At the storming of the outworks on the 21st, the Allies sustained a loss of fully 1,000 more men, and Prince Eugene was wounded in the head by a musket-ball. He was by this event confined to his tent for some days. The besiegers were now in possession not only of a part of the covered way, but of a demi-bastion and several places of

arms.

The deputies of the States of Holland, perceiving how slowly the engineers carried on their approaches, and the difficulty of supplying the army with provisions and ammunition, proposed to raise the siege. This Prince Eugene absolutely refused to do.

"My own honour is concerned in the event," said he. And though the Dutch would much rather have seen Ghent and Bruges reduced, and their own frontiers secured from the incursions of the French, Prince Eugene persisted in continuing the investment; and while he remained on the sick-list, Marlborough commanded the siege in person, as there was no officer present possessed of sufficient rank and talent to whom it could be entrusted; and hence he found himself compelled to watch Vendôme on one hand, and keep the besiegers to their duty on the other.

Every morning saw him on horseback at the earliest blush of dawn. When all was quiet in front, he rode back to the lines of the covering army; and he returned again every evening, that he might be at hand to observe such measures as his skilful antagonist might compel him to adopt. By thus appearing, as it were, at all points where danger threatened or labour was to be endured, he infused so much of his own zeal and energy into those around him, that on the 23rd the whole of the tenailles, or low works in the ditch before the curtains, fell into his hands, together with the covered way. The author of "The Life of Queen Anne" relates that Marshal Boufflers contrived to inform the Duke de Vendôme that his ammunition was becoming scarce. On this the Chevalier de Luxembourg was dispatched by Vendôme, at the head of 2,000 horse and dragoons, each of whom carried sixty pounds' weight of gunpowder; these men were to cut a passage through the lines of circumvallation, and throw themselves at all hazards into Lisle.

Accordingly, after placing green boughs in their hats, such being the badge or cognisance which the Allies wore in battle, they advanced along the causeway that leads from Douay to Lisle. Meeting there with some of the outposts, they had the hardihood to affect being Germans belonging to the army of Marlborough, who were conveying

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prisoners to his camp; but on an officer approaching to examine them more closely, they put spur to their horses, pushed along the causeway at full gallop, and broke through the lines of circumvallation.

They were now fired on by the trench-guards, and pursued to the barrier gate of the town, when by some accident several bags of their powder took fire, and sixty men, with their horses, were blown up and miserably scorched. 1,200 succeeded in cutting a passage into Lisle; the rest, in the confusion, and under cover of the night, all escaped to Douay, save thirty men who were scorched to death by the explosion of their own. powder, which was scattered on the causeway, from which the shoes of the galloping horses struck sparks of fire, and thus ignited it.

We have stated that the covering army occupied a position between Noyelles and Peronne; the combined forces of Berwick and Vendôme, maintaining a corresponding alignment in their front. The French right extended towards Ennevelin, while their left rested upon Gondecourt, and all their proceedings led to a firm belief that a desperate attempt to relieve the siege was about to be made; but save the storming of the village of Teclin nothing was done. Perceiving the hopelessness of attempting to raise the siege, Vendôme and Berwick now endeavoured to place the besiegers under a species of blockade, by cutting the sluices of the canals, inundating the lower lands, and closing up the avenues that led to Brussels and Antwerp.

The road to Ostend alone remained open; yet even it was menaced, and it became a matter of the utmost consideration that an ample convoy should be sent up while the means of doing so were yet within reach.

Bishop Burnet says they "fell to making lines all along the Scheldt, but chiefly about Oudenarde." This was more completely to isolate the forces of Marlborough, and cut off all supplies from Holland. These lines were about seventy miles long, and were more like fortified ramparts than ordinary intrenchments, and were everywhere armed with cannon.

From Ostend alone could supplies come now; and there 6,000 British troops had recently landed under the command of General Erle, who was instructed to secure every horse and wagon he could lay hands upon, and load them with such munition of war as the place contained, while General Webb, at the head of 6,000 men, was detached as an escort for their protection. The first portion of this force which marched was a battalion of the Royal Scots under Lieutenant

whole country under water to the very border of the dyke. He then reinforced the garrison of Nieuport; established a post with 1,600 horse and foot in rear of Leffinghen, and completely cut off all communication between the lines and Ostend.

He opened a cannonade from nineteen pieces, and under cover of it closed up with musketry. The action was very severe while it lasted. The regiments formed in the woods, as well as a cloud of the grenadiers and skirmishers who were posted among the brushwood, reserved their shot till the enemy's line was past, when they opened a murderous fire on their flanks and rear, at the distance of a few yards. They were thrown into the most complete disorder, and never recovered from it; but seemed to get more and more bewildered, amid the clouds of fleecy smoke that curled up from the brushwood and rolled away before the wind.

They broke and fled, in spite of the exertions of their leaders to rally them, and the long convoy passing in the meanwhile by the rear of the wood, came into Menin without the loss of a single wagon. The conflict lasted two hours. The loss of Webb's force was 912 of all ranks, killed or wounded; that of the enemy was alleged by the prisoners taken to be be nearly 4,000; and the survivors fled in such confusion that they left behind them in the wood all their guns, for which, however, they returned the following day.

The gallantry of this exploit excited great admiraration, and General Webb was honoured by the thanks of the first British Parliament which had assembled in that year, and by the approbation of the queen. Seven years afterwards, with two other generals, named Ross and Stuart, he "was laid aside" by George I. for no other crime than being a Scotsman.

