Page:Surprising adventures and sufferings of Frederick Baron Trenck.pdf/8

8 foraging. Famine and want therefore obliged us to retreat, having no relief to hope for from the country behind us, which we had laid entirely waste on our march. The severity of the season in November made the soldiers very impatient; in six weeks we lost forty-two thousand men, either by sickness or desertion. In short, we were obliged to abandon Bohemia. All the cavalry was dismounted for want of forage; the severity of the weather, the broken roads, continual marching and repeated alarms, diffused a general spirit 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 his 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 my tent; and my indefatigable activity procured me 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,