, but himself take arms against that grandson and co-operate
in his proper shame by helping to oust him from it. It was stipulated that
Louis should so act (if his grandson should show resistance and still
clung to his throne) in company with those who had been for so many years
his bitter and successful foes.

This last small item in the programme of the victors changed all. It
destroyed in the mind of Louis and of his subjects the advantages of the
disgraceful peace which they had thought themselves compelled to accept;
and, as Louis himself well put it, if he were still compelled to carry on
the war, it was better to fail in pursuing it against his enemies than
against his own household.

The king issued to the authorities of his kingdom and to his people a
circular letter, which remains a model of statesmanlike appeal. Grave,
brief, and resolute, it exactly expressed the common mood of the moment.
It met with an enthusiastic response. The depleted countrysides just
managed to furnish the armies with a bare pittance of oats and rye (for
wheat was unobtainable). Recruits appeared in unexpected numbers; and
though none could believe that the issue could be other than disastrous,
the campaign of 1709 was undertaken by a united nation.

Of French offensive action against the overwhelming forces of their
enemies there could be no question. Villars, who commanded the armies of
Louis XIV. upon the north-eastern frontier, opposing Marlborough and
Eugene, drew up a line of defence consisting of entrenchments, flooded
land, and the use of existing watercourses, a line running from the
neighbourhood of Douai away eastward to the Belgian frontier. Behind this
line, with his headquarters at La Bassee,[1] he waited the fatal assault.

It was at the close of June that the enemy's great forces moved. Their
first action was not an attempt to penetrate the line but to take the
fortresses upon its right, which taken, the defence might be turned. They
therefore laid siege to Tournai, the first of the two fortresses guarding
the right of the French line. (Mons was the second.)

Here the first material point in the campaign showed the power of
resistance that tradition and discipline yet maintained in the French
army. The long resistance of Tournai and its small garrison largely
determined what was to follow. Its siege had been undertaken in the hope
of its rapid termination, which the exiguity of its garrison and the
impossibility of