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I expressed my dissatisfaction by forbidding you to come to France, and I have made you feel that even without the assistance of my armies, by merely closing the Rhine, the Weser, the Scheldt, and the Meuse against Holland, I should have placed her in a situation more critical than if I had declared war against her.
It was necessary he should arrive in time for the battle of Austerlitz. Gustavus, King of Sweden, who was always engaged in some enterprise, wished to raise an army composed of Swedes, Prussians, and English; and certainly a vigorous attack in the north would have prevented Bernadotte from quitting the banks of the Elbe and the Weser, and reinforcing the Grand Army which was marching on Vienna.
The war, meanwhile, continued; the King of Prussia, who had at first won a splendid victory over the Austrians in front of Prague, had been beaten at Kolin, and forced to fall back on Saxony. Marshal d'Estrees, slowly occupying Westphalia, had got the Duke of Cumberland into a corner on the Weser. On the morning of July 23, 1757, the marshal summoned all his lieutenant-generals.
Piccolomini chose the fertile banks of the Weser for his winter quarters; but being outflanked by Banner, he was obliged to give way to the Swedes, and to impose on the Franconian sees the burden of maintaining his army.
The King of Denmark, with his whole army, was unable to cope with Tilly alone; much less, therefore, with a shattered force could he hold his ground against the two imperial generals. The Danes retired from all their posts on the Weser, the Elbe, and the Havel, and the army of Wallenstein poured like a torrent into Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Holstein and Sleswick.
Every other authority in the army, even that of the Emperor himself, ceased from the moment Wallenstein assumed the commander's baton, and every act was invalid which did not proceed from him. From the banks of the Danube, to those of the Weser and the Oder, was felt the life-giving dawning of this new star; a new spirit seemed to inspire the troops of the emperor, a new epoch of the war began.
He said that the Mississippi, which is a great river here as large as the Weser, should be dammed back and held while a war of extermination was carried on against the Indians on the other side of it with a view to Christianizing them. The people listened, their faces flushed with eating and with the close air.
For the moment indeed they yielded to the fact that Bremen and Verden were not only of the highest importance to Hanover, which was brought by them in contact with the sea, but of hardly less value to England itself, as they placed the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, the chief inlets for British commerce into Germany, in the hands of a friendly state.
And now that the power of the Emperor threatened once more to attain a dangerous superiority, Maximilian at once ceased to pursue the Swedes. He was also afraid of reprisals from France, who had threatened to direct Turenne's whole force against him if he allowed his troops to cross the Weser.
At the same time some detachments passed the river on the right, between Minden and Oldendorp, and marked out a new camp advantageously situated, having the Weser in front, and the right and left covered with eminences and marshes.
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