powers agreed to assemble a vast army in the Netherlands;
and it was resolved that the Austrians and Piedmonte so should once more
penetrate into Provence. The Dutch patriots, however, were not roused
into this exertion, until all their remonstrances had failed at the
court of Versailles; until they had been urged by repeated memorials of
the English ambassador, and stimulated by the immediate danger to which
their country was exposed; for France was by this time possessed of
all the Austrian Netherlands, and seemed bent upon penetrating into the
territories of the United Provinces. In February, the duke of Cumberland
began to assemble the allied forces; and in the latter end of March they
took the field in three separate bodies. His royal highness, with the
English, Hanoverians, and Hessians, fixed his head quarters at the
village of Tilberg; the prince of Waldeck was posted with the Dutch
troops at Breda; and mareschal Bathiani collected the Austrians and
Bavarians in the neighbourhood of Venlo. The whole army amounted to one
hundred and twenty thousand men, who lay inactive six weeks, exposed
to the inclemency of the weather, and almost destitute of forage and
provisions. Count Saxe, by this time created mareschal-general of
France, continued his troops within their cantonments at Bruges,
Antwerp, and Brussels, declaring, that when the allied army should
be weakened by sickness and mortality, he would convince the duke of
Cumberland that the first duty of a general is to provide for the health
and preservation of his troops. In April this fortunate commander took
the field, at the head of one hundred and forty thousand men; and the
count de Clermont commanded a separate body of nineteen battalions and
thirty squadrons. Count Lowendahl was detached on the sixteenth of the
month, with seven-and-twenty thousand men, to invade Dutch Flanders; at
the same time, the French minister at the Hague presented a memorial to
the states, intimating, that his master was obliged to take this step by
the necessity of war; but that his troops should observe the strictest
discipline, without interfering with the religion, government, or
commerce of the republic; he likewise declared, that the countries
and places of which he might be obliged to take possession should be
detained no otherwise than as a pledge, to be restored as soon as the
United Provinces should give convincing proofs that they would no longer
furnish the enemies of Fran