self intact; morally, the battle left the
defeated more elated than the victors; and for this reason, that the
result was so much more in their favour than the expectation had been. In
what is most important of all, the general fortunes of the campaign, the
victory of the allies at Malplaquet was as sure a signal that the advance
on Paris could not be made, and as sure a prevention of that advance as
though Marlborough and Eugene had registered, not a success, but a defeat.

Situations of this sort, which render victories barren or actually
negative, paradoxical to the general reader, simple enough in their
military aspect, abound in the history of war. It is perhaps more
important to explain them if one is to make military history intelligible
than to describe the preliminaries and movements of the great decisive
action.

The "block" of Malplaquet (to use the metaphor which is common in French
history), the unexpected power of resistance which this last of the French
armies displayed, and the moral effect of that resistance upon the allies,
have an historical meaning almost as high as that of Blenheim upon the
other side. It has been well said that one may win every battle and yet
lose a campaign; there is a sense in which it may be said that one may win
a campaign and suffer political loss as the result.

Malplaquet was the turning-point after which it was evident that the
decline of the French position in Europe would go no further. As Blenheim
had marked the turn of the tide against Louis, so Malplaquet marked the
slack water when the tide was ready to turn in his favour. After Blenheim
it was certain that the ambition of Louis XIV. was checked, and probable
that it would wholly fail. After Malplaquet it was equally certain that
the total destruction of Louis' power was impossible, that the project of
a march on Paris might be abandoned, and that the last phases of the great
war would diminish the chances of the allies.

The Dutch (whose troops in particular had been annihilated upon the left
of the field) did indeed maintain their uncompromising attitude, but no
longer with the old certitude of success; Austria also and her allies did
continue the war, but a war doomed to puerility, to a sort of stale-mate
bound to end in compromise. But it was in England that the effect of the
battle was most remarkable.

In England, where opinion had but tardily accepted the necessity for war
nine years before, and where the