in the Strasburg
parts; Karl once across, Britannic Majesty was to cross about Mainz, and
co-operate from Lower Elsass. And they should have been swift about
it; and were not! All the world expected a severe slash to France; and
France itself had the due apprehension of it: but France and all the
world were mistaken, this time.

Prince Karl was slow with his preparations; Noailles and Coigny
(Broglio's successor) were not slow; "raising batteries everywhere,"
raising lines, "10,000 Elsass Peasants," and what not;--so that, by the
time Prince Karl was ready (middle of August), they lay intrenched
and minatory at all passable points; and Karl could nowhere, in that
Upper-Rhine Country, by any method, get across. Nothing got across;
except once or twice for perhaps a day, Butcher Trenck and his loose
kennel of Pandours; who went about, plundering and rioting, with loud
rodomontade, to the admiration of the Gazetteers, if of no one else.

Nor was George's seconding of important nature; most dubitative, wholly
passive, you would rather say, though the River, in his quarter, lay
undefended. He did, at last, cross the Rhine about Mainz; went languidly
to Worms,--did an ever-memorable TREATY OF WORMS there, if no fighting
there or elsewhere. Went to Speyer, where the Dutch joined him (sadly
short of numbers stipulated, had it been the least matter);--was at
Germersheim, at what other places I forget; manoeuvring about in a
languid and as if in an aimless manner, at least it was in a perfectly
ineffectual one. Mentzel rode gloriously to Trarbach, into Lorraine;
stuck up Proclamation, "Hungarian Majesty come, by God's help, for her
own again," and the like;--of which Document, now fallen rare, we give
textually the last line: "And if any of you DON'T [don't sit quiet at
least], I will," to be brief, "first cut off your ears and noses, and
then hang you out of hand." The singular Champion of Christendom, famous
to the then Gazetteers! [In Adelung (iii. B, 193) the Proclamation
at large. I have, or once had, a _Life of Mentzel_ (Dublin, I think,
1744), "price twopence,"--dear at the money.] Nothing farther could
George, with his Dutch now adjoined, do in those parts, but wriggle
slightly to and fro without aim; or stand absolutely still, and eat
provision (great uncertainty and discrepancy among the Generals, and
Stair gone in a huff [Went, "August 27th, by Worms" (Henderson,
_Life of Cumberlund,_ p. 48), just while his Majesty wa