Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 369, July 1846

by Various

MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES.

1708-1709.

The fall of the external walls of Lille did not terminate the struggle for that important fortress. Marshal Boufflers still held the citadel, a stronghold in itself equal to most fortresses of the first order. No sooner, however, were the Allies in possession of the town, than the attack on the citadel commenced with all the vigour which the exhausted state of the magazines would furnish. Detached parties were sent into France, which levied contributions to a great extent, and both replenished the stores of the Allies and depressed the spirits of the French, by making them feel, in a manner not to be misunderstood, that the war had at length approached their own doors. To divert, if possible, Marlborough from his enterprise, the Elector of Bavaria, who had recently returned from the Rhine, was detached by Vendôme, with fifteen thousand men against Brussels; while he himself remained in his intrenched camp on the Scheldt, which barred the road from Lille to that city, at once stopping the communication, and ready to profit by any advantage afforded by the measures which the English general might make for its relief. The governor of Brussels, M. Paschal, who had seven thousand men under his orders, rejected the summons to surrender, and prepared for a vigorous defence; and meanwhile Marlborough prepared for its relief, by one of those brilliant strokes which, in so peculiar a manner, characterize his campaigns.

Giving out that he was going to separate his army into winter-quarters, he dispatched the field artillery towards Menin, and he himself set out with his staff in rather an ostentatious way for Courtray. But no sooner had he lulled the vigilance of the enemy by these steps, than, wheeling suddenly round, he advanced with the bulk of his forces towards the Scheldt, and directed them against that part of the French general's lines where he knew them to be weakest. The army, upon seeing these movements, anticipated the bloodiest battle, on the day following, they had yet had during the war. But the skill of the English general rendered resistance hopeless, and gained his object with wonderfully little loss. The passage of the river was rapidly effected at three points; the French corps stationed at Oudenarde, vigorously assailed and driven back on Grammont with the loss of twelve hundred men, so as to leave the road uncovered, and restore the communication with Brussels. Having thus cleared the way of the enemy, Marlborough sent back Eugene to resume the siege of the citadel of Lille; while he himself, with the greater part of his forces, proceeded on to Brussels, which he entered in triumph on the 29th November. The Elector of Bavaria was too happy to escape, leaving his guns and wounded behind; and the citadel of Lille, despairing now of succour, capitulated on the 11th December. Thus was this memorable campaign terminated by the capture of the strongest frontier fortress of France, under the eyes of its best general and most powerful army.[6]

But Marlborough, like the hero in antiquity, deemed nothing done while any thing remained to do. Though his troops were exhausted by marching and fighting almost without intermission for five months, and he himself was labouring under severe illness in consequence of his fatigues, he resolved in the depth of winter to make an attempt for the recovery of Ghent, the loss of which in the early part of the campaign had been the subject of deep mortification. The enemy, after the citadel of Lille capitulated, having naturally broken up their army into cantonments, under the belief that the campaign was concluded, he suddenly collected his forces, and drew round Ghent on the 18th December. Eugene formed the covering force with the corps lately employed in the reduction of Lille. The garrison was very strong, consisting of no less than thirty battalions and nineteen squadrons, mustering eighteen thousand combatants.[7] The governor had been instructed by Vendôme to defend this important stronghold to the last extremity; but he was inadequately supplied with provisions and forage, and this event signally belied the expectations formed of his resistance. The approaches were vigorously pushed. On the 24th the trenches were opened; on the 25th a sortie was repulsed; on the 28th December, the fire began with great vigour from the breaching and mortar batteries; and at noon, the governor sent a flag of truce, offering to capitulate if not relieved before the 2d January. This was agreed to; and on the latter day, as no friendly force approached, the garrison surrendered the gates and marched out, in such strength that they were defiling incessantly from ten in the morning till seven at night! Bruges immediately followed the example; the garrison capitulated, and the town again hoisted the Austrian flag. The minor forts of Plassendall and Leffinghen were immediately evacuated by the enemy. With such expedition were these important operations conducted, that before Vendôme could even assemble a force adequate to interrupt the besiegers' operations, both towns were taken, and the French were entirely dispossessed of all the important strongholds they had gained in the early part of the campaign in the heart of Brabant. Having closed his labours with these glorious successes, Marlborough put the army into now secure winter-quarters on the Flemish frontiers, and himself repaired to the Hague to resume the eternal contest with the timidity and selfishness of his Dutch allies.[8]

