panic-spell seemed to
be broke, under which the French had labored ever since the disaster
of Hochstedt; and, fighting now on the threshold of their country, they
showed an heroic ardor of resistance, such as had never met us in the
course of their aggressive war. Had the battle been more successful,
the conqueror might have got the price for which he waged it. As it was,
(and justly, I think,) the party adverse to the Duke in England were
indignant at the lavish extravagance of slaughter, and demanded more
eagerly than ever the recall of a chief whose cupidity and desperation
might urge him further still. After this bloody fight of Malplaquet, I
can answer for it, that in the Dutch quarters and our own, and amongst
the very regiments and commanders whose gallantry was most conspicuous
upon this frightful day of carnage, the general cry was, that there was
enough of the war. The French were driven back into their own boundary,
and all their conquests and booty of Flanders disgorged. As for the
Prince of Savoy, with whom our Commander-in-Chief, for reasons of his
own, consorted more closely than ever, 'twas known that he was animated
not merely by a political hatred, but by personal rage against the old
French King: the Imperial Generalissimo never forgot the slight put by
Lewis upon the Abbe de Savoie; and in the humiliation or ruin of his
most Christian Majesty, the Holy Roman Emperor found his account.
But what were these quarrels to us, the free citizens of England and
Holland! Despot as he was, the French monarch was yet the chief of
European civilization, more venerable in his age and misfortunes than at
the period of his most splendid successes; whilst his opponent was but
a semi-barbarous tyrant, with a pillaging, murderous horde of Croats
and Pandours, composing a half of his army, filling our camp with their
strange figures, bearded like the miscreant Turks their neighbors, and
carrying into Christian warfare their native heathen habits of rapine,
lust, and murder. Why should the best blood in England and France be
shed in order that the Holy Roman and Apostolic master of these ruffians
should have his revenge over the Christian king? And it was to this end
we were fighting; for this that every village and family in England was
deploring the death of beloved sons and fathers. We dared not speak to
each other, even at table, of Malplaquet, so frightful were the gaps
left in our army by the cannon of that bloody ac