y wended home, by Coburg and other Countries
where he had business, eating his way; and early in July was safe in
the Metal Mountains again; having fluttered the Volscians in their
Frankenland Corioli to an unexpected extent. It is one of five or six
such sallies Friedrich made upon the Reich, sometimes upon the Austrians
and Reich together, to tumble up their magazines and preparations. Rapid
unexpected inroads, year after year; done chiefly by the Free-Corps; and
famous enough to the then Gazetteers. Of which, or of their doers, as
we can in time coming afford little or no notice, let us add this small
Note on the Free-Corps topic, which is a large one in the Books, but
must not interrupt us again:--

"Before this War was done," say my Authorities, "there came gradually
to be twenty-one Prussian Free-Corps,"--foot almost all; there being
already Hussars in quantity, ever since the first Silesian experiences.
"Notable Aggregates they were of loose wandering fellows, broken Saxons,
Prussians, French; 'Hungarian-Protestant' some of them, 'Deserters from
all the Armies' not a few; attracted by the fame of Friedrich,--as the
Colonels enlisting them had been; Mayer himself, for instance, was by
birth a Vienna man; and had been in many services and wars, from
his fifteenth year and onwards. Most miscellaneous, these Prussian
Free-Corps; a swift faculty the indispensable thing, by no means
a particular character: but well-disciplined, well-captained; who
generally managed their work well.

"They were, by origin, of Anti-Tolpatch nature, got up on the
diamond-cut-diamond principle; they stole a good deal, with order
sometimes, and oftener without; but there was nothing of the old
Mentzel-Trenck atrocity permitted them, or ever imputed to them; and
they did, usually with good military talent, sometimes conspicuously
good, what was required of them. Regular Generals, of a high merit, one
or two of their Captains came to be: Wunsch, for example; Werner, in
some sort; and, but for his sudden death, this Mayer himself. Others of
them, as Von Hordt (Hard is his Swedish name); and 'Quintus Icilius'
(by nature GUICHARD, of whom we shall hear a great deal in the Friedrich
circle by and by), are distinguished as honorably intellectual and
cultivated persons. [Count de Hordt's _Memoirs_ (autobiographical, or
in the first person: English Translation, London, 1806; TWO French
Originals, a worse in 1789, and a better now at last), Preface,