up) was 66,000,--nay 70,000; Karl having lent him that beautiful
cannibal gentleman, "Colonel Mentzel and 4,000 Tolpatches," by way
of edge-trimming. Karl was to cross in Upper Elsass, in the
Strasburg parts; Karl once across, Britannic Majesty was to cross
about Mainz, and co-operate from Lower Elsass. And they should have
been swift about it; and were not! All the world expected a severe
slash to France; and France itself had the due apprehension of it:
but France and all the world were mistaken, this time.

Prince Karl was slow with his preparations; Noailles and Coigny
(Broglio's successor) were not slow; "raising batteries
everywhere," raising lines, "10,000 Elsass Peasants," and what not;
--so that, by the time Prince Karl was ready (middle of August),
they lay intrenched and minatory at all passable points; and Karl
could nowhere, in that Upper-Rhine Country, by any method, get
across. Nothing got across; except once or twice for perhaps a day,
Butcher Trenck and his loose kennel of Pandours; who went about,
plundering and rioting, with loud rodomontade, to the admiration of
the Gazetteers, if of no one else.

Nor was George's seconding of important nature; most dubitative,
wholly passive, you would rather say, though the River, in his
quarter, lay undefended. He did, at last, cross the Rhine about
Mainz; went languidly to Worms,--did an ever-memorable TREATY OF
WORMS there, if no fighting there or elsewhere. Went to Speyer,
where the Dutch joined him (sadly short of numbers stipulated, had
it been the least matter);--was at Germersheim, at what other
places I forget; manoeuvring about in a languid and as if in an
aimless manner, at least it was in a perfectly ineffectual one.
Mentzel rode gloriously to Trarbach, into Lorraine; stuck up