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We were taken in the rear at more than one point, and Taviers being no longer able to assist us, Ramillies itself fell, after a prodigious fire and an obstinate resistance. The Comte de Guiche at the head of the regiment of Guards defended it for four hours, and performed prodigies, but in the end he was obliged to give way.
The wind soon increasing, blew strong from the E. S. E. with a very heavy sea, and about three o'clock in the morning of the 17th flew suddenly round to the contrary point, blowing most tremendously, and accompanied with rain, thunder and lightning; the Ramillies was taken by the lee, her main-sail thrown back, her main-mast went by the board, and mizen-mast half way up; the fore-top mast fell over the starboard bow, the fore-yard broke in the slings, the tiller snapped in two, and the rudder was nearly torn off.
The admiral immediately hoisted his flag on board the latter, and sailing with the first fair wind, arrived, on the 17th, in Plymouth Sound, apparently in good health, but with a settled oppression upon his breast, from having been so long and so dreadfully exposed upon the deck of the Ramillies in the horrid night when she was first overtaken by the storm; nor could he remove that complaint for upwards of six months.
His centre, with the village of Ramillies and the Tomb of Ottomond commanding it, the really important positions of the day, was weakened by the loss of troops sent on a wild-goose chase. Ere Villeroy could repair the mischief and summon his men from Anderkirk, Marlborough had sent down upon the French centre a great body of cavalry under the command of Auerkerke, the Dutch general.
There he heard that his countrymen had suffered a disastrous defeat at Ramillies; that nearly all the Netherlands had been wrested from France; that a heavy defeat had been inflicted upon her at Turin, and that Italy was well nigh lost.
We were taken in the rear at more than one point, and Taviers being no longer able to assist us, Ramillies itself fell, after a prodigious fire and an obstinate resistance. The Comte de Guiche at the head of the regiment of Guards defended it for four hours, and performed prodigies, but in the end he was obliged to give way.
I saw the extraordinary word "Brom" pinned on to a photograph of Collier, and found out that it stood for Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet. "I can't help thinking that Marlborough finished off with Blenheim, because it is the sort of battle any one who is not even reading history has heard of," he explained, "and I have to get that idea out of my head.
"And suppose," says Esmond, who always had this gloomy apprehension, "the bonne cause should give us up to the French, as his father and uncle did before him?" "Give us up to the French!" starts up Bolingbroke; "is there any English gentleman that fears that? You who have seen Blenheim and Ramillies, afraid of the French!
The French were hardly able to cope with Marlborough during the next campaign, but rallied in 1706, during which year the great battle of Ramillies was fought, and won by Marlborough. The conquest of Brabant, and the greater part of Spanish Flanders, resulted from this victory; and Louis, crippled and humiliated, made overtures of peace.
Political and military genius set William and Marlborough in the forefront of the struggle; Lewis reeled beneath the shock of Blenheim and Ramillies; and shameful as were some of its incidents the Peace of Utrecht left England the main barrier against the ambition of the House of Bourbon. Nor was this a position from which any change of domestic policy could withdraw her.
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