Early in the year it became evident that Louis intended to make a great effort to regain the ground he had lost in Flanders, for he assembled a hundred thousand men behind his frontier fortresses, and placed them under the command of his grandson the Duke of Burgundy, with de Vendôme as his military tutor and adviser. As Marlborough had but eighty thousand troops at his immediate disposal, he arranged that Eugene, the Prince of Savoy, who was in charge of the allied forces on the Rhine, should support him whenever he wanted help. This help was soon required, for the French took the initiative, and at the end of May advanced to the forest of Soignies. While Marlborough concentrated at Hal, de Vendôme rapidly despatched detachments to Bruges and Ghent, where the civil authorities were in his pay; and when Louis’ soldiers appeared outside the walls, the gates stood open before them. Having thus secured two very important points in the system of waterways connected with the Lys and the Scheldt, de Vendôme next threatened Brussels; and by forcing Marlborough to move to Asche for its protection, gained time to prepare for the attack on Oudenarde, the capture of which would make him master of the greater part of the Scheldt. He proposed to cover the siege operations from Lessines, a place about thirteen miles south-east of Oudenarde, and hoped to establish his main body there before Marlborough had grasped his plan; but the Duke’s secret service agents did not fail him, and when he learned that de Vendôme was to move southwards from his camp at Alost on July 9, he determined to outstrip him by starting from Asche long before dawn on the same day. As the reinforcements from the Rhine had not yet arrived, in point of actual numbers the Allies were considerably weaker than the French; but Eugene, leaving his own troops many marches behind him, had recently joined the English general—and the mere presence of Eugene was in itself worth many thousand men. In a straight line the Allies and the French had about the same distance, twenty miles, to march, but by the roads followed by the Allies the mileage was nearly fifty per cent greater. Almost without a pause, Marlborough’s troops tramped steadily from 2 A.M. till noon, when, with fifteen miles to their credit, they halted till the evening, though Cadogan’s detachment of eight squadrons and as many battalions was allowed only four hours’ rest before starting for Lessines, thirteen miles farther on. Throughout the night the main body pressed forward and reached their destination to find that their exertions had not been thrown away—they had outmarched the French: no enemy was in sight, and Cadogan, who had struggled into Lessines at midnight, had already thrown several pontoon bridges across the river Dender. Not until the Allies had reached their camping ground did the heads of the French columns begin to show on the horizon; and when de Vendôme and the Duke of Burgundy realised that Marlborough lay between them and France, they abandoned all hope of besieging Oudenarde, and fell back on the Scheldt to secure the safety of Bruges.
Marlborough decided to follow them, and Cadogan with eleven thousand troops of all arms, including Sabine’s brigade of the 8th, XVIIIth, 23rd, and 37th regiments, quietly left the camp in the small hours of July 11. The duty of this advance-guard was to make all preparations for the crossing from the right bank of the Scheldt to the left by the main body, which was due to arrive at Oudenarde a few hours after Cadogan. Between 10 and 11 A.M. its cavalry scouts had crossed the river a few hundred yards below the town, and were riding up to the thickly enclosed table-land between the principal stream and its northern affluent, the Norken,[48] when they saw to their front a number of French troopers scouring the country for forage. Vendôme had marched down the right bank to Gavre, a few miles below Oudenarde, and was then in process of crossing the Scheldt. These foraging parties were part of the French advance-guard, for de Vendôme, who apparently had taken no steps to watch the movements of the Allies, was so unconscious of danger that many of his men had been allowed to disperse. The French Horse, however, quickly recovered from their surprise at finding Marlborough on their heels, and drove back our scouts, discovering in the course of the pursuit that a body of his cavalry was on the plateau near the village of Eyne, and that some of the bridges over the river near Oudenarde were in his hands.
