e retreated in perfect
good order; the panic-spell seemed to be broke, under which the French had
laboured ever since the disaster of Hochstedt; and, fighting now on the
threshold of their country, they showed an heroic ardour 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 neighbours, 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 i