XXXIII. was achieved. A drawn battle at sea, off Malaga, and CHAP. the failure of an attempt on Barcelona were somewhat compensated by the English capture of Gibraltar. The year 1705 was not marked by any signal exploit of Marlborough. He first tried to penetrate into France by what he considered its weakest point, the Moselle. He was baffled, however, by the ability and activity of Marshal Villars. The fears of the Dutch then compelled the duke to march to their succour in Brabant, where Marlborough forced the French lines, and added to his military renown, without, however, depriving the enemy of any of his principal conquests. In Spain an important blow was struck. Lord Peterborough, at the head of an expedition of some 5,000 soldiers, touched at Lisbon, and carried off from thence the Archduke Charles, who had been unable to penetrate into Spain from that quarter. His real mission, that which Marlborough himself most urged, was to succour the Duke of Savoy. But the archduke insisted on expending every effort to capture Barcelona. The scheme would have failed, as so many similar ones had done, if Lord Peterborough, bold and inventive to rashness, had not conceived the project of surprising the garrison of the citadel, Mont Juich, which overlooked and commanded the town, September 13th, 1705. It remains one of the most daring exploits in the annals of British heroism, and was completely successful, Lord Peterborough not only capturing the castle and reducing the city, but saving the lives of the governor and many of the principal inhabitants. Charles of Austria was thus enabled to assume the crown of Spain in the capital of Catalonia, and take his stand there, a formidable rival to Philip at Madrid. Another year was Marlborough condemned to what he considered plodding in Flanders. His own nature spurred him to far adventure. He had saved Austria by a march to the Danube, and he now proposed to save XXXIII. CHAP. the Duke of Savoy, and to liberate Italy from the French, by conducting an army beyond the Alps. The French king, after vainly endeavouring to suppress the revolt of the Huguenots in the Cevennes by arms, had recurred to the meaner but more successful artifice of buying off their chiefs. The reduction of the Camisards, as these fanatic and stubborn religionists were called, left the Duke of Savoy still more at the mercy of the French, and in 1705 the Duke of Vendome captured his chief fortresses, and reduced his territories in Piedmont to that of the capital and its citadel. Unable to overcome the difficulties in the way of his own march to the Duke of Savoy's relief, Marlborough at least secured the despatch of 8,000 Prussians to join his army. From one capital of Germany he hurried to another, upon the same quest, and expostulated with the Hungarians for paralysing the emperor's power, and by their insurrection leaving him exposed to the encroachments of the French. Instead, however, of operating, as he wished, with an army upon the plains of Piedmont and of Lombardy to fight Vendome, Marlborough found himself in the spring of 1706, near Tirlemont, at the head of 60,000 men, having an understanding with certain citizens of Namur, who promised to make him master of that fortress. Marshal Villeroy was at the head of a French army of no less force, with which he marched to protect Namur. Foreseeing a conflict, both commanders hastened to seize what each considered an advantageous position between the rivers of Ghette and Mehaigne. The French anticipated Marlborough in reaching this spot. Villeroy had his right on the Mehaigne behind the village of Taviers, his left, at a distance of five quarters of a league, at Anderkirk. In front and in advance of his centre was the village of Ramillies, in which he posted ten battalions (only five according to Pelet). The strength of the position was that Anderkirk was protected by a stream called the XXXIII. Janz, and the space between the right and Ramillies by CHAP. a marsh considered to be impassable. The armies were drawn up in presence of each other all the morning of Whitsunday, the 23rd of May. The battle did not begin till three in the afternoon. Marlborough ordered, or seemed to despatch, the greater part of his force to attack the French left at Anderkirk. Villeroy at once weakened his centre to reinforce what he considered the threatened point; whilst, as he did so, Marlborough ordered the rear of his attacking force, consisting chiefly of cavalry, to wheel to the left under cover of a rising ground, and join in the assault which was then about to be made upon Taviers and the French right. The noise and smoke of a simultaneous attack upon Ramillies prevented Villeroy from descrying the manœuvre, and the first tidings that the marshal had from his right wing was that it had been driven in, and that Marlborough's