Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852. Various
capital. This daring but prudent design, says Mr Alison, was precisely that of Wellington and Blucher a century afterwards; but Marlborough was overruled – Eugene for once concurring in regarding it as too hazardous; and it was resolved to commence the invasion of the territories of the Grand Monarque, by laying siege to the inestimably-important frontier fortress of Lille, the strongest place in French Flanders, and which could give the Allies a solid footing, a commanding position, in the territories of Louis. The undertaking, however, was most formidable – "for not only was the place itself, the masterpiece of Vauban, of great strength, but the citadel within its walls was still stronger; and, moreover, it was garrisoned by the celebrated Marshal Boufflers, with fifteen thousand choice troops, and every requisite for a vigorous defence."30 Besides all this, Vendôme and the Duke of Berwick, at the head of more than a hundred thousand men, lay in an impregnable camp, covered by the canal of Bruges, completely fortified, between Ghent and Bruges, ready to interrupt or raise the siege. But of what avail? Marlborough sate down before Lille, and it fell. To avert that event, Vendôme and Berwick led forth their magnificent army, a hundred and ten thousand men, preceded by two hundred pieces of cannon, in the finest order, to within a quarter of a league of Marlborough – "everybody expecting the greatest battle, on the morrow, which Europe had ever seen."31 Thus grandly they advanced; but as ridiculously retired without firing a shot! Marlborough, however, was of a different humour, and resolved to follow and fight them; and the Duke of Berwick himself has told us what the issue would have been – that Marlborough would have utterly routed his enemy, and probably finished the war that day." But – the Dutch deputies again! They interposed, and Marlborough's heart nearly burst as he beheld the foe retire unmolested. "If Cæsar or Alexander," said Eugene, "had had the Dutch deputies by their side, their conquests would have been less rapid.32 The siege went on – a ball striking Eugene on the head, and wounding him severely, whereby the whole burthen of directing and sustaining the vast operations fell on Marlborough alone, till Eugene's recovery. After sixty days' siege, Boufflers was compelled to capitulate, being treated very nobly by his captors. Still the citadel remained – but that also fell; and so fell the strongest frontier fortress of France, under the eyes of its best generals and most powerful army! A siege perhaps the most memorable, and also one of the most bloody, in modern Europe, – standing forth, as Mr Alison elsewhere remarks, in solitary and unapproachable grandeur in European warfare. The Allies were now within reach of the very heart of France; and Louis XIV. was trembling in his halls at Versailles.33 Before Marlborough could close his campaign, however, he recovered Ghent and Bruges. Such was the campaign of 1708, one of the most glorious in the military annals of England, and one in which the extraordinary capacity of the English general shone forth with perhaps the brightest lustre. The strife of opinion, the war of independence, was alike brought to an issue in that memorable contest, and, as far as military success could do it, to a glorious termination. "But at this moment," says Mr Alison, with a sigh, "faction stepped in to thwart the efforts of patriotism; and his subsequent life is but a record of the efforts of selfish ambition to wrest from the hero the laurels, from the nation the fruits, of victory."34
When the laurelled victor returned to England, he received no favour from the Queen, and was treated with studied coldness at court. Faction and intrigue had been and were then busy at their foul work. This was doubtless hard to bear; but what was the situation of the great Louis? His fortunes were desperate; his exchequer was beggared; the land was filled with lamentation; and the horrors of famine were superadded. Then Louis supplicated for peace to those whom he had so long striven to crush and annihilate: a bitter humiliation! And in his extremity he bethought himself of bribing his great conqueror; offering him, directly, no less a sum than nearly a quarter of a million sterling, as the price of his influence for the purpose of obtaining terms advantageous to France. It need not be said that the attempt was scornfully repulsed. The triumphant Allies insisted on terms of compromise which Marlborough himself, with noble disinterestedness, condemned, and Louis could do nothing but repudiate. Once again, therefore, he took the field, with an enormous army of 112,000 men, under his renowned