they saw themselves exposed to absolute annihilation.

The formidable position which Villars had laboured with so much diligence to strengthen was no longer tenable. Pierced in the centre, and turned on the left, the French saw themselves menaced on every side; while their general, borne wounded from the field, was incapable either of extricating them from their difficulties, or retrieving the fortune of the day. Still, they were far from yielding to despair. Boufflers, made aware of the condition in which affairs stood, flew from his own post on the right, and collecting a mass of 2000 of the élite of the cavalry, the garde de corps, gendarmes, and others, endeavoured to drive the allies before him. Their horse he overthrew and dispersed; their infantry, however, drawn up upon the captured redoubts, threw in such a fire as no troops whatever could withstand; and again were the choicest of the cavaliers of France compelled to turn their backs. One more effort was made. A body of infantry was withdrawn from the works in rear of Bleron, and marched hastily to the left; while at the same time the squadrons were re-formed, and led back to the charge. But it was now too late. Marlborough was at hand with a reinforcement of English horse, which swept the garde de corps from the field; the infantry, checked by a murderous discharge from the guns on the right and left, staggered and stood still; while at the same moment the prince of Orange, having discovered that the force in his front was diminished, bore down simultaneously with the prince of Hesse. In ten minutes the entrenchments were won, both at Bleron and in the wood of Lanière, and the entire allignment, cut into morsels, ceased to be defensible.

Boufflers saw that the battle was lost, and made all his dispositions for a retreat. It was conducted with the utmost regularity, in three columns; the whole being covered by a strong reserve under Luxembourg; and as the allies were too much exhausted to press them in their march, little or no loss was sustained. One column crossed the Hon at Taisnière; another filed through the woods in a parallel direction, till, arriving at the plain in front of Bavai, they there united: the third again withdrew towards Quesnoy, passing the Honeau at Audrignies; and the whole finally re-assembled by dawn the following morning, in a position between Quesnoy and Valenciennes. With respect, again, to the allies, they pursued no farther than the heath of Malplaquet, and the level grounds about Taisnière; where, worn down by the exertions which they had made, and oppressed with sleep, they spent the night in bivouac.

It is not very easy to determine the exact amount of loss sustained by either army in this memorable battle. If we may give credit to Villars, there fell of the allies 35,000 men; while in the French lines not more than 6000 or 7000 casualties could

be reckoned: but a statement so glaringly ridiculous carries upon the very face of it more than a sufficient refutation. The truth we believe to be, that while the confederates had to lament in killed and wounded about 20,000 soldiers, the enemy found themselves weakened to the amount of 15,000 only; a proportion not incredible, when the strength of their position is considered. Be this, however, as it may, we know that the victory of Malplaquet, though of the greatest moral consequence, was purchased at an expense of life not before equalled during the war; indeed, the de feated Frenchman found consolation under his reverses in being able to assure his sovereign that a few more such defeats would deliver him from all apprehension of protracted hostilities. Nevertheless, the political results even of so murderous a triumph were exceedingly gratifying. Marlborough was at once set free from all risk of molestation while occupied in the siege of Mons; and the fall of that place, it was justly calculated, would open out to him the road to still greater and more important conquests.

