and-forty hours the armies were
in presence of each other. Ghent was taken, and on the same day Monsieur
de la Mothe summoned Bruges; and these two great cities fell into the
hands of the French without firing a shot. A few days afterwards La Mothe
seized upon the fort of Plashendall: and it began to be supposed that all
Spanish Flanders, as well as Brabant, would fall into the hands of the
French troops; when the Prince Eugene arrived from the Mozelle, and then
there was no more shilly-shallying.

The Prince of Savoy always signalized his arrival at the army by a great
feast (my lord duke's entertainments were both seldom and shabby): and I
remember our general returning from this dinner with the two
commanders-in-chief; his honest head a little excited by wine, which was
dealt out much more liberally by the Austrian than by the English
commander:--"Now," says my general, slapping the table, with an oath, "he
must fight; and when he is forced to it, d---- it, no man in Europe can
stand up against Jack Churchill." Within a week the battle of Oudenarde
was fought, when, hate each other as they might, Esmond's general and the
commander-in-chief were forced to admire each other, so splendid was the
gallantry of each upon this day.

The brigade commanded by Major-General Webb gave and received about as
hard knocks as any that were delivered in that action, in which Mr. Esmond
had the fortune to serve at the head of his own company in his regiment,
under the command of their own colonel as major-general; and it was his
good luck to bring the regiment out of action as commander of it, the four
senior officers above him being killed in the prodigious slaughter which
happened on that day. I like to think that Jack Haythorn, who sneered at
me for being a bastard and a parasite of Webb's, as he chose to call me,
and with whom I had had words, shook hands with me the day before the
battle begun. Three days before, poor Brace, our lieutenant-colonel, had
heard of his elder brother's death, and was heir to a baronetcy in
Norfolk, and four thousand a year. Fate, that had left him harmless
through a dozen campaigns, seized on him just as the world was worth
living for, and he went into action, knowing, as he said, that the luck
was going to turn against him. The major had just joined us--a creature of
Lord Marlborough, put in much to the dislike of the other officers, and to
be a spy upon us, as it was said. I know not whether the tru