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April-May, 1741.

In such an amazing condition is the English Fighting Apparatus under Walpole, being important for England's self only, while the Talking Apparatus, important for Walpole, is in such excellent gearing, so well kept in repair and oil! By Wentworth's blame, who had no knowledge of war; by Vernon's, who sat famous on the Opposition side, yet wanted loyalty of mind; by one's blame and another's, whose it is idle arguing, here is how your Fighting Apparatus performs in the hour when needed. Unfortunate General, or General's Cocked-Hat (a brave heart too, they say, though of brain too vacant, too opaque); unfortunate Admiral (much blown away by vanity, ill nature, and Parliamentary wind); doubly unfortunate Nation, that employs such to lead its armaments! How the English Nation took it? The English Nation has had much of this kind to take, first and last, and apparently will yet have. "Gloomy silence," like that of the poor men going home to their tents, is our only dialect toward it,

This is a dreadful business, this of the wrecked Carthagena Expedition; such a force of war-munitions in every kind, including the rare kind human Courage and force of heart, only not human Captaincy, the rarest kind, as could have swallowed South America at discretion had there been Captains over it; has gone blundering down into Orcus and the shark's belly in that unutterable manner; might have been didactic to England more than it was, England's skin being very thick against lessons of that nature; might have broken the heart of a little Sovereign Gentleman, Curator of England, had he gone hypochondriacally into it, which he was far from doing, brisk little Gentleman, looking out elsewhither, with those eyes à fleur de tête, and nothing of insoluble admitted into the brain that dwelt inside.

What became subsequently of the Spanish War we in vain inquire of History-Books. The War did not die for many years to come, but neither did it publicly live; it disappears at this point: a River Niger, seen once flowing broad enough, but issuing-Does it issue nowhere, then? Where does it issue? Ex

April-May, 1741.

cept for my Constitutional Historian, still unpublished, I should never have known where. By the time these disastrous Carthagena tidings reached England, his Britannic Majesty was in Hanover, involved, he, and all his State-doctors, English and Hanoverian, in awful contemplation on Pragmatic Sanction, Kaiserwahl, Celestial Balance, and the saving of Nature's Keystone, should this still prove possible to human effort and contrivance; in which imminency of Doomsday itself, the small English-Spanish matter, which the Official people, and his Majesty as much as any, had bitterly disliked, was quite let go, and dropped out of view; forgotten by Official people; left to the dumb English Nation, whose concern it was, to administer as it could.

Anson-with his three ships gone to two, gone ultimately to one-is henceforth what Spanish War there officially is. Anson could not meet those Vernon-Wentworth gentlemen "from the other side of the Isthmus of Darien," the gentlemen, with their Enterprise, being already bankrupt and away. Anson, with three inconsiderable ships, which rotted gradually into one, could not himself settle the Spanish War, but he did, on his own score, a series of things, ending in beautiful finis of the Acapulco Ship, which were of considerable detriment and of highly considerable disgrace to Spain, and were, and are long likely to be, memorable among the Sea-heroisms of the world, giving proof that real Captains, taciturn Sons of Anak, are still born in England, and Sea-kings equal to any that were. Luckily, too, he had some chaplain or ship's-surgeon on board who saw good to write account of that memorable Voyage of his, and did it in brief, perspicuous terms, wise and credible: a real Poem in its kind, or Romance all Fact; one of the pleasantest little Books in the World's Library at this date. Anson sheds some tincture of heroic beauty over that otherwise altogether hideous puddle of mismanagement, platitude, disaster, and vindicates, in a pathetically potential way, the honor of his poor Nation a little.

Apart from Official Anson, the Spanish War fell mainly, we may say, into the hands of-of Mr. Jenkins himself, and such Friends of his at Wapping, Bristol, and the Sea-ports as might be disposed to go privateering; in which course, after some cross

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es at first, and great complaints of losses to Spanish Privateers, Wapping and Bristol did at length eminently get the upper hand, and thus carried on this Spanish War (or Spanish-French, Spain and France having got into one boat) for long years coming in an entirely inarticulate, but by no means quite ineffectual manner-indeed, to the ultimate clearance of the Seas from both French and Spaniard within the next twenty years. Readers shall take this little Excerpt, dated Three Years hence, and set it twinkling in the night of their imaginations:

Bristol, Monday, 21st (10th) September, 1744.

"Nothing is to

be seen here but rejoicings for the number of French prizes brought into this port. Our Sailors are in high spirits, and full of money, and while on shore, spend their whole time in carousing, visiting their Mistresses, going to plays, serenading, &c., dressed out with laced hats, tossels (sic), swords with sword-knots, and every other way of spending their money."13

Carthagena, Walpole, Viners-here are Sorrows for a Britannic Majesty; and these are nothing like all. But poor readers should have some respite-brief breathing-time, were it only to use their pocket-handkerchiefs, and summon new courage!

CHAPTER XIII.

SMALL-WAR: FIRST EMERGENCE OF ZIETHEN, THE HUSSAR GENERAL, INTO NOTICE.

