“Ah!” says Holtz (and some folks were very willing to listen to him), “if the king came by his own, how changed the conduct of affairs would be!  His Majesty’s very exile has this advantage, that he is enabled to read England impartially, and to judge honestly of all the eminent men.  His sister is always in the hand of one greedy favorite or another, through whose eyes she sees, and to whose flattery or dependants she gives away everything.  Do you suppose that his Majesty, knowing England so well as he does, would neglect such a man as General Webb?  He ought to be in the House of Peers as Lord Lydiard.  The enemy and all Europe know his merit; it is that very reputation which certain great people, who hate all equality and independence, can never pardon.”  It was intended that these conversations should be carried to Mr. Webb.  They were welcome to him, for great as his services were, no man could value them more than John Richmond Webb did himself, and the differences between him and Marlborough being notorious, his Grace’s enemies in the army and at home began to court Webb, and set him up against the all-grasping, domineering chief.  And soon after the victory of Oudenarde, a glorious opportunity fell into General Webb’s way, which that gallant warrior did not neglect, and which gave him the means of immensely increasing his reputation at home.

After Oudenarde, and against the counsels of Marlborough, it was said, the Prince of Savoy sat down before Lille, the capital of French Flanders, and commenced that siege, the most celebrated of our time, and almost as famous as the siege of Troy itself, for the feats of valor performed in the assault and the defence.  The enmity of the Prince of Savoy against the French king was a furious personal hate, quite unlike the calm hostility of our great English general, who was no more moved by the game of war than that of billiards, and pushed forward his squadrons, and drove his red battalions hither and thither as calmly as he would combine a stroke or make a cannon with the balls.  The game over (and he played it so as to be pretty sure to win it), not the least animosity against the other party remained in the breast of this consummate tactician.  Whereas between the Prince of Savoy and the French it was guerre a mort.  Beaten off in one quarter, as he had been at Toulon in the last year, he was back again on another frontier of France, assailing it with his indefatigable fury.  When the Prince came to the army, the smouldering fires of war were lighted up and burst out into a flame.  Our phlegmatic Dutch allies were made to advance at a quick march—­our calm Duke forced into action.  The Prince was an army in himself against the French; the energy of his hatred, prodigious, indefatigable—­infectious over hundreds of thousands of men.  The Emperor’s general was repaying, and with a vengeance, the slight the French King had put upon the fiery little Abbe of Savoy.  Brilliant and famous as a leader himself, and beyond