njoyed on any former
occasion.

Every thing announced a more important campaign than the preceding had
proved in the Low Countries. Encouraged by the little progress which the
Allies had made in the former campaign, Louis XIV. had been induced to
make the most vigorous efforts to accumulate a preponderating force, and
re-establish his affairs in that quarter. Vendome's army had, by great
exertion, been raised to a hundred thousand men, and at the same time
secret communications were opened with a considerable portion of the
inhabitants in some of the frontier fortresses of Brabant, in order to
induce then on the first favourable opportunity to surrender them to the
French arms. The unpopularity of the Dutch authorities in those towns,
and the open pretensions which they put forth to wrest them from the
Emperor, and deliver them over at a general peace to the hated rule of
Protestant Holland, rendered those advances peculiarly acceptable.
Vendome's instructions were to act on the offensive, though in a
cautious manner; to push forward in order to take advantage of these
favourable dispositions, and endeavour to regain the important ground
which had been lost during the panic which followed the battle of
Ramilies.

On their side the Allies had not been idle; and preparations had been
made for transferring the weight of the contest to the Low Countries.
The war in Italy being in a manner terminated by the entire expulsion of
the French from that peninsula, and their secret convention for a sort
of suspension of active operations with the Emperor in that quarter,
Prince Eugene had been brought to the theatre of real hostilities on the
northern frontier of France. It was agreed that two great armies should
be formed, one in Brabant under Marlborough, and the other on the
Moselle under Eugene; that the Elector of Hanover should act on the
defensive on the Rhine; that Eugene should join the English general, and
that with their united force they should force the French general to a
battle. This well conceived plan met with the usual resistance on the
part of the Allied powers, which compelled Marlborough to repair in
person to Hanover, to smooth over the objections of its Elector.
Meanwhile the dissensions and difficulties of the cabinet in London
increased to such a degree, that he had scarcely quitted England when he
was urged by Godolphin, and the majority of his own party, to return, as
the only means of saving them from