The French, fully aware of the political changes in England, had during the winter made extraordinary exertions to prolong the war for yet one more campaign, and to that end had covered the northern frontier with a fortified barrier on a gigantic scale. Starting from the coast of Picardy the lines followed the course of the river Canche almost to its source. From thence across to the Gy, or southern fork of the Upper Scarpe, ran a line of earthworks, extending from Oppy to Montenancourt. From the latter point the Gy and the Scarpe were dammed so as to form inundations as far as Biache, at which place a canal led the line of defence from the Scarpe to the Sensée. Here more inundations between the two rivers carried the barrier to Bouchain, whence it followed the Scheldt to Valenciennes. From thence more earthworks prolonged the lines to the Sambre, which carried them at last to their end at Namur.

This was a formidable obstacle to the advance of the Allies, but no lines had sufficed to stop Marlborough yet; and with Eugene by his side the Duke did not despair. Before he could start for the campaign, however, the news came that the Emperor Joseph was dead of smallpox, an event which signified the almost certain accession of the Archduke Charles to the Imperial crown and the consequent withdrawal of his candidature for the throne of Spain. Eugene was consequently detained at home; and, worse than this, a fine opportunity was afforded for making a breach in the Grand Alliance. To render the Duke’s difficulties still greater, though his force was already weakened by the necessity of finding garrisons for the towns captured in the previous year, the English Government had withdrawn from him five battalions[67] for an useless expedition to Newfoundland under the command of Mrs. Masham’s brother, General Hill; an expedition which may be dismissed for the present without further mention than that it was dogged by misfortune from first to last, suffered heavy loss through shipwreck, and accomplished literally nothing.

Nevertheless the Imperial army was present, though without Eugene. The whole of the forces were assembled a little to the south of Lille at Orchies; and April 20./​May 1. on the 1st of May Marlborough moved forward to a position parallel to that of Villars, who lay in rear of the river Sensée with his left at Oisy and his right at Bouchain. There both armies remained stationary and inactive for six weeks. Eugene came, but presently received orders to return and to bring his troops June 3/14. with him. On the 14th of June Marlborough moved away one march westward to the plain of Lens in order to conceal this enforced diminution of his strength. The position invited a battle, but Villars only moved down within his lines, parallel to the Duke; and once more both armies remained inactive for five weeks. After the departure of Eugene the French commander detached a portion of his troops to the Rhine, but even so he had one hundred and thirty-one battalions against ninety-four, and one hundred and eighty-seven squadrons against one hundred and forty-five of the Allies.

We now approach what is perhaps the most remarkable and certainly the most entertaining feat of the Duke during the whole war. Villars, bound by his instructions, would not come out and fight; his lines could not be forced by an army of inferior strength, and they could therefore be passed only by stratagem. The inundation on the Sensée between Arras and Bouchain could be traversed only by two causeways, the larger of which was defended by a strong fort at Arleux, while the other was covered by a redoubt at Aubigny, half a mile below it. Marlborough knew that he could take the fort at Arleux at any time and demolish it, but he knew also that Villars would certainly retake it and rebuild as soon as his back was turned. He therefore set himself to induce Villars to demolish it himself. With this view he detached a strong force June 25./​July 6. under General Rantzau to capture the fort, which was done without difficulty. The Duke then gave orders that the captured works should be greatly strengthened, and, for their further protection, posted a large force under the Prussian General Hompesch on the glacis of Douay, some six miles distant from the fort.

As fate ordained it, Hompesch, thinking himself secure under the guns of Douay, neglected his outposts and even his sentries, and was surprised two days later June 28./​July 9. by a sudden attack from Villars, which was only repulsed with considerable difficulty and not a little shame. Villars was in ecstasies over his success, and Marlborough displayed considerable annoyance. However, the Duke reinforced Hompesch, as if to show the value which he attached to Arleux, and pushed forward the new works with the greatest vigour. Finally, when all was completed, he threw a weak garrison into the fort and led the rest of the army away two marches westward, encamping opposite the lines between the July 10/21. Canche and the Scarpe. Villars likewise moved westward parallel to him, and took up a position between Oppy and Montenancourt; but, before he started, he detached a force to attack Arleux. The commander of the fort sent a message to Marlborough that he could not possibly hold it, and the Duke at once despatched Cadogan with a strong force to relieve it. It was noticed, however, that Cadogan made no such haste as the urgency of the occasion would have seemed to require; and indeed, before he had gone half-way, he returned with the intelligence that Arleux had surrendered.

