Meanwhile Contades proceeded to reap the fruit of his very successful movements. Part of his light troops seized upon Osnabrück, and the rest were sent to levy contributions in Hanover; M. de Chevreuse was detached with three thousand men to besiege Lippstadt; d'Armentières continued to besiege Münster; Broglie's corps crossed the Weser on the 14th to invest Hameln; and on the 16th Contades with the main army debouched into the basin of Minden, and pushed a part of his army as far to the northward as Petershagen. Ferdinand, though he could bring but forty-five thousand men into the field against sixty thousand, advanced southward next day to offer him battle; but Contades retired without awaiting his arrival and withdrew to an unassailable position immediately to south of Minden. If he could hold Ferdinand inactive while his several detachments did their work, it was of no profit to him to hazard a general action.
July.
So far Contades's operations had been masterly. He had taken Cassel, the capital of Hesse, and had invested both Lippstadt and Münster; he had further taken Minden and invested Hameln; and thus he bade fair to possess himself of the line of the Weser and to carry the war straight into Hanover. Ferdinand's position was most critical, and was not rendered more pleasant to him by a series of uncomplimentary messages from Frederick the Great. But Contades, from the moment that he declined battle, seems to have taken leave, possibly from excessive confidence, of all energy and ability. His position was, it is true, impregnable. His army lay immediately to the south of Minden, communicating by three bridges with Broglie's corps on the other side of the Weser. His right rested on the town and the river, his left on a mass of wooded hills—the end of the range that had separated his army from Ferdinand's—and the whole of his front was covered by a wide morass, through which ran a brook called the Bastau. But though unassailable from any point, the position had conspicuous defects. In the first place, it did not leave the army free to move in all directions; and in the second, it necessitated the detachment of troops to the south to maintain communication through Gohfeld and Hervorden with the French base at Cassel. It was for Ferdinand, by skilful use of these defects, to entice Contades from his pinfold to meet him in the open field.
July 28.
July.
Returning to camp at Petershagen after Contades's withdrawal to Minden, Ferdinand's first step was to push his picquets forward into a chain of villages that lay in his front: Todtenhausen on the bank of the Weser, Fredewald immediately to west of Todtenhausen, Stemmern and Holthausen somewhat in advance of Fredewald, and Nord Hemmern, Sud Hemmern, and Hille still farther to south and west. The occupation of Hille brought his advanced posts to the western edge of the morass that covered Contades's front, and to the head of the one causeway that led across it. On the 22nd Wangenheim's corps, about ten thousand strong, was pushed forward to Todtenhausen, where it remained conspicuous, in advance of the army. In the midst of these movements came the bad news of the fall of Münster, which enabled d'Armentières to march from thence to besiege Lippstadt, and Chevreuse to return with his detachment to Minden; but this misfortune only quickened Ferdinand to action. On the 27th the Hereditary Prince marched with six thousand men south-westward towards Lübbecke, and on the following day drove from it a body of French irregulars which was stationed there for the protection of Contades's left flank. Then turning eastward he pursued his march against the French communications. Simultaneously, on the 28th, General Dreve led the garrison of Bremen against Osnabrück, retook it, and hastened eastward to join the Hereditary Prince. The junction effected, the two pressed on towards Hervorden, and on the 31st established themselves astride of the road by which all Contades's supplies must be brought up from the south.
Here, therefore, was a menace in his rear to make the French General uneasy in his position behind the morass; and now Ferdinand added a temptation in his front to induce him the more readily to quit it. On the 29th the Prince, leaving Wangenheim's corps isolated about Todtenhausen, led the whole of the rest of the army a short march to the south-west, and encamped between Fredewald and Hille. Headquarters were at Hille, under guard of the Twelfth and Twentieth Regiments of the British Foot, for the red-coats held the place of honour on the right of the line; and picquets were pushed on to Sud Hemmern, Hartum, and Hahlen, villages on the eastern side of Hille, by the border of the morass. Finally, from two to three thousand men were ordered to Lübbecke to maintain communication with the Hereditary Prince. Such dispositions might well have appeared hazardous; but Ferdinand had thought them out in every detail. Wangenheim's corps, though isolated, was strongly entrenched, with several guns; while his position covered the only outlet by which the French could debouch from behind the marsh. Thereby two important objects were gained. First, the safe passage of convoys from the Lower Weser was assured; and secondly, it was made certain that, before Contades could deploy to attack Wangenheim in force, Ferdinand with the main army would have time either to fall upon his flank or simply to join his own left to Wangenheim's right. To ensure the swift execution of this latter critical movement, Ferdinand directed all Generals to acquaint themselves carefully with the ground, and in particular with the outlets that led from his position to the open plain before Minden.
