The 17th annual Seven Years War Convention was held in South Bend, Indiana on March 31 and April 1. It was a smashing success. We had roughly 125 attendees, including around 100 for the banquet and Christopher Duffy's lecture on the battle of Rossbach as seen through the eyes of the Allies.

I wish to acknowledge the hard work of Paul Petri and Brian Visek in running the convention. Also Phil Mackie of the UK flew all the way to Indiana to provide much needed assistance. We all owe them our thanks.

Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa

I have a bit of errata in the last issue that needs correcting. In "The Advance to Nismes" by Neil Cogswell, a number of errors turned up. These were entirely of my own doing. Neil had e-mailed me an attached file with the text as well as mailing me a hard copy. I forgot entirely about the e-text and retyped his article from scratch (duh). Neil points out the following misspellings or omissions:

"With the St Paul section, I guess that you must have scanned in the hard copy rather than use the "Word" file that I sent you. I deduce this from a few changes in spelling: Krzrcaor for Krzeczor (Intro); Laudon for Loudon (on one occasion only - July 30th); and I for 1 (page 54). Did you have a problem with the Word file that I e-mailed?

[No, Neil, I was just being stupid. -Jim]

"As well as the spelling typos, I noticed two omissions;

"Page 48 para 1, 'The Prussians do not have sufficient light troops to prevent desertion from all parts of their camps; they do not have sufficient strength to oppose the Croats on all sides. Thus, if we had detachments of regular troops to support those Croats who are not close enough to the army to be able to be supported directly, the Prussians would not dare to advance for fear of being cut off.'

"Page 51 para 1, 'Yesterday, Colonel Guasco, made a reconnaissance of the Prussian Army. He reports that it does not exceed 20 to 25,000 men.'"

In this issue the above problems should be avoided, as I have imported Neil's files for "Gabel and Zittau" directly from his e-mail as I should have done earlier. I apologize for the faux pas.

Return to the Letters Section

Due to popular demand, I am now reprinting letters in the Newsletter section toward the back of the book. I encourage the readership to send me their letters and please let me know if they are NOT intended for printing within the pages of the Journal. Otherwise, I will print them in the Journal if they merit it.

Concerning This Issue

I sent both this issue and the winter issue about a month late. I plan to rectify this with Issue Number Four which I hope to have in the mail by the end of August. This issue has a leitmotif in the form of the Anglo-French conflict in India vis-à-vis Eyre Coote and Lally, two Irishmen who fought, one for the French, the other, for England, on the Indian subcontinent. If that isn't pregnant with irony, then I don't know irony.

Also featured is part 2 of Dean West's well-received biography of Maurice de Saxe. As this does not even get Maurice up to the War of the Austrian Succession, I can only assume that Dean is writing a sort of book on our beloved Saxon paladin. In the event, I hope you find it as enjoyable a read as I did.

We also have another installment of Neil Cogswell's Horace St. Paul material. Since there is a lot here, I'm stopping now to bring on the good stuff.

All the Best

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