Such was the memorable campaign of 1708—one of the most glorious in the military annals of England, and the one in which the extraordinary capacity of the British general perhaps shone forth with the brightest lustre. The vigour and talent of Vendôme, joined to the secret communication which he had with those disaffected to the Austrian government in Ghent and Bruges, procured for him, in the commencement of the campaign, a great, and what, if opposed by less ability, might have proved a decisive advantage. By the acquisition of these towns, he gained the immense advantage of obtaining the entire command of the water communication of Brabant, and establishing himself in a solid manner in the heart of the enemy's territory. The entire expulsion of the Allies from Austrian Flanders seemed the unavoidable result of such a success, by so enterprising a general at the head of a hundred thousand combatants. But Marlborough was not discouraged; on the contrary, he built on the enemy's early successes a course of manœuvres, which in the end wrested all his conquests from him, and inflicted a series of disasters greater than could possibly have been anticipated from a campaign of unbroken success. Boldly assuming the lead, he struck such a blow at Oudenarde as resounded from one end of Europe to the other, struck a terror into the enemy which they never recovered for the remainder of the campaign, paralysed Vendôme in the midst of his success, and reduced him from a vigorous offensive to a painful defensive struggle. While the cabinet of Versailles were dreaming of expelling the Allies from Flanders, and detaching Holland, partly by intrigue, partly by force of arms, from the coalition, he boldly entered the territory of the Grand Monarque, and laid siege to its chief frontier fortress, under the eyes of its greatest army and best general. In vain was the water communication of the Netherlands interrupted by the enemy's possession of Ghent and Bruges; with incredible activity he got together, and with matchless skill conducted to the besiegers' lines before Lille, a huge convoy eighteen miles long, drawn by sixteen thousand horses, in the very teeth of Vendôme at the head of an hundred and twenty thousand men. Lille captured, Ghent and Bruges recovered, the allied standards solidly planted on the walls of the strongest fortress of France, terminated a campaign in which the British, over-matched and surrounded by lukewarm or disaffected friends, had wellnigh lost at the outset by foreign treachery all the fruits of the victory of Ramilies.

The glorious termination of this campaign, and, above all, the addition made to the immediate security of Holland by the recovery of Ghent and Bruges, sensibly augmented Marlborough's influence at the Hague, and at length overcame the timidity and vacillation of the Dutch government. When the English general repaired there in the beginning of 1709, he quickly overawed the adherents of France, regained his wonted influence over the mind of the Pensionary Heinsius, and at length succeeded in persuading the government and the States to augment their forces by six thousand men. This, though by no means so great an accession of numbers as was required to meet the vast efforts which France was making, was still a considerable addition; and by the influence of Prince Eugene, who was well aware that the principal effort of the enemy in the next campaign would be made in the Netherlands, he obtained a promise that the Imperial troops should winter there, and be recruited, so as to compensate their losses in the preceding campaign. Great difficulties were experienced with the court of Turin, which had conceived the most extravagant hopes from the project of an invasion of France on the side both of Lyons and Franche Comté, and for this purpose required a large subsidy in money, and the aid of fifty thousand men under Prince Eugene on the Upper Rhine. Marlborough was too well aware, by experience, of the little reliance to be placed on any military operations in which the Emperor and the Italian powers were to be placed in co-operation, to be sanguine of success from this design; but as it was material to keep the court of Turin in good-humour, he gave the proposal the most respectful attention, and sent General Palmer on a special mission to the Duke of Savoy, to arrange the plan of the proposed irruption into the Lyonnois. With the cabinet of Berlin the difficulties were greater than ever, and in fact had become so urgent, that nothing but the presence of the English General, or an immediate agent from him, could prevent Prussia from seceding altogether from the alliance. General Grumbkow was sent there accordingly in March, and found the king in such ill-humour at the repeated disappointments he had experienced from the Emperor and the Dutch, that he declared he could only spare three battalions for the approaching campaign.[9] By great exertions, however, and the aid of Marlborough's letters and influence, the king was at length prevailed on to continue his present troops in the Low Countries, and increase them by fourteen squadrons of horse.[10]

