Marlborough for declining battle before Cambrai, and that he was actually obliged to explain why he refused to sacrifice the fruit of his manœvres by attacking a superior force in a strong position with an army not only smaller in numbers at its best, but much thinned by a forced march and exhausted by fatigue. "I despair of being ever able to please all men," he wrote. "Those who are capable of judging will be satisfied with my endeavours: others I leave to their own reflections, and go on with the discharge of my duty."
It is possible that Villars only refrained from hindering Marlborough's passage of the Scheldt in deference to orders from Versailles, of which the Duke was as well aware as himself; but it is more than doubtful whether he ever intended the British to capture Bouchain. Though inferior in numbers, however, Marlborough covered himself so skilfully with entrenchments that Villars could not hinder him, while all attempts at diversion were met so readily that not one
Sept. 2/13. of them succeeded. Finally, the garrison surrendered as prisoners of war under the very eyes of Villars. The Duke would have followed up his success by the siege of Quesnoi, the town before which English troops first came under the fire of cannon in the year of Crecy; but by this time Lewis, with the help of the contemptible Harley, had succeeded in detaching England from the Grand Alliance. Though, therefore, the English ministers continued to encourage Marlborough in his operations, in order to conceal their own infamous conduct from the Allies, yet they took good care that those operations should proceed no further. So with the capture of Bouchain the last and not the least remarkable of Marlborough's campaigns came, always victoriously, to an end.
