rs in order to encourage the men.

At last, on the 3rd of September, the garrison, reduced to 3000
men, surrendered; and were permitted to march out with the honours
of war, and to return to France on the promise not to serve again.

This siege cost the allies 5000 men.

Chapter 27: Malplaquet, and the End of the War.

During all the time that the allies had been employed upon the
siege of Tournai, Marshal Villars had laboured to form an
impregnable line of entrenchments, barring all farther advance.
Marlborough, however, a day or two previously to the fall of
Tournai, sent off the Prince of Hesse Cassel, who by a rapid and
most masterly march fell upon the French lines, at a part where the
French had no expectation of there being an enemy within thirty
miles of them. No opposition was made, and the prince marching
rapidly to the plateau of Jemappes, invested Mons on the French
side. The rest of the army followed. The effect caused throughout
France, and indeed through Europe, by the success of this masterly
movement, was immense; and it was evident that a great battle was
at hand.

Villars moved his army rapidly up. A detachment of Eugene's troops
were left to watch Mons, and the allied army, 93,000 strong,
advanced to meet them, and on the night of the 7th bivouacked in a
line three miles long, and five from that occupied by the French.
Marshal Villars had with him 95,000 men. The forces therefore were
as nearly as possible equal; but the allies had 105 guns, against
eighty of the French.

The position taken up by Villars was of great natural strength;
being a plateau, interspersed with woods and intersected with
streams, and elevated from a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet
above the meadowland of the Trouville, across which their
assailants must pass. Malplaquet stood on this plateau. On the
slopes from the plateau to the plain, the woods were extremely
thick, and the only access to the plateau, for troops, were two
clearings cut through the woods, known as the Trouees de la
Louviere, and d'Aulnoit.

On the morning of the 8th, when the French definitely took up their
position, Marlborough and Eugene were in favour of making an
instant attack, before the French could add to the great natural
strength of their position by entrenchments. The Dutch deputies,
however, were altogether opposed to an assault on so formidable a
front. Finally a compromise was adopted--a compromise which, as is
often the ca