Tournai once more passed into the hands of the French in 1668, when it was captured by Louis XIV and afterwards elaborately fortified by Vauban, was retaken by Marlborough in 1709, returned to Austria five years later, and captured once more by the French after the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. Four years later it was again restored to Austria, but was twice taken by the armies of the first French republic, remaining French territory till the battle of Waterloo. It would be a difficult matter to say how often its fortifications have been built, demolished, rebuilt and again destroyed.
The most noteworthy of these later sieges was that of 1745, during the War of the Austrian Succession, which brought the English and French into conflict even along the frontiers of their far-off American colonies. Austrian Flanders became the arena of the decisive campaign in this war—in which its inhabitants had absolutely no interest or concern whatever—and Tournai was the prize for which the armies fought. It was during this and the preceding century that Flanders became “the cockpit of Europe”—foreign armies sweeping over its fertile plains in wars the very purpose of which was unknown to the peasants who helplessly saw their cattle and crops swept away and their farmsteads and villages destroyed. It is curious to remark how frequently the English were engaged in these conflicts, particularly in the vicinity of Tournai. In the words of Lord Beaconsfield, “Flanders has been trodden by the feet and watered with the blood of successive generations of British soldiers.”
An English force formed the nucleus and the backbone of the allied army, which was commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, brother of King George II. The French forces were led by Maurice de Saxe, the greatest military leader of that generation, as Marlborough had been of the one before it. King Louis XV—for almost the only time in his long reign—played the part of a man throughout this campaign. When Saxe explained his plan of campaign, which involved a scheme of field fortifications, the “carpet generals” protested loudly that Frenchmen were well able to meet their foes on open ground. Louis silenced these arm-chair critics and replied to his great field-marshal, “In confiding to you the command of my army I intend that every one shall obey you, and I will be the first to set an example of obedience.”
For a time the allies, which consisted of English, Hanoverian, Dutch and Austrian troops—very few Flemings taking part in this campaign on either side—were in doubt whether Saxe intended to attack Mons, St. Ghislain or Tournai. With his usual rapidity of action, the French leader, when his forces suddenly appeared before Tournai, had that city completely invested before the allies knew where he was. It was early in the month of May, and very rainy, when the allied army started from Brussels and marched through the mud toward the beleaguered city. On the evening of May tenth, eleven days after the siege had begun, they arrived within sight of the quintuple towers of the cathedral and the adjacent belfry. Their position was southeast of the city, on the route to St. Ghislain and Mons, and the towers were therefore sharply outlined against the sunset as the army, standing on rising ground, gazed across the rolling country that was to be the morrow’s battlefield.
Saxe had made the most of the slowness of the allies’ advance by choosing the ground where he would give battle, and strengthening his position with field redoubts, using the little village of Fontenoy as a base. The allies attacked from the direction of the little village of Vezon, while Louis XV watched the battle from a hill near the intersection of the Mons road with that leading from Ramecroix to Antoing. The attack began at two o’clock in the morning, the English advancing in a hollow square, and it was not until after two in the afternoon that Saxe, after bringing every man in his forces into action, had the satisfaction of seeing the great square falter and turn slowly back—halting every hundred yards to beat off its foes. The fiercest unit in the French army was a brigade of Irish volunteers who fought like tigers, the men flinging themselves against the stubborn English square again and again. A learned historian, who has devoted more than eighty pages to a description of the battle, fails to give so clear an idea of its decisive moment as does the poet Thomas Osborne Davis in half as many lines:
“Thrice at the huts of Fontenoy the English column failed,
And twice the lines of Saint Antoine the Dutch in vain assailed;
For town and slope were filled with fort and flanking battery,
And well they swept the English ranks and Dutch auxiliary.
As vainly through De Barri’s wood the British soldiers burst,