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So ended the fight and pursuit of Ramillies, which effectually disposed of the taunt levelled at Marlborough after Blenheim, that he did not know how to improve a victory. The loss of the French in killed, wounded, and prisoners was thirteen thousand men, swelled by desertion during the pursuit to full two thousand more. The trophies of the victors were eighty standards and colours, fifty guns, and a vast quantity of baggage. The loss of the Allies was from four to five thousand killed and wounded, which fell almost entirely on the Dutch and Danes, the British, owing to their position on the extreme right, being but little engaged until the close of the day. The chief service of the British, therefore, was rendered in the pursuit, which they carried forward with relentless thoroughness and vigour. The Dutch were delighted that their troops should have done the heaviest of the work in such an action, and the British could console themselves with the performance of their cavalry, and above all, with the reflection that the whole of the success was due to their incomparable chief.
May-June.
The effect of the victory and of the rapid advance that followed it was instantaneous. Louvain and the whole line of Dyle fell into Marlborough's hands on the day after the battle; Brussels, Malines, and Lierre surrendered before the first halt, and gave him the line of the Senne and the key of the French entrenchments about Antwerp; and one day later, the surrender of Alost delivered to him one of the strongholds on the Dender. Never pausing for a moment, he sent forward a party to lay bridges on the Scheldt below Oudenarde in order to cut off the French retreat into France, a movement which obliged Villeroy forthwith to abandon the lines about Ghent and to retire up the Lys to Courtrai. Ghent, Bruges, and Damme thereupon surrendered on the spot; Oudenarde followed them, and after a few days Antwerp itself. Thus within a fortnight after the victory the whole of Flanders and Brabant, with the exception of Dendermond and one or two places of minor importance, had succumbed to the Allies, and the French had fallen back to their own frontier.
June.
Nor was even this all. A contribution of two million livres levied in French Flanders brought home to the Grand Monarch that the war was now knocking at his own gates. Villars, with the greater part of his army, was recalled from the Rhine to the Lys, and a number of French troops were withdrawn to the same quarter from Italy. Baden had thus the game in his own hand on the Rhine, and though he was too sulky and incapable to turn the advantage to account, yet his inaction was no fault of Marlborough's. We are hardly surprised to find that in the middle of this fortnight the Duke made urgent request for fresh stores of champagne; he may well have needed the stimulant amid such pressure of work and fatigue.[338]
June 6 17 .
He now detached Overkirk to besiege Ostend and another party to blockade Dendermond, at the same time sending off five British battalions, which we shall presently meet again, for a descent on the Charente which was then contemplated in England. This done he took post with the rest of the Army at Rouslers, to westward of the Lys, whence he could at once cover the siege of Ostend and menace Menin and Ypres. The operations at Ostend were delayed for some time through want of artillery and the necessity of waiting for the co-operation of the Fleet; but the trenches were finally opened on the 17th of June, and a few weeks later the town surrendered.
June 27
July 8.
Aug. 11 22 .
Three days after this the army was reassembled for the siege of Menin. This fortress was of peculiar strength, being esteemed one of Vauban's masterpieces, and was garrisoned by five thousand men. Moreover, the French, being in command of the upper sluices of the Lys, were able greatly to impede the operations by cutting off the water from the lower stream, and thus rendering it less useful for purposes of transport. But all this availed it little; for three weeks after the opening of the trenches Menin surrendered. The British battalions[339] which had been kept inactive at Ramillies took a leading share in the work, and some of them suffered very heavily, but had the satisfaction of recapturing four of the British guns that had been taken at Landen.