1708

VICTORY OF OUDENARDE.

117

VI.

threw forward General Cadogan, who opened a sudden attack CHAP. on a body of horse and foot which had advanced to Eyne, a village two miles to the north of Oudenarde. A sharp struggle took place; the French were routed and most of them driven across the Norken, while three entire battalions and their general, the Duke de Biron, were taken prisoners. In this charge, the electoral prince George of Hanover, afterwards George II. of England, led a squadron with intrepidity. Cadogan's troops then pressed forward and occupied Heurne, a mile north of Eyne. It was becoming dusk and the French could still have avoided a general engagement, but the Duke of Burgundy, without consulting Vendôme, ordered an advance. After a stubbornly contested fight the issue was determined by the execution, under the direction of Marlborough, of a turning movement of the French right by the veteran Dutch marshal, Ouwerkerk. This threw the French into confusion, and soon after eight o'clock Vendôme ordered a general retreat. But for the darkness, Marlborough repeatedly affirmed, the retreat would have degenerated into a panic-stricken rout and the war have been at an end. The allies lost only 3,000 men; the French 6,000 killed and wounded and 9,000 prisoners, including 700 officers, as well as ninety-eight colours and standards. Including deserters and fugitives who never rejoined, Marlborough computed the diminution of their numbers at 20,000 men. With a modesty characteristic of his dispatches, Marlborough summed up the features of the engagement which exhibit his genius in defying with success the traditional rules of war. "We were obliged," he wrote to the queen in reply to her letter of congratulation, "not only to march five leagues that morning, but to pass a river before the enemy and to engage them before the whole army was passed." The queen ordered a public thanksgiving. The tories were divided in their attitude. To the Jacobites there were the additional vexations that the pretender, under the name of the Chevalier de St. George, had been prominent in the defeated army, and that the protestant heir had won a name for gallantry in the action. Many of them minimised

1 The interesting metrical account of the battle by John Scot, serving in the Scots Brigade in pay of the States of Holland, narrates that the Elector of Hanover, .. Prince George, having had his horse shot under him, was supposed

VI.

CHAP. the success and affected to "look upon the giving of thanks for a victory at Oudenarde to be a mocking of God". The first care of Vendôme after the battle was to protect Ghent and Bruges. With this object he occupied an intrenched camp behind the canal of Bruges. Here he was safe against attack and could await the advance of Berwick, whose army would raise the combined forces to 100,000 men. As after Ramillies, Marlborough proposed to strike a blow at the heart of France, to mask Lille and to advance by forced marches upon Paris. Eugene refused. It was decided, therefore, to lay siege to Lille; its relief would certainly necessitate the advance of the French armies, its capture would pave the way for Marlborough's brilliant project. In the meantime a body of English cavalry was detached to ravage Picardy.

Before the army of Berwick had entered the theatre of operations, the investment of Lille was begun on August 13. Though Vendôme and Berwick effected a junction on the 30th they could agree upon nothing but the interception of the communications of the besiegers. During September the resources of the allies were daily more straitened by the cutting off of convoys from Brussels. The only source of supplies left them was the sea. It happened that during the summer months a military force under General Erle had been cruising in the Channel, with orders to effect a landing in Normandy or Brittany. The expedition proved a failure, and the troops, at Marlborough's instance, were now conveyed to Ostend. There a large convoy was prepared, to conduct which Marlborough detached General Webb, with about 4,000 foot and three squadrons of dragoons. On September 27, when some fifteen miles from Ostend, near the castle of Wynendaele, Webb was attacked by the French general Lamothe, with troops nearly double in numbers. Reinforced, after a brilliant defence, by General Cadogan, he beat the French off. Upon the issue of this action hung the fate of Lille. "If they [Webb and Cadogan] had not succeeded, and our convoy had been lost, the consequence must have been the raising of to have been killed, but afterwards fought on foot with a half-pike. The pretender is said by the same author to have thrice rallied the French and the Irish Brigade. The Remembrance, Scottish Hist. Soc. (1901), iii., 412.

1 Erasmus Lewis to Robert Harley, Whitehall, August 19, 1708, Portland MSS., iv,. 501.

1708

WEBB'S VICTORY AT WYNENDAELE.

119

VI.

the siege next day," wrote Marlborough; "there did not CHAP. remain powder and ball for above four days." "This last action," wrote Petkum, the minister of the Duke of SchleswigHolstein at the Hague to Torcy, "is considered here more important in its consequences than the battle of Oudenarde." 1 Webb justly received for his exploit the thanks of the house of

commons.

