It is possible that Villars only refrained from hindering Marlborough’s passage of the Scheldt in deference to orders from Versailles, of which the Duke was as well aware as himself; but it is more than doubtful whether he ever intended the British to capture Bouchain. Though inferior in numbers, however, Marlborough covered himself so skilfully with entrenchments that Villars could not hinder him, while all attempts at diversion were met so readily that not one of them succeeded. ◆Sept. 2/13.◆ Finally, the garrison surrendered as prisoners of war under the very eyes of Villars. The Duke would have followed up his success by the siege of Quesnoi, the town before which English troops first came under the fire of cannon in the year of Crecy; but by this time Lewis, with the help of the contemptible Harley, had succeeded in detaching England from the Grand Alliance. Though, therefore, the English ministers continued to encourage Marlborough in his operations, in order to conceal their own infamous conduct from the Allies, yet they took good care that those operations should proceed no further. So with the capture of Bouchain the last and not the least remarkable of Marlborough’s campaigns came, always victoriously, to an end. CAMPAIGNS OF 1744–1748 VOL. II. BOOK VII. CHAPTER V However fortunate might be the issue of Dettingen, it served at least its purpose in preventing the despatch of French reinforcements to the Danube and to Bohemia; and the campaign of 1743 closed with the utter collapse of Belleisle’s great schemes and with the expulsion of the French from Germany. It was now clear that the war would be carried on in the familiar cockpit of the Austrian Netherlands. Such a theatre was convenient for France, since it lay close to her own borders, and convenient for the Allies, because the Dutch had at last been persuaded to join them, and because the British would be brought nearer to their base at Ostend. Marshal Saxe, whose fine talent had hitherto been wasted under incompetent French Generals in Bohemia, was appointed to the chief command of the French in Flanders; and every effort was made to give him a numerous and well-equipped army, and to enable him to open his campaign in good time. ◆1744.◆