As soon as de Vendôme realised the situation he decided to form along the slopes overlooking the Scheldt; the line was to stretch from Heurne on his left to Mooregem on his right, and after ordering a detachment of cavalry and seven battalions to occupy Heurne, he rode back to report his dispositions to the Duke of Burgundy, whom he found at breakfast. French writers say that the Prince greatly disliked any interruption at his meals, and the news that the Allies were on the same bank of the river as himself was very unwelcome. There was already great friction between the Prince and his military “bearleader”; and to vent his spleen upon the Marshal the Duke of Burgundy peremptorily rejected the veteran’s plan, and insisted on preparing to give battle, not close to the bank of the Scheldt, where there was a good chance of crushing Marlborough’s columns as they came piece-meal into action, but two miles farther back, on the far side of the Norken, with his left at Asper and his right at Wannegem. From that moment things began to go wrong with the French. In the confusion caused by the rejection of the Marshal’s scheme no one thought of recalling the cavalry and infantry ordered to Heurne: and these luckless troops marched steadily towards a village which they believed to be Heurne, though it proved to be the hamlet of Eyne, well within the reach of Cadogan’s infantry.
While the French generals were laboriously forming their army behind the Norken, Cadogan was throwing pontoon bridges over the Scheldt, and anxiously scanning the horizon for the clouds of dust which would herald the march of the main body of the Allies. But the day was stifling, the roads narrow and bad; it was not until two o’clock in the afternoon that the heads of the columns began to reach the river, and thus set Cadogan free to secure for his chief a good foothold on the left bank. The first thing to be done was to drive the French out of Eyne; and a body of Hanoverian cavalry and three brigades of infantry from the advance-guard were ordered to attack the village. Sabine’s brigade of British was in front, and as it was led by the Royal Irish, the XVIIIth was the first regiment under fire at the battle of Oudenarde. Though the garrison of Eyne were conscious that they had been stranded in an impossible position, so far in advance of their main line that they could not hope to be reinforced, they fought well at first; but when they realised that they were heavily outnumbered they lost heart: three battalions surrendered: the others were hustled out of the village at the point of the bayonet, and then fell into the hands of the Hanoverians, who after cutting them to pieces charged the detachment of French cavalry posted near Eyne and chased it into the marshes of the Norken.[49] Cadogan followed up his success by pushing two Prussian regiments towards Groenewald, thus to some extent protecting the right flank of the main body as it crossed the Scheldt.
The French troops who had been powerless to help their comrades at Eyne became clamorous to avenge them, and the Duke of Burgundy, seeing how slowly the Allies defiled over the bridges, determined to take the offensive, and ordered his right and centre to advance. About five o’clock a formidable mass of infantry threatened Groenewald, where the Prussians would have fared badly had they not been reinforced at once by twelve battalions of the advance-guard, who, as they came into action, prolonged the line to the left—i.e., southwards, towards the hamlet of Schaerken. But as the French continued to gain ground on this part of the field twenty battalions from the main body were flung into the fray, and by continuing to extend to the left as they joined the fighting line, repulsed a dangerous attempt by the enemy to turn the left of the Allies at this point.
In the enclosures round Groenewald every hedge and ditch became a miniature fortress, taken and retaken as the tide of battle ebbed and flowed; and near the village of Schaerken the Allies could hardly keep the enemy in check until the Duke reinforced this part of the line. Then slowly, and with great difficulty, the Dutch and Hanoverians forced the French back a few hundred yards to Diepenbeck; but there they met with so stubborn a resistance that they could gain no further ground. Some writers say that the French infantry had fallen back to a belt of abattis prepared earlier in the day; be that as it may, the fact remains that at this point de Vendôme’s infantry fought magnificently, and brought Marlborough’s foot soldiers to a standstill. Fortunately the Duke had in hand a reserve of some twenty battalions and many squadrons, all of whom had so recently crossed the river that they had not yet come into action; and with these troops he turned the right of the enemy’s line, drove in the outer flank of their infantry, and after dispersing a body of de Vendôme’s cavalry fell upon the right rear of the French army. About this time, but far too late to influence the issue of the battle, the Duke of Burgundy ordered his left to move forward; but his foot soldiers did nothing, and his horsemen were paralysed by the sight of the British regiments of cavalry, drawn up on the far side of the swamp across which they were called upon to advance. Thus the combat resolved itself into a struggle round the villages of Groenewald and Diepenbeck, and as night fell the flashes of the muskets showed that the French line, ever growing thinner and narrower, was hour by hour more closely hemmed in on front and flank and rear by Marlborough’s infantry. Soon it became too dark to distinguish friend from foe, and after parties from the right and left wings of the Allies had met in rear of the French position and fired into each other, Marlborough ordered his weary troops to break off the battle, to halt where they stood, and be ready to resume the combat at dawn next day. But at daybreak there was no enemy to fight. When the French right flank was turned the Duke of Burgundy again quarrelled fiercely with de Vendôme. The General tried to keep the army together; the Prince insisted on an immediate retreat; the troops lost their discipline, and following the example of Louis XIV.’s grandson, a mass of runaways—generals and private soldiers, horse, foot and artillery—streamed off the field. Not all the French broke, however: by dint of de Vendôme’s personal exertions he rallied enough officers and men to form the rear-guard, with which he covered the “stampede” to Ghent.
