Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/271

A.D. 1709.] treatment of their king, the insolent rejection of his peaceful desires, that they execrated the selfish arrogance of the allies, for Louis had insinuated that they were carrying on the war only for their own personal interests. The kingdom, impoverished and reduced as it was, determined to support the ill-used monarch with the last remnant of its substance; and such exertions were made for the continued struggle as astonished the world. Nor was the effect of Louis's representations lost on Marlborough's enemies in England. They declaimed on the unreasonableness of the allies almost as loudly as the French, and they particularly denounced the demand that Louis should help to dethrone and expatriate his own grandson, as the most astounding piece of assumption that had ever been heard of.

Prince Eugene and Marlborough immediately proceeded to Flanders to commence the campaign, but before following them we must notice a circumstance or two in England. The session of parliament closed on the 21st of April. Before doing so it had contracted a loan of four hundred thousand pounds from the bank of England. The bank also undertook to circulate exchequer bills to the amount of two millions five hundred thousand pounds, on condition that their charter should be renewed for twenty-one years, and that their stock of two millions two hundred and one thousand pounds should be doubled by a new subscription.

Parliament had also been obliged to pass a bill for securing the privileges of ambassadors and other public ministers of foreign princes. The occasion of this was, that a Mr. Morton, a laceman of Covent Garden, arrested the Russian ambassador for a debt of one hundred pounds. The ambassador insisted on his exemption from arrest in virtue of his office; but the bailiffs used him very roughly and dragged him to prison till the earl of Feversham gave bail for him. Matueof, the ambassador, exasperated at this treatment, demanded summary redress of government, and his demands were supported by the ambassadors of the emperor, the king of Prussia, and other princes. The queen expressed the highest indignation at the occurrence, and the sheriff and his officers, with Morton, the laceman, and altogether thirteen persons concerned in the affray, were indicted for the offence in the Queen's Bench Court, and found guilty. Mr. Secretary Boyle assured the ambassador that the whole of the offenders should be punished severely for their conduct. But the ambassador of the demi-savage Czar thought nothing of such punishment as a little imprisonment. He demanded passports for himself and family, went over to Holland, and thence forwarded a memorial of his injuries to the queen, accompanied by a letter from the Czar, demanding the immediate execution of every person concerned in the outrage. This was the punishment which Peter would himself have inflicted on them without any trial, probably cutting off half a dozen of the heads with his own hand; and the explanations of the queen's ministers, that no such punishment could be awarded to such an offence, only the more excited the anger of both Czar and ambassador. The government were greatly embarrassed by the case. They, however, deemed it necessary for the pacification of the Czar, and for the protection of all ambassadors, to bring in a bill by which not only the suit against the ambassador and all claims against his bail were made void, and the ambassador fully indemnified from all costs and damages in the case, but all the ambassadors and their servants were exempt from all suits against their person or distraint of their goods. No bankrupt, however, who put himself into the service of an ambassador to defraud his creditors, was to enjoy any benefit of the act; and it was necessary for all servants of ambassadors, in order to enjoy its protection, to register their names in the office of one of the principal secretaries of state, a list of which should be transmitted to the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, and be suspended publicly in their offices. A copy of this act, engrossed on vellum, and showily ornamented, was sent to the Czar, with an apologetic letter from the queen, and this at length succeeded in appeasing the northern despot's wrath.

On the 21st of June, Marlborough and prince Eugene crossed the frontiers of France, and with a force of one hundred and ten thousand men drew up in a plain near Lille. Marshal Villars, considered now the ablest general of France, encamped his army on the plain of Sens betwixt two impassable morasses, and began to entrench himself. The allies reconnoitred his position, but found it too strong to attack him in it; and as they could not advance towards Paris leaving such an enemy behind them, they made a feint of attacking Ypres, and then suddenly marching on Tournay in the night of the 27th of June, they presented themselves before it on the 7th of July. The place was strong, but the garrison was weak. It consisted of only twelve battalions of infantry and four squadrons of horse, in very inefficient condition. Villars endeavoured to throw into the place seven thousand fresh troops, but he could not effect it. The governor, lieutenaut de Surville, was a man of great military skill and determination, and he maintained the siege with such vigour that the allies were not only detained before the place for a long and invaluable time, but lost many men. The town capitulated on the 28th of July, when the allies were about to carry it by storm, but the citadel held out till the 3rd of September. The same day, leaving a detachment under the earl of Albemarle to level the defences, the allies crossed the Scheldt and determined to besiege Mons. They sent forward a detachment under the prince of Hesse to attack the French lines from the Haisne to the Sambre, which were abandoned at his approach. At this juncture marshal Boufflers arrived to support Villars, and, though his superior in command, agreed to serve under him. Marlborough, hearing that Villars had quitted his camp, and that the French were on the march to attack the prince of Hesse and cut off the approaches to Mons, made a rapid movement, which brought him face to face with the French army, which consisted of one hundred and twenty thousand men—ten thousand more than the army of the allies. Villars and Boufflers were encamped behind the woods of La Merte and Tanieres, in the neighbourhood of Malplaquet. The allies encamped with their right near Sart and Bleron, and the left on the edge of the wood of Lagniere, the head-quarters being at Blaregines. On the 9th of September the outposts of the two armies began to skirmish, but the French fell back on an encampment near Malplaquet, and spent the night in