The arrival of the Duke of Berwick[52] with large reinforcements from the Rhine raised the Duke of Burgundy’s strength to at least 100,000 combatants. To meet them Marlborough had only 84,000 troops; but when after many weeks’ delay his huge convoy started from Brussels, he manœuvred so brilliantly that the enemy was never able to come within striking distance of its cumbrous length. It was not until the 22nd of August that the Allies broke ground before Lille, which every Frenchman regarded as impregnable, for on its fortification Vauban had lavished all his skill, 150 guns and mortars frowned from its works, and Marshal de Boufflers commanded its garrison of 15,000 picked men. The siege was to be carried on by Eugene, while from Helchin on the Scheldt Marlborough covered the operations with the field army. Among Eugene’s troops the British were not strongly represented: “only five regiments were detailed for regular work in the trenches”[53]--the 16th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, and as hard knocks were to be expected, it is scarcely necessary to add, the XVIIIth also. The Duke had hardly finished his lines of circumvallation, or, in modern language, the works protecting his own front and Eugene’s rear, when he learned that the Duke of Burgundy was advancing to the relief of Lille. For a week the armies lay opposite each other. Marlborough and Eugene were anxious to attack the French, whose position was so bad that Berwick saw nothing but defeat in store for them if they gave battle; but once again the Dutch deputies threw away splendid chances by refusing to allow their troops to fight. The French generals, though under positive orders from Louis to wipe out their disgrace at Oudenarde by winning a great battle near Lille, declined the combat, and withdrew to devote themselves to the safer task of harassing the Allies’ line of communication. By taking up and holding strongly positions running along the Scheldt and the Scarpe from Ghent to Douai, they hoped to intercept all convoys from Brussels, at that time the Duke’s chief source of supply, but they forgot that in Ostend, which Marlborough had recaptured two years before, he possessed on the open sea a port within easy distance of England. The troops which had just returned from the expedition to Normandy--an expedition as futile as most of our similar enterprises seemed fated to be--were landed at Ostend, where they were employed most usefully in forming a new base.