six weeks; sound of his cannon heard at Strasburg on winter nights,
300 years ago: to no purpose; for his Captains of the Siege, after
trial and second trial, solemnly shook their heads; and the great
Kaiser, breaking into tears, had to raise the Siege of Metz; and
went his way, never to smile more in this world: and Metz, and
Toul, and Verdun, remain with the French ever since):--"To the
Three Bishoprics, possibly enough!"

"'Or they may purpose for the Donau Countries, where Broglio is
crackling off like trains of gunpowder; and lend hand to Prince
Karl, thereby enclosing Broglio fires?' This, according to present
aspects, is between two the likeliest. And perhaps, had provenders
and arrangements been made beforehand for such a march, this had
been the feasiblest: and, to my own notion, it was some wild hope
of doing this without provenders or prearrangements that had
brought the Pragmatic into its present quarters at Aschaffenburg,
which are for the military mind a mystery to this day.

"Early in the Spring, the French Governmeut had equipped Noailles
with 70,000 men, to keep watch, and patrol about, in the Rhine-Mayn
Countries, and look into those points. Which he has been vigilantly
doing,--posted of late on the south or left bank of the Mayn;--and
is especially vigilant, since June 14th, when the Pragmatic Army
got on march, across the Mayn at Hochst; and took to offering him
battle, on his own south side of the River. Noailles--though his
Force [still 58,000, after that Broglio Detachment of 12,000] was
greatly the stronger--would not fight; preferred cutting off the
Enemy's supplies, capturing his river-boats, provision-convoys from
Hanau, and settling him by hunger, as the cheaper method.
Impetuous Stair was thwarted, by flat protest of his German