The successes of the past campaign were sufficient to set the British Parliament in good humour, and to prompt it to vote a further increase of ten thousand German mercenaries for the following year. Nevertheless political troubles were increasing, and there were already signs that the rule of Godolphin and Marlborough was in danger. The death of the Prince Consort had been a heavy blow to the Duke. Prince George may have deserved Lord Macaulay\'s character for impenetrable stupidity, but there can be little doubt that his heavy phlegmatic character was of infinite service to steady the weak and unstable Queen Anne.
1709.

In the spring of 1709, however, it seemed reasonable to hope that peace, which would have set all matters right, was well-nigh assured. France, already at the last gasp through the exhaustion caused by the war, was weakened still further by a severe winter which had added famine to all her other troubles; and Lewis sought anxiously, even at the price of humiliation, for peace. He approached Marlborough, reputed the most avaricious and corruptible of men, with a gigantic bribe to obtain good terms, but was unhesitatingly rebuffed. The Duke stated the conditions which might be acceptable to England; and had the negotiations been trusted to him, there can be little doubt but that he would have obtained the honourable peace which he above all men most earnestly desired. He was, however, overruled by instructions from home imposing terms which Lewis could not be expected to grant; the war was continued;[513] and Marlborough, who had striven his hardest to bring it to an end, was of course accused of prolonging it deliberately for his own selfish ends.
June.
June 15 26 .

The French, now menaced with an invasion and a march of the Allies to Paris, had strengthened their army enormously by withdrawing troops from all quarters to Flanders, and had set in command their only fortunate general, that very able soldier and incomparable liar, Marshal Villars. To cover Arras, the northwestern gate of France, Villars had thrown up a strong line of entrenchments from the Scarpe at Douay to the Lys, which were generally known, after the name of his headquarters, as the lines of La Bassée. There he lay, entrenched to the teeth, while Marlborough and Eugene, after long delay owing to the lateness of the spring, encamped with one hundred and ten thousand men to the south of Lille, between two villages, with which the reader will in due time make closer acquaintance, called Lincelles and Fontenoy. Thence they moved south straight upon Villars\' lines with every apparent preparation for a direct attack upon them and for forcing their way into France at that point. The heavy artillery was sent to Menin on the Lys; report was everywhere rife of the coming assault, and Villars lost no time in summoning the garrison of Tournay to his assistance. On the 26th of June, at seven in the evening, Marlborough issued his orders to strike tents and march; and the whole army made up its mind for a bloody action before the lines at dawn. To the general surprise, after advancing some time in the direction of the French, the columns received orders to change direction to the left. After some hours\' march eastward they crossed a river, but the men did not know that the bridge lay over the Marque and that it led them over the battlefield of Bouvines; nor was it until dawn that they saw the gray walls and the four spires of Tournay before them and discovered that they had invested the city.
June 26
July 7.
July 19 30 .
Aug. 23
Sept. 3.

Tournay had been fortified by Vauban and was one[514] of the strongest fortresses in France,[365] but its garrison had been weakened by the unsuspecting Villars, and there was little hope for it. The heavy artillery of the Allies, which had been sent to Menin, went down the Lys to Ghent and up the Scheldt to the besieged city, the trenches were opened on the 7th of July, and after three weeks, despite the demonstrations of Villars and of incessant heavy rain, Tournay was reduced to surrender.[366] Then followed the siege of the citadel, the most desperate enterprise yet undertaken by the Allied troops, inasmuch as the subterraneous works were more numerous and formidable than those above ground. The operations were, therefore, conducted by mine and countermine, with destructive explosions and confused combats in the darkness, which tried the nerves of the soldiers almost beyond endurance. The men did not object to be shot, but they dreaded to be buried alive by the hundred together through the springing of a single mine.[367] Four English regiments[368] bore their share in this work and suffered heavily in the course of it, until on the 3rd of September the citadel capitulated.

[515]
Aug. 20 31 .
Aug. 23
Sept. 3.

