followed (if you have Maps and Patience) into the last details.
Instructive really to the soldier;--but must be, almost all, omitted
here. One beautiful slap to Duke d'Ahremberg (a poor old friend of
Daun's and ours) we will remember: "Action of Pretsch" they call
it; defeat, almost capture of poor D'Ahremberg; who had been sent to
dislodge the Prince, by threatening his supplies, and had wheeled,
accordingly, eastward, wide away; but, to his astonishment, found, after
a march or two, Three select Prussian Corps emerging on him, by front,
by rear, by flank, with Horse-artillery (quasi-miraculous) bursting out
on hill-tops, too,--and, in short, nothing for it but to retreat,
or indeed to run, in a considerably ruinous style: poor D'Ahremberg!
[Seyfarth (_Beylagen,_ ii. 634-637), "HOFBERICHT VON DER AM 29 OCTOBER,
1759, BEY MEURO [chiefly BEY PRETSCH] VORGEFALLENEN ACTION;" ib. ii. 543
n.] On the whole, Daun is reduced to a panting condition; and knows not
what to do. His plans were intrinsically bad, says Tempelhof; without
beating Henri in battle, which he cannot bring himself to attempt,
he, in all probability, will, were it only for difficulties of the
commissariat kind, have to fall back Dresden-ward, and altogether take
himself away. [Tempelhof, iii. 287-289.]

After this sad slap at Pretsch, Daun paused for consideration; took
to palisading himself to an extraordinary degree, slashing the Schilda
Forests almost into ruin for this end; and otherwise sat absolutely
quiet. Little to be done but take care of oneself. Daun knows withal of
Hulsen's impending advent with the Silesian 13,000;--November 2d, Hulsen
is actually at Muskau, and his 13,000 magnified by rumor to 20,000.
Hearing of which, Daun takes the road (November 4th); quits his
gloriously palisaded Camp of Schilda; feels that retreat on Dresden, or
even home to Bohemia altogether, is the one course left.

And now, the important Bautzen Colloquy of SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER
15th, having here brought its three or more Courses of Activity to a
pause,--we will glance at the far more important THURSDAY, 13th, other
side the Ocean:--

ABOVE QUEBEC, NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER 12th-13th, In profound silence, on the
stream of the St. Lawrence far away, a notable adventure is going on.
Wolfe, from two points well above Quebec ("As a last shift, we will try
that way"), with about 5,000 men, is silently descending in boats; with
purpose to climb the Heights somewhere on this side t