Villars was elated beyond measure; and Marlborough for the first time in his life seemed to be greatly distressed and cast down. Throwing off his usual serenity, he proclaimed in public with much passion that he would be even with Villars yet, and would attack him, come what might of it, where he lay. Then came the news that Villars had razed the entire works of Arleux, over which Marlborough had spent such pains, entirely to the ground. This increased the Duke’s ill-temper. He declared that he would avenge this insult to his army, and renewed his menace of a direct attack on the entrenchments. Villars now detached July 15/26. a force to make a diversion in Brabant; and this step seemed to drive Marlborough distracted. Vowing that he would check the march of this detachment, he sent off ten thousand men under Lord Albemarle to Béthune, July 17/28. and the whole of his baggage and heavy artillery to Douay. Having thus weakened an army already inferior to that of the French, he repaired the roads that led towards the enemy’s entrenchments, and on the 1st of August, with much display of vindictiveness, sulkiness, and general vexation, advanced one march July 21./​Aug. 1. nearer to the lines, encamping between Houdain and St. Pol. His army watched his proceedings with amazement, for it had never expected such behaviour from Corporal John.

Villars meanwhile was in a transport of delight. He drew every man, not only from all parts of the lines but also from the neighbouring garrisons, towards the threatened point, and asked nothing better than that Marlborough should attack. In the height of exultation he actually wrote to Versailles that he had brought the Duke to his ne plus ultra. Marlborough’s strange manner still remained the same. On the 2nd of August July 22./​August 2. he advanced to within a league of the lines, his left being opposite to Aubigny on the Upper Scarpe; and during that day and the next set the whole of his July 23./​August 3. cavalry to work to collect fascines. At nightfall of the 3rd he sent away all his light artillery, together with every wheeled vehicle, under escort of a strong detachment, and next morning rode forward with most of his July 24./​August 4. generals to reconnoitre the eastern end of the lines. Captain Parker of the Eighteenth Royal Irish, who had obtained permission to ride with the Staff, was amazed at the Duke’s demeanour. Marlborough had now thrown off all his ill-temper and was calm and cool as usual, indicating this point and that to his officers. “Your brigade, General, will attack here, such and such brigades will be on your right and left, such another in support, and you will be careful of this, that, and other.” The generals listened and stared; they understood the instructions clearly enough, but they could not help regarding them as madness. So the reconnaissance proceeded, drearily enough, and was just concluding when General Cadogan turned his horse, unnoticed, out of the crowd, struck in his spurs and galloped back to camp at the top of his speed. Presently the Duke also turned, and, riding back very slowly, issued orders to prepare for a general attack on the morrow.

At this all ranks of the army, from the general to the drummer, fell into the deepest depression. Not a man could fail to see that direct assault of the lines was a hopeless enterprise at the best of times, and doubly hopeless now that half of the army and the whole of the artillery had been detached for other service. Again the violent and unprecedented outburst of surliness and ill-temper was difficult to explain; and the only possible explanation was that the Duke, rendered desperate by failure and misfortunes, had thrown prudence to the winds and cared not what he did. A few only clung faintly to the hope that the chief, who had led them so often to victory, might still have some surprise in store for them; but the most part gave themselves up for lost, and lamented loudly that they should ever have lived to see such a change come over the Old Corporal.

So passed the afternoon among the tents of the Allies; but meanwhile Cadogan with forty hussars at his heels had long started from the camp and was galloping hard across the plain of Lens to Douay, five leagues away. There he found Hompesch ready with his garrison, now strengthened by detachments from Béthune and elsewhere to twelve thousand foot and two thousand horse, and told him that the time was come. Hompesch thereupon issued his orders for the troops to be ready to march that night. Still the main army under Marlborough knew nothing of this, and passed the day in dismal apprehension till the sun went down, and the drummers came forward to beat tattoo. Then a column of cavalry trotted out westward, attracting every French eye and stirring every French brain with curiosity as to the purport of the movement. The drums began to roll; and the order ran quietly down the line to strike tents and prepare to march immediately.

Never was command more welcome. Within an hour all was ready and the army was formed into four columns. The cavalry, having done their work of distracting French vigilance to the wrong quarter, returned unseen by the enemy; and at nine o’clock the whole army faced to its left and marched off eastward in utter silence, with Marlborough himself at the head of the vanguard.

The night was fine, and under the radiant moonlight the men swung forward bravely hour after hour over the plain of Lens. The moon paled; the dawn crept up into the east throwing its ghastly light on the host of weary, sleepless faces; and presently the columns reached the Scarpe at Vitry. So far the march had lasted eight hours, and fifteen miles had been passed. Pontoon-bridges were already laid across the river, and on the further bank, punctual to appointment, stood Brigadier Sutton with the field-artillery. The river was passed, and presently a messenger came spurring from the east with a despatch for the Duke of Marlborough. He read it; and words were passed down the columns of march which filled them with July 25./​August 5. new life. “Generals Cadogan and Hompesch” (such was their purport) “crossed the causeway at Arleux unopposed at three o’clock this morning, and are in possession of the enemy’s lines. The Duke desires that the infantry will step out.” The right wing of horse halted to form the rearguard and bring up stragglers, while a cloud of dust in the van told that the Duke and fifty squadrons with him were pushing forward at the trot. Then the infantry shook themselves up and stepped out with a will.