Before the close of the siege Marlborough and Eugene, leaving a sufficient force before Tournay, had moved back with the main army before the lines at Douay. They had long decided that the lines were far too formidable to be forced, but they saw no reason for communicating this opinion to Villars. On the 31st of August Lord Orkney, with twenty squadrons and the whole of the grenadiers of the army, marched away silently and swiftly eastward towards St. Ghislain on the Haine. Three days later, immediately after the capitulation of the citadel of Tournay, the Prince of Hessen-Cassel started at four o\'clock in the afternoon in the same direction; at nine o\'clock Cadogan followed him with forty squadrons more, and at midnight the whole army broke up its camp and marched after them. Twenty-six battalions alone were left before Tournay to superintend the evacuation and to level the siege works, with orders to watch Villars carefully and not to move until he did.
Aug. 26
Sept. 6.

The Prince of Hessen-Cassel soon overtook Orkney, from whom he learned that St. Ghislain was too strongly held to be carried by his small force. The Prince therefore at once pushed on. Rain was falling in torrents, and the roads were like rivers, but he continued his advance eastward behind the woods that line the Haine almost without a halt, till at length at two o\'clock on the morning of the 6th of September he wheeled to the right and crossed the river at Obourg three miles to the north-east of Mons. Before him lay the river Trouille running down from the south through Mons, and in rear of it a line of entrenchments, thrown up from Mons to the Sambre during the last war to cover the province of Hainault. A short survey showed him that the lines were weakly guarded; and before noon he had passed them without opposition. His force, despite the weather and the state of the roads, had covered the fifty miles to Obourg in fifty-six hours.
Aug. 27
Sept. 7.

Too late Villars discovered that for the second time he had been duped, and that Marlborough had no[516] intention of forcing his way into France through the lines of La Bassée and the wet swampy country beyond them, when he could pass the lines of the Trouille without loss of a man. He was in a difficult position, for Mons was but slenderly garrisoned and difficult of access, while, if captured, it would be a valuable acquisition to the Allies. The approach to it from the westward was practically shut off by a kind of natural barrier of forest, running, roughly speaking, from St. Ghislain on the Haine on the north to Maubeuge on the Sambre to the south. In this barrier there were but two openings, the Trouée de Boussut between the village of that name and the Haine, and the Trouées d\'Aulnois and de Louvière, which are practically the same, some miles further to the south. These will be more readily remembered, the northern entrance by the name of Jemappes, the southern by the name of Malplaquet. Villars no sooner knew what was going forward than he pushed forward a detachment with all speed upon the northern entrance, which was the nearer to him. The detachment came too late. The Prince of Hessen-Cassel was already astride of it, his right at Jemappes, his left at Ciply. The French thereupon fell back to await the approach of the main army of the Allies.
Aug. 26
Sept. 6.
Aug. 27
Sept. 7.

Meanwhile that army had toiled through the sea of mud on the northern bank of the Haine, and crossing the river had by evening invested Mons on the eastern side. On the following day Villars and his whole army also arrived on the scene and encamped a couple of miles to westward of the forest-barrier from Montreuil to Athis. Here he was joined by old Marshal Boufflers, who had volunteered his services at a time of such peril to France. The arrival of the gallant veteran caused such a tumult of rejoicing in the French camp that Marlborough and Eugene, not knowing what the clamour might portend, withdrew all but a fraction of the investing force from the town, and advancing westward into the plain of Mons caused the army to bivouac between Ciply and Quévy in order of battle.

[517]
Aug. 28
Sept. 8.
Aug. 29
Sept. 9.

