$5,000, and his own at only 6000: a statement which, if it were true, would show that the French army must have been either struck with cowardice or with madness to quit the field when the advantage was so decidedly on their side. Colonel Blackader, who went as usual over the ground to get a preaching from the dead,' believed the loss was equal on both sides. Mr. Coxe estimates that of the allies at 20,000, and that of the French at 14,000. Blackader, who acknowledges that he did not expect to see the enemy fight so well, says it was the most deliberate, solemn and well ordered battle that he had ever seen, a noble and fine disposition, and as finely executed. Every one was at his post, and he never saw troops engage with more cheerfulness, boldness and resolution. For himself, he never had a more pleasant day in his life.' The great loss on the part of the conquerors arose from the impetuosity of the Prince of Orange, who made the attack contrary to his instructions, before he could be properly supported, and thus sacrificed the flower of the Dutch infantry, occasioning thereby nearly half the slaughter. The enemies of Marlborough, who were now increasing both in violence and in strength, loudly accused him of rashness in this action, and of wantonly throwing away the lives of men to gratify his personal ambition. He could not repel this cruel accusation, without throwing a censure upon the Prince of Orange, which would have produced certain mischief. He had afterwards an opportunity of shewing how he resented these black slanders, when he could fix upon the slanderer, and vindicate himself without injury to the public. At the very time when he was thus calumniated, the grief which he suffered at seeing so many brave men killed, with whom he had lived eight years, and when they thought themselves sure of peace, had actually made him ill. He was a thoroughly humane man, and that too in an age when humanity was a rare virtue. One of his first cares after the action had been to administer relief to the wounded French, of whom 3000 had been left upon the field, and to arrange means with the French marshals for conveying them away. He did not speak of the victory with exultation as he had been wont to do on his other great days, but called it a very murderous battle; and Villars, in his usual style of boasting, said to the king that if it pleased God to favour him with the loss of another such battle, his enemies would be destroyed. The vain general might have known that after such a defeat, there could be no hope of victory; that the more dearly it had been purchased, the greater was the moral value of the success. There remained no cause to palliate, no subterfuge to cover the defeat which the French had sustained. They could not impute it to want want of confidence in their commander, or want of skill; to want of conduct or of courage in the army, or in any part of it; nor to any disadvantages of ground, nor to any error or mishap of any kind. They had chosen their position and strengthened it. They had stood their ground well: men, officers and commander had done their best, the only blunder had been committed by their enemies, and owing to that, and to the advantage of their post, they had inflicted a loss greater by nearly one-third than what they had sustained, and yet they had been beaten. The consequence was that they never afterwards ventured to meet Marlborough in the field. Berwick was recalled from Dauphiny to co-operate in an attempt for the relief of Mons, but the attempt was not made, and the town was taken. By this conquest the great towns in Brabant and Flanders were covered, and the French were at length circumscribed within their own limits. Had Marlborough's advice been followed in 1706, Mons would have been taken without the expense of blood at Malplaquet. At this time Marlborough committed the only indiscreet act with which he can be justly charged. Sensible that the Queen was entirely alienated from him by the intriguers to whom she had given her whole confidence, and that his enemies were every day becoming more active and more virulent, for the sake of strengthening himself while his friends were in power, he wished for a patent which should constitute him Captain-General for life: nor was he deterred from asking for it by the opinion of the Lord Chancellor Cowper, that the office had never been conferred otherwise than during pleasure. The request served only to increase the Queen's angry disposition towards him, to give his enemies an opportunity for alarming her, and to gratify both her and them by the mortification which her positive refusal inflicted upon him. In the ensuing year the negociations were renewed, and broken off upon the same ground,-not by Marlborough's advice, that calumny, it may be hoped, will now be no more repeated. He was no longer the moving mind in all foreign negociations. Knowing that his power was on the decline, his desire was to incur as little responsibility as possible for measures which he was not allowed to influence, and he called himself white paper, upon which the treasurer and his friends might write their directions. The campaign opened with another successful passage of the enemy's lines, a great and unexpected success. I bless God,' said Marlborough, for putting it into their heads not to defend them, for at Pont de Vendin where I passed, the Mareschal d'Artagnan was with 20,000 men, which if he had staid must have made it very doubtful. But, God be praised, we are come here without the loss of any men. The excuse the French make is, is, that we came four days before they expected us.' This movement was preparatory to the siege of Douay. It was expected that Villars would venture a battle for its relief, for it was a post of great importance, to which the allies could bring all their stores by water, even from Amsterdam, and the French had a great superiority of numbers. Marlborough looked for an action, but no longer with that joyous expectation which hitherto he had always felt, for the cursed spirit of faction which was undermining every thing at home had now begun to prevail, and was manifesting itself even in the army. If the battle was fought he believed that, from the nature of the country, it must be very decisive. 