Contades meanwhile reasoned, as Ferdinand had hoped and intended, in a very different fashion. The Allied army was, to his mind, dispersed in every direction. Ten thousand men were with the Hereditary Prince at Gohfeld; at least two thousand more at Lübbecke; Ferdinand himself, with the greater portion of the army, seemed so anxious to be within supporting distance of the Prince that he had left Wangenheim in the air; while even Wangenheim's corps was not united, but had detached a few battalions across the river to keep an eye on Broglie. Still the interruption of his own communications with Cassel was troublesome; and it would be well to put an end to that and to all other difficulties by a decisive blow and a brilliant victory. He therefore despatched the Duke of Brissac with eight thousand men to Gohfeld to hold the Hereditary Prince in check, threw eight bridges over the Bastau for the passage of his troops across it in as many columns, and ordered Broglie to be ready to cross the Weser with his corps to form a ninth column upon his right. The total force which he could bring into the plain of Minden was fifty-one thousand men with one hundred and sixty-two guns. Against it, if all went well, Ferdinand could oppose forty-one thousand men and one hundred and seventy guns.
Aug. 1.
A fresh gale was blowing from the south-west which drowned the stroke of the clocks of Minden, as midnight closed the last day of July and ushered in the first of August. Already the French camp was all alert in the darkness, and the columns were moving off, not without confusion, to the bridges of the Bastau. An hour later two white-coated deserters were brought in by a picquet to the Prince of Anhalt, General Officer of the day in the Allied army, with the important intelligence that the whole French army was in motion. Ferdinand had seen signs of some stir on the previous evening, and had directed that, on the observance of the slightest movement at the advanced posts, information should be brought to him at once. Yet two o'clock came, and three o'clock, before a belated messenger arrived at headquarters from Anhalt with the news. Instantly Ferdinand called the whole of his troops to arms, and ordered them to march to their appointed positions. His orders had already been issued, and were clear and precise enough. The advance was to be in eight columns, and the formation for battle, as usual, with infantry in the centre and cavalry on each flank. The first or right-hand column consisted of twenty-four squadrons of cavalry under Lord George Sackville, fifteen of them being British squadrons of the Blues, First and Third Dragoon Guards, Scots Greys, and Tenth Dragoons. The second was made up entirely of German artillery; and the third under Major-General von Spörcke comprised the Twelfth, Twentieth, Twenty-third, Twenty-fifth, Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-first regiments of the British Line. Seven out of the eight columns were formed and marched off with great promptitude; but in Sackville's column all was confusion and delay. Some of the regiments were ready and others were not; and Sackville himself was not to be found. It was no good beginning for the British cavalry.
Having given the alarm Ferdinand hastened, with a single staff-officer accompanying him, to see for himself how matters stood. It is not difficult to conceive of his anxiety. Owing to the unpardonable neglect of Anhalt the French had gained two hours upon him; and now, when the army had been at last set in motion, the cavalry of his right wing was not moving with the rest. There was therefore every likelihood that the village of Hahlen, on which he had intended to rest his right flank, might be occupied by the French before Sackville could be there to prevent them. Instantly galloping away to Hartum he ordered the picquets stationed therein to move at once to Hahlen, and then hurried back with all speed to the latter village, only to learn the bad news that it was already in possession of the French. Meanwhile not a word had come from Wangenheim, who, for aught he knew, might be in serious difficulties. Despatching his solitary aide-de-camp to Todtenhausen to ascertain how matters were going on the left, he galloped on alone with his groom into the plain of Minden. The wind was blowing so furiously that not a sound even of cannon could be heard in the direction of the Weser; but before long he caught sight of the French advancing on Kuttenhausen, and of a dense cloud of smoke rising before Todtenhausen. Evidently Wangenheim was hotly engaged. But meanwhile from windward there came the roar of a furious cannonade about Hille, where the causeway issued from the western end of the morass. This could only be a diversion, for Ferdinand had already sealed up the outlet of the causeway with five hundred men and two guns; but to make assurance still surer he now ordered two more guns and the detachment from Lübbecke to Hille, and sent information to the Hereditary Prince of what was passing. Then, galloping for a moment to the left, Ferdinand satisfied himself that his columns were advancing, and turned back in the teeth of the wind to Hahlen. There once again the stupidity of the Prince of Anhalt had set matters wrong. He had duly brought up the picquets from Hartum before Hahlen, as directed, but had halted instead of clearing the French out of the village, and had thereby delayed the deployment of the whole of Spörcke's column. He was bidden to take the village at once, which he did without difficulty; but having done so this hopeless officer proceeded to instal himself and his picquets as if to stay there for ever.[353]