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260 may just as correctly be attributed the victory. The awful carnage was the direct result of attacking a hundred and twenty thousand Frenchmen in such a fortified position; desperate fighting was the necessary condition of victory. On the other side the pretender distinguished himself by equally gallant conduct. He charged twelve times with the household troops, and in the last received a sword-wound in the arm. The French having retired into Valenciennes, the allies continued the siege of Mons, which capitulated on the 23rd of October, and the armies then retired into winter quarters.

In other quarters the campaign had been of little importance. On the Rhine the French gained a slight advantage over count Merci near Friburg. In Piedmont field-marshal Daun, who commanded in place of the duke of Savoy—who refused to act on account of some difference with the emperor—was opposed effectually by the duke of Berwick, though he had dispatched a portion of his troops to put down a new outbreak of the Camisards in the Viverais, where they defeated the leader, Abraham, broke him alive on the wheel, and hanged or sent to the galley's the rest of the prisoners. Daniel, the coadjutor of Abraham, was also killed, and the insurrection for the time quelled. The duke of Marlborough had been very desirous to send succours to the brave but unfortunate protestants of the Viverais and the Cevennes; but before it could be done the news of their defeat came, about a month before the bloody battle of Malplaquet.

In Spain and Portugal the advantage was on the side of the French, so far as it went. The English and Portuguese were defeated at Caya by the Spaniards under the marshal de Bay. The castle of Alicant, garrisoned by two English regiments, held out all the winter. The Chevalier D'Asfeldt, who conducted the siege, caused the rock to be undermined, and having lodged fifteen hundred barrels of gunpowder, informed Syburg, the governor, that two of his officers might come out and see the condition of the works. This offer being accepted, D'Asfeldt in person accompanied them to the mine, and used every means to induce them to capitulate. Syburg continued deaf to his remonstrances, and resolved to stand the explosion. The mine being sprung, he and a large number of the garrison perished; but notwithstanding this dreadful disaster, the officer who succeeded to the command resolved to hold out to the last extremity. After the reduction of Minorca, general Stanhope and admiral Whitaker went to their relief; but finding it impracticable, negotiated their capitulation, and conveyed them to Minorca. In Catalonia general Staremberg held the ground against king Philip. In the north of Europe the whole face of affairs was changed by the defeat of the king of Sweden at Pultowa, and his flight into Turkey. Augustus of Saxony again marched into Poland, supported by Prussia, which entered into a league with him against Sweden.

The defeat of Malplaquet, though really more costly to the allies than to himself, had, in his depressed circumstances, shown Louis the increased necessity for peace; but he took shelter under the more favourable aspect of affairs in Spain and on the Rhine to renew his tenders of negotiation with an air of independence. His minister, De Torcy, opened a communication with Petikum, the resident of the duke of Holstein at the Hague, and offered to send plenipotentiaries to the Hague to treat if the States-General sent them passports. The States-General declined giving these passports till they knew the proposed basis of the treaty, but they allowed Petikum to proceed to Versailles. Meantime king Philip, apprised of this movement, issued a manifesto, protesting against articles entered into by the contracting parties regarding Spain. He declared his determination to drive Charles thence, and that his prospects of doing so were every day rising. He also made overtures to Marlborough, and De Torcy did the same, again tempting the avaricious duke, but in vain; the dangers were too great for even the large bribe offered. When Petikum returned with Louis's proposals, they were found to be so wholly short of the demands of the allies, that they abruptly refused to treat; declared their resolution to prosecute the war with unabated vigour, and wrote to all the allies, exhorting them to the same determination.

The parliament of Great Britain met on the 15th of November, and the queen, opening it in person, announced in her speech that France had been endeavouring, by false and hollow artifices, to amuse the allies with a prospect of peace, but with the real intent to sow jealousies amongst them. The allies had wisely rejected the insidious overtures; that our arms had been as successful as in any former campaign, and had now laid France open to the advance of the confederate troops; and that if they granted her, as she trusted they would, liberal supplies, she believed that we should now soon reduce that exorbitant and oppressive power which had so long threatened the liberties of Europe. Both lords and commons presented addresses fully approving of the rejection of the king of France's delusive overtures. They thanked the duke of Marlborough for his splendid victory at Malplaquet—a sentiment by no means responded to by the nation at large, which severely blamed him for the sacrifice of such a host of his countrymen, as they believed, only for his own personal glory and gain. The commons voted six million two hundred thousand pounds for the services of the year, and established the lottery and other schemes for raising this heavy sum.

The great topic, however, which engrossed almost the whole attention not only of this session of parliament but of the whole nation, was not foreign affairs, not the general war, but a party war at home, which was carried on with the most extraordinary furor, and put the whole public into a flame. The ostensible cause of this vehement conflict was the publication of a couple of sermons by a clergyman, hitherto of no mark; the real cause was the determination of Harley and the tories to damage the whigs irremediably, and to drive them at once from the service of the state and the support of the people. They therefore seized with consummate tact on these sermons, which were, as printed, stupid though rabid performances; and which, had they not been adroitly steeped in party spirit—the most inflammable of all spirits—and set fire to, might soon have slept forgotten in the linings of trunks, or as wrappers of butter and cheese.

On the 13th of December, 1709, Mr. Dolben, the son of the archbishop of York, denounced in the house of commons