The labours of the siege were immediately resumed with fresh energy; and as Eugene was able to superintend them in person, hopes of a speedy and glorious termination were encouraged.

A new expedient was resorted to by Vendôme to avert this catastrophe. He marched a column from the Scheldt through Ghent, and joined La Mothe between Moerdyke and the canal that connects Bruges with Plassendael. He opened the sluices

Marlborough no sooner heard of these plans than he hastened to prevent them; but he was too late. The whole face of the country now resembled a vast sea, out of which the houses, windmills, and woodlands stood but half submerged; and it was only by packing ammunition in skins, and conveying these in flat-bottomed boats, that further supplies could be sent to the front; and a curious kind of warfare was maintained amid the watery waste, boat fighting with boat, and wagon with wagon.

It was amid this state of matters that Marshal Auverquerque, one of the most able of the allied commanders, died.

On the 22nd of October, after sixty days of open trenches, Marshal Boufflers proposed to capitulate; and as an act of justice to his gallantry and skill, he was permitted to name his own terms. He yielded up the town, and retired into Vauban's citadel, to sustain there, with the remains of his garrison, a second siege. His cavalry were permitted to march to Douay, taking with them the wives and families of all the officers and soldiers.

By the 14th of November Prince Eugene had effected a lodgment on the counterscarp of the citadel of Lisle; on the 17th of that month the troops had stationed themselves on the glacis of the second covered way.

The siege was pressed with all the vigour which the exhausted state of the magazines would permit. To recruit these, numerous parties were from time to time sent into France, to sweep away corn, cattle, and other supplies from the open country; while Marlborough, as he had hitherto done, maintained a commanding position, so as to cover both the besiegers and their foragers; and to Vendôme and Berwick it became palpable now that any attempt to rescue Lisle was impossible.

On the 8th of December Marshal Boufflers beat a parley and yielded up the citadel, from which he and his garrison came forth with all the honours of war, and marched to Douay; and so ended one of the most remarkable sieges of these brilliant campaigns.

"In this great enterprise," says Smollett, "spirit and perseverance made amends for want of foresight and skill, which were flagrant on the side of the confederates. Yet their success was owing in a great measure to the improvidence and misconduct of the besieged. The French generals never

WHILE the war was being thus waged in Flanders, the contest for the throne of Spain between Philip, Duke of Anjou, and Charles, son of Leopold I., was continued with varying success; and in that strife the defence of the castle of Alicante by an old English regiment and one composed of foreign refugees, against more than 12,000 French and Spanish troops, presents a remarkable instance of fortitude and obstinate bravery.

Admiral Sir George Byng, by order of Admiral Sir John Leake, had taken Alicante by storm, in August, 1706, compelling the governor, Colonel Count Mahoney, an Irish soldier of fortune, to capitulate, after he had been severely wounded, and had 160 of his guns which faced the sea dismounted by those of the British fleet. But he had defended himself with such bravery that honourable terms were given him; and he marched out at the head of 130 dragoons (thirty of whom were Irishmen), the sole survivors of his force, with four pieces of cannon, and lighted matches.

This officer was as remarkable for bravery as for his extreme modesty. It is related of him that when he was sent to the Court of France to relate the surprise of Cremona, when the intrepidity of the Irish saved the town, and when he himself, while commanding one of their battalions, had performed the most valiant action of the day, by (as we have elsewhere told) defending a part of the ramparts long after the Imperialists had entered the place, and holding his post so obstinately that the French garrison had time to rally, and drive out Prince Eugene, in the whole of his narrative he took no notice of himself or of the Irish brigade, so when he had finished speaking, Louis XIV. said—

"You say nothing to me, monsieur, of your brave countrymen."

"Sire,” replied the intrepid Irishman, "they followed the example of the subjects of your Majesty."

Major-General Richard Gorges was now en trusted with the defence of Alicante, a post of great importance, its harbour being one of the best in Valencia. It stands nearly in the centre of the bay, on a narrow peninsula, which abuts into the sea, and, like its fortress, the city is of vast antiquity, dating from the Moorish invasion in the eighth century; and near it lie those fertile plains known as Las Huertas, or "The Gardens."

On the 15th of April Gorges succeeded Arthur, Earl of Donegal, in command of the regiment now known as the 35th, or Dorsetshire. He erected an additional defence to Alicante, called Gorge's Battery, between the castle and the town; and the first duty performed by its guns, was a funeral salute in honour of Marcus, Viscount Dungannon, who died in Alicante. He was colonel of an English regiment which is no longer in existence, and was son of Colonel Marcus Trevor, who was said to have wounded Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Marston Moor. The viscount's regiment was given to the Marquis de Montandre; and, through the mismanagement of Lieutenant-Colonel Bateman, it was soon after surprised and cut to pieces, with the loss of three of its colours, by the Duke of Berwick's dragoons.

Major-General Michael Richards was appointed Governor of Alicante on the recall of Gorges to England. He was a Catholic, and consequently was greatly esteemed by the Valencians, "though, to give him his own, he behaved himself extremely well in all other respects," says Carleton, in his "Memoirs." He was a brigadier of the year of the Revolution; and, as Catholics were not then allowed to hold such high rank, we must conclude that Richards adhered to the religion of his forefathers in secret.

Alicante was now invested and besieged by a strong force under the Chevalier d'Asfeld, afterwards Marquis and Marshal of France. He had with him 12,000 French and Spanish troops, with