The Cornet of Horse: A Tale of Marlborough's Wars

by G. A. Henty

In resisting the attack upon one side of the fortress only, thirty-eight mines were sprung in twenty-six days, almost every one with fatal effect. It is no detriment to the courage of the troops to say, that they shrank appalled before such sudden and terrible a mode of warfare, and Marlborough and Eugene in person visited the trenches and braved the dangers in order to encourage the men.

At last, on the 3rd of September, the garrison, reduced to 3000 men, surrendered; and were permitted to march out with the honours of war, and to return to France on the promise not to serve again.

This siege cost the allies 5000 men.

[Chapter 27]: Malplaquet, and the End of the War.

During all the time that the allies had been employed upon the siege of Tournai, Marshal Villars had laboured to form an impregnable line of entrenchments, barring all farther advance. Marlborough, however, a day or two previously to the fall of Tournai, sent off the Prince of Hesse Cassel, who by a rapid and most masterly march fell upon the French lines, at a part where the French had no expectation of there being an enemy within thirty miles of them. No opposition was made, and the prince marching rapidly to the plateau of Jemappes, invested Mons on the French side. The rest of the army followed. The effect caused throughout France, and indeed through Europe, by the success of this masterly movement, was immense; and it was evident that a great battle was at hand.

Villars moved his army rapidly up. A detachment of Eugene's troops were left to watch Mons, and the allied army, 93,000 strong, advanced to meet them, and on the night of the 7th bivouacked in a line three miles long, and five from that occupied by the French. Marshal Villars had with him 95,000 men. The forces therefore were as nearly as possible equal; but the allies had 105 guns, against eighty of the French.

The position taken up by Villars was of great natural strength; being a plateau, interspersed with woods and intersected with streams, and elevated from a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet above the meadowland of the Trouville, across which their assailants must pass. Malplaquet stood on this plateau. On the slopes from the plateau to the plain, the woods were extremely thick, and the only access to the plateau, for troops, were two clearings cut through the woods, known as the Trouees de la Louviere, and d'Aulnoit.

On the morning of the 8th, when the French definitely took up their position, Marlborough and Eugene were in favour of making an instant attack, before the French could add to the great natural strength of their position by entrenchments. The Dutch deputies, however, were altogether opposed to an assault on so formidable a front. Finally a compromise was adopted--a compromise which, as is often the case, was the very worst course which could have been adopted. The army should neither fall back, as the Dutch wished; nor attack at once, as Marlborough desired. It was resolved not to abandon the siege of Mons, and to attack the enemy if they would not take the offensive; but to wait until Saint Ghislain, which commanded a passage on the Haine, was taken; and until twenty-six battalions on the march from Tournai arrived.

It was two days before these conditions were fulfilled; and Villars had used these two precious days in throwing up a series of immensely strong works. The heights he occupied formed a concave semicircle, enfilading on all sides the little plain of Malplaquet, and this semicircle now bristled with redoubts, palisades, abattis, and stockades; while the two trouees, or openings, by which it was presumed that the allies would endeavour to force an entrance, were so enfiladed by cross batteries as to be well-nigh unassailable. Half the French army by turns had laboured ceaselessly at the works, during the two days which the cowardly folly of the Dutch deputies had given them; and the result was the works resembled rather the fortifications of a fortress, than ordinary field works. Marlborough and Eugene had seen from hour to hour the progress of these formidable works, and resolved to mask their front attack by a strong demonstration on the enemy's rear. The troops coming up from Tournai, under General Withers, were ordered not to join the main army; but to cross the Haine at Saint Ghislain, and to attack the extreme left of the enemy at the farm of La Folie. Baron Schulemberg was to attack the left flank of the entrenchments in the wood of Taisniere, with forty of Eugene's battalions, supported by as many cannon; while Count Lottum was to attack the right flank of the wood with twenty-two battalions. The rest of the army was to attack in front; but it was from Eugene's attack in the wood of Taisniere that success was chiefly hoped.

At three o'clock on the morning of the 11th the men were got under arms, divine service was performed at the head of each regiment, and then the troops marched to the posts assigned to them in the attack. Both armies were confident, the French enthusiastic.