Page:The reign of George VI - 1763.djvu/107

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OF GEORGE VI.
81

and soon after a vast fleet of transports wafted the King, at the head of sixty thousand of the bravest troops in the world, to the coast of Flanders. Had the Emperor been in a less critical situation he could have drawn one of his enemies off by marching to Paris; but nothing could save Frederic except raising the siege of Vienna. George, therefore, lost no time, but began a long and dangerous march, through a country wholely possessed by the enemy. He had with him a vast train of artillery, and a multitude of baggage waggons, yet, thus incumbered, he ventured on one of the most dangerous expeditions that ever was known. All the passes, quite from Flanders to Austria, were in the hands of the French and Russians: he had many fortresses to pass by; and a prodigious number of rivers to cross. Yet all these difficulties so far from slackening the activity of the King,served