BATTLE OF HASTENBECK.

On Sunday, the twenty-fourth of July, the French, after having laid part of the electorate of Hanover under contribution, marched in three columns, with their artillery, towards the village of Latford, when major-general Furstenburgh, who commanded the out-ports in the village, sent an officer to inform the duke of Cumberland of their approach. His royal highness immediately reinforced those posts with a body of troops, under the command of lieutenant-general Sporcken; but finding it impossible to support the village, as it was commanded by the heights opposite to it, which were possessed by the enemy, and being sensible that it would be always in his power to retake it, from its situation in a bottom between two hills, he withdrew his post from Latford. The French then made two attacks, one at the point of the wood, and the other higher up in the same wood, opposite to the grenadiers commanded by major-general Hardenberg, but they failed in both; and though the fire of their artillery was very hot, they were obliged to retire. The French army encamping on the heights opposite to the duke of Cumberland’s posts, the intelligence received, that M. d’Etrées had assembled all his troops, and was furnished with a very considerable train of artillery, left his royal highness no room to doubt of his intending to attack him. He, therefore, resolved to change his camp for a more advantageous situation, by drawing up his army on the eminence between the Weser and the woods, leaving the Hamelen river on his right, the village of Hasten-beck in his front, and his left close to the wood, at the point of which his royal highness had a battery of twelve pounders and haubitzers. There was a hollow way from the left of the village to the battery, and a morass on the other side of Hastenbeck to his right. Major-general Schulenberg, with the hunters, and two battalions of grenadiers, was posted in the corner of the wood upon the left of the battery; his royal highness ordered the village of Hastenbeck to be cleared to his front, to prevent it being in the power of the enemy to keep possession of it, and the ways by which the allies had a communication with that village during their encampment to be rendered impassable. In the evening-he withdrew all his outposts, and in this position the army lay upon their arms all night. On the twenty-fifth, in the morning, the French army marched forwards in columns, and began to cannonade the allies very severely, marching and counter-marching continually, and seeming to intend three attacks, on the right, the left, and the centre. In the evening their artillery appeared much superior to that of the allies. The army was again ordered to lie all night on their arms; his royal highness caused a battery at the end of the wood to be repaired; count Schulenberg to be reinforced with a battalion of grenadiers, and two field pieces of cannon; and that battery to be also supported by four more battalions of grenadiers, under the command of major-general Hardenberg. He likewise caused a battery to be erected of twelve six-pounders, behind the village of Hastenbeck, and took all the precautions he could think of to give the enemy a warm reception. As soon as it was day light, he mounted on horseback to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, whom he found in the same situation as the day before. At a little after five a very smart cannonading began against the battery behind the village, which was supported by the Hessian infantry and cavalry, who stood a most severe fire with surprising steadiness and resolution. Between seven and eight the firing of small arms began on the left of the allies, when his royal highness ordered major-general Behr, with three battalions of Brunswick, to sustain the grenadiers in the wood, if their assistance should be wanted; The cannonading continued above six hours, during which the troops, that were exposed to it, never once abated of their firmness. The fire of the small arms on the left increasing, and the French seeming to gain ground, his royal highness detached the colonels Darkenhausen and Bredenbach, with three Hanoverian battalions and six squadrons, round the wood by Afferde, who, towards the close of the day, drove several squadrons of the enemy back to their army, without giving them any opportunity to charge. At length the grenadiers in the wood, apprehensive of being surrounded, from the great numbers of the enemy that appeared there, and were marching round on that side, though they repulsed every thing that appeared in their front, thought it advisable to retire nearer the left of the army, a motion which gave the enemy an opportunity of possessing themselves of that battery without opposition. Here the hereditary prince of Brunswick distinguished himself at the head of a battalion of Wolfenbuttle guards, and another of Hanoverians, who attacked and repulsed, with their bayonets, a superior force of the enemy, and retook the battery. But the French being in possession of an eminence which commanded and flanked both the lines of the infantry and the battery of the allies, and where they were able to support their attack under the cover of a hill, his royal highness, considering the superior numbers of the enemy, near double to his, and the impossibility of dislodging them from their post, without exposing his own troops too much, ordered a retreat; in consequence of which his army retired, first to Hamelen, where he left a garrison, then to Nienburgh, and afterwards to Hoya; in the neighbourhood of which town, after sending away all the magazines, sick, and wounded, he encamped, in order to cover Bremen and Verden, and to preserve a communication with Stade, to which place the archives, and most valuable effects of Hanover had been removed. In this engagement, colonel Bredenbach attacked four brigades very strongly posted, with a battery of fourteen pieces of cannon, repulsed, and drove them down a precipice, and took all their artillery and ammunition; but preferring the care of his wounded to the glory of carrying away the cannon, he brought off only six, nailing up and destroying the rest. The loss of the allies in all the skirmishes, which lasted three days, was three hundred and twenty-seven men killed, nine hundred and seven wounded, and two hundred and twenty missing, or taken prisoners; whilst that of the French, according to their own accounts, amounted to fifteen hundred men.

The French, being left masters of the field, soon reduced Hamelen, which was far from being well fortified, obliged the garrison to capitulate, and took out of the town sixty brass cannon, several mortars, forty ovens, part of the equipage of the duke’s army, and large quantities of provisions and ammunition, which they found in it, together with a great many sick and wounded, who, not being included in the capitulation, were made prisoners of war. Whether the court of France had any reason to find fault with the conduct of the mareschal d’Etrées, or whether its monarch was blindly guided by the counsels of his favourite the marquese de Pompadour, who, desirous to testify her gratitude to the man who had been one of the chief instruments of her high promotion, was glad of an opportunity to retrieve his shattered fortunes, and, at the same time, to add to her own already immense treasures, we shall not pretend to determine; though the event seems plainly to speak the last. Even at the time, no comparison was made between the military skill of the mareschal d’Etrées, and that of the duke de Richelieu; but, however that may have been, this last, who, if he had not shone in the character of a soldier, excelled all, or at least most of his contemporaries in the more refined arts of a courtier, was, just before the battle we have been speaking of, appointed to supersede the former in the command of the French army in Lower Saxony, where he arrived on the sixth of August, with the title of mareschal of France; and M. d’Etrees immediately resigned the command.

GEORGE II. 1727-1760