Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: A few obvious misprints have been corrected, but in general the originally erratic spelling, punctuation and typesetting conventions have been retained. Accents in foreign-language poetry and phrases, particularly the Greek, are inconsistent in the original, and have not been standardised. The index is for the whole volume, but only December's articles are linked up.


It was not thus with the French.
The same cause which had loosened the efforts of the confederates, had inspired unwonted vigour into their councils. The Rhine was crossed by the Allies; the French armies had been hurled with disgrace out of Germany; the territory of the Grand Monarque was threatened both from the side of Alsace and Flanders; and a formidable insurrection in the Cevennes both distracted the force and threatened the peace of the kingdom. But against all these evils Louis made head. Never had the superior vigour and perseverance of a monarchy over that of a confederacy been more clearly evinced. Marshal Villars had been employed in the close of the preceding year to appease the insurrection in the Cevennes, and his measures were at once so vigorous and conciliatory, that before the end of the following winter the disturbances were entirely appeased. In consequence of this, the forces employed in that quarter became disposable; and by this means, and the immense efforts made by the government over the whole kingdom, the armies on the frontier were so considerably augmented, that Villeroi and the Elector of Bavaria took the field in the Low Countries at the head of seventy-five thousand men, while Marshal Marsin on the Upper Rhine, covered Alsace with thirty thousand. Those armies were much larger than any which the Allies could bring against them; for although it had been calculated that Marlborough was to be at the head of ninety thousand men on the Moselle on the 1st May, yet such had been the dilatory conduct of the States-general and the German princes, that in the beginning of June there were scarcely thirty thousand men collected round his standards; and in Flanders and on the Upper Rhine the enemy's relative superiority was still greater.