(who gives Mayer's own LETTER, and others, upon Vach).] And will add only, that, having girt himself and made his packages, Mayer left the Hill of Culmbach; and deliberately wended home, by Coburg and other Countries where he had business, eating his way; and early in July was safe in the Metal Mountains again; having fluttered the Volscians in their Frankenland Corioli to an unexpected extent.

It is one of five or six such sallies Friedrich made upon the Reich, sometimes upon the Austrians and Reich together, to tumble up their magazines and preparations.

Rapid unexpected inroads, year after year; done chiefly by the Free-Corps; and famous enough to the then Gazetteers.

Of which, or of their doers, as we can in time coming afford little or no notice, let us add this small Note on the Free-Corps topic, which is a large one in the Books, but must not interrupt us again:-- "Before this War was done," say my Authorities, "there came gradually to be twenty-one Prussian Free-Corps,"-- foot almost all; there being already Hussars in quantity, ever since the first Silesian experiences.
"Notable Aggregates they were of loose wandering fellows, broken Saxons, Prussians, French; 'Hungarian-Protestant' some of them, 'Deserters from all the Armies' not a few; attracted by the fame of Friedrich,--as the Colonels enlisting them had been; Mayer himself, for instance, was by birth a Vienna man; and had been in many services and wars, from his fifteenth year and onwards.

Most miscellaneous, these Prussian Free-Corps; a swift faculty the indispensable thing, by no means a particular character: but well-disciplined, well-captained; who generally managed their work well.
"They were, by origin, of Anti-Tolpatch nature, got up on the diamond-cut-diamond principle; they stole a good deal, with order sometimes, and oftener without; but there was nothing of the old Mentzel-Trenck atrocity permitted them, or ever imputed to them; and they did, usually with good military talent, sometimes conspicuously good, what was required of them.