October.

I pass now to Flanders, which is about to become for the second time the training ground of the British Army. The judicious¹ help sent by Lewis the Fourteenth to Ireland had practically diverted the entire strength of William to that quarter for two whole campaigns; and though, as has been seen, there were English in Flanders in 1689 and 1690, the contingents² which they furnished were too small and the operations too trifling⁵ to warrant description in detail. After the battle of the Boyne the case was somewhat altered, for, though a large force was still required in Ireland for Ginkell's final pacification⁶ of 1691, William was none the less at liberty to take the field in Flanders in person. Moreover, Parliament with great good-will had voted seventy thousand men for the ensuing year, of which fully⁷ fifty thousand were British,[258] so that England was about to put forth⁸ her strength in Europe on a scale unknown since the loss of Calais.

But first a short space must be devoted⁹ to the theatre of war, where England was to meet and break down the overweening power of France. Few studies are more difficult, even to the professed¹⁰ student, than that of the old campaigns in Flanders, and still fewer more hopeless of simplification to the ordinary reader. Nevertheless, however desperate the task, an effort must be made once for all to give a broad idea of the scene of innumerable great actions.

Taking his stand on the northern frontier of France[352] and looking northward¹¹, the reader will note three great rivers running through the country before him in, roughly speaking, three parallel semicircles, from south-east to north-west. These are, from east to west, the Moselle, which is

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