VOL. II. BOOK VII. CHAPTER V
However fortunate might be the issue of Dettingen, it
served at least its purpose in preventing the despatch of
French reinforcements to the Danube and to Bohemia;
and the campaign of 1743 closed with the utter collapse
of Belleisle's great schemes and with the expulsion of
the French from Germany. It was now clear that the
war would be carried on in the familiar cockpit of the
Austrian Netherlands. Such a theatre was convenient
for France, since it lay close to her own borders, and
convenient for the Allies, because the Dutch had at
last been persuaded to join them, and because the
British would be brought nearer to their base at
Ostend. Marshal Saxe, whose fine talent had hitherto
been wasted under incompetent French Generals in
Bohemia, was appointed to the chief command of the
French in Flanders; and every effort was made to
give him a numerous and well-equipped army, and
to enable him to open his campaign in good time.
1744 In England the preparations by no means corresponded with the necessities of the position. The estimates indeed provided for a force of twenty-one thousand British in Flanders in 1744 as against sixteen thousand in the previous year, but only at the cost of
