Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/263

A.D. 1708 Poland, and the landgrave of Hesse, were engaged in the siege. All the art and valour on both sides were put forth. The French endeavoured to cut off the supplies of the allies coming from Ostend; but major-general Webbe, who guarded these supplies with a body of six thousand men, defeated an attacking party of twenty-two thousand French under the count de la Motte, near Wynendael, killing six thousand of them, and accomplishing one of the most brilliant exploits of the whole war. After a stubborn and destructive defence, Boufflers capitulated for the town on the 22nd of October, but contrived to hold the citadel till the 10th of December.

Lille, important as it was, was not won, it is said, without a loss of at least twelve thousand of the allies, whilst Boufflers was reckoned to have lost half his garrison. During the siege Eugene had to hasten to the rescue of Brussels. After the fall of Lille the allies reduced Ghent, Bruges, and all the towns they had lost; and the French, greatly humiliated, abandoned Flanders, and retired into their own territories, the French court being filled with consternation at these terrible reverses. The duke of Berwick was highly incensed at the management of the campaign by Vendome and Burgundy. He states that, during the siege of Lille, Marlborough, through him, made propositions for peace, which were, however, haughtily rejected by the not yet sufficiently humbled Louis. Marlborough would probably have been glad to have procured peace now, that he might watch the critical state of affairs at home, where Harley and Mrs. Masham were steadily driving their mines beneath the feet of the whigs, and where the whole body of tories were constantly endeavouring to misrepresent his proceedings in the war, continually prognosticating defeats from alleged blunders, which, nevertheless, were as regularly refuted by the most brilliant successes.

The campaign in Catalonia had begun in favour of the French, but it, too, had ended decidedly in favour of the allies. There the earl of Galway was superseded by general Stanhope, an able and active officer; and count Staremberg, the imperial general, was a man of like stamp. But before the imperial troops had arrived in the English fleet commanded by Sir John Leake, the duke of Orleans had besieged and taken Tortoso and Denia, the garrison of the latter place being detained prisoners contrary to the articles of capitulation. No sooner, however, did generals Stanhope and Staremberg get into the scene of action than they put a stop to the progress of the French, and maintained the rest of the province intact. They soon, moreover, planned a striking enterprise. Sir John Leake carried over to Sardinia a small body of troops under the command of the marquis D'Alconzel, assaulted and took Cagliari, and received the submission of the whole island, which acknowledged king Charles, and sent a very timely supply of thirty thousand sacks of corn to the army in Catalonia, where it was extremely needed. General Stanhope then, with the consent of count Staremberg, set sail for Minorca with a few battalions of Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese, accompanied by a fine train of British artillery, directed by brigadier Wade and colonel Petit. They landed on the 26th of August at Port Mahon, and invested St. Philip, its chief fortress. They so disposed their forces that the garrison, which consisted only of one thousand Spaniards and six hundred French marines under colonel Jonquiere imagined that there were at least twenty thousand invaders, and, in consequence, surrendered after some sharp fighting, in which brigadier Wade, at the head of a party of grenadiers, stormed a redoubt with such fury as amazed the garrison. On the 30th of September not only Port Mahon but the whole island was in the hands of the English, the garrison of Port Furnelles having also submitted to the attack of the admirals Leake and Whitaker. The inhabitants were delighted with the change, king Phillp having so heavily oppressd them and deprived them of their privileges. The Spanish soldiers were conveyed by agreement to Mercia, but the French were detained in reprisal for the perfidious detention of the garrison of Denia. When La Jonquiere, the commander, ascertained the actual number of the troops to which he had surrendered, on his arrival at Mercia, he flung himself out of a window and killed himself. General Stanhope appointed colonel Petit governor of Fort St. Philip, and deputy-governor of the whole island, and returned to Catalonia.

Sir John Leake, however, proceeded to the coast of the papal states, designing to bombard Civita Vecchia, in retaliation for the pope having so openly sanctioned the late attempt of the invasion of Scotland by the pretender. But the pope had by this time suffered a deep humiliation at the hands of the imperial troops. These, in consequence of the pope having endeavoured to form a league of Italian princes in favour of France, had been marched in conjunction with those of the duke of Modena, and had driven all before them. The pope remonstrated, and, at the time of Sir John Leake's approach, the emperor and the duke of Savoy proposed a negotiation for peace through the marquis De Prie, as ambassador at Rome for Savoy. But the pope, encouraged by France, refused to receive De Prie, whereupon the imperialists marched into the papal states, took Bologna, and terribly alarmed Rome itself. The pope then hastened to receive De Prie and to disband his levies, rather than see Rome besieged and Civita Vecchia bombarded. The imperial troops took up their winter quarters in the papal states; the pope agreed to acknowledge Charles as king of Naples, and allow the passage of imperial troops through his territories. Leake contented himself with destroying many French and Italian vessels along the coast, and with giving support to count Daun, the viceroy of Naples, for king Ctarles.

In May of the same year, commodore Wager in the West Indies, with only four ships of the line, fell in with seventeen Spanish galleons; they were proceeding from Carthagena to Portobello. He attacked them about sunset, and blew up the Spanish admiral, by which a cargo of goods and money valued at three million pieces of eight were lost. The rear-admiral struck, and the vice-admiral only escaped by running with a number of the galleons behind a dangerous sand-bank off Carthagena. Wager, however, made such captures that his own share of the prize-money amounted to a hundred thousand pounds. The Spaniards said the sailors fought more like devils than men; but this was not the case with some of the officers, or the prizes would have been immensely greater, and, in fact, most of