BATTLE OF ECKEREN.

The French generals, in order to frustrate the scheme of Marlborough, resolved to cut off the retreat of Opdam. Boufflers, with a detachment of twenty thousand men from Villeroy’s army, surprised him at Eckeren, where the Dutch were put in disorder; and Opdam, believing all was lost, fled to Breda. Nevertheless, the troops rallying under general Schlangenburg, maintained their ground with the most obstinate valour till night, when the enemy was obliged to retire, and left the communication free with fort Lillo, to which place the confederates marched without further molestation, having lost about fifteen hundred men in the engagement. The damage sustained by the French was more considerable. They were frustrated in their design, and had actually abandoned the field of battle; yet Louis ordered Te Deum to be sung for the victory; nevertheless Boufflers was censured for his conduct on this occasion, and in a little time totally disgraced. Opdam presented a justification of his conduct to the states-general; but by this oversight he forfeited the fruits of a long service, during which he had exhibited repeated proofs of courage, zeal, and capacity. The states honoured Schlangenburg with a letter of thanks for the valour and skill he had manifested in this engagement; but in a little time they dismissed him from his employment on account of his having given umbrage to the duke of Marlborough, by censuring his grace for exposing such a small number of men to this disaster. After this action, Villeroy, who lay encamped near Saint Job, declared he waited for the duke of Marlborough, who forthwith advanced to Hoogstraat, with a view to give him battle; but at his approach the French general, setting fire to his camp, retired within his lines with great precipitation. Then the duke invested Huy, the garrison of which, after a vigorous defence, surrendered themselves prisoners of war on the twenty-seventh day of August. At a council of war held in the camp of the confederates, the duke proposed to attack the enemies’ lines between the Mehaigne and Leuwe, and was seconded by the Danish, Hanoverian, and Hessian generals; but the scheme was opposed by the Dutch officers, and the deputies of the states, who alleged that the success was dubious, and the consequences of forcing the lines would be inconsiderable; they therefore recommended the siege of Limburgh, by the reduction of which they would acquire a whole province, and cover their own country, as well as Juliers and Gueldres, from the designs of the enemy. The siege of Limburgh was accordingly undertaken. The trenches were opened on the five-and-twentieth day of September, and in two days the place was surrendered; the garrison remaining prisoners of war. By this conquest the allies secured the country of Liege, and the electorate of Cologn, from the incursions of the enemy; before the end of the year they remained masters of the whole Spanish Guelderland, by the reduction of Gueldres, which surrendered on the seventeenth day of September, after having been long blockaded, bombarded, and reduced to a heap of ashes, by the Prussian general Lottum. Such was the campaign in the Netherlands, which in all probability would have produced events of greater importance, had not the duke of Marlborough been restricted by the deputies of the states-general, who began to be influenced by the intrigues of the Louvestein faction, ever averse to a single dictator.