The French lost about 6000 killed and wounded, and 9000 prisoners;[50] and (according to Millner) we took from them 10 guns, 56 pairs of colours, 52 standards, and 4500 horses. The casualties among the Allies were about 3000 killed or wounded, more than half of which were among the Dutch. The British suffered very little, 53 officers and men being killed and 177 wounded. The Royal Irish, though the first regiment to come in action, were extremely lucky in losing only a lieutenant and 8 private soldiers killed and 12 wounded.[51]
While Marlborough’s troops were enjoying forty-eight hours’ well-earned rest, an audacious project was forming itself in their great leader’s brain. He knew that an expedition was being prepared in England for a descent on the coast of Normandy, and that to meet it many battalions would be drawn off from the centre of France. The Duke of Burgundy’s army was reeling under the stroke of Oudenarde, and would take weeks to recover itself. Why should not the Allies profit by this favourable combination of circumstances, and leaving a detachment to watch the garrison of Lille, neglect that great frontier fortress and carry the war into the very heart of France? But the scheme was too daring, even for Eugene, who insisted that Lille must be captured as a preliminary to a serious invasion. So the Duke made up his mind to reduce Lille, and marching across the French frontier formed a camp near Commines, levying large contributions from the neighbouring towns, while he began his preparations for the siege. A single detail will be enough to show how enormous these preparations were—the staff had to collect 16,000 horses to drag the big guns and ammunition over the seventy-five miles of villanous road between Lille and Brussels, where the heavy ordnance was stored.
The arrival of the Duke of Berwick[52] with large reinforcements from the Rhine raised the Duke of Burgundy’s strength to at least 100,000 combatants. To meet them Marlborough had only 84,000 troops; but when after many weeks’ delay his huge convoy started from Brussels, he manœuvred so brilliantly that the enemy was never able to come within striking distance of its cumbrous length. It was not until the 22nd of August that the Allies broke ground before Lille, which every Frenchman regarded as impregnable, for on its fortification Vauban had lavished all his skill, 150 guns and mortars frowned from its works, and Marshal de Boufflers commanded its garrison of 15,000 picked men. The siege was to be carried on by Eugene, while from Helchin on the Scheldt Marlborough covered the operations with the field army. Among Eugene’s troops the British were not strongly represented: “only five regiments were detailed for regular work in the trenches”[53]—the 16th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, and as hard knocks were to be expected, it is scarcely necessary to add, the XVIIIth also. The Duke had hardly finished his lines of circumvallation, or, in modern language, the works protecting his own front and Eugene’s rear, when he learned that the Duke of Burgundy was advancing to the relief of Lille. For a week the armies lay opposite each other. Marlborough and Eugene were anxious to attack the French, whose position was so bad that Berwick saw nothing but defeat in store for them if they gave battle; but once again the Dutch deputies threw away splendid chances by refusing to allow their troops to fight. The French generals, though under positive orders from Louis to wipe out their disgrace at Oudenarde by winning a great battle near Lille, declined the combat, and withdrew to devote themselves to the safer task of harassing the Allies’ line of communication. By taking up and holding strongly positions running along the Scheldt and the Scarpe from Ghent to Douai, they hoped to intercept all convoys from Brussels, at that time the Duke’s chief source of supply, but they forgot that in Ostend, which Marlborough had recaptured two years before, he possessed on the open sea a port within easy distance of England. The troops which had just returned from the expedition to Normandy—an expedition as futile as most of our similar enterprises seemed fated to be—were landed at Ostend, where they were employed most usefully in forming a new base.