But it was not on the Continent only that open enemies or lukewarm and treacherous friends were striving to arrest the course of Marlborough's victories. His difficulties at home, both with his own party and his opponents, were hourly increasing; and it was already foreseen, that they had become so formidable that they would cause, at no very remote period, his fall. Though he was publicly thanked, as well he might, by both houses of parliament, when he came to London on 1st March 1709, yet he received no mark of favour from the Queen, and was treated with studied coldness at court.[11] Envy, the inseparable attendant on exalted merit—ingratitude, the usual result of irrequitable services, had completely alienated the Queen from him. Mrs Masham omitted nothing which could alienate her royal mistress from so formidable a rival; and it was hard to say whether she was most cordially aided in her efforts by the open Opposition, or the half Tory-Whigs who formed the administration. Both Godolphin and the Duke speedily found that they were tolerated in office merely: while, in order to weaken their influence with the people, every effort was made to depreciate even the glorious victories which had shed such imperishable lustre over the British cause. Deeply mortified by this ingratitude, Marlborough gladly embraced an offer which was made to him by the government, in order to remove him from court, to conduct the negotiation now pending at the Hague with Louis XIV. for the conclusion of a general peace.[12]

The pride of the French monarch was now so much humbled that he sent the President Rouillé to Holland, with public instructions to offer terms to the Allies, and private directions to do every thing possible to sow dissension among them, and, if possible, detach Holland from the alliance. His proposals were to give up Spain, the Indies, and the Milanese to King Charles; and cede the Italian islands, reserving Naples and Sicily for his grandson. In the Netherlands and Germany, he offered to restore matters to the state they were at the peace of Ryswick; and though he was very reluctant to give up Lille, he offered to cede Menin in its place. These terms being communicated to the court of London, they returned an answer insisting that the whole Spanish monarchy should be restored to the house of Austria, the title of Queen Anne to the Crown of England, and the Protestant succession acknowledged, the Pretender removed, the harbour of Dunkirk destroyed, and an adequate barrier secured for the Dutch. In their ideas upon this barrier, however, they went much beyond what Marlborough was disposed to sanction, and therefore he maintained a prudent reserve on the subject. As the French plenipotentiary could not agree to these terms, Marlborough returned to England, and Lord Townsend was associated with him as plenipotentiary. They were instructed to insist that Furmes, Ipres, Menin, Lille, Tournay, Condé, Valenciennes, and Maubeuge, should be given up to form a barrier, and that Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay should be restored. Alarmed at the exaction of such rigorous terms, Louis sent M. de Torcy, who made large concessions; and Marlborough, who was seriously desirous of bringing the war to a conclusion, exerted all his influence with the States to induce them to accept the barrier offered. He so far succeeded, that on the very day after his return to the Hague, he wrote both to Lord Godolphin and the Duchess of Marlborough, that he had prevailed on the Dutch commissioners to accede to the principal articles, and that he had no doubt the negotiation would terminate in an honourable peace.[13]

These flattering prospects, however, were soon overcast. The Dutch renewed their demand of having their barrier strengthened at the expense of Austria, and insisted that the Flemish fortresses of Dendermonde and Ghent, forming part of the Imperial dominions, should be included in it. To this both Eugene and Marlborough objected, and the Dutch, in spite, refused to stipulate for the demolition of Dunkirk. So violent an altercation took place on the subject between the Pensionary Heinsius and Marlborough, that it had wellnigh produced a schism in the grand alliance. M. de Torcy at first endeavoured to mitigate the demands of the Dutch government; but finding them altogether immovable, he addressed himself privately to Marlborough, offering him enormous bribes if he could procure more favourable terms for France. The offers were 2,000,000 livres (£80,000) if he could secure Naples and Sicily, or even Naples alone, for the grandson of the King of France; and 4,000,000 livres (£160,000) if, in addition to this, he could save Strasburg, Dunkirk, and Landau, for France. Marlborough turned away from the disgraceful proposal with coldness and contempt;[14] but enforced in the most earnest manner on the French king, the prudence and even necessity of yielding to the proffered terms, if he would save his country from dismemberment, and himself from ruin. His efforts, however, to bring matters to an accommodation with France proved ineffectual; and after some weeks longer spent in proposals and counter-proposals, the ultimatum of the Allies was finally delivered to the French plenipotentiary by the Pensionary of Holland.[15]