to give
the enemy a warm reception. As soon as it was day light, he mounted on
horseback to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, whom he found in the
same situation as the day before. At a little after five a very smart
cannonading began against the battery behind the village, which was
supported by the Hessian infantry and cavalry, who stood a most severe
fire with surprising steadiness and resolution. Between seven and eight
the firing of small arms began on the left of the allies, when his royal
highness ordered major-general Behr, with three battalions of Brunswick,
to sustain the grenadiers in the wood, if their assistance should be
wanted; The cannonading continued above six hours, during which the
troops, that were exposed to it, never once abated of their firmness.
The fire of the small arms on the left increasing, and the French
seeming to gain ground, his royal highness detached the colonels
Darkenhausen and Bredenbach, with three Hanoverian battalions and six
squadrons, round the wood by Afferde, who, towards the close of the day,
drove several squadrons of the enemy back to their army, without giving
them any opportunity to charge. At length the grenadiers in the wood,
apprehensive of being surrounded, from the great numbers of the enemy
that appeared there, and were marching round on that side, though they
repulsed every thing that appeared in their front, thought it advisable
to retire nearer the left of the army, a motion which gave the enemy an
opportunity of possessing themselves of that battery without opposition.
Here the hereditary prince of Brunswick distinguished himself at the
head of a battalion of Wolfenbuttle guards, and another of Hanoverians,
who attacked and repulsed, with their bayonets, a superior force of the
enemy, and retook the battery. But the French being in possession of an
eminence which commanded and flanked both the lines of the infantry and
the battery of the allies, and where they were able to support their
attack under the cover of a hill, his royal highness, considering the
superior numbers of the enemy, near double to his, and the impossibility
of dislodging them from their post, without exposing his own troops too
much, ordered a retreat; in consequence of which his army retired, first
to Hamelen, where he left a garrison, then to Nienburgh, and afterwards
to Hoya; in the neighbourhood of which town, after sending away all the
magazines, sick, and wounded, he encamped, in