Page:Life and surprising adventures of Frederick Baron Trenck.pdf/8

 six weeks we lost forty-two thousard men, by sickness or desertion. In short, we were to abandon Bohemia. All the Cavalry dismounted for want of forage; the severity  the weather, the broken roads, continual marching, and repeated alarms, diffused a general  of discontent, and a third of the army deserted.

Prince Charles followed us as far as the frontiers of Bohemia, and halted there to put troops into winter quarters. This gave the King time to recruit his army; especially by the return of his deserters, whom the Austrians were imprudent enough to dismiss.

In this campaign I passed few nights in tent: and my indefatigable activity procured  the favour and entire confidence of the King. Nothing contributed so much to keep up my resolution, as the public praises I received, when I returned to head quarters from foraging with sixty or eighty waggons loaded, while others came back empty.

I was sent one day from Beneschen on a foraging party, with a detachment of thirty Hussars and twenty Rangers. I posted my Hussars in a convent, and went with the Rangers to a gentleman's seat, to procure a sufficient number of waggons to bring off hay and straw from an adjacent farm. But a Lieutenant of Austrian Hussars, who lay concealed in a wood with thirty-six horse, having remarked the weakness of my escort, took advantage of the moment, when my people were employed in loading the waggons, and surprising my centinel, fell suddenly upon them, and took the whole party prisoners in the farm-yard, I was sitting quietly in the gentleman's seat, with the mistress of the house, and saw from the window what happened.