marshal, Villars; and all France was animated, at this momentous crisis, by the conviction that then "it behoved every Frenchman to conquer or die." Marlborough commenced the campaign with 110,000 men; and great results were looked for, from "the contest of two armies of such magnitude, headed by such leaders, and when the patriotic ardour of the French nation, now raised to the uttermost, was matched against the military strength of the Confederates, matured by a series of victories so long and brilliant." So confident was Villars in the strength of his army, and his intrenched position, that he sent a trumpeter to the Allies' headquarters, to announce that "they would find him behind his lines; or, if they were afraid to attack, he would level them, to give entrance!" With consummate prudence Marlborough declined the invitation, and besieged Tournay – which he took, after a siege of almost unequalled horrors; but he gained by it a fertile and valuable province in French Flanders. Then he determined to take Mons, the next great fortress on the direct road to Paris; but for this it would be necessary to break through Villars' long lines of defence. By a dexterous movement, he succeeded in turning these formidable lines, thirty leagues in length, the results of two months' severe labour, and the subject of such vainglorious boasting by their constructor. They were now rendered utterly useless; and this great feat had been accomplished easily, and without bloodshed. Then came another terrible battle – that of Malplaquet, in which Marlborough, with 93,000 men, after the most bloody and obstinately contested contest that had occurred in the war, defeated an army of 95,000, – the noblest which the French monarchy had ever sent forth – strongly posted between two woods – trebly intrenched! "It was," says Mr Alison, "a desperate duel between France and England, in which the whole strength of each nation was put forth. Nothing like it had occurred since Agincourt, nor afterwards occurred till Waterloo." Both Villars and Boufflers performed prodigies of strategy and valour; but of what avail against Marlborough? Then he laid siege to, and took Mons: after which there remained only two more fortresses between the Allies and Paris! These prodigious operations, however, formed the subject of vexatious insults, paltry and presumptuous criticism, to his malignant enemies in England, with a view to lower his overwhelming influence at home. He was disgusted and disheartened, and went so far as to say to the Queen, with natural but imprudent indignation – "After all I have done, it has not been able to protect me against the malice of a bed-chamber woman!"
The affairs of the Allies becoming exceedingly critical, Marlborough, after strenuous but futile efforts at negotiation, was forced again to take the field; and projected operations on a grander scale than ever, with a view to promptly closing the war. Again he succeeded in passing immensely strong lines of defence without shot or bloodshed, and sat down before Douai, another fortress of the utmost importance, in every way, to France. Villars received imperative instructions, from the alarmed court at Versailles, to raise the siege at all hazards; and, at the head of a splendid army of upwards of 90,000 men, most ably generalled, approached, "with all the pomp and circumstance of war," to within musket-shot of Marlborough's position – around whose bayonets, however, played the lustre of Blenheim and Ramilies. Villars advanced – to retire without firing a shot, though his army greatly outnumbered that of Marlborough! Of course, he took Douai, after a bloody siege; and then Bethune, after thirty days of open trenches; where, says the French annalist, "Vauban beat the chamade– the sad signal which terminated all the sieges undertaken by Marlborough!"35 It had to sound twice more in that campaign – on the fall of St Venant, and of Aire, after severe sieges; and the trembling Louis, disarrayed of four great frontier fortresses in one campaign, now placed all his hopes on the result of base intrigues in England against Marlborough and the war ministry. "What we lose in Flanders," said his triumphant minister, Torcy, "we shall gain in England!" And there, indeed, his enemies were doing their work with the utmost skill and determination, in order to secure his speedy downfall, and the advent of a ministry which should surrender all that had been gained in the war, humble England before France, and seal the fate of Protestantism and the Succession which upheld it. Their scandalous doings almost wore out Marlborough, making him, as he said, "every minute wish to be a hermit." He nobly resolved, however, harassed and thwarted
Alison, i. 406.
Alison, i. 448.
Alison, ii. 125.