LITMIR.BIZ

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some of N.N.T.'s expressions: —

      "Try not the engine of craft: to come over me thus is beyond thee."

      "This the suggestion, forsooth, that thyself being safe with thy booty,

      I shall sit down without mine."

      The phrase to "come over me" is colloquial, and too low even for a letter. "Your suggestion" is a phrase for a letter, not for an epic poem. "Forsooth" would be good in construing, but not in a poem. Again, is this passage serious English: —

      "Opposite rose Agamemnon in wrath, but before he could open?"

      I could notice other blemishes of style, as they seem to me; and, indeed, I could the more easily find them, on account of the very severe standard of good English, serious and dignified, yet plain and idiomatic, which I think the case requires. Every phrase should be the very best that can be found both for meaning and tone. I know that this requirement is difficult; but I think the thing may be done; and I do not see why N.N.T. should not do it, and thus give us a better English Homer than we have yet.

      If you can find room for me, I have a few more words to say on this same matter of English hexameters another day. It appears to me that there are still very erroneous notions current upon the subject. In the mean time I subscribe myself your obedient

M. L.

      MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES

1708-1709

      The fall of the external walls of Lille did not terminate the struggle for that important fortress. Marshal Boufflers still held the citadel, a stronghold in itself equal to most fortresses of the first order. No sooner, however, were the Allies in possession of the town, than the attack on the citadel commenced with all the vigour which the exhausted state of the magazines would furnish. Detached parties were sent into France, which levied contributions to a great extent, and both replenished the stores of the Allies and depressed the spirits of the French, by making them feel, in a manner not to be misunderstood, that the war had at length approached their own doors. To divert, if possible, Marlborough from his enterprise, the Elector of Bavaria, who had recently returned from the Rhine, was detached by Vendôme, with fifteen thousand men against Brussels; while he himself remained in his intrenched camp on the Scheldt, which barred the road from Lille to that city, at once stopping the communication, and ready to profit by any advantage afforded by the measures which the English general might make for its relief. The governor of Brussels, M. Paschal, who had seven thousand men under his orders, rejected the summons to surrender, and prepared for a vigorous defence; and meanwhile Marlborough prepared for its relief, by one of those brilliant strokes which, in so peculiar a manner, characterize his campaigns.

      Giving out that he was going to separate his army into winter-quarters, he dispatched the field artillery towards Menin, and he himself set out with his staff in rather an ostentatious way for Courtray. But no sooner had he lulled the vigilance of the enemy by these steps, than, wheeling suddenly round, he advanced with the bulk of his forces towards the Scheldt, and directed them against that part of the French general's lines where he knew them to be weakest. The army, upon seeing these movements, anticipated the bloodiest battle, on the day following, they had yet had during the war. But the skill of the English general rendered resistance hopeless, and gained his object with wonderfully little loss. The passage of the river was rapidly effected at three points; the French corps stationed at Oudenarde, vigorously assailed and driven back on Grammont with the loss of twelve hundred men, so as to leave the road uncovered, and restore the communication with Brussels. Having thus cleared the way of the enemy, Marlborough sent back Eugene to resume the siege of the citadel of Lille; while he himself, with the greater part of his forces, proceeded on to Brussels, which he entered in triumph on the 29th November. The Elector of Bavaria was too happy to escape, leaving his guns and wounded behind; and the citadel of Lille, despairing now of succour, capitulated on the 11th December. Thus was this memorable campaign terminated by the capture of the strongest frontier fortress of France, under the eyes of its best general and most powerful army.6

      But Marlborough, like the hero in antiquity, deemed nothing done while any thing remained to do. Though his troops were exhausted by marching and fighting almost without intermission for five months, and he himself was labouring under severe illness in consequence of his fatigues, he resolved in the depth of winter to make an attempt for the recovery of Ghent, the loss of which in the early part of the campaign had been the subject of deep mortification. The enemy, after the citadel of Lille capitulated, having naturally broken up their army into cantonments, under the belief that the campaign was concluded, he suddenly collected his forces, and drew round Ghent on the 18th December. Eugene formed the covering force with the corps lately employed in the reduction of Lille. The garrison was very strong, consisting of no less than thirty battalions and nineteen squadrons, mustering eighteen thousand combatants.7 The governor had been instructed by Vendôme to defend this important stronghold to the last extremity; but he was inadequately supplied with provisions and forage, and this event signally belied the expectations formed of his resistance. The approaches were vigorously pushed. On the 24th the trenches were opened; on the 25th a sortie was repulsed; on the 28th December, the fire began with great vigour from the breaching and mortar batteries; and at noon, the governor sent a flag of truce, offering to capitulate if not relieved before the 2d January. This was agreed to; and on the latter day, as no friendly force approached, the garrison surrendered the gates and marched out, in such strength that they were defiling incessantly from ten in the morning till seven at night! Bruges immediately followed the example; the garrison capitulated, and the town again hoisted the Austrian flag. The minor forts of Plassendall and Leffinghen were immediately evacuated by the enemy. With such expedition were these important operations conducted, that before Vendôme could even assemble a force adequate to interrupt the besiegers' operations, both towns were taken, and the French were entirely dispossessed of all the important strongholds they had gained in the early part of the campaign in the heart of Brabant. Having closed his labours with these glorious successes, Marlborough put the army into now secure winter-quarters on the Flemish frontiers, and himself repaired to the Hague to resume the eternal contest with the timidity and selfishness of his Dutch allies.8

      Such was the memorable campaign of 1708 – one of the most glorious in the military annals of England, and the one in which the extraordinary capacity of the British general perhaps shone forth with the brightest lustre. The vigour and talent of Vendôme, joined to the secret communication which he had with those disaffected to the Austrian government in Ghent and Bruges, procured for him, in the commencement of the campaign, a great, and what, if opposed by less ability, might have proved a decisive advantage. By the acquisition of these towns, he gained the immense advantage of obtaining the entire command of the water communication of Brabant, and establishing himself in a solid manner in the heart of the enemy's territory. The entire expulsion of the Allies from Austrian Flanders seemed the unavoidable result of such a success, by so enterprising a general at the head of a hundred thousand combatants. But Marlborough was not discouraged; on the contrary, he built on the enemy's early successes a course of manœuvres, which in the end wrested all his conquests from him, and inflicted a series of disasters greater than could possibly have been anticipated from a campaign of unbroken success. Boldly assuming the lead, he struck such a blow at Oudenarde as resounded from one end of Europe to the other, struck a terror into the enemy which they never recovered for the remainder of the campaign, paralysed Vendôme in the midst of his success, and reduced him from a vigorous offensive to a painful defensive struggle. While the cabinet of Versailles were dreaming of expelling the Allies from Flanders, and detaching Holland, partly by intrigue, partly by force of arms, from the coalition, he boldly entered the territory of the Grand Monarque, and laid siege to its chief frontier fortress, under the eyes of its greatest army and best general. In vain was the water communication of the Netherlands interrupted by the enemy's possession of Ghent and Bruges; with incredible activity he got together, and with matchless skill conducted to the besiegers' lines before Lille, a huge convoy eighteen miles long, drawn by sixteen thousand horses, in the very teeth of Vendôme at the head of an hundred and twenty thousand men.

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