But they had, as too common, nothing ready. Impetuous Stair strove to get ready; "pushed out the Grey Dragoons" for one item. But the Authorities refused Stair's counsel, as rash again; and made no effectual pursuit at all;--too glad that they had brushed their Battle-field triumphantly clear, and got out of that fatal pinfold in an honorable manner.
MAP: BOOK XIV, Chap V, page 257 GOES HERE--------------------------"They stayed on the ground till 10 at night; settling, or trying to settle, many things. The Surgeons were busy as bees, but able for Officers only;--'Dress HIM first!' said the glorious Duke of Cumberland, pointing to a young Frenchman [Excellency Fenelon's Son, grand-nephew of TELEMAQUE] who was worse wounded than his Highness. Quite in the Philip-Sydney fashion; which was much taken notice of. 'All this while, we had next to nothing to eat' (says one informant).--Ten P.M.: after which, leaving a polite Letter to Noailles, 'That he would take care of our Wounded, and bury our Slain as well as his own,' we march [through a pour of rain] to Hanau, where our victuals are, and 12,000 new Hessians and Hanoverians by this time.
"Noailles politely bandaged the Wounded, buried the Dead. Noailles, gathering his scattered battalions, found that he had lost 2,659men; no ruinous loss to him,--the Enemy's being at least equal, and all his Wounded fallen Prisoners of War. No ruinous loss to Noailles, had it not been the loss of Victory,--which was a sore blow to French feeling; and, adding itself to those Broglio disgraces, a new discouragement to Most Christian Majesty.
Victory indisputably lost:--but is it not Grammont's blame altogether? Grammont bears it, as we saw; and it is heavily laid on him. But my own conjecture is, forty thousand enraged people, of English and other Platt-Teutsch type, would have been very difficult to pin up, into captivity or death instead of breakfast, in that manner: and it is possible if poor Grammont had not mistaken, some other would have done so, and the hungry Baresarks (their blood fairly up, as is evident) would have ended in getting through." [Espagnac, i. 193; Guerre de Boheme, i. 231.-- Gentleman's Magazine, vol.
xiii. (for 1743), pp. 328-481;--containing Carteret's Despatch from the field; followed by many other Letters and indistinct Narrations from Officers present (p. 434, "Plan of the Battle," blotchy, indecipherable in parts, but essentially rather true),--is worth examining. See likewise Anonymous, Memoirs of the late Duke of Cumberland (Lond. 1767; the Author an ignorant, much-adoring military-man, who has made some study, and is not so stupid as he looks), pp. 56-78; and Henderson (ignorant he too, much-adoring, and not military), Life of the Duke of Cumberland (Lond. 1766), pp. 32-48. Noailles's Official Account (ingenuously at a loss what to say), in
Campagnes, ii. B, 242-253, 306-310. OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 11-14 (incorrect in many of the DETAILS).
This was all the Fighting that King George got of his Pragmatic Army; the gain from conquest made by it was, That it victoriously struggled back to its bread-cupboard. Stair, about two months hence, in the mere loitering and higgling that there was, quitted the Pragmatic; magnanimously silent on his many wrongs and disgusts, desirous only of "returning to the plough," as he expressed himself. The lofty man; wanted several requisites for being a Marlborough; wanted a Sarah Jennings, as the preliminary of all!--We will not attend the lazy movements and procedures of the Pragmatic Army farther; which were of altogether futile character, even in the temporary Gazetteer estimate; and are to be valued at zero, and left charitably in oblivion by a pious posterity. Stair, the one brightish-looking man in it, being gone, there remain Majesty with his D'Ahrembergs, Neippergs, and the Martial Boy;Generals Cope, Hawley, Wade, and many of leaden character, remain:
--let the leaden be wrapped in lead.
It was not a successful Army, this Pragmatic. Dettingen itself, in spite of the rumoring of Gazetteers and temporary persons, had no result,--except the extremely bad one, That it inflated to an alarming height the pride and belligerent humor of his Britannic, especially of her Hungarian Majesty; and made Peace more difficult than ever. That of getting Ostein, with his Austrian leanings, chosen Kur-Mainz,--that too turned out ill: and perhaps, in the course of the next few months, we shall judge that, had Ostein leant AGAINST Austria, it had been better for Austria and Ostein.
Of the Pragmatic Army, silence henceforth, rather than speech!--One thing we have to mark, his Britannic Majesty, commander of such an Army,--and of such a Purse, which is still more stupendous,--has risen, in the Gazetteer estimate and his own, to a high pitch of importance. To be Supreme Jove of Teutschland, in a manner; and acts, for the present Summer, in that sublime capacity.
Two Diplomatic feats of his,--one a Treaty done and tumbled down again, the other a Treaty done and let stand ("Treaty of Worms,"and "Conferences," or NON-Treaty "of Hanau"),--are of moment in this History and that of the then World. Of these two Transactions, due both of them to such an Army and such a Purse, we shall have to take some notice by and by; the rest shall belong to Night and her leaden sceptre--much good may they do her!
Some ten days after Dettingen, Broglio (who was crackling off from Donauwurth, in view of the Lines of Schellenberg, that very 27th of June) ended his retreat to the Rhine Countries; "glorious," though rather swift, and eaten into by the Tolpatcheries of Prince Karl.
