ke madmen.'

KING. "'A very good style it is! I should like to know that man; I would
thank him for it.--Your General von Ried, then, had got the devil
in him, that time at Eilenburg [spurt of fight there, in the Meissen
regions, I think in Year 1758, when the D'Ahremberg Dragoons got so cut
up], to let those brave Dragoons, who so long bore your Name with glory,
advance between Three of my Columns?'--He had asked me the same question
at the Camp of Neustadt ten years since; and in vain had I told him that
it was not M. de Ried; that Ried did not command them at all; and that
the fault was Marechal Daun's, who ought not to have sent them into that
Wood of Eilenburg, still less ordered them to halt there without even
sending a patrol forward. The King could not bear our General von Ried,
who had much displeased him as Minister at Berlin; and it was his way to
put down everything to the account of people he disliked.

KING. "'When I think of those devils of Saxon Camps [Summer,
1760],--they were unattackable citadels! If, at Torgau, M. de Lacy had
still been Quartermaster-General, I should not have attempted to attack
him. But there I saw at once the Camp was ill chosen.'

EGO. "'The superior reputation of Camps sometimes causes a desire to
attempt them. For instance, I ask your Majesty's pardon, but I have
always thought you would at last have attempted that of Plauen, had the
War continued.'

KING. "'Oh, no, indeed! There was no way of taking that one.'

EGO. "'Does n't your Majesty think: With a good battery on the heights
of Dolschen, which commanded us; with some battalions, ranked behind
each other in the Ravine, attacking a quarter of an hour before daybreak
[and so forth, at some length,--excellent for soldier readers who
know the Plauen Chasm], you could have flung us out of that almost
impregnable Place of Refuge?'

KING. "'And your battery on the Windberg, which would have scourged my
poor battalions, all the while, in your Ravine?'

EGO. "'But, Sire, the night?'

KING. "'Oh, you could not miss us even by grope. That big hollow that
goes from Burg, and even from Potschappel,--it would have poured like a
water-spout [or fire-spout] over us. You see, I am not so brave as you
think.'

"The Kaiser had set out for his Interview [First Interview, and indeed
it is now more than half done, a good six weeks of it gone] with
the Czarina of Russia. That Interview the King did not like [no
wonder]:--and, to undo