3 AUGUST 1901, Page 14

THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY.

(To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")

SIE,—I think if Colonel Townshend will read the passage in Carlyle's " Frederick " to which I referred in my last letter (Spectator, July 20th) he will be satisfied that the French account of Lord Charles Hay's speech is a legend. The story is a very pretty one, and "Gentlemen of the Guard, fire first," has become almost proverbial. We are sorry, as C8rly1e says, to spoil it but the true story is quite as good, though not so epigrammatic as Voltaire's, and surely I,erd Charles Hay is the best authority for what he himself said