better than I wished. I sustained the
Bavarians; and the Turks, after having fled to the heights, lost all the
advantages of their ground. A large troop of their cavalry wished to
charge mine, which were too much advanced; a whole regiment was cut in
pieces; but two others, who arrived opportunely to their aid, decided
the victory. It was then that I received a cut from a sabre; it was, I
believe, my thirteenth wound, and probably my last. Everything was over
at eleven o'clock in the morning. Viard, during the battle, retained the
garrison of Belgrad, which capitulated the same day. I forgot that there
was no Boufflers there: I played the generous man: I granted the honors
of war to the garrison, who, not knowing what they meant, did not avail
themselves of them. Men, women, and children, chariots and camels,
issued forth all at once, pell-mell, by land and by water.

At Vienna the devotees cried out, "A miracle!" those who envied me cried
out, "Good-fortune!" Charles VI was, I believe, among the former: and
Guido Stahrenberg among the latter. I was well received, as might have
been expected.

Here is my opinion respecting this victory, in which I have more cause
for justification than for glory; my partisans have spoken too favorably
of it, and my enemies too severely. They would have had much more reason
to propose cutting off my head on this occasion than on that of Zenta,
for there I risked nothing. I was certain of conquering: but here, not
only I might have been beaten, but totally ruined and lost in a storm,
for the enemy's artillery to the left, on the shores of the Danube, had
destroyed my bridges. I was, indeed, superior in saics and in workmen
and artillerymen to protect or repair them: I had a corps also at
Semlin.

Could I anticipate the tardiness or disinclination of the authorities
who engaged in this war, where there were so many vices of the interior
in administration, and so much ignorance in the chiefs of the civil and
commissariat departments? Hence it was that I was in want of everything
necessary to commence the siege, and to take Belgrad before the arrival
of the grand vizier, and which hindered me afterward from checking him
on the heights. This, however, I should have done--but for my cursed
fever--before his artillery arrived. And then that unlucky dysentery,
which put my army into the hospital, or rather into the burying-ground,
for each regiment had one behind its camp--could I anticipate t