HANOVRE);'"
a name still sticking to it, I believe. [Barbier, iii. 256, 271.] Of the
Richelieu Campaign we are happily delivered from saying almost anything:
and the main interest for us turns now on that Soubise-Hildburghausen
wing of it,--which also is a sufficiently contemptible affair; not to be
spoken of beyond the strictly unavoidable.

Friedrich, with his 23,000 setting out from Dresden, August 30th, has a
march of about 170 miles towards Erfurt. He may expect to find--counting
Richelieu, if Royal Highness of Cumberland persist in acting ZERO as
hitherto--a confused mass of about 150,000 Enemies, of one sort and
other, waiting him ahead; not to think of those he has just left
behind;--and he cannot well be in a triumphant humor! Behind, before,
around, it is one gathering of Enemies: one point only certain, that
he must beat them, or else die. Readers would fain follow him in this
forlorn march; him, the one point of interest now in it: and readers
shall, if we can manage, though it is extremely difficult. For, on
getting to Erfurt, he finds his Soubise-Hildburghausen Army off on
retreat among the inaccessible Hills still farther westward; and has
to linger painfully there, and to detach, and even to march personally
against other Enemies; and then, these finished, to march back towards
his Erfurt ones, who are taking heart in the interim:--and, in short,
from September 1st to November 5th, there are two months of confused
manoeuvring and marching to and fro in that West-Saxon region, which
are very intricate to readers. November 5th is a day unforgettable:
but anterior to that, what can we do? Here, dated, are the Three
grand Epochs of the thing; which readers had better fix in mind as a
preliminary:--

1. SEPTEMBER 13th, Friedrich has got to Erfurt neighborhood; but Soubise
and Company are off westward to the Hills of Eisenach, won't come down;
Friedrich obliged to linger thereabouts, painfully waiting almost a
month, till

2. OCTOBER 11th, hearing that "15,000 Austrians" (that Stolpen Party,
left as rear-guard at Stolpen; Croats mainly, under a General Haddick)
are on march for Berlin, he rises in haste thitherward, through Leipzig,
Torgau, say 100 miles; hears that Haddick HAS been in Berlin (16th-17th
October) for one day, and that he is off again full speed with a ransom
of 30,000 pounds, which they have had to pay him: upon which Friedrich
calls halt in the Torgau country;--and would have been uncertain