They made haste, in their hot humor, to declare War (6th October, 1768); [Hermann, v.

608-611.] not considering much how they would carry it on.

Declared themselves in late Autumn,--as if to give the Russians ample time for preparing; those poor Turks themselves being as yet ready with nothing, and even the season for field-operations being over.
King Friedrich, who has still a Minister at the Porte, endeavored to dissuade his old Turk friends, in this rash crisis; but to no purpose; they would listen to nothing but Vergennes and their own fury.

Friedrich finds this War a very mad one on the part of his old Turk friends; their promptitude to go into it (he has known them backward enough when their chances were better!), and their way of carrying it on, are alike surprising to him.

He says: "Catharine's Generals were unacquainted with the first elements of Castrametation and Tactic; but the Generals of the Sultan had a still more prodigious depth of ignorance; so that to form a correct idea of this War, you must figure a set of purblind people, who, by constantly beating a set of altogether blind, end by gaining over them a complete mastery." [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ vi.