All prospers to Berwick in this matter: Noailles his lieutenant (not yet gone to Italy till next year), with whom is Maurice Comte de Saxe (afterwards Marechal de Saxe), an excellent observant Officer, marches up to Ettlingen, May 3d; bivouacs "at the base of the mountain" (no great things of a mountain); ascends the same in two columns, horse and foot, by the first sunlight next morning; forms on a little plain on the top; issues through a thin wood,--and actually beholds those same LINES OF ETTLINGEN, the outmost eastern end of them: a somewhat inconsiderable matter, after all! Here is Noailles's own account:-- "These retrenchments, made in Turk fashion, consisted of big trees set zigzag (EN ECHIQUIER), twisted together by the branches; the whole about five fathoms thick.

Inside of it were a small forlorn of Austrians: these steadily await our grenadiers, and do not give their volley till we are close.

Our grenadiers receive their volley; clear the intertwisted trees, after receiving a second volley (total loss seventy-five killed and wounded); and--the enemy quits his post; and the Lines of Ettlingen ARE stormed!" [Noailles, _Memoires_ (in Petitot's Collection), iii.

207.] This is not like storming the Lines of Stollhofen; a thing to make Noailles famous in the Newspapers for a year.

But it was a useful small feat, and well enough performed on his part.