Having halted only so long as was necessary to secure their prisoners and provide for the wounded, the allies proceeded to resume the investment of Mons; Marlborough re-establishing his headquarters near Beliant, while Eugene again took post at Quaregnon. A corps of 30 battalions and as many squadrons was then placed under the immediate command of the prince of Orange, for the purpose of conducting the siege; and the utmost exertions were made to bring up from Brussels guns, stores, and entrenching tools. But a succession of violent rains materially impeded the progress of the convoys. The country, likewise, around Mons being naturally swampy, a good deal of difficulty was experienced in commencing operations; so that the 25th of September arrived before the state of the weather would permit the trenches to be opened. From that date, however, all things went on favourably. Boufflers, though assisted by the talent and enterprise of Berwick, did not venture to molest the allies, who pushed their approaches with equal skill and industry. On the 9th of October a two-fold lodgment was effected in the covert way. Batteries were then erected, and a heavy fire kept up, under shelter of which the trenches were carried, on the 10th, to the edge of the counterscarp. On the 17th, several outworks were stormed and taken, and on the same day the breaching batteries began to fire; and on the 20th, his defences being ruined, and the body of the place laid bare, the governor surrendered. This was the last military operation performed during the present season; for the weather, which had fairly broken, rendered a longer continuance in the field impossible. While, therefore, the French separated into two corps,50 battalions and 100 squadrons taking post under Berwick, in the vicinity of Maubeuge; the remainder, with Boufflers at their head, covering Va

lenciennes and Quesnoy,-Marlborough abandoned a design which he had formed, of acting against the former city; and after regulating the tour of outpost duty, as well as establishing a code of signals and a chain of alarm posts, sent back his army to winter quarters. The English were thus established at Ghent, the Danes at Bruges, and the Prussians on the Meuse; the Dutch and other contingents retired to Brussels, Louvain, and the towns near; while the generals themselves set out for the Hague, to concert measures at leisure against the opening of the next campaign.

The campaign of 1709, though less brilliant than most which had preceded it, proved upon the whole extremely favourable to the cause of the league. By the reduction of Tournay and Mons, the conquest of Brabant and Flanders became complete, and a fortified line was interposed between the enemy and the important places in its

rear.

In like manner, the burden and expense of the war were, in great measure, removed from the Dutch provinces; the French being driven within the limits of their own country, and forced to depend on the resources which they could drain from thence. Yet it was only in the Low Countries, where Marlborough and Eugene guided their strength, that the confederates may be said to have reaped this year any decided advantages. On the Rhine, no event of importance befell, except that a corps under count Merci, which had succeeded in penetrating into Alsace, permitted itself to engage a superior French force between Minnengen and Brisach, and was destroyed. In Spain, the war every where languished; the French party obtaining a few tifing successes in one quarter, while their rivals prevailed in another; and on the side of Dauphiné, the increasing animosity between the emperor and the duke of Savoy paralysed every exertion. The French, feebly attacked, retired into the passes of the mountains, where they took up a position for the defence of their own frontier; nor was the slightest effort made to dislodge them. All this, it will readily be imagined, gave great uneasiness to Marlborough; yet this was not the only, nor perbaps the chief source of anxiety to which he was exposed. The state of parties at home became every day less and less satisfactory; indeed, it was impossible for him to shut his eyes to the proofs which were continually afforded, that the influence both of his adherents and of himself was rapidly declining.

It is not for us to describe transactions in detail, of which the history belongs rather to the political than the military biographer of Marlborough. Enough is done when we state, that the whigs, becoming daily more and more importunate, forced the duke, much against his will, again to espouse their cause; and that, by his entreaty, lord Orford came into office as chief commissioner of the navy, having as his subordinates sir George Byng and sir John Leake. As a matter of course,

the removal of the earl of Pembroke gave great offence to Harley and Mrs. Masham. They ceased not to vent their spleen daily, by working upon the personal prejudices of the queen; while the duchess, too proud to conciliate, though not sufficiently so to hold aloof, injured the cause of her friends by her very zeal in their favour. It was to no purpose that the duke besought her to adopt a new method of acting towards her sovereign. She persisted in asking, in the most arrogant tone, favours for herself or others, most of them scarcely worth obtaining, till at last she was abruptly informed that the queen desired not to treat her as a friend, though it should never be forgotten that she was wife to the duke of Marlborough.

