g: to say much would he a waste of record; as the
thing itself was a waste of powder. A thing hideous to think of; without
the least profit to Fermor, but with total ruin to all the inhabitants,
and to the many strangers who had sought refuge there. One interior
circumstance is memorable and lucky to us. Artillery-Captain Tielcke
happened to be with these people; had come in the train of "two Saxon
Princes, serving as volunteers;" and, with a singular lucidity, and
faithful good sense, not scientific alone, he illuminates these black
Russian matters for such as have to do with them.

Tielcke's Book of _Contributions to the Art of War_ [_Beytrage zur
Kriege-Kunst und (ZUR) Geschichte des Krieges von 1756 bis 1763_ (six
thin vols. 4to, with many Plates); cited above.] is still in repute with
Soldiers, especially in the Artillery line; and indeed shows a sound
geometrical head, and contains bits of excellent Historical reading
interspersed among the scientific parts. This Tielcke, it appears, was
a common foot-soldier, one of those Pirna 14,000 made Prussian against
their will; but Tielcke had a milkmaid for sweetheart in those regions,
who, good soul, gave him her generous farewell, a suit of her clothes,
perhaps a pair of her pails; and in that guise he walked out of bondage.
Clear away; to Warsaw, to favor with the King and others (being of
real merit, an excellent, studious, modest little man); and here he
now reappears, in a higher capacity; as articulate Eye-witness of the
Custrin Business and the Zorndorf, among much other Russian darkness,
which shall remain comfortably blank to us.

Up to Custrin, the Journal of the Operations of the Russian Army, which
I could give from day to day, ["TAGEBUCH BEYDER &c. (Diary of both
Armies from the beginning of the Campaign till Zorndorf"), in Tielcke,
ii. 1-75; Tempelhof, ii. 136, 216-224; _Helden-Geschichte,_ v.; &c.
&c.] is of no interest except to the Nether Powers of this Universe; the
Russian Operations hitherto having consisted in slow marches, sluttish
cookeries, cantonings, bivouackings, with destruction of a poor innocent
Country, and arson, theft and murder done on the great scale by inhuman
vagabonds, Cossacks so called, not tempered on this occasion by the
mercy of Calmucks. The regular Russian Army, it appears, participates
in the common horror of mankind against such a method of making war; but
neither Feldmarschall Fermor, nor General Demikof (properly THEMICOUD