"One day, as I entered his room, he came towards me, saying, 'Itremble to announce bad news to you. I have just heard that Prince Karl of Lorraine is dying.' [Is already dead, "at Brussels, July 4th;" Duke of Sachsen-Teschen and Wife Christine succeeded him as Joint-Governors in those parts.] He looked at me to see the effect this would have; and observing some tears escaping from my eyes, he, by gentlest transitions, changed the conversation; talked of war, and of the Marechal de Lacy. He asked me news about Lacy; and said, 'That is a man of the greatest merit. In former time, Count Mercy among yourselves [killed, while commanding in chief, at the Battle of Parma in 1733], Puysegur among the French, had some notions of marches and encampments; one sees from Hyginus's Book [ancient Book] ON CASTRAMETATION, that the Greeks also were much occupied with the subject: but your Marechal surpasses the Ancients, the Moderns and all the most famous men who have meddled with it. Thus, whenever he was your Quartermaster-General, if you will permit me to make the remark to you, I did not gain the least advantage. Recollect the two Campaigns of 1758 and 1759;you succeeded in everything. I often said to myself, 'Shall I never get rid of that man, then?' You yourselves got me rid of him;and--[some liberal or even profuse eulogy of Lacy, who is De Ligne's friend; which we can omit].
"Next day the King, as soon as he saw me, came up; saying with the most penetrated air: 'If you are to learn the loss of a man who loved you, and who did honor to mankind, it will be better that it be from some one who feels it as deeply as I do. Poor Prince Karl is no more. Others, perhaps, are made to replace him in your heart;but few Princes will replace him with regard to the beauty of his soul and to all his virtues.' In saying this, his emotion became extreme. I said: 'Your Majesty's regrets are a consolation; and you did not wait for his death to speak well of him. There are fine verses with reference to him in the Poem, SUR L'ART DE LA GUERRE.'
My emotion troubled me against my will; however, I repeated them to him.
[<italic> "Soutien de mes rivaux, digne appui de ta reine, Charles, d'un ennemi sourd aux cris de la haine Recois l'eloge" <end italic> ... (for crossing the Rhine in 1744): ten rather noble lines, still worth reading; as indeed the whole Poem well is, especially to soldier students (L'ART DE LAGUERRE, Chant vi.: <italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic>
x. 273).] The Man of Letters seemed to appreciate my knowing them by heart.
KING. "'His passage of the Rhine was a very fine thing;--but the poor Prince depended upon so many people! I never depended upon anybody but myself; sometimes too much so for my luck. He was badly served, not too well obeyed: neither the one nor the other ever was the case with me.--Your General Nadasti appeared to me a great General of Cavalry?' Not sharing the King's opinion on this point, I contented myself with saying, that Nadasti was very brilliant, very fine at musketry, and that he could have led his hussars to the world's end and farther (DANS L'ENFER), so well did he know how to animate them.
KING. "'What has become of a brave Colonel who played the devil at Rossbach? Ah, it was the Marquis de Voghera, I think?--Yes, that's it; for I asked his name after the Battle.'
EGO. "'He is General of Cavalry.'
KING. "'PERDI! It needed a considerable stomach for fight, to charge like your Two Regiments of Cuirassiers there, and, Ibelieve, your Hussars also: for the Battle was lost before it began.'
EGO. "'Apropos of M. de Voghera, is your Majesty aware of a little thing he did before charging? He is a boiling, restless, ever-eager kind of man; and has something of the good old Chivalry style.
Seeing that his Regiment would not arrive quick enough, he galloped ahead of it; and coming up to the Commander of the Prussian Regiment of Cavalry which he meant to attack, he saluted him as on parade; the other returned the salute; and then, Have at each other like madmen.'
KING. "'A very good style it is! I should like to know that man;I would thank him for it.--Your General von Ried, then, had got the devil in him, that time at Eilenburg [spurt of fight there, in the Meissen regions, I think in Year 1758, when the D'Ahremberg Dragoons got so cut up], to let those brave Dragoons, who so long bore your Name with glory, advance between Three of my Columns?'--He had asked me the same question at the Camp of Neustadt ten years since; and in vain had I told him that it was not M. de Ried; that Ried did not command them at all; and that the fault was Marechal Daun's, who ought not to have sent them into that Wood of Eilenburg, still less ordered them to halt there without even sending a patrol forward. The King could not bear our General von Ried, who had much displeased him as Minister at Berlin; and it was his way to put down everything to the account of people he disliked.
KING. "'When I think of those devils of Saxon Camps [Summer, 1760],--they were unattackable citadels! If, at Torgau, M. de Lacy had still been Quartermaster-General, I should not have attempted to attack him. But there I saw at once the Camp was ill chosen.'
EGO. "'The superior reputation of Camps sometimes causes a desire to attempt them. For instance, I ask your Majesty's pardon, but Ihave always thought you would at last have attempted that of Plauen, had the War continued.'
KING. "'Oh, no, indeed! There was no way of taking that one.'
EGO. "'Does n't your Majesty think: With a good battery on the heights of Dolschen, which commanded us; with some battalions, ranked behind each other in the Ravine, attacking a quarter of an hour before daybreak [and so forth, at some length,--excellent for soldier readers who know the Plauen Chasm], you could have flung us out of that almost impregnable Place of Refuge?'
KING. "'And your battery on the Windberg, which would have scourged my poor battalions, all the while, in your Ravine?'
EGO. "'But, Sire, the night?'