Webb and Rantzau
was detached into Artois and Picardy upon the most painful and odious
service that Mr. Esmond ever saw in the course of his military life. The
wretched towns of the defenceless provinces, whose young men had been
drafted away into the French armies, which year after year the insatiable
war devoured, were left at our mercy; and our orders were to show them
none. We found places garrisoned by invalids, and children and women: poor
as they were, and as the costs of this miserable war had made them, our
commission was to rob these almost starving wretches--to tear the food out
of their granaries, and strip them of their rags. 'Twas an expedition of
rapine and murder we were sent on: our soldiers did deeds such as an
honest man must blush to remember. We brought back money and provisions in
quantity to the duke's camp; there had been no one to resist us, and yet
who dares to tell with what murder and violence, with what brutal cruelty,
outrage, insult, that ignoble booty had been ravished from the innocent
and miserable victims of the war?

Meanwhile, gallantly as the operations before Lille had been conducted,
the Allies had made but little progress, and 'twas said when we returned
to the Duke of Marlborough's camp, that the siege would never be brought
to a satisfactory end, and that the Prince of Savoy would be forced to
raise it. My Lord Marlborough gave this as his opinion openly; those who
mistrusted him, and Mr. Esmond owns himself to be of the number, hinted
that the duke had his reasons why Lille should not be taken, and that he
was paid to that end by the French king. If this was so, and I believe it,
General Webb had now a remarkable opportunity of gratifying his hatred of
the commander-in-chief, of balking that shameful avarice, which was one of
the basest and most notorious qualities of the famous duke, and of showing
his own consummate skill as a commander. And when I consider all the
circumstances preceding the event which will now be related, that my lord
duke was actually offered certain millions of crowns provided that the
siege of Lille should be raised; that the Imperial army before it was
without provisions and ammunition, and must have decamped but for the
supplies that they received; that the march of the convoy destined to
relieve the siege was accurately known to the French; and that the force
covering it was shamefully inadequate to that end, and by six times
inferior to Count de la