h bluster and agitation among
the weaker sorts in both Nations. Whereupon,--

"JULY 1st [just in the days while Friedrich was first trying Horse
Artillery], Rear-Admiral Rodney sails from Portsmouth with a few
Frigates, and Six Bomb-ketches [FIREDRAKE, BASILISK, BLAST, and such
nomenclatures [List of him, in Beatson, _Naval and Military Memoirs_
(London, 1804), ii. 241; his Despatch excellently brief, ib. ii. 323]];
and in the afternoon of Tuesday, 3d, arrives in the frith or bay of
Havre. Steers himself properly into 'the Channel of Honfleur' before
dark; and therefrom, with his Firedrake, Basilisk and Company, begins
such a bombardment of Havre and the flat-bottomed manufactories as was
quite surprising. Fifty-two incessant hours of it, before he thought
poor Havre had enough. Poor Havre had been on fire six times; the flat
manufactory (unquenchable) I know not how many; all the inhabitants off
in despair; and the Garrison building this battery to no purpose, then
that; no salvation for them but in Rodney's 'mortars getting too hot.'
He had fired of shells 1,900, of carcasses, 1,150: from Wednesday about
sunrise till Friday about 8 A.M.,--about time now for breakfast; which
I hope everybody had, after such a stretch of work. 'No damage to speak
of,' said the French Gazetteers; 'we will soon refit everything!' But
they never did; and nothing came of Havre henceforth. Vannes was always,
and is now still more, to be the main place; only that Hawke--most
unexpectedly, for one fancied all their ships employed in distant
parts--rides there with a Channel Fleet of formidable nature; and the
previous question always is: 'Cannot we beat Hawke? Can we! Or will not
he perhaps go, of himself, when the rough weather comes?'"

Chapter III.--FRIEDRICH IN PERSON ATTEMPTS THE RUSSIAN PROBLEM; NOT WITH
SUCCESS.

Before Wedell's catastrophe, the Affair of those Haddick-Loudon
Detachments had become a little plainer to Friedrich. The intention,
he begins to suspect, is not for Berlin at all; but for junction with
Soltikof,--at Crossen, or wherever it may be. This is in fact their real
purpose; and this, beyond almost Berlin itself, it is in the highest
degree important to prevent! Important; and now as if become impossible!

Prince Henri had come to Bautzen with his Army, specially to look after
Loudon and Haddick; and he has, all this while, had Finck with some
10,000 diligently patrolling to westward of them, guarding Berlin;