order to cover Bremen and
Verden, and to preserve a communication with Stade, to which place the
archives, and most valuable effects of Hanover had been removed. In
this engagement, colonel Bredenbach attacked four brigades very strongly
posted, with a battery of fourteen pieces of cannon, repulsed, and drove
them down a precipice, and took all their artillery and ammunition; but
preferring the care of his wounded to the glory of carrying away the
cannon, he brought off only six, nailing up and destroying the rest. The
loss of the allies in all the skirmishes, which lasted three days,
was three hundred and twenty-seven men killed, nine hundred and seven
wounded, and two hundred and twenty missing, or taken prisoners; whilst
that of the French, according to their own accounts, amounted to fifteen
hundred men.

The French, being left masters of the field, soon reduced Hamelen, which
was far from being well fortified, obliged the garrison to capitulate,
and took out of the town sixty brass cannon, several mortars, forty
ovens, part of the equipage of the duke's army, and large quantities of
provisions and ammunition, which they found in it, together with a great
many sick and wounded, who, not being included in the capitulation, were
made prisoners of war. Whether the court of France had any reason to
find fault with the conduct of the mareschal d'Etrees, or whether
its monarch was blindly guided by the counsels of his favourite the
marquese de Pompadour, who, desirous to testify her gratitude to the
man who had been one of the chief instruments of her high promotion, was
glad of an opportunity to retrieve his shattered fortunes, and, at the
same time, to add to her own already immense treasures, we shall not
pretend to determine; though the event seems plainly to speak the last.
Even at the time, no comparison was made between the military skill of
the mareschal d'Etrees, and that of the duke de Richelieu; but, however
that may have been, this last, who, if he had not shone in the character
of a soldier, excelled all, or at least most of his contemporaries in
the more refined arts of a courtier, was, just before the battle we have
been speaking of, appointed to supersede the former in the command
of the French army in Lower Saxony, where he arrived on the sixth
of August, with the title of mareschal of France; and M. d'Etrees
immediately resigned the command.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

THE FRENCH TAKE POSSESSION OF