he does with orderly velocity: and at 9 A.M. the Dignitaries and their
8,000 find open gates, Seidlitz clean off; occupy the posts, with due
emphasis and flourish; and proceed to the Schloss in a grand triumphant
way,--where privately they are not very welcome, though one puts
the best face on it, and a dinner of importance is the first thing
imperative to be set in progress. A flurried Court, that of Gotha,
and much swashing of French plumes through it, all this morning, since
Seidlitz had to flit.

"Seidlitz has not flitted very far. Seidlitz has ranked his small
dragoon-hussar force in a hollow, two miles off; has got warning sent to
a third regiment within reach of him, 'Come towards me, and in a certain
defile, visible from Gotha eastward, spread yourselves so and so!'--and
judges by the swashing he hears of up yonder, that perhaps something may
still be done. Dinner, up in the Schloss, is just being taken from the
spit, and the swashing at its height, when--'Hah what is that, though?'
and all plumes pause. For it is Seidlitz, artistically spread into
single files, on the prominent points of vision; advancing again, more
like 15,000 than 1,500: 'And in the Defile yonder, that regiment, do you
mark it; the King's vanguard, I should say?--To horse!'

"That is Seidlitz's fine Bit of Painting, hung out yonder, hooked on
the sky itself, as temporary background to Gotha, to be judged of by the
connoisseurs. For pictorial effect, breadth of touch, truth to Nature
and real power on the connoisseur, I have heard of nothing equal by any
artist. The high Generalcy, Soubise, Hildburghausen, Darmstadt, mount in
the highest haste; everybody mounts, happy he who has anything to mount;
the grenadiers tumble out of the Schloss; dragoons, artillery tumble
out; Dauphiness takes wholly to her heels, at an extraordinary pace: so
that Seidlitz's hussars could hardly get a stroke at her; caught sixty
and odd, nine of them Officers not of mark; did kill thirty; and had
such a haul of equipages and valuable effects, cosmetic a good few of
them, habilatory, artistic, as caused the hussar heart to sing for joy.
Among other plunder, was Loudon's Commission of Major-General, just on
its road from Vienna [poor Mannstein's death the suggesting cause,
say some];--undoubtedly a shining Loudon; to whom Friedrich, next day,
forwarded the Document with a polite Note." [_Helden-Geschichte,_ iv.
640; Westphalen, ii. 37; _OEuvres de Frederic,_ iv, 147.