things,--"iron ramrods," for one; a very great improvement on the
fragile ineffective wooden implement, say all the Books, but give
no date to it; that is the first thing; and there will be others,
likewise undated, but posterior, requiring mention by and by.
Inventing many things;--and always well practising what is already
invented, and known for certain. In a word, he is drilling to
perfection, with assiduous rigor, the Prussian Infantry to be the
wonder of the world. He has fought with them, too, in a conclusive
manner; and is at all times ready for fighting.

He was in Malplaquet with them, if only as volunteer on that
occasion. He commanded them in Blenheim itself; stood, in the
right or Eugene wing of that famed Battle of Blenheim, fiercely at
bay, when the Austrian Cavalry had all fled;--fiercely volleying,
charging, dexterously wheeling and manoeuvring; sticking to his
ground with a mastiff-like tenacity,--till Marlborough, and
victory from the left, relieved him and others. He was at the
Bridge of Cassano; where Eugene and Vendome came to hand-grips;--
where Mirabeau's Grandfather, COL-D'ARGENT, got his six-and-thirty
wounds, and was "killed" as he used to term it. [Carlyle's
Miscellanies, v. ? Mirabeau.] "The hottest
fire I ever saw," said Eugene, who had not seen Malplaquet at that
time. While Col-d'Argent sank collapsed upon the Bridge, and the
horse charged over him, and again charged, and beat and were
beaten three several times,--Anhalt-Dessau, impatient of such
fiddling hither and thither, swashed into the stream itself with
his Prussian Foot: swashed through it, waist-deep or breast-deep;
and might have settled the matter, had not his cartridges got
wetted. Old King Friedrich rebuked him angrily for his impetuosity
in this matter, and the sad loss of men.