while, uncertain
what to do; their old Commander being killed withal, and their new a
dubitative person, and no orders left. The Duke had left no orders;
having indeed broken in here, in what we called a spiritual white-heat,
without asking himself much what he would do when in: 'Beat the French,
knock them to powder if I can!'--Meanwhile the French clouds are
reassembling a little: Royal Highness too is readjusting himself, now
got '300 yards ahead of Fontenoy,'--pauses there about half an hour, not
seeing his way farther.

"During which pause, Duc de Richelieu, famous blackguard man, gallops
up to the Marechal, gallops rapidly from Marechal to King; suggesting,
'were cannon brought AHEAD of this close deep Column, might not they
shear it into beautiful destruction; and then a general charge be made?'
So counselled Richelieu: it is said, the Jacobite Irishman, Count Lally
of the Irish Brigade, was prime author of this notion,--a man of tragic
notoriety in time coming. ["Thomas Arthur Lally Comte de Tollendal,"
patronymically "O'MULALLY of TULLINDALLY" (a place somewhere in
Connaught, undiscoverable where, not material where): see our
dropsical friend (in one of his wheeziest states), _King James's Irish
Army-List_ (Dublin, 1855), pp. 594-600.] Whoever was author of it,
Marechal de Saxe adopts it eagerly, King Louis eagerly: swift it becomes
a fact. Universal rally, universal simultaneous charge on both flanks
of the terrible Column: this it might resist, as it has done these two
hours past; but cannon ahead, shearing gaps through it from end to end,
this is what no column can resist;--and only perhaps one of Friedrich's
columns (if even that) with Friedrich's eye upon it, could make its
half-right-about (QUART DE CONVERSION), turn its side to it, and
manoeuvre out of it, in such circumstances. The wrathful English
column, slit into ribbons, can do nothing at manoeuvring; blazes and
rages,--more and more clearly in vain; collapses by degrees, rolls into
ribbon-coils, and winds itself out of the field. Not much chased,--its
cavalry now seeing a job, and issuing from the Wood of Barry to cover
the retreat. Not much chased;--yet with a loss, they say, in all, of
7,000 killed and wounded, and about 2,000 prisoners; French loss being
under 5,000.

"The Dutch and Austrians had found that the fit time was now come, or
taken time by the forelock,--their part of the loss, they said, was a
thousand and odd hundreds. The Battle