'I long for an end of the war,' says he, so God's will be done. Whatever the event may be, I shall have nothing to reproach myself with, having with all my heart done my duty, and being hitherto blessed with more success than ever was known before. My wishes and duty are the same: but I can't say I have the same sanguine prophetic spirit I did use to have, for in all the former actions I did never doubt of success, we having had constantly the great blessing of being of one mind. I cannot say it is so now, for I fear some are run so far into villainous faction, that it would give them more content to see us beaten; but if I live I will be so watchful that it shall not be in their power to do much hurt.' Douay fell; the skilful dispositions of Villars prevented the allies from laying siege to Arras, which had been their intention; they therefore turned upon Bethune, which they invested, and won. The French marshals constructed a series of defences to cover the interior of France; and the allies closed the campaign by the capture of Aire and St. Venant. Meantime the administration of the whigs had been effectually undermined, and they had ample reason to regret the impolitic way in which they forced themselves into office, and the illjudged and intemperate manner in which they had conducted the late negociation, and given the king of France so great an advantage over them in the opinion of the world. A large portion of Mr. Coxe's work is necessarily employed in developing the miserable intrigues by which they were fooled as well as overthrown. We may be allowed to avoid the pain and humiliation of following him through the disgraceful detail, except in that part wherein Marlborough was more particularly concerned. By a strange inconsistency, the duchess, high-minded as she was, after her long bickerings with the Queen, and the total alienation which she had in some degree provoked and deserved, dreaded a dismissal from her office as something disgraceful and when the intention of dismissing her was intimated, Marlborough, in a personal interview, requested the Queen not to remove her ill the end of the war, which might reasonably be expected in the course of a year, when, he said, they would both retire together. The Queen, who had all the inflexibility of her father's character, insisted that the gold key should be delivered to her within three days, and Marlborough, even on his knees, intreated for an interval of ten days, that means might be devised for rendering the blow less mortifying and disgraceful. It is mortifying to record this, but it was his last, or rather his only weakness, and its palliation may be found in that affection for his wife, which, had he been less than what he was, would have degenerated into uxoriousness. From all the other trials which were preparing for him he came off like gold from the furnace. And on this occasion also he perfectly recovered himself. The queen, with her characteristic temper, insisted upon having the key within the time that she had specified: Marlborough delivered it that same evening; and not being prepared for so ready an obedience, her behaviour was such as if a sense of her own ingratitude had then confounded her. His own feeling of resentment would have led him to resign the command at the same time : the advice of the duchess, and of Godolphin, a consideration of what was due to Eugene, to the allies, and to the general good, -finally, the hope of being yet enabled to complete the services. which he had rendered to Europe, and to his country (ungratefully as that country was now beginning to requite him) by concluding a safe and lasting peace, overcame this impulse. Mr. Coxe appears to regret this: in an evil hour, he says, he yielded to their representations, and continued in the command only to encounter the disgrace and persecution with which he had been threatened, and to lament the conclusion of that dishonourable peace which he so much deprecated. In this instance we differ from his biographer, and consider the magnanimity with which Marlborough then sacrificed all private considerations, and even hazarded his military reputation, by serving under a ministry whose malevolence he knew, and from whom he had reason to expect nothing but ill usage, as one of the many proofs of true greatness in the life of this illustrious man. Under these circumstances he entered upon his last campaign, and with the further disadvantage of losing his worthy colleague Eugene, who, in consequence of the death of the Emperor Joseph, was called away, taking with him all his cavalry, and a considerable part of his foot. The French had been busily employed during the latter part of the autumn, and through the winter, in forming and strengthening a series of lines extending from Namur to the coast of Picardy, near Montreuil. Villars relied so much upon the strength of these defences that he boasted of having at last last brought Marlborough to his ne plus ultra: he was encou raged also by the immediate diminution of force which Eugene's departure had occasioned, and sent word to his antagonist that he should be 30,000 stronger than the allies. Upon this Marlborough observed, if their superiority be as great as he says it will be, I should not apprehend much from them, but that of their being able to hinder us from acting, which to my own particular would be mortification enough; for, since constant success has not met with approbation, what may I not expect when nothing is done! As I rely very much on Providence, so I shall be ready at improving all occasions that may offer.' But whatever superiority of numbers the French might have possessed, Louis was at that time playing too sure a game with the English cabinet to hazard any thing in the field: Villars therefore received positive orders not to risk an engagement. Marlborough's object was to invest Bouchain; to do this he must break through the lines, and he well knew that the consent of the generals and Dutch deputies could never be obtained for so difficult an attempt: he must, therefore, imperceptibly bring them into a situation where they would perceive the necessity of the measure, and he must deceive the enemy at the same time. He effected both objects, and duped the enemy so effectually, that having first made them demolish the fortifications at Arleux which impeded his project, he got within their lines without losing a single man-being, says Colonel Blackader, one of the finest projects and best executed which has been during the war. Villars endeavoured then to lure him to a battle, as the only means of wiping off the disgrace, and even the Dutch deputies were so elated with this great and unexpected success that they urged him to attack the French; but Marlborough knew, from the nature of the ground, and the exhausted state of the men, who had marched ten or twelve leagues the preceding day, that this could not be done with any reasonable prospect of advantage. He had gained his object without a battle; and he chose to expose himself to the censure of envious tongues and evil minded men, rather than hazard the lives of his men without an adequate cause. Blackader, while he expresses his regret at the disappointment, bears, at the same time, a just testimony to the commander. 'It was very near carried in a council of war,' he says, ' that we should attack them, but it was resolved otherwise, to the regret of most part of the army. In such cases vor exercitus vox Dei. Our soldiers were much encouraged by their success in passing the lines, and the enemy much discouraged. When God delivers our enemy into our hand, and we let them escape, he often allows them to be more troublesome afterwards. On the other hand, we are not to be suspicious |