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Updated: June 25, 2025
The Grail Quest was a theme which had been treated not once nor twice, but of which numerous, and conflicting, versions were already current, and, when Wauchier de Denain undertook to complete Chretien's unfinished work, he drew largely upon these already existing forms, regardless of the fact that they not only contradicted the version they were ostensibly completing, but were impossible to harmonize with each other.
Moreau had defeated Souvarow at Bassignano; Brune had defeated the Duke of York and General Hermann at Bergen; Massena had annihilated the Austro-Russians at Zurich; Korsakof had escaped only with the greatest difficulty; the Austrian, Hotz, with three other generals, were killed, and five made prisoners. Massena saved France at Zurich, as Villars, ninety years earlier, had saved it at Denain.
The flags of Denain and Fontenoy, and those of the first campaign in Italy, were already suspended from the columns which supported the roof. Two centenarian "Invalids" who had fought beside Marechal Saxe were standing, one to the right and one to the left of Berthier, like caryatides of an ancient world, gazing across the centuries.
At the commencement of 1711, Philip V. had acquired for his throne a security that Louis XIV. had not yet obtained for the integrity of his own frontiers, and without mistaking the influence of the victory of Denain, so wonderfully opportune, it is just, we think, to allow a far larger share than is customary to the thoroughly Spanish victory of Villaviciosa in the unhoped-for conditions obtained by France at the peace of Utrecht.
Some one said the ill-omened face of Mohun had been seen at the theatre the night before, and Macartney and Meredith with him. Meant to be a feast, the meeting, in spite of drink and talk, was as dismal as a funeral. Every topic started subsided into gloom. His Grace of Ormonde went away because the conversation got upon Denain, where we had been defeated in the last campaign.
The enemy's frigate is indeed most sadly a wreck, thirty-four men killed and eighty-four wounded, many of them mortally; one officer only has suffered, being badly wounded. She was commanded by Citizen Denain, capitaine de vaisseau, to whose obstinacy they ascribe the sacrifice of many lives.
After the most brilliant, the most continually and invariably triumphant of reigns, he began to see Fortune slipping away from him, and the grievous consequences of his errors successively overwhelming the state. "God is punishing me; I have richly deserved it," he said to Marshal Villars, who was on the point of setting out for the battle of Denain.
The French, by their frequent losses, which they chiefly attributed to the courage of our men, believed that a British general, at the head of British troops, was not to be overcome; and the Maréchal de Villars was quickly sensible of the advantage he had got; for, in a very few days after the desertion of the allies, happened the Earl of Albemarle's disgrace at Denain, by a feint of the Maréchal's, and a manifest failure somewhere or other, both of courage and conduct on the side of the confederates.
"I have lived long enough, sir," he said, "now that I have seen your Majesty victorious. You now know on what the fortune of battles depends." The victory of Fontenoy, like that of Denain, restored the courage and changed the situation of France.
Villars attacked a separate body of their troops, encamped at Denain, under the command of the earl of Albemarle. Their intrenchments were forced, and seventeen battalions either killed or taken. The earl himself and all the surviving officers were made prisoners.
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