A few days after receiving this severe but merited rebuff, the duchess took the extraordinary step, of which she has herself left a memorial on record. She drew up a copious narrative of the commencement and progress of the connexion which had so long subsisted between the queen and herself. She interlarded it with extracts from the Whole Duty of Man, illustrative of the duties of friendship; introduced into it a portion of the exhortation in the church service to the due reception of the Lord's supper; and adding a passage from Jeremy Taylor on the virtue of charity, sent the whole to the queen. "If your majesty will read this narrative of twenty-six years' faithful services," said she, in the letter which accompanied the memorial, " and write only in a few words that you had read them, together with the extracts, and were still of the same opinion as you were when you sent me a very harsh letter, which was the occasion of my troubling you with this narrative, I assure you I will never trouble you more on any subject but the business of my office." With a woman of Anne's strong feelings, it was not likely that such a course should produce other than an effect diametrically the opposite of what was sought. She became daily more and more estranged, not from the duchess only, but from all who chanced to possess her confidence; insomuch that even Marlborough himself began to be regarded with a coldness amounting to little short of distaste.

Harley, an acute and heartless intriguer, failed not to turn to the best account the imprudence of his rival. Not content to join the tories and the jacobites in decrying the military services of Marlborough, he managed to excite a strong feeling against him as a negotiator; at one moment condemning the proposed preliminaries, as not sufficiently advantageous to England; at another, censuring him for the rupture of negotiations which Louis had refused to continue. Meanwhile, various methods were tried, and that not without success, to sow dissension among the whigs themselves. Lord Rivers, at one period the professed spy upon Harley himself, was purchased; the duke of Somerset was gained by flattering his vanity; and even the cautious and calculating

Shrewsbury was worked upon, if not to abandon his party, at least to weaken the tie which bound them together. Of all these events Marlborough was regularly informed by Godolphin; yet it was at this very moment that he chose to hazard a request, for which we find it difficult, on the score either of wisdom or propriety, to devise an excuse. Feeling that the high ground of royal favour on which he had hitherto stood was sliding from beneath his feet, Marlborough began to think of fortifying himself by other means against the anticipated attacks of his enemies. In an evil hour, though warned to the contrary by lord chancellor Cowper, he applied for a patent which should secure to him for life the office of captain-general. His request was of course rejected, and he became all at once an object of suspicion, misplaced but not unnatural, to his sovereign.

The recollection of this impolitic step was still fresh in the queen's memory, when Marlborough, after a brief sojourn at the Hague, took ship for England. He seems to have been not unconscious of the delicate predicament in which he stood; at least, his parting address to the states manifestly implies that he anticipated but an indifferent welcome in his own country. "I am grieved," said he, "that I am obliged to return to England, where my services to your republic will be turned to my disgrace." Like the declarations of most men who write or speak according to the dictates of outraged feeling, this assertion contained an almost equal share of truth and falsehood. His services to the republic were not the cause of the disgrace into which he had fallen; for that he might blame in part the extravagances of the duchess, in part his own want of firmness and consistency. Yet were these services such as ought to have secured him from any mortification, even if the grounds of complaint against him had been stronger than they were. On the 8th of November he landed at Aldborough, in Suffolk, and on the 10th arrived in London, amid the cheers of a delighted populace, who, to do them justice, were not yet taught ingratitude by the waywardness of their superiors, either in court or parlia

ment.

No other proofs that he had fallen into disfavour were at first exhibited than might be gathered from the somewhat formal civility of the queen. The lords and the commons, as heretofore, tendered him their thanks, and a liberal sum was voted to meet the contingencies of next campaign; but no great while elapsed ere an opportunity offered, of which her majesty was persuaded to avail herself. The office of constable of the Tower fell vacant, and to supply the vacancy belonged in an especial manner to the commander in chief. Marlborough designed the place for the duke of Northumberland; but, at the suggestion of Harley, lord Rivers applied for it, and, by a gross breach of good faith and fair dealing on the part of the court circle, obtained a promise of the ap

