low in obeying
orders. Sometimes he seems wilfully to misunderstand them, and
altogether he is a thorn in my side. I am glad, indeed, that the
British infantry division are entirely under my control. With them
I have no difficulty whatever. He was entirely in the wrong in this
matter; and I certainly should address a remonstrance to him, on
the subject of his manner and language to one of my staff, but our
relations are already unpleasantly strained, and any open breach
between us might bring about a serious disaster."

"I certainly should not wish that you should make any allusion to
the matter, sir. Possibly I may have an opportunity of teaching him
to be more polite, after we have done with the French."

By two sudden strokes the duke, in the third week of July, obtained
possession of Bremen, thereby obtaining a port by which stores and
reinforcements from England could reach him; and also recaptured
Osnabrueck, and found to his great satisfaction that the French had
also established a magazine there, so that the stores were even
larger than when they had taken it from him.

The great point was to induce Contades to move from his impregnable
position. He knew that both Contades and Broglio were as anxious as
he was to bring about a battle, did they but see an advantageous
opportunity; and he took a bold step to tempt them.

On the 30th of July he sent the Hereditary Prince, with a force of
ten thousand men, to make a circuit and fall upon Gohfeld, ten
miles up the Weser; and so cut the line by which Contades brought
up the food for his army from Cassel, seventy miles to the south.
Such a movement would compel the French either to fight or to fall
back. It was a bold move and, had it not succeeded, would have been
deemed a rash one; for it left him with but thirty-six thousand men
to face the greatly superior force of the French.

The bait proved too tempting for the French generals. It seemed to
them that the duke had committed a fatal mistake. His left, leaning
on the Weser was, by the march of the force to Gohfeld, left
unsupported at a distance of three miles from the centre; and it
seemed to them that they could now hurl themselves into the gap,
destroy the duke's left, and then crush his centre and right, and
cut off whatever remnant might escape from Hanover.

On Tuesday evening, July 1st, the French got into motion as soon as
it was dark. During the night Contades crossed, by nineteen bridges
that he h