One day, while at Bennaschen, I was commanded out, with a detachment
of thirty hussars and twenty chasseurs, on a foraging party. I had
posted my hussars in a convent, and gone myself, with the chasseurs,
to a mansion-house, to seize the carts necessary for the conveyance
of the hay and straw from a neighbouring farm. An Austrian
lieutenant of hussars, concealed with thirty-six horsemen in a wood,
having remarked the weakness of my escort, taking advantage of the
moment when my people were all employed in loading the carts, first
seized our sentinel, and then fell suddenly upon them, and took them
all prisoners in the very farm-yard. At this moment I was seated at
my ease, beside the lady of the mansion-house, and was a spectator
of the whole transaction through the window.

I was ashamed of and in despair at my negligence. The kind lady
wished to hide me when the firing was heard in the farm-yard. By
good fortune, the hussars, whom I had stationed in the convent, had
learnt from a peasant that there was an Austrian detachment in the
wood: they had seen us at a distance enter the farmyard, hastily
marched to our aid, and we had not been taken more than two minutes
before they arrived. I cannot express the pleasure with which I put
myself at their head. Some of the enemy's party escaped through a
back door, but we made two-and-twenty prisoners, with a lieutenant
of the regiment of Kalnockichen. They had two men killed, and one
wounded; and two also of my chasseurs were hewn down by the sabre,
in the hay-loft, where they were at work.

We continued our forage with more caution after this accident: the
horses we had taken served, in part, to draw the carts; and, after
raising a contribution of one hundred and fifty ducats on the
convent, which I distributed among the soldiers to engage them to