pointment from the queen. Marlborough strongly remonstrated; but could obtain no other satisfaction than an assurance that her majesty could not intend any personal slight to him, because she had exercised her undoubted prerogative under the firm conviction that the mode of doing so was approved by his gracc. As Marlborough had, in a loose conversation, insinuated that, provided the queen chose to appoint lord Rivers, he would not object, it was impossible to argue the point farther; he therefore bore with this affront as well as he could. But a second was soon put upon him, to which he found it impossible to submit. To the colonelcy of the Oxford Blues, which was likewise vacant, he received orders to appoint colonel Hill, an officer who had seen little service, and whose chief claim consisted in his standing in the relation of brother to Mrs. Masham. Marlborough's indignation could not any longer be suppressed. He demanded and obtained an in terview; pressed upon the queen the injustice of the proceeding; and finding his wishes treated with coldness, quitted the presence in disgust. He immediately withdrew to Windsor Lodge with the duchess, and declined any longer to act as one of her majesty's council.

A tedious and difficult negotiation ensued, for the purpose of repairing this breach, of which it were out of place, in a work like the present, to give even an outline. We content ourselves, therefore, with saying, that Marlborough was restrained from formally sending in his resignation by the mistaken fears of Godolphin and his adherents; that, after repeatedly declaring that he would not again act as a public man till Mrs. Masham was dismissed, he was prevailed upon to relinquish the determination; and that a sort of compromise was effected, the queen giving up to him the appointment in dispute, while he abstained from pressing his demand relative to the favourite. From Marlborough himself it seems never to have been concealed that, by adopting this middle and unsatisfactory course, he gave up, in point of fact, all to his enemies. To the public in general, he appeared to have prevailed; for the colonelcy was bestowed upon a deserving soldier, for whom he all along intended it; but both the commons and the cabinet were not slow to perceive that her majesty was, in point of fact, the gainer. Hill was consoled for his loss of military rank by a pension of 1000l. a year; and the duke was, by a variety of trivial circumstances, taught to feel that his political importance was on the

wane.

We have nothing to do, in our present sketch, with the silly affair of Dr. Sacheverell. A furious high churchman, preaching before a jacobite lord mayor, thought fit to maintain, in his extravagance, the principle of non-resistance; and, as a necessary consequence, to censure, in no measured terms, the conduct of those by whom the Revolution was effected. The whigs sensitively alive to

rebuke, saw fit to make the matter a subject of parliamentary enquiry; and the doctor, in spite of Marlborough's recommendation to the contrary, was impeached. The whole proceeding served only to elevate into undeserved importance a man conspicuous for nothing except his zeal; while it afforded an opening to Harley, of which he failed not to take advantage, for drawing more and more upon the ministry the hatred both of the queen and the people. Sacheverell was, indeed, found guilty by a small majority, and sentenced to three years' suspension; but when a farther proposition was made, to render him incapable of accepting preferment, the motion was rejected by 60 votes to 59. Nor was this all. With one consent the people espoused his cause. They greeted him with shouts of approbation as often as he appeared in public; they crowded round the queen's chair (who went every day incognita to witness the trial) with "God bless your majesty; we hope you are for Sacheverell and the church!" and they exhibited oak leaves in their hats, in token of their approval of the tenets for preaching which the doctor was arraigned. In a word, the tory principles gained ground in all quarters; the queen herself openly avowed them; and the whigs, with whom Marlborough was now entirely united, felt, as an unavoidable consequence, that the moment of their downfal was at hand.

The trial of Sacheverell was yet in progress, when Marlborough, whose presence operated as a powerful restraint upon Harley and his friends, was, by a politic arrangement of the tory faction, removed to the Continent. Louis had again opened a negotiation for peace; and appeared so bent upon the accomplishment of his object, that the states, at all times suspicious, entreated that the duke might be sent over, to assist in the deliberations which were going on at the Hague. Nothing could occur more opportunely for the enemies of that great man. His friends, moreover, in their excessive desire to advance what they believed to be his interests, were urgent in pressing a compliance with the message; and the queen was petitioned by the house of commons to hasten his departure. She attended to the request, though not in a manner the most gratifying to its object; and Marlborough set out early in the spring for the Continent. After a rough pas sage, he landed at Brill on the 2d of March, 1710; and on the 4th arrived, in no very agreeable frame of mind, at the Hague.

