entrenchments; then fresh batteries began to play upon the walls, and in a short time the resistance was fairly beaten down and the garrison surrendered on honourable terms. The siege lasted thirty-one days, and cost the French eleven hundred officers and men, while the Allies’ strength was diminished by two thousand six hundred combatants. In the spring of 1707, the Allies assembled at Bethlehem, where the British contingent was joined by the Royal Irish from their winter quarters at Ghent. Owing to the underhand conduct of the Emperor of Austria, who for his private ends made a secret treaty with Louis XIV. for the neutralisation of Italy, the French were able to withdraw their troops from that country and largely reinforce the Marshal de Vendôme, who had succeeded de Villeroi in command of their “army of Flanders.” But de Vendôme had no wish to fight Marlborough, and a long spell of very bad weather helped him to evade all the Duke’s efforts to bring him to battle. Stearne in his journal mentions that “there fell such rain that our men were not able to draw their legs after them, neither could they keep their arms or ammunition dry.” On one occasion the Allies were struggling over nine miles of country, along which the French had just retreated, “but what with the enemy marching before us, and our Horse which followed them, and the rain continuing the roads were so deep and miry that the most part of our infantry were not able to reach the camp that night, and it was three or four days before the rear came up, and several of them perished by the way.”[47] In the hope of raising a rebellion in North Britain, Louis XIV. attempted early in 1708 to land the Pretender in Scotland, with a handful of French soldiers to train the partisans who were expected to flock to the standard of the Stuart Prince. The expedition sailed long before the campaign opened on the Continent; to meet it the XVIIIth and nine other regiments were hurriedly shipped off to Shields, where the transports anchored while their escort of men-of-war joined in the chase of the enemy’s vessels, which were driven back to France. As soon as the danger was over the troops were sent off to Ostend, where they arrived in full time to rejoin Marlborough’s army.