The progress of the besiegers could no longer be resisted. On October 22 Marshal Boufflers capitulated for the surrender of the city. The citadel held out week after week, the allies' communications were constantly interrupted, and Marlborough received the discouraging information that the enemy was expecting reinforcements. The Elector of Bavaria, who had hitherto lain inactive on the Rhine, suddenly marched to Mons, and on November 22 appeared before the gates of Brussels at the head of 15,000 men. Its inhabitants were well affected to him and its garrison numbered but 7,000 troops. Marlborough and Eugene hurried to the rescue by rapid marches, surprised and routed the French troops guarding the fords of the Schelde, and captured over 1,000 prisoners. While Eugene returned to the army of investment, Marlborough, despite the fatigue of his troops, pushed on. The defective intelligence from which the opposed commanders habitually suffered again came to his help. Scarcely was the elector aware of the passage of the Schelde ere he found Marlborough upon him. “He immediately," wrote the duke in a dispatch of November 28, "quitted the siege in the greatest confusion, leaving all his artillery and ammunition with above 800 wounded officers and soldiers in the camp, and retired towards Mons." In two days Marlborough had won two brilliant successes. Brussels was saved and the fate of Lille sealed. Marlborough stood master of Brabant. On December 9 the citadel of Lille surrendered. Ghent and Bruges speedily followed its example. The campaign of this year illustrates no less than that of 1704 the extraordinary talents of Marlborough as a general. His army was inferior to the united armies of Vendôme and Berwick, yet he contrived, after winning a pitched battle in unfavourable circumstances,

1 October 4, 1708, Round MSS., p. 331, Hist. MSS, Comm., 14th Rep., App.

pt. ix.

VI.

CHAP. to maintain the investment of a first-class fortress with its communications threatened on every side, to defeat two auxiliary armies, to harry the enemy's country, to recover the whole of the territory recently occupied by the French, and, in short, to accomplish every object to which he addressed his efforts.

In Spain at the opening of the campaign of 1708 there were three Bourbon armies afoot; one of 22,000 men, under Orleans in north-west Catalonia, a second under General Bay on the Portuguese frontier, and 6,000 Castilians under General d'Asfeldt in occupation of the province of Valencia. On the northern border of Catalonia hovered the Duke de Noailles at the head of a French force. Galway, who since his wounds at Almanza had become blind of one eye and partially deaf, was, in deference to the emperor's repeated solicitations, relieved of his thankless post as commander-in-chief of the British contingent. But so convinced were Marlborough and his whig friends of his skill as a general and his value as a diplomatist, that it was decided to nominate him to the chief command of the British forces in Portugal, and in February to accredit him as ambassador to the court of Lisbon.

While the archduke's cause continued to lose ground on the mainland, the supremacy of the maritime powers was asserting itself in his interest at sea. In August the fleet of Leake, who had succeeded Shovell in the Mediterranean, put in at Cagliari, and after a show of resistance took possession of Sardinia, replacing the Bourbon governor by the Count Cifuentes, the former leader of the Austrian party in Aragon. That island's inexhaustible granaries were now at the disposal of the allies. But the British government was not disposed to forgo all share in the advantages procured by its efforts and expenditure. The fate of Shovell had impressed more strongly than before upon the mind of Marlborough the necessity of a winter harbour in the Mediterranean. In July of this year he wrote to Stanhope: "I am so entirely convinced that nothing can be done effectually without the fleet, that I conjure you if possible to take Port Mahon". At Stanhope's instance, Leake arrived before Port Mahon, the harbour of Minorca, on September 5, and was joined by Stanhope at the head of 2,600 troops nine days later. After a little more than a fortnight's resistance St. Philip's castle, protecting the harbour, and the castle of

1708

STANHOPE CAPTURES PORT MAHON.

121

VI.

Fornelle were taken, the reduction of the entire island costing CHAP. the allies no more than fifty men. This, the substantial part of the enterprise, was achieved by Stanhope, Leake having, in obedience to orders, returned home, leaving a squadron behind him. Port Mahon was garrisoned by British troops, and for forty-eight years Minorca remained in British hands. "England," wrote Stanhope to Sunderland, "ought never to part with this island, which will give the law to the Mediterranean both in time of war and peace."

In the judgement alike of Louis XIV. and the allies, the throne of Philip V. rested upon French bayonets. A succession of disasters in the Netherlands, culminating in the loss of Lille, provoked reflexion on the part of Louis as to his power to continue his support. Victory had made the allies, on their part, inflexible in their demand that, as a basis of negotiations for peace, France should make "the preliminary concession of Spain and the Indies, and of the Barrier"1 But the prospect to the allies of playing in Spain, on behalf of Charles III., the thankless part which Louis XIV. had undertaken for his grandson, suggested to the fertile brain of the Duke of Orleans a possibility of compromise. As grandson of Anne of Austria, he professed some hereditary claim and was remote from succession to the French crown. He was ambitious and had no scruples in favour of Philip V., by whom he was disliked and distrusted. In October he opened secret negotiations with Stanhope, with whom before the war he had been on terms of friendship, proposing himself for the crown of Spain. Stanhope ventured a counter-proposal which should satisfy the ambition of Orleans for a crown and detach him from Louis XIV. The duke should have carved out for him a kingdom of Navarre and Languedoc. These negotiations were summarily cut short by the recall of the duke to France in the autumn of 1708. During the autumn and winter of 1708 the position of Philip V. had daily been growing stronger. After the evacuation in April, 1709, of the citadel of Alicante by the English garrison, which had sustained a siege of nearly five months' duration, the kingdom of Charles III. was reduced to the city of Barcelona.

1 Petkum to Torcy, December 11, 1708, Round MSS., p. 336.