Every reader of history must be aware that the conduct of Louis on the present occasion was, if sincere, remarkable for its moderation and candour. He accepted the preliminaries suggested by the allies, with a single exception; that is to say, he was prepared not only to make great sacrifices of territory, to dismantle Dunkirk, and to recognise the boundary selected by the states; but he declared himself willing to relinquish his grandson's claim upon Spain, provided only Sicily

were granted as a compensation. It appears that Marlborough, contrary to the opinion which long prevailed, advocated the wisdom of negotiating on this basis; but both the emperor and the duke of Savoy so strongly opposed the measure that his judgment was over-ruled.* Preparations were accordingly made on both sides to refer the decision of the dispute to the sword; and very early in April, a period not hitherto esteemed convenient for military operations, the armies began, as if by mutual consent, to assemble.

The plan of campaign, concerted between Marlborough and Eugene, was framed on the most gigantic scale, and promised, if followed up with diligence and ability, to lead to decisive results. In the Netherlands, it was proposed to begin with the siege of Douay; an important place on the Scheld, which, besides communicating by water with Amsterdam itself, was admirably situated as a base of future operations. Douay reduced, the allies were to proceed against Arras, the last in the triple line of fortresses which covered the frontier; after which, they were to lay siege to Calais and Boulogne, in conjunction with an armament sent from England on purpose to co-operate with them. Meanwhile Dauphiné was to be invaded from Piedmont, and the disaffected protestants, who abounded in that province, incited to take up arms. A descent was likewise to be made on the coast of Languedoc, from whence the people of the Cevennes should be roused into action; and a chain of communication being formed along the Drome, through the valley of Crette and by the Vivarais, all the insurgents were to act in unison and together. On the side of the Peninsula, too, a great blow was to be struck in a word, there was but one section of the vast arena where the war should be permitted to languish, namely, on the Rhine. As it was not to that quarter that the allies looked for events at all calculated to effect the general issues of the war, it was determined to support there only a corps of observation, of which the numbers were to be reduced to the lowest efficient scale, by the withdrawal of large detachments towards the Netherlands, and their incorporation with the grand army about to penetrate into Artois.

The conferences of Gertruydenberg were still in progress, when Marlborough and Eugene, assembling 60,000 men at Tournay, prepared to open the campaign. Having recovered the fortress of Mortagne, a little post on the Scheld, of which the enemy had taken possession, they distributed their forces into four columns, and advanced in the direction of the canal which connects Douay with Lille; threatening, at the same

The behaviour of the allies towards the French plenipotentiaries on this occasion seems to have been both iniquitous and impolitic. They were grossly insulted, kept in a species of imprisonment at Gertruydenberg, and their very letters were opened and read. The French complained bitterly of such treatment, and not without reason.

time, the passes of the Upper Dyle. On the 21st, the bridge of Pont à Vendin was seized by the prince of Wirtemberg, at the head of 15,000 men; the same day Marlborough made good his passage; while Eugene, crossing at Saut and Courières, came again into communication with his illustrious coadjutor on the plain of Lens. That night the troops lay on their arms: for marshal Montesquiou, who commanded 40 battalions and 20 squadrons, though he had not ventured to defend the canal, was understood to be near at hand; nevertheless, when on the morrow the allies again pushed upon the Scarpe, Montesquiou retired before them. He precipitately crossed the Senzet, took the road to Cambray, and left them at liberty to follow up at leisure their own devices. Thus, without having been compelled to fire a shot, Marlborough found himself in command of the formidable entrenched camp, upon the construction of which Villars had expended so much both of time and labour; and established in a position from which he might at once effect the blockade of Douay, and hold in check any force that might move for its relief.

