Though through the leg with bullet shot
The Prince his wound regarded not,
But still maintained his post and fought
For glorious George of England.
[CHAPTER V]
However fortunate might be the issue of Dettingen, it served at least its purpose in preventing the despatch of French reinforcements to the Danube and to Bohemia; and the campaign of 1743 closed with the utter collapse of Belleisle's great schemes and with the expulsion of the French from Germany. It was now clear that the war would be carried on in the familiar cockpit of the Austrian Netherlands. Such a theatre was convenient for France, since it lay close to her own borders, and convenient for the Allies, because the Dutch had at last been persuaded to join them, and because the British would be brought nearer to their base at Ostend. Marshal Saxe, whose fine talent had hitherto been wasted under incompetent French Generals in Bohemia, was appointed to the chief command of the French in Flanders; and every effort was made to give him a numerous and well-equipped army, and to enable him to open his campaign in good time.
1744.
In England the preparations by no means corresponded with the necessities of the position. The estimates indeed provided for a force of twenty-one thousand British in Flanders in 1744 as against sixteen thousand in the previous year, but only at the cost of depleting the weak garrison left in England; for the actual number of men voted for the two years was the same. All British officers of experience strongly urged upon the Government the importance of being first in the field,[177] but when an army was to be made up in different proportions of English, Dutch, Germans, and Austrians it needed a Marlborough to bring the discordant Courts into harmony as well as to make ready the troops for an early campaign. By the beginning of April eighty thousand French soldiers had marched from their winter quarters, and were concentrated on the frontier between the Scheldt and the Sambre, while the Allies were still scattered about in cantonments, not exceeding even then a total strength of fifty-five thousand men. Wade, the English commander, delayed first by confusion at home and next by contrary winds, was still in England while the French were concentrating, and not a single English recruit to repair the losses of the past campaign had arrived in Flanders. Then arose disputes as to the disposition of the Allied forces, both Austrians and Dutch being nervously apprehensive of leaving their towns on the frontier without garrisons. When in the second week in May the Allied Army was at last collected close to Brussels, it was still weaker by twenty thousand men than it should have been, and found itself confronted with the task of holding Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, and the Sambre against a superior force of French.[178] May passed away and June came, but the Allies remained helpless and motionless in their camp, while Saxe, after a short march westward, turned north and advanced steadily between the Scheldt and the Lys. His principal object was not very difficult to divine. By the middle of June his detachments had seized Ypres and Fort Knock, which commanded the canal from Nieuport to Ypres, thus cutting off the British from one of their bases on the coast. It remained to be seen whether he would aim next at Ostend, where the whole of the British stores of ordnance were accumulated, or whether he would attempt Bruges and Ghent in order to secure the navigation of the Bruges Canal as well as of the Scheldt and Lys. Again, it was always open to him, if he pleased, to besiege Tournay, a fortress which the Allies would not willingly lose. Thus the problem set to the Allies was not easy of solution; but of all solutions they chose the worst. The Dutch and Austrians could not bear the notion of forsaking any one of their darling strongholds, and insisted that the strength of the army should be frittered away in providing weak garrisons for the defence of all.[179] Wade, to do him justice, was for keeping all the troops together, crossing the Scheldt, and taking up a strong position to cover Ghent; but the Austrians would not consent lest they should expose Brussels.[180] Wade was certainly not a strong man, but he must not be too hardly judged. Marlborough had spent the most anxious days of all his campaigns in distraction between the safety of Ghent and of Brussels, and had only extricated himself by the march that preceded the battle of Oudenarde.