his horse" as makes him "astonishingly plunderous of forage." The British officer was totally unequipped with either knowledge of war or fear of death. "They have," says Mauvillon, “ a quiet, natural arrogance which tempts them to despise the enemy as well as the danger; and as they very seldom think of making any surprisal themselves, they generally take it for granted that the enemy will as little." It is well known," adds Mauvillon, "how much these people despise all foreigners especially, it may be added, when they are Hanoverians! Yet Ferdinand managed his British exquisitely. He asked of them only what they could give him, and what a good general most values, magnificent fighting service. Ferdinand subtly flattered them, indeed, by always thrusting them into the place where hard knocks were most abundant. In Contades and Broglie-the “wargod Broglie" of Carlyle, who, thirty years afterwards, flitted briefly and tragically across the smoky sky of the French Revolution-he had opponents of very high quality; yet Ferdinand out-generalled them as completely in the strife of wits before Minden as his gallant British regiments overthrew them by actual push of pike and bayonet in the battle itself.

Contades and Broglie, whose united forces were a little short of 70,000 men, were threatening Hanover; Ferdinand, with some 54,000 men, had the task of defending it. Contades had taken up a position of great strength in front of Minden. His right wing was on the Weser, his left was covered by a morass, impassible to either cavalry or artillery; the Bastau, a black, slow-creeping stream with treacherous banks, served as a sort of natural wet ditch to his front; and

here, with 30,000 men and a powerful artillery, Contades sat unassailable, while Broglie, with a force of almost

equal strength, was in touch on the farther bank of the Weser. Ferdinand could not attack the position held

by the French in front of Minden; he dared not expose his own flank to the counter-stroke of Contades, while he marched off to prevent Broglie overrunning Hanover; it only remained to tempt Contades out of his ring of sheltering morasses. And the story of the cool daring and light-handed skill with which this was done makes a very pretty study in tactics.

In brief, Ferdinand detached 10,000 men under his nephew, the hereditary Prince of Brunswick, a gallant, hard-hitting soldier, to make a snatch at Gohfeld, ten miles to the rear of Contades, and so cut off his meal waggons, lumbering slowly down from Cassel. Next he thrust out his left wing, under Wangenheim, leaving an apparently careless and fatal gap of three miles betwixt wing and centre. Ferdinand, that is, committed—or seemed to commit, and with ostentation-under the very eyes of the eagerly watching French generals, two unpardonable military blunders. He divided his force in the presence of the enemy by despatching 10,000 to attack Gohfeld; he permitted his left wing to lie within actual stroke of the foe, and left it without support. Contades resembled, in a word, a wary and much experienced trout at the bottom of a deep pool, and Ferdinand's left wing was the fly with which the trout was being daintily tempted to make a dash out, The 10,000 men marching on Gohfeld, of course, gave the impression that the allied army was divided, as well as ill-placed. On the evening of July 31, 1759, Contades held a council of war, and it was determined to attack, suddenly-before dawn-and with the whole strength of the French army. The sound of the tattoo that night was to be the signal for movement. Con

tades' army was to cross the Bastau by nineteen bridges, already constructed, form into eight columns, and push, like the thrust of a spear, through the apparent gap betwixt Ferdinand's left wing and his centre. Wangenheim would thus be caught betwixt the main body of the French and the Weser; and Broglie, marching along the banks of the Weser, was to crush that truncated left wing into powder, and then join Contades in a victorious assault on Ferdinand's main body. But Ferdinand divined the plans of the French council of war as accurately as though he had assisted to make them. He guessed, indeed, the very hour and method of the attack. At one o'clock that same night his cavalry was saddled; and while the stars yet shone in the misty heavens, and while the French, with much confusion and tumult, were pouring across their nineteen bridges, Ferdinand's troops, in perfect silence and order, marching on converging lines, had filled up the apparent gap, and stood in order of battle ready for the fight.

Day broke, grey and uncertain, with fog, and the French moved stumblingly, and with many halts, across the heath, rough with undergrowth, in front of Minden. Broglie, with the bank of the Weser to guide him, reached Wangenheim's front just as the eastern sky began to whiten with the dawn, but he would not attack until he had seen Contades' columns marching past Wangenheim's flank. About eight o'clock Contades, riding in front of his slowly advancing battalions, mounted the low empty ridge which marked the apparent gap in Ferdinand's position, and from which he expected to see Wangenheim's undefended flank, lying open to his stroke. The grey mist, slowly lifting and

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blown into eddies by a faint wind, still stretched over the plain, but through it there broke on Contades' astonished vision the outlines of a great army in steadfast battle array-far-stretching lines of solid infantry, punctuated with batteries, and edged with ordered squadrons of horse. The "gap" had vanished. Ferdinand's apparently abandoned left wing on the Weser was knitted by a chain of marshalled battalions to his centre. This was formed of three far-extended lines of British infantry, a long ribbon of steel and scarlet; while yet farther to the right, ranked in menacing squadrons, was the British and Hanoverian cavalry. With a stroke Prince Ferdinand had cancelled all the advantage of position on the part of the French, and drawn them out to meet him in the open.

Contades could not retreat; to cross those nineteen bridges with Ferdinand thundering on his rear would have been ruinous. He had, after all, great superiority in numbers, and, as quickly as might be, he made his disposition for battle. Contades adopted a very ominous precedent-the formation of Tallard at Blenheim. He placed his cavalry-a magnificent force of 10,000 horsemen-in his centre, covered their front by the fire of his powerful artillery, and formed his infantry on either wing. A small wood screened the British and Hanoverian cavalry on Ferdinand's right; some rough ground served to protect the Hanoverian and Prussian battalions that formed his left. But the centre was clear. Across a narrow interval of heath the crowding squadrons of French horsemen and the steadfast lines of British infantry gazed at each other. Nothing separated them but a few hundred yards of dry heathy soil, across