At an early hour in the morning of the 24th, Douay was formally invested. On the northern side of the town, general Cadogan, with a corps of English, seized and kept possession of Pont à Rache on the canal of Marchiennes, from which he communicated by the left with Marlborough, and by the right with Eugene. The latter of these chiefs, taking up the line, covered the western front by pitching his camp between Auby and Equerchain; while the former, partly by patrols, partly by a judicious selection of posts, masked both the eastern and southern faces. Immediately the piquets were driven in, and the circle gradually closing, the infantry drew their first parallel on the 28th, while the cavalry found quarters among the villages which stretch from Auby to Bouvigny.

These preliminary measures being duly taken, a double attack commenced, one directed against the gate of Equerchain, the other against that of Ocre. The approaches were pushed with great vigour, in spite of a furious sortie; and the batteries were all constructed and ready to receive the guns so early as the 7th of May. On the 9th, not fewer than 200 pieces of artillery arrived in the camp, of which a large portion was immediately mounted; and by early dawn on the following morning, a beavy fire opened. But the dangers which menaced Douay, of which he entertained a just conception, seemed at last to rouse Villars from a supineness not easily explained. He had concentrated in and around Cambray so early as the first of May, to the amount of 153 battalions and 262 squadrons; yet it was not till now that he exhibited any disposition, either by manœuvring or by violence, to relieve the place. On the 20th, however, when the allies were already approaching the covered way, he put his columns in

motion. He caused several bridges to be constructed upon the Scheld; he occupied in force the castle of Oisy, not far from Arleux, and made every demonstration of a meditated attack somewhere in the vicinity of Dechy; for the purpose, as it ultimately appeared, of drawing the attention of Marlborough to the country between the Scheld and the Scarpe. But finding that the allies took no notice of these proceedings, he suddenly changed his plan, and, crossing the Scarpe, assumed a new position not far from Arras. It was thus placed beyond a doubt, that the succours with which he designed to refresh the place would, if thrown in at all, arrive from the side of Lens; and to frustrate that object, Marlborough and Eugene immediately directed their attention.

Marlborough and Eugene, fully anticipating that a place so important as Douay, one of the keys of the second fortified line, and held by 8000 men, would not be suffered to fall without at least an effort to save it, had drawn the outline of two fortified positions; one, which should cover the besieging force on the east, from Arleux to the Scarpe, the other, which protected the western camp, from Vitry to Montigny. In the interval, between these lines they assembled, on the 24th, the whole of their army, with the exception of 30 battalions which continued the siege, and 12 squadrons by which Pont à Rache was guarded. Here it was proposed to wait the event; because a march of six hours would carry them into either line, according as circumstances might require; but on the 25th, intelligence arriving of Villars's movement on Arras, an immediate change of ground took place. The columns, getting under arms, passed the Scarpe at several points where bridges of communication had been constructed, and threw themselves into the western line; while Marlborough fixed his head-quarters at Vitry on the extreme left, and Eugene established himself at Hernin Lietard on the right. Yet no battle was fought. Villars advanced, it is true, on the 1st of June, within musket-shot of the allied outposts; but despairing of success, immediately fell back to a position between Fampoux and Noyelles. Finally, after manœuvring a few days, under the vague hope that some fortunate event might befall, that ground was, in its turn, abandoned, and a retrogression as far as Arras took place. Marlborough did not consider it necessary to follow the French marshal, or to withdraw his attention for a moment from the business of the siege. The corps employed in the latter service was, on the contrary, strengthened; and incited by every inducement of praise and rivalry to increased exertion; and so well were the wishes of the general seconded by the exertions of those under him, that all things went on to admiration. On the 22d, the trenches being carried to the nearest attainable point, a sap was begun; and on the 26th, Douay capitulated. The garrison, reduced to 4500 men, with the brave governor Albergotti,