AFTER Brieg, Friedrich undertook nothing military except strict vigilance of Neipperg for a couple of months or more. Military, especially offensive operations, are not the methods just now. Rest on your oars; see how this seething Ocean of European Politics, and Peace or War, will settle itself into currents, into set winds, by which of them a man may steer who happens to have a fixed port in view. Neipperg, too, is glad to be quiescent; "my Infantry hopelessly inferior," he writes to head-quarters: "Could not one hire 10,000 Saxons, think you”—or do several other chimerical things, for help? Except with his Pandour people, working what mischief they can, Neipperg does 13 Extract of a Letter from Bristol, in Gentleman's Magazine, xiv., 504.

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nothing. But this Hungarian rabble is extensively industrious, scouring the country far and wide, and gives a great deal of trouble both to Friedrich and the peaceable inhabitants, so that there is plenty of Small-War always going on-not mentionable here, any passage of it, except perhaps one, at a place called Rothschloss, which concerns a remarkable Prussian Hussar Major, their famed Ziethen, and is still remembered by the Prussian public.

We have heard of Captain, now Major Ziethen, how Friedrich Wilhelm sent him to the Rhine Campaign, six years ago, to learn the Hussar Art from the Austrians there. One Baronay (Baroniay, or even Baranyai, as others write him), an excellent hand, taught him the Art, and how well he has learned Baronay now sadly experiences. The Affair of Rothschloss (in abridged form) befell as follows:

"In these Small-War businesses, Baronay, Austrian Major-General of Hussars, had been exceedingly mischievous hitherto. It was but the other day a Prussian regular party had to go out upon him just in time, and to re-wrench'sixty cart-loads of meal' wrenched by him from suffering individuals, with which he was making off to Neisse, when the Prussians" (from their Camp of Mollwitz, where they still are) “came in sight.

"And now again (May 16th) news is, That Baronay, and 1400 Hussars with him, has another considerable set of meal-carts in the Village of Rothschloss, about twenty miles southward, Frankenstein way, and means to march with them Neisse-ward to-morrow. Two marches or so will bring him home, if Prussian diligence prevent not. 'Go instantly,' orders Friedrich, appointing Winterfeld to do it: Winterfeld with 300 dragoons, with Ziethen and Hussars to the amount of 600, which is more than one to two of Austrians.

"Winterfeld and Ziethen march that same day; are in the neighborhood of Rothschloss by nightfall, and take their measures-block the road to Neisse, and do the other necessary things—and go in upon Baronay next morning at the due rate, fiery men both of them; sweep poor Baronay away minus the meal, who finds even his road blocked (bridge bursting into cannon-shot upon him at one point)—instead of bridge, a stream, or slow current of quagmire for him-and is in imminent hazard. Ziethen's behavior was superlative (details of it unintelligible off the ground); and Baronay fled totally in wreck; his own horse shot, and at the moment no other to be had; swam the quagmire,

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or swashed through it 'by help of a tree,' and had a near miss of capture. Recovering himself on the other side, Baronay, we can fancy, gave a grin of various expression as he got into saddle again: 'The arrow so near killing was feathered from one's own wing, too!' And, indeed, a day or two after, he wrote Ziethen a handsome Letter to that effect."1

Ziethen, for minor good feats, had been made Lieutenant-Colonel the very day he marched; his Commission dates May 16th, 1741; and on the morrow he handsels it in this pretty manner. He is now forty-two; much held down hitherto, being a man of inarticulate turn, hot and abrupt in his ways, liable always to multifarious obstruction and unjust contradiction from his fellow-creatures. But Winterfeld's report on this occasion was emphatic, and Ziethen shoots rapidly up henceforth; Colonel within the year, General in 1744, and more and more esteemed by Friedrich during their subsequent long life together.

Though perhaps the two most opposite men in Nature, and standing so far apart, they fully recognized one another in their several spheres. For Ziethen, too, had good eyesight, though in abstruse sort; rugged, simple son of the moorlands; nourished, body and soul, on orthodox frugal oatmeal (so to speak), with a large sprinkling of fire and iron thrown in!—a man born poor; son of some poor Squirelet in the Ruppin Country; "used to walk five miles into Ruppin on Saturday nights," in early life, and have his hair done into club, which had to last him till the week following"2—a big-headed, thick-lipped, decidedly ugly little man, and yet so beautiful in his ugliness; wise, resolute, true, with a dash of high, uncomplaining sorrow in him; not the "bleached nigger" at all, as Print-Collectors sometimes call him! no; but (on those oatmeal terms) the Socrates-Odysseus, the valiant, pious Stoic, and much-enduring man one of the best HussarCaptains ever built. By degrees, King Friedrich and he grew to be-with considerable tiffs now and then, and intervals of gloom and eclipse--what we might call sworn friends; on which

'Helden-Geschichte, i., 927; Orlich, i., 120. The Life of General de Zieten (English Translation, very ill printed, Berlin, 1803), by Frau von Blumenthal (a vaguish eloquent Lady, but with access to information, being a connection of Z.'s), p. 84. 2 Militair-Lexikon, iv., 310.

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