Villars meanwhile had not moved, being adroit enough to threaten both passages and keep the Allies in doubt as to which he should select. While therefore the mass of the Allied army was moved towards the Trouée d\'Aulnois, a strong detachment was sent up to watch the Trouée de Boussut. That night Villars sent detachments forward to occupy the southern passage, and by midday of the morrow his whole army was taking up its position across the opening. Marlborough at once moved his army forward, approaching so close that his left wing exchanged cannon shot with Villars\'s right. Everything pointed to an immediate attack on the French before they should have time to entrench themselves. Whether the Dutch deputies intervened to stay further movements is uncertain. All that is known is that a council of war was held, wherein, after much debate, it was resolved to await the arrival of the detachment from the Trouée de Boussut and of the troops that had been left behind at Tournay, and that in the meanwhile eighteen battalions should be sent north to the capture of St. Ghislain and the investment of Mons turned into a blockade. Evidently in some quarter there was reluctance to hazard a general action.
Aug. 30
Sept. 10.

Villars now set himself with immense energy to strengthen his position; and, when Marlborough and Eugene surveyed the defences at daybreak of the following morning, they were astonished at the formidable appearance of the entrenchments. Marlborough was once more for attacking without further delay, but he was opposed by the Dutch deputies and even by Eugene. The attack was therefore fixed for the morrow; and another day was lost which Villars did not fail to turn to excellent account.

The entrance from the westward to the Trouée d\'Aulnois or southern entrance to the plain of Mons is marked by the two villages of Campe du Hamlet on the north and Malplaquet on the south. About a mile in advance of these villages the ground rises to its highest elevation, the opening being about three thousand[518] paces wide, and the ground broken and hollowed to right and left by small rivulets. This was the point selected by Villars for his position. It was bounded on his right by the forest of Laignières, the greatest length of which ran parallel to the Trouée, and on the left by a forest, known at different points by the names of Taisnières, Sart and Blaugies, the greatest length of which ran at right angles to the Trouée. Villars occupied the forest of Laignières with his extreme right, his battalions strengthening the natural obstacles of a thick and tangled covert by means of abattis. From the edge of the wood he constructed a triple line of entrenchments, which ran across the opening for full a third of its width, when they gave way to a line of nine redans. These redans in turn yielded place to a swamp backed by more entrenchments, which carried the defences across to the wood of Taisnières. Several cannon were mounted on the entrenchments and a battery of twenty guns before the redans. On Villars\'s left the forests of Taisnières and Sart projected before the general front, forming a salient and re-entering angle. Entrenchments and abattis were constructed in accordance with this configuration, and two more batteries were erected on this side, in addition to several guns at various points along the line, to enfilade an advancing enemy. Feeling even thus insecure Villars threw up more entrenchments at the villages of Malplaquet and Chaussée du Bois in rear of the wood of Sart, and was still hard at work on them to the last possible moment before the action. Finally in rear of all stood his cavalry, drawn up in several lines. The whole of his force amounted to ninety-five thousand men.

The position was most formidable, but it had its defects. In the first place the open space before the entrenchments was broken at about half a mile\'s distance by a small coppice, called the wood of Tiry, which could serve to mask the movements of the Allied centre. In the second place the forest of Sart ran out beyond the fortified angle in a long tongue, which would[519] effectually conceal any troops that might be directed against the extreme left flank. Finally the French cavalry, being massed in rear of the entrenchments, could take no part in the action until the defences were forced, and was therefore incapable of delivering any counterstroke. Marlborough and Eugene accordingly decided to make a feint attack on the French right and a true attack on their left front and flank. Villars would then be obliged to reinforce his left from his centre, which would enable the defences across the open to be carried, and the whole of the allied cavalry to charge forward and cut the French line in twain.
Aug. 31
Sept. 11.

The dawn of the 11th of September broke in dense heavy mist which completely veiled the combatants from each other. At three o\'clock prayers were said in the Allied camp, and then the artillery was moved in position. Forty pieces were massed in a single battery in the open ground against the French left, and were covered with an epaulment for defence against enfilading fire; twenty-eight more were stationed against the French right, and the lighter pieces were distributed, as usual, among the different brigades. Then the columns of attack were formed. Twenty-eight battalions under Co............