ss, finished in roars of laughter
from all our battalions.

Day broke, and the order was issued to follow the French general. The
troops, animated by the prospect of coming to action at last, and
utterly wearied with the idleness of the camp, received the intelligence
with shouts; and the whole moved rapidly forward. Dampierre, before his
march of the previous night, had provided for casualty, by forming an
intrenched camp in the famous position of Famars. It was strong by
nature, and he had added to its strength by covering it with fieldworks,
and a powerful artillery. It was late in the day before we came within
sight of it; and its strength, from the height of its glacis--the
natural glacis made by a succession of sloping hills--was all displayed
to full and formidable advantage. The troops, fatigued with the length
of the march under the burning sun of one of the hottest days which I
ever felt, were halted at the foot of the heights; and the plans of
attack proposed were various enough to have perplexed the Aulic Council
itself. Lines of circumvallation, or bombardment, or waiting the effect
of famine, were successively urged. But the British style prevailed at
last over the scientific. The Guards were ordered to head the column
which was to storm the lines in front, and columns on the right and left
were put in motion at the same instant. We rushed forward under a
general discharge of the French artillery and musketry, and in a quarter
of an hour the position was in our hands. The difficulty of its
approach, and the broken nature of the ground in its rear, enabled the
French general to make his retreat with the chief part of his forces.
But our prize was well worth the trouble; for we brought back two
thousand prisoners, and the whole artillery in position.

The war had now begun in earnest; and our advance was unintermitted. On
the eighth day from the storm of Famars, we again came in sight of
Dampierre. He was now the assailant; our army, which had never exceeded
ten thousand men, (such was the military parsimony of those days,) with
the Prussian troops, and some of the smaller German contingents, were
now unwisely spread to cover a line of nearly thirty miles. The French
general had seized the opportunity of retaliating his ill fortune upon
the allied troops. At daybreak we were roused by the tidings that the
French had broken through our weak extended line in several places, and
had got into the rear of the wh