The Collected Works of Hilaire Belloc. Hilaire Belloc

the French. These men were Prince Eugene of Savoy (French by birth and training, a voluntary exile, and inspired throughout his life by a determination to avenge himself upon Louis XIV.), and the Englishman John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough.

      The combination of such a pair was irresistible. Its fruit appeared almost at the inception of the new situation in the great victory of Blenheim.

      This action, fought in August 1704, was the first great defeat French arms had registered in that generation. Henceforward the forces commanded from Versailles were compelled to stand upon the defensive.

      To Blenheim succeeded one blow after another. In 1706 the great battle of Ramillies, in 1708 the crushing action of Oudenarde, confirmed the supremacy of the allies and the abasement of France. By the opening of 1709 the final defeat of Louis and his readiness to sue for peace were taken for granted.

      The financial exhaustion which I have said was already present, though hardly suspected, in 1701, was grown by 1709 acute. The ordinary methods of recruitment for the French army—which nominally, of course, was upon a voluntary basis—had long reached and passed their limit. The failure of the harvest in 1708, followed by a winter of terrible severity, had completed the catastrophe, and with the ensuing spring of 1709 Louis had no alternative but to approach the allies with terms of surrender.

      It seemed as though at last the way to Paris lay open. The forces of the allies in the Netherlands were not only numerically greatly superior to any which the exhausted French could now set against them, but in their equipment, in their supplies, the nourishment of the men, and every material detail, they were upon a footing wholly superior to the corresponding units of the enemy, man for man. They had further the incalculable advantage of prestige. Victory seemed normal to them, defeat to their opponents; and so overwhelming were the chances of the coalition against Louis that its leaders determined with judgment to demand from that monarch the very fullest and most humiliating terms.

      Though various sections of the allies differed severally as to their objects and requirements, their general purpose of completely destroying the power of France for offence, of recapturing all her conquests, and in particular of driving the Bourbons from the throne of Spain, was held in common, and vigorously pursued.

      Marlborough was as active as any in pushing the demands to the furthest possible point; Eugene, the ruling politicians of the English, the Dutch, and the German princes were agreed.

      Louis naturally made every effort to lessen the blow, though he regarded his acceptance of grave and permanent humiliation as inevitable. The negotiations were undertaken at the Hague, and were protracted. They occupied the late spring of 1709 and stretched into the beginning of summer. The French king was prepared (as his instructions to his negotiators show) to give up every point, though he strove to bargain for what remained after each concession. He would lose the frontier fortresses, which were the barrier of his kingdom in the north-east. He would even consent to the abandonment of Spain to Austria.

      Had that peace been declared for which the captains of Europe were confidently preparing, the future history of our civilisation would have proved materially different from what it has become. It is to be presumed that a complete breakdown of the strength of France would have followed; that the monarchy at Versailles would have sunk immediately into such disrepute that the eighteenth century would have seen France divided and possibly a prey to civil war, and one may even conclude that the great events of a century later, the Revolution and the campaigns of Napoleon, could not have sprung from so enfeebled a society.

      It so happened, however, that one of those slight miscalculations which are productive in history of its chief consequences, prevented the complete humiliation of Louis XIV. The demands of the allies were pushed in one last respect just beyond the line which it was worth the while of the defeated party to accept, for it was required of the old king not only that he should yield in every point, not only that he should abandon the claims of his own grandson to the throne of Spain (which throne Louis himself had now, after eight years of wise administration, singularly strengthened), but himself take arms against that grandson and co-operate in his proper shame by helping to oust him from it. It was stipulated that Louis should so act (if his grandson should show resistance and still clung to his throne) in company with those who had been for so many years his bitter and successful foes.

      This last small item in the programme of the victors changed all. It destroyed in the mind of Louis and of his subjects the advantages of the disgraceful peace which they had thought themselves compelled to accept; and, as Louis himself well put it, if he were still compelled to carry on the war, it was better to fail in pursuing it against his enemies than against his own household.

      The king issued to the authorities of his kingdom and to his people a circular letter, which remains a model of statesmanlike appeal. Grave, brief, and resolute, it exactly expressed the common mood of the moment. It met with an enthusiastic response. The depleted countrysides just managed to furnish the armies with a bare pittance of oats and rye (for wheat was unobtainable). Recruits appeared in unexpected numbers; and though none could believe that the issue could be other than disastrous, the campaign of 1709 was undertaken by a united nation.

Of French offensive action against the overwhelming forces of their enemies there could be no question. Villars, who commanded the armies of Louis XIV. upon the north-eastern frontier, opposing Marlborough and Eugene, drew up a line of defence consisting of entrenchments, flooded land, and the use of existing watercourses, a line running from the neighbourhood of Douai away eastward to the Belgian frontier. Behind this line, with his headquarters at La Bassée,1 he waited the fatal assault.

      It was at the close of June that the enemy’s great forces moved. Their first action was not an attempt to penetrate the line but to take the fortresses upon its right, which taken, the defence might be turned. They therefore laid siege to Tournai, the first of the two fortresses guarding the right of the French line. (Mons was the second.)

      Here the first material point in the campaign showed the power of resistance that tradition and discipline yet maintained in the French army. The long resistance of Tournai and its small garrison largely determined what was to follow. Its siege had been undertaken in the hope of its rapid termination, which the exiguity of its garrison and the impossibility of its succour rendered probable. But though Marlborough had established his headquarters before the place by the evening of the 27th of June, and Eugene upon the next day, the 28th, though trenches were opened in the first week of July and the first of the heavy fighting began upon the 8th of that month, though the town itself was occupied after a fortnight’s struggle, yet it was not until the 3rd of September that the citadel surrendered.

      This protracted resistance largely determined what was to follow. While it lasted no action could be undertaken against Villars. Meanwhile the French forces were growing stronger, and, most important of all, the first results of the harvest began to be felt.

      Tournai once taken, it was the business of the allies to pierce the French line of defence as soon as possible, and with that object to bring Villars to battle and to defeat him.

      The plan chosen for this object was as follows:—

      The allied army to march to the extreme right of the positions which the French could hope to defend. There the allies would contain the little garrison of Mons. Thither the mass of the French forces must march in order to bar the enemy’s advance upon Paris, and upon some point near Mons the whole weight of the allies could fall upon them, destroy them, and leave the way to the capital open.

      Sketch Map showing how the Lines of La Bassée blocked the advance of the Allies on Paris,

       and Marlborough’s plan for turning them by the successive capture of Tournai and Mons.

      The plan was strategically wise. The lines of La Bassée proper could not be pierced, but this right extremity of the French positions was backed by easy country; the swamps, canals, and entrenchments of the main line to the north and west were absent. With the defeat of the inferior French forces at this point all