He was entirely in the wrong in this matter; and I certainly should address a remonstrance to him, on the subject of his manner and language to one of my staff, but our relations are already unpleasantly strained, and any open breach between us might bring about a serious disaster." "I certainly should not wish that you should make any allusion to the matter, sir.

Possibly I may have an opportunity of teaching him to be more polite, after we have done with the French." By two sudden strokes the duke, in the third week of July, obtained possession of Bremen, thereby obtaining a port by which stores and reinforcements from England could reach him; and also recaptured Osnabrueck, and found to his great satisfaction that the French had also established a magazine there, so that the stores were even larger than when they had taken it from him.
The great point was to induce Contades to move from his impregnable position.

He knew that both Contades and Broglio were as anxious as he was to bring about a battle, did they but see an advantageous opportunity; and he took a bold step to tempt them.
On the 30th of July he sent the Hereditary Prince, with a force of ten thousand men, to make a circuit and fall upon Gohfeld, ten miles up the Weser; and so cut the line by which Contades brought up the food for his army from Cassel, seventy miles to the south.
Such a movement would compel the French either to fight or to fall back.

It was a bold move and, had it not succeeded, would have been deemed a rash one; for it left him with but thirty-six thousand men to face the greatly superior force of the French.
The bait proved too tempting for the French generals.

It seemed to them that the duke had committed a fatal mistake.