I find, by your two last letters, that a former one is missing, apparently the first you wrote me from the army, and in which you accounted for Mrs. Wolmar's secret uneasiness. Not having received that letter, I imagine it was in the mail of one of our couriers, who was taken; you will, therefore, my friend, be pleased to re-communicate its contents. I am at a loss to conjecture what they were, and am uneasy about them. For again, I say, if happiness and peace dwell not in Eloisa's mind, I know not where they will find an asylum on earth. You may make her easy, as to the dangers she imagines we are here exposed to; we have to do with an enemy too expert to suffer us to pursue him. With a handful of men, he baffles our attempts, and deprives us of all opportunity to attack him. As we are very sanguine, however; we may probably raise difficulties which the best generals would not be able to surmount, and at length oblige the French to fight us. I foresee our first success will cost us dear, and that the victory we gained at Dettingen will make us lose one in Flanders. We make head against a very able commander. Nor is this all; he possesses the love and confidence of his troops, and the French soldiers, when they have a good opinion of their leader, areinvincible.[82]On the contrary, they are good for so little when they are commanded by courtiers they despise, that frequently their enemies need only to watch the intrigues of the cabinet, and seize a proper opportunity, to vanquish with certainty the bravest people on the continent: this they very well know. The duke of Marlborough, taking notice of the good look and martial air of a French soldier, taken prisoner at the battle of Blenheim, told him, if the French army had been composed of fifty thousand such men as he, it would not have been so easily beaten; Zounds sir, replied the grenadier, there are men enough in it like me, but it wants such a man as you; now such a man at present commands the French troops, and is on our side wanting; but we have courage, and trouble ourselves little about that. At all events, however, I intend to see their operations for the remainder of the campaign, and am resolved not to leave the army till it goes into winter-quarters. We shall all be gainers by such a delay, the season being too far advanced for us to think of crossing the mountains this year. I shall spend the winter with you, and not go to Italy till the beginning of the spring. Tell Mr. and Mrs. Wolmar I have thus changed my design, that I may have more time to contemplate that affecting picture you so pathetically describe, and that I may have also the opportunity to see Mrs. Orbe settled with them. Continue, my dear sir, to write with your usual punctuality, and you will do me a greater pleasure than ever: my equipage having been taken by the enemy, I have no ; but amuse myself in reading over your letters.
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