EANING OF MALPLAQUET

That political significance which we must seek in all military history,
and without which that history cannot be accurate even upon its technical
side, may be stated for the battle of Malplaquet in the following terms.

Louis XIV. succeeding to a cautious and constructive period in the
national life of France, this in its turn succeeding to the long impotence
of the religious wars, found at his orders when his long minority was
ended a society not only eager and united, but beginning also to give
forth the fruit due to three active generations of discussion and combat.

Every department of the national life manifested an extreme vitality, and,
while the orderly and therefore convincing scheme of French culture
imposed itself upon Western Europe, there followed in its wake the triumph
of French arms; the king in that triumph nearly perfected a realm which
would have had for its limits those of ancient Gaul.

It would be too long a matter to describe, even in general terms, the
major issues depending upon Louis XIV.'s national ambitions and their
success or failure.

In one aspect he stands for the maintenance of Catholic civilisation
against the Separatist and dissolving forces of the Protestant North; in
another he is the permanent antagonist of the Holy Roman Empire, or rather
of the House of Austria, which had attained to a permanent hegemony
therein. An extravagant judgment conceives his great successes as a menace
to the corporate independence of Europe, or--upon the other view--as the
opportunity for the founding of a real European unity.

But all these general considerations may, for the purposes of military
history, be regarded in the single light of the final and decisive action
which Louis XIV. took when he determined in the year 1701 to support the
claims of his young grandson to the throne of Spain. This it was which
excited against him a universal coalition, and acts following upon that
main decision drew into the coalition the deciding factor of Great
Britain.

The supremacy of French arms had endured in Europe for forty years when
the Spanish policy was decided on. Louis was growing old. That financial
exhaustion which almost invariably follows a generation of high national
activity, and which is almost invariably masked by pompous outward state,
was a reality already present though as yet undiscovered in the condition
of France.

It was at the close of that year 1701 that t