the infantry in Ireland that, when after two years he returned to duty with the regiment in Flanders, Government made him a present of two hundred pounds. Though Louis had suffered heavily in 1708, the enormous resources of his kingdom enabled him to send large numbers of fresh troops to the Marshal de Villars, whom early in 1709 he placed in command of the army of Flanders. De Villars’ first care had been to secure the safety of Arras, the key to the north-east of France, by throwing up to the east of the town a great line of works which stretched from the Lys to Douai; and from behind these works, known as the lines of La Bassée, he watched the Allies, who owing to the lateness of the season did not take the field till June. Marlborough’s first move was to make open, even ostentatious preparations to force the lines; de Villars concentrated to resist them, calling up as reinforcements a large portion of the garrison of Tournai, a fortress some sixteen miles east of Lille. As Tournai was Marlborough’s immediate objective, he marched swiftly upon it, and invested it before de Villars discovered how completely he had been outwitted. At the beginning of the siege the XVIIIth took part in an expedition to reduce various small forts in the neighbourhood, and after marching night and day returned “greatly fatigued,”[57] but in time to help to storm the breaches of the ravelin, and to repulse a determined sortie by the garrison, who strove to make up for the weakness of their numbers by the vigour of their defence. Up to the time that the town surrendered and the troops retired into the citadel, the siege had run on normal lines; but when the attack on the citadel began things became very different, for this stronghold was celebrated throughout Europe for its subterranean defences, and the ground outside its walls was honeycombed with casemates, mines, and secret passages. To reach these hidden works the besiegers had to sink deep shafts, and then to drive tunnels fathoms deep under the earth, at any moment liable to be blown sky-high by the explosion of a mine. The desperate work done by the XVIIIth in this phase of the siege is well described by Stearne.