troops were drawn up in position about to fall upon the flank of the French infantry in the centre. Ere he could even seek to remedy it, the infantry in Ramillies, seeing they were outflanked, suffered themselves to be beaten out of the village. There was nothing left but to make an orderly retreat, and this was observed for a time. But some wagons being upset and choking a defile, their cavalry, irritated at the obstruction, broke through it, and threw the infantry into confusion. The retreat then became a flight, Marlborough taking advantage of it to order a vigorous pursuit, during which the fugitives abandoned arms and all else, not more than six cannon being saved by them out of sixty. The loss in killed and wounded was less to the French than at Blenheim, but the result showed the greatness of the panic which followed the defeat. The Elector of Bavaria and Villeroy, who first took refuge behind the walls of Louvain, soon quitted it for Brussels, but found it necessary to evacuate that capital. Flanders declared against them, with its chief towns of Ghent CHAP. and Bruges. The French flag was only to be seen XXXIII. floating upon Mons, Lille, and Antwerp. The conquests with which Louis had inaugurated the war were stricken out of his hands.* The fortunes of war have been, strange to say, very similar in all ages to the French in their attempts either to appropriate Flanders, and push their frontier to the Rhine, or to overstep the barrier of the Alps and extend their occupation over Italy. In both enterprises they have more than once succeeded, and inaugurated their wars with what appeared decisive victories. But notwithstanding their efforts to render the result of such victories permanent, by erecting fortresses and exhausting the artifices of defensive war, the French have, towards the end of such wars, been driven from the plains of North Italy as well as Flanders. Ramillies accomplished the latter. Prince Eugene at Turin accomplished the former in the autumn of the same fatal year of 1706. For four months the French had held Turin closely besieged. The citadel was almost the last stronghold that held for the Duke of Savoy, and that maintained or typified his power. Situated in a level plain, as the ruins of its mounds still attest, its sole strength lay in art, without any aid from nature. And the French generals were pretty certain of overcoming these in a given time. Still the defence was obstinate. On the last day of August the Duke of Orleans had led a storming party which penetrated amongst the fortifications; but which was repulsed with great loss. The citadel could not have withstood a repetition of such attacks. Prince Eugene and the Duke of Savoy were able to survey from the heights of the Superga the entire position of the besieger's operations, and on the morning of the 7th they ordered a general attack from the right * Pelet. Villeroy's letter to the king. Chamillard to Villeroy. XXXIII. along the line of the Doria. The Duke of Saxe-Gotha CHAP. and the Count de Bonneval were amongst the principal leaders, with the Prince of Wurtemberg and the Prussians under the Prince of Anhalt. It was the Prussians who most distinguished themselves in the attack, forcing their way across the French entrenchments, and the army of the Prince succeeded in driving the enemies from their position and camp between the Doria and the Stura. On this the French found it impossible to continue the siege. Marshal Marsin himself, being wounded, lay in a small cabin, where he was stifled by an explosion in an adjoining room. The French fled or withdrew into Pignerol, leaving behind them nearly 200 pieces of cannon. The battle of Turin and Prince Eugene won for Piedmont what Ramillies and Marlborough achieved for the Low Countries, the complete overthrow of French dominion in these regions. Had the great English commander been endowed with as much political sagacity as he possessed military genius, he would have taken advantage of the depressed state of the fortunes and of the spirit of the French monarch to accept the large concessions which Louis the Fourteenth, at the close of 1706, was prepared to make. Philip having been driven out of Spain, the French court would have consented to his ceding that monarchy altogether, and with it the Indies, if allowed to retain the dominion of Naples and Sicily. Marlborough, however, would not hear of a Bourbon prince reigning over Sicily and Naples.* And the Dutch, who would have gladly listened to such a distribution of the old Spanish monarchy, were silenced, and compelled to go on with the war. Louis was thus left no choice but to stand gallantly on his defence. The spirit and the resources of his great country did not fail him. The capitation tax was resuscitated. Duties were laid upon deaths, bapHis correspondence in Coxe's Marlborough, |