from
Sir Robert Murray Keith to his Excellency Papa, now at Petersburg,
"Excellency first," as we used to define him, stands in the miserably
edited _Memoirs and Correspondence_ (London, 1849), i. 104-105; and may
tempt you to a reading; but alters nothing, adds little or nothing.
Sir R. fights here as a Colonel of Highlanders, but afterwards became
"Excellency second" of his name.] And it is a Battle lost to Choiseul's
grand Pair of Armies; a Campaign checked in mid volley; and nothing
but recriminations, courts-martial, shrieky jargonings,--and plain
incompatibility between the two Marechaux de France; so that they had to
part company, and go each his own road henceforth. Choiseul remonstrates
with them, urges, encourages; writes the 'admirablest Despatches;' to
no purpose. 'How ridiculous and humiliating would it be for us, if,
with Two Armies of such strength, we accomplished nothing, and the whole
Campaign were lost!' writes he once to them.

"Which was in fact the result arrived at; the two Generals parting
company for this Campaign (and indeed for all others); and each, in his
own way, proving futile. Soubise, with some 30,000, went gasconading
about, in the Westphalian, or extreme western parts; taking Embden (from
two Companies of Chelsea Pensioners; to whom he broke his word, poor old
souls;--to whom, and much more to the Populations there [LETTER FROM
A FRENCH PROTESTANT GENTLEMAN AT GRONINGEN; followed by confirmatory
LETTER FROM &c. &c. (copied into _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1761), give
special details of the altogether ULTRA-Soltikof atrocities perpetrated
by Soubise's people (doubtless against his will) on the recalcitrant
or disaffected Peasants, on the &c. &c.]),--taking Embden, not taking
Bremen; and in fact doing nothing, except keep the Gazetteers in vain
noise: a Soubise not in force, by himself, to shake Ferdinand; and
who, it is remarked, now and formerly, always prefers to be at a
good distance from that Gentleman. Broglio, on the other hand, keeps
violently pulsing out, round Ferdinand's flanks; taking Wolfenbuttel
(Broglio's for two days), besieging Brunswick (for one day);-and,
in short, leaving, he too, the matter as he had found it. A man of
difficult, litigious temper, I should judge; but clearly has something
of generalship: 'does understand tactic, if strategy NOT,' said
everybody; 'while Soubise, in both capacities, is plain zero!'
[Excellency Stanley (see INFRA) to Pitt, "Paris, 30th J