of two indifferent princes, Philip
of France and Charles of Austria, should have the Spanish crown. Lord
Peterborough declared that it was not worth his country's while to
fight for such "a pair of louts."

[Illustration: "Now!" came the order.]

Into the war, however, England had thrown herself, under the direction
of Harley, the famous Tory minister now in power, at home, and with
Marlborough as commander-in-chief of both the English and the Dutch
forces abroad. The General's first aim was to take back from Louis XIV
all those fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands which had been seized
and garrisoned by the French troops as if the country were a French
possession.

He started from Kaiserwoerth, a town on the Rhine, which his troops had
captured from one of Louis's chief allies, the Elector of Cologne,
before Marlborough arrived to take command. Venloo was taken in
gallant style, and then the important city of Liege, on the Meuse. The
result of the campaign was that the French had been chased from the
Lower Rhine, and Holland, much to its relief, made far more safe from
attack. Returning to England, the victorious commander was given a
grand reception. And no wonder, for it was the first time for many a
year that the French had received a real check.

While these things were going on in the Netherlands, another leader
under the Grand Alliance, Prince Louis of Baden, took Landau, on the
Rhine, from the French. In Italy, too, the allies triumphed, the
gallant Prince Eugene, presently to be the warm and life-long friend
of Marlborough, defeating the French brilliantly at Cremona, a
fortunate thing for the Empire, which was thus secured from a French
invasion through the Tyrol.

To crown the successes of the Grand Alliance during the campaign of
1702, the first of the war, the brave sailor Sir George Rooke,
following the Spanish galleons and the French war vessels into the
harbour of Vigo, destroyed the greater number of them. It was a
repetition of Drake's famous expedition to "singe the King of Spain's
beard."

All these things happened while George Fairburn and other English
prisoners ate their hearts out in captivity at Dunkirk. The lad chafed
under the surveillance to which he was subjected, and never passed a
day without turning over in his mind some scheme of escape. How it was
to be done, he did not see. But he waited for his chance, and
meanwhile, partly to avoid being suspected, and partly to while away