PROGRESS OF THE HANOVERIAN ARMY.

About the latter end of November, the Hanoverian army was wholly assembled at Stade, under the auspices of prince Ferdinand, who resolved without delay to drive the French from the electorate, whither they now began their march. Part of the enemy’s rear, consisting of two thousand men, was, in their march back to Zell, attacked in the bailiwick of Ebstorff, and entirely defeated by general Schuylenbourg; and, in a few days after this action, another happened upon the river Aller, between two considerable bodies of each army, in which the Hanoverians, commanded by general Zastrow, remained masters of the field. These petty advantages served to encourage the allies, and put them in possession of Lunen-burgh, Zell, and part of the Brunswick dominions, which the enemy were obliged to abandon. The operations of prince Ferdinand, however, were retarded by the resolution and obstinate perseverance of the French officer who commanded the garrison of Harbourg. When the Hanoverian troops made themselves masters of the town, he retired into the castle, which he held out against a considerable detachment of the allied army, by whom it was invested; at length, however, the fortifications being entirely demolished, he surrendered upon capitulation. On the sixth day of December, prince Ferdinand began his march towards Zell, where the French army had taken post, under the command of the duke de Richelieu, who, at the approach of the Hanoverians, called in his advanced parties, abandoned several magazines, burned all the farm-houses and buildings belonging to the sheep-walks of his Britannic majesty, without paying the least regard to the representations made by prince Ferdinand on this subject; reduced the suburbs of Zell to ashes, after having allowed his men to plunder the houses, and even set fire to the orphan hospital, in which a great number of helpless children are said to have perished. One cannot, without horror, reflect upon such brutal acts of inhumanity. The French troops on divers occasions, and in different parts of the empire, acted tragedies of the same nature, which are not easily reconcileable to the character of a nation famed for sentiment and civility. The Hanoverians having advanced within a league of Zell, the two armies began to cannonade each other; the French troops, posted on the right of the Aller, burned their magazines, and retired into the town, where they were so strongly intrenched, that prince Ferdinand could not attempt the river, the passes of which were strongly guarded by the enemy. At the same time, his troops were exposed to great hardships from the severity of the weather; he, therefore, retreated to Ultzen and Lunenburgh, where his army was put into winter-quarters, and executed several small enterprises by detachment, while the French general fixed his headquarters in the city of Hanover, his cantonments extending as far as Zell, in the neighbourhood of which many sharp skirmishes were fought from the out-parties with various success. Their imperial majesties were no sooner apprized of these transactions, which they considered as infractions of the convention, than they sent an intimation to the baron de Steinberg, minister from the king of Great Britain as elector of Hanover, that he should appear no more at court, or confer with their ministers; and that his residing at Vienna, as he might easily conceive, could not be very agreeable: in consequence of which message he retired, after having obtained the necessary passports for his departure. The chagrin occasioned at the court of Vienna by the Hanoverian army’s having recourse to their arms again, was, in some measure, alleviated by the certain tidings received from Petersburgh, that the czarina had signed her accession in form to the treaty between the courts of Vienna, Versailles, and Stockholm.