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 case, was the very worst course which could have been adopted.  The army should neither fall back, as the Dutch wished; nor attack at once, as Marlborough desired.  It was resolved not to abandon the siege of Mons, and to attack the enemy if they would not take the offensive; but to wait until Saint Ghislain, which commanded a passage on the Haine, was taken; and until twenty-six battalions on the march from Tournai arrived.