I dare to say that I am not scared more than another at sight of abuses and disorder, but it is time to apply to an evil which is at its height other remedies than palliatives, which, for the most part, merely aggravate it and render it incurable as long as war lasts.

I have not seen and do not see here anything but what overwhelms me, and I feel still more wretched for having been the witness of it." Whilst the plunder of Hanover was serving the purpose of feeding the insensate extravagance of Richelieu and of the army, Frederick II.

had entered Saxony, hurling back into Thuringia the troops of Soubise and of the Prince of Hildburghausen.

By this time the allies had endured several reverses; the boldness of the King of Prussia's movements bewildered and disquieted officers as well as soldiers.

"Might I ask your Highness what you think of his Prussian majesty's manoeuvring ?" says a letter to Count Clermont, from an officer serving in the army of Germany; "this prince, with eighteen or twenty thousand men at most, marches upon an army of fifty thousand men, forces it to recross a river, cuts off its rear guard, crosses this same river before its very eyes, offers battle, retires, encamps leisurely, and loses not a man.