harassed his march.  “I shouldn’t like to say a word against Prince Eugene,” said Marlborough, “but he will arrive at the appointed spot on the Moselle ten days too late.”  The English were by themselves when they encountered the French army in front of Audernarde.  The engagement began.  Vendome, who commanded the right wing, sent word to the Duke of Burgundy.  The latter hesitated and delayed; the generals about him did not approve of Vendome’s movement.  He fought single-handed, and was beaten.  The excess of confidence of one leader, and the inertness of the other, caused failure in all the operations of the campaign; Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough laid siege to Lille, which was defended by old Marshal Boufflers, the bravest and the most respected of all the king’s servants.  Lille was not relieved, and fell on the 25th of October; the citadel held out until the 9th of December; the king heaped rewards on Marshal Bouffers:  at the march out from Lille, Prince Eugene had ordered all his army to pay him the same honors as to himself.  Ghent and Bruges were abandoned to the imperialists.  “We had made blunder upon blunder in this campaign,” says Marshal Berwick, in his Memoires, “and, in spite of all that if somebody had not made the last in giving up Ghent and Bruges, there would have been a fine game the year after.”  The Low Countries were lost, and the French frontier was encroached upon by the capture of Lille.  For the first time, in a letter addressed to Marshal Berwick, Marlborough let a glimpse be seen of a desire to make peace; the king still hoped for the mediation of Holland, and he neglected the overtures of Marlborough:  “the army of the allies is, without doubt, in evil plight,” said Chamillard.

The campaign in Spain had not been successful; the Duke of Orleans, weary of his powerlessness, and under suspicion at the court of Philip V., had given up the command of the troops; the English admiral, Leake, had taken possession of Sardinia, of the Island of Minorca, and of Port Mahon; the archduke was master of the isles and of the sea.  The destitution in France was fearful, and the winter so severe that the poor were in want of everything; riots multiplied in the towns; the king sent his plate to the mint, and put his jewels in pawn; he likewise took a resolution which cost him even more; he determined to ask for peace.

“Although his courage appeared at every trial,” says the Marquis of Torcy, “he felt within him just sorrow for a war whereof the weight overwhelmed his subjects.  More concerned for their woes than for his own glory, he employed, to terminate them, means which might have induced France to submit to the hardest conditions before obtaining a peace that had become necessary, if God, protecting the king, had not, after humiliating him, struck his foes with blindness.”