SKIRMISHES WITH THE FRENCH.

In the meantime, the French on the Lower Rhine continued filing off incessantly. The siege of Gueldres was converted into a blockade, occasioned by the difficulties the enemy found in raising batteries; and a party of Hanoverians having passed the Weser, as well to ravage the country of Paderborn as to reconnoitre the French, carried off several waggons loaded with wheat and oats, destined for the territories of the elector of Cologn. On the other hand, colonel Fischer having had an engagement with a small body of Hanoverians, in the county of Tecklenburgh, routed them, and made some prisoners. After several other petty skirmishes between the French and the Hanoverians, the duke of Cumberland altered the position of his camp, by placing it between Bielefeldt and Hervorden, in hopes of frustrating the design of the enemy; who, declining to attack him on the side of Bracwede, after having reconnoitred his situation several days, made a motion on their left, as if they meant to get between him and the Weser. This step was no sooner taken, than, on the thirteenth of June in the afternoon, having received advice that the enemy had caused a large body of troops, followed by a second, to march on his right to Burghotte, he ordered his army to march that evening towards Hervorden; and, at the same time, major-general Hardenberg marched with four battalions of grenadiers, and a regiment of horse, to reinforce that post. Count Schulenberg covered the left of the march with a battalion of grenadiers, a regiment of horse, and the light troops of Buckenburgh. The whole army marched in two columns. The right, composed of horse, and followed by two battalions, to cover their passage through the enclosures and defiles, passed by the right of Bielefeldt; and the left, consisting of infantry, marched by the left of the same town. The vanguard of the French army attacked the rear guard of the allies, commanded by major-general Einsiedel, very briskly, and at first put them into some confusion, but they immediately recovered themselves. This was in the beginning of the night. At break of day the enemy’s reinforcements returned to the charge, but were again repulsed, nor could they once break through lieutenant-colonel Al-feldt’s Hanoverian guards, which closed the army’s march with a detachment of regular troops and a new raised corps of hunters.