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Updated: May 26, 2025
The pandours of my kinsman, the Austrian Trenck, were incessantly at our heels, gave us frequent alarms, did us great injury, and, by their alertness, we never could make any impression upon them with our cannon. Trenck at length passed the Elbe, and went and burnt and destroyed our magazines at Pardubitz: it was therefore resolved wholly to evacuate Bohemia.
A horrible thing in its way, it is true; but how could the Pandour tyrant brave the infection of democratic doctrines among his own barbarian armies? Were not placards, addressed to our "German brethren," posted upon the walls of Paris, exhorting the Pandours to fraternise with their fellow-creatures?
To his warlike inclination was added the insensibility of a heart natively wicked: and he found himself an actor, on the great scene of life, at a time when the earth was drenched with human gore, and when the sword decided the fate of nations: hence this chief of pandours, this scourge of the unprotected, became an iron-hearted enemy, a ferocious foe of the human race, a formidable enemy in private life, and a perfidious friend.
It is the old story: Friedrich, famine and mud and misery of Pandours compelling, has to retire northward, Elbe-ward, inch by inch; whither the Austrians follow at a safe distance, and, in spite of all manoeuvring, cannot be got to fight. Important little feat of Nassau's; of which anon.
Nothing but some weak body of hussars and infantry stood looking into it, from the Hill of Hausdorf: even these might have given him some slight hindrance; but these were played upon by endless Pandours, "issuing from a wood near by," with musketries, and at length with cannon batteries, one and another; and had to fall back, or to be called back, to Maxen Hill, where the main force is.
A baffling, bitterly impatient three weeks; two of them the worst two, he spends at Weissenberg itself, chasing Pandours, and scuffling on the surface, till Keith and the Magazine-train come up; even writing Verses now and then, when the hours get unendurable otherwise!
His request was granted, he published the amnesty, and began to raise recruits; he therefore enrolled his own vassals, formed a corps of 500 men, went in search of the robbers, drove them into a strait between the Save and Sarsaws, where they capitulated, and 300 of them enrolled themselves with his pandours. Most of these men were six feet in height, determined, and experienced soldiers.
About sunrise of the 17th, the Austrians, in sufficient force, chiefly of Pandours, appeared on the heights to the south: they had been foreseen the night before; but the French covering General, luckier than Minuzzi, did not wait for them; only warned Dingelfingen, and withdrew across the River, to wait there on the safe left bank. Identity made out, mark what a pass he is at.
I deserved to be overcome in this battle, for I had weakened my army too much by detachments. Nothing but the skill of my generals and the bravery of my troops saved me from a defeat. Something is also due to the avarice of the pandours and Croats; a branch of our laurel-wreath belongs justly to Nadasti and Trenck.
'Ay, said Fergus, still in good-humour, 'he would have told you, if you had questioned him, "a ganging foot is aye getting." But come, my dear Baron, you know as well as I that a hundred Uhlans, or a single troop of Schmirschitz's Pandours, would make more havoc in a country than the knight of the mirror and all the rest of our clans put together.
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