one of the worst.
Provisions, ammunitions, were not to be had by force of wagonry: scant
food for soldiers, doubly scant the food of Sieges;"--"the road from
Beverungen [where the Weser-boats have to stop, which is 30 miles from
Cassel, perhaps 60 from Ziegenhayn, and perhaps 100 from the outmost or
southern-most of Ferdinand's parties] is paved with dead horses,"
nor has even Cassel nearly enough of ammunition:--in a word, Broglio,
finding the time come, bursts up from his Frankfurt Position (March
14th-21st) in a sharp and determined manner; drives Ferdinand's people
back, beats the Erbprinz himself one day (by surprisal, 'My compliment
for Langensalza'), and sets his people running. Ferdinand sees the
affair to be over; and deliberately retires; lucky, perhaps, that he
still can deliberately: and matters return to their old posture. Broglio
resumes his quarters, somewhat altered in shape, and not quite so
grasping as formerly; and beyond his half-filled Magazines, has lost
nothing considerable, or more considerable than has Ferdinand himself."
[Tempelhof, v. 15-45; Mauvillon, ii. 135-148.]

The vital element in Ferdinand's Adventure was the Siege of Cassel;
all had to fail, when this, by defect of means, under the best of
management, declared itself a failure. Siege Captain was a Graf von
Lippe-Buckeburg, Ferdinand's Ordnance-Master, who is supposed to be "the
best Artillery Officer in the world,"--and is a man of great mark in
military and other circles. He is Son and Successor of that fantastic
Lippe-Buckeburg, by whom Friedrich was introduced to Free-Masonry long
since. He has himself a good deal of the fantast again, but with a
better basis of solidity beneath it. A man of excellent knowledge
and faculty in various departments; strict as steel, in regard to
discipline, to practice and conduct of all kinds; a most punctilious,
silently supercilious gentleman, of polite but privately irrefragable
turn of mind. A tall, lean, dusky figure; much seen to by neighbors, as
he stalks loftily through this puddle of a world, on terms of his own.
Concerning whom there circulates in military circles this Anecdote,
among many others;--which is set down as a fact; and may be, whether
quite believable or not, a symbol of all the rest, and of a man not
unimportant in these Wars. "Two years ago, on King Friedrich's birthday,
24th January, 1759, the Co