Villars had received intelligence of Marlborough’s march only two hours after he had started, but he was so thoroughly bewildered by the Duke’s intricate manœvres that he did not awake to the true position until three hours later. Then, quite distracted, he put himself at the head of the Household Cavalry and galloped off at full speed. So furiously rode he that he wore down all but a hundred of his troopers and pushed on with these alone. But even so Marlborough was before him. At eight o’clock he crossed the lower causeway at Aubanchœuil-au-bac and passing his cavalry over the Sensée barred the road from the west by the village of Oisy. Presently Villars, advancing reckless of all precautions, blundered into the middle of the outposts. Before he could retire, his whole escort was captured, and he himself only by miracle escaped the same fate.

The Marshal now looked anxiously for the arrival of his main body of horse; but the Allied infantry had caught sight of the French on the other side of the Sensée, and, weary though they were, had braced themselves to race them for the goal. Nevertheless the severity of the march and the burden of their packs began to tell heavily on the foot. Hundreds dropped down unconscious, and many died there and then, but they were left where they lay to await the arrival of the rearguard; for no halt was called, and each regiment pushed on as cheerfully as possible with such men as still survived. Thus they were still ahead of the French when they turned off to the causeway at Arleux, and, Marlborough having thrown additional bridges over the Sensée, they came quickly into their positions. The right wing of infantry crossed the river about four o’clock in the afternoon, having covered close upon forty miles in eighteen hours; and by five o’clock the whole force was drawn up between Oisy and the Scheldt within striking distance of Arras, Cambrai, and Bouchain. So vanished the ne plus ultra of Villars, a warning to all generals who put their sole trust in fortified lines.

Marlborough halted for the next day to give his troops rest and to allow the stragglers to come in. Fully half the men of the infantry had fallen out, and there were many who did not rejoin the army until the third day. Villars on his side moved forward and offered Marlborough battle under the walls of Cambrai; but the Duke would not accept it, though the Dutch deputies, perverse and treacherous to the last, tried hard to persuade him. Had the deputies marched in the ranks of the infantry with muskets on their shoulders and a kit of fifty pounds’ weight on their backs, they would have been less eager for the fray. Marlborough’s own design, long matured in his own mind, was the capture of Bouchain, and his only fear was lest Villars should cross the Scheldt before him and prevent it. The deputies, however, who had been so anxious to hurry the army into an engagement under every possible disadvantage, shrank from the peril of a siege carried on by an inferior under the eyes of a superior force. But Marlborough, even if he had not been able to adduce Lille as a precedent, was determined to have his own way, and carried his point. At noon on the July 27./​August 7. 7th of August he marched down almost within cannon-shot of Cambrai, ready to fall on Villars should he attempt to pass the Scheldt, halted until his pontoon-bridges had been laid a few miles further down the stream, and then gradually withdrawing his troops threw the whole of them across the river unmolested.

It is hardly credible that a vast number of foolish civilians, Dutch, Austrian, and even English, blamed Marlborough for declining battle before Cambrai, and that he was actually obliged to explain why he refused to sacrifice the fruit of his manœvres by attacking a superior force in a strong position with an army not only smaller in numbers at its best, but much thinned by a forced march and exhausted by fatigue. “I despair of being ever able to please all men,” he wrote. “Those who are capable of judging will be satisfied with my endeavours: others I leave to their own reflections, and go on with the discharge of my duty.”

It is possible that Villars only refrained from hindering Marlborough’s passage of the Scheldt in deference to orders from Versailles, of which the Duke was as well aware as himself; but it is more than doubtful whether he ever intended the British to capture Bouchain. Though inferior in numbers, however, Marlborough covered himself so skilfully with entrenchments that Villars could not hinder him, while all attempts at diversion were met so readily that not one Sept. 2/13. of them succeeded. Finally, the garrison surrendered as prisoners of war under the very eyes of Villars. The Duke would have followed up his success by the siege of Quesnoi, the town before which English troops first came under the fire of cannon in the year of Crecy; but by this time Lewis, with the help of the contemptible Harley, had succeeded in detaching England from the Grand Alliance. Though, therefore, the English ministers continued to encourage Marlborough in his operations, in order to conceal their own infamous conduct from the Allies, yet they took good care that those operations should proceed no further. So with the capture of Bouchain the last and not the least remarkable of Marlborough’s campaigns came, always victoriously, to an end.