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The victory was largely due at Lauffeld, as it had been at Fontenoy, to the desperate courage of the Irish Brigade, who, in the words of one of their enemies, "fought like devils," and actually came very near to capturing Cumberland himself. But the tide of victory soon turned for France on land and sea, and she became as anxious to make a peace as any other of the belligerent powers could be.
King Louis's wishes are known, this long while; and Ligonier, generously dismissed by him after Lauffeld, has brought express word to that effect, and outline of the modest terms proposed in one's hour of victory, with pot ceasing to boil. On a sudden, too, "March 18th," wintry blasts and hailstorms still raging, Marechal de Saxe, regardless of Domestic Hunger, took the field, stronger than ever.
And farther on, there is a Battle of Lauffeld coming, 2d July, 1747; with similar results; frustration evident, retreat evident, victory not much to speak of. And in this gloriously delightful manner Saxe and the French Nation have proceeded, till in fact the Netherlands Territory with all strongholds, except Maestricht alone, was theirs, and they decided on attacking the Dutch Republic itself.
Marechal de Saxe, after his victory at Lauffeld, 2d July, did not besiege Maestricht, as had been the universal expectation; but shot off an efficient lieutenant of his, one Lowendahl, in due force, privately ready, to overwhelm Bergen-op-Zoom with sudden Siege, while he himself lay between the beaten enemy and it.
Oliver Cromwell's soldiers did so, Gustaf Adolf's; in fact, I think all good soldiers: Roucoux with a Prince Karl, Lauffeld with a Duke of Cumberland; you gain your Roucoux, your Lauffeld, Human Stupidity permitting: but one day you fall in with Human Intelligence, in an extremely grave form; and your 'ELAN, elastic outburst, the quickest in Nature, what becomes of it?
The victories of Maria Theresa in Italy were balanced by those of France in the Netherlands, where Marshal Saxe inflicted new defeats on the English and Dutch at Roucoux and Lauffeld.
The French were commanded by Marshal Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy. The English troops were under the command of Cumberland, and Lauffeld was therefore regarded by them as in some sort avenging Culloden.
France for a while was flattered and fluttered by a series of brisk successes which left almost the whole of the Austrian Netherlands in her possession at the end of the campaign of 1746. The battle of Lauffeld, near Maestricht, in Holland, in the summer of 1747, in which the allied Austrian, Dutch, and English armies were defeated, especially exhilarated the French Jacobites.
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