Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

The loss of the French in the late action with the Prince of Cobourg near Quesnoy was immense. They were frequently attacked by the Austrians with the bayonet, and dreadful slaughter ensued ; but no effort, however great, could avail against the prodigious superiority of the French.

The following most extraordinary exertion, that never was, and probably never will be equalled, ought to be recorded to the honour of the artificers of Portsmouth Dock-yard: The Prince of Wales of 98 guns, went off the stocks on Saturday at eleven o'clock, came into the wet-dock next tide, and was caulked and coppered complete in nine hours, in order to show his Majesty the operation.

Oudenarde still held out when the last advices came away ; but, from the numerous army that invests it, and the determined ferocity with which it is attacked, we are fearful its possession by the allies is rendered extremely precarious.

Ghent holds out, but its security is not to be relied on unless the Duke of York should be enabled to afford it the necessary succours; and of this he does not speak with a sufficient degree of confidence to indulge a hope that the enemy may receive in that quarter an effectual check to their rapacious career.

Brussels, we may naturally conclude, is by this time in the hands of the French, the defence of which appears not to have been the object of the allied armies, who, as Prince Cobourg writes, were making dispositions to cover Namur, leaving Brussels to its fate; having previously, however, allowed the inhabitants time to remove such part of their property as might be deemed advisable.

Ten days before the meeting of Parliament, 1712, Dean Swift, who reprobated the then war, endeavored by his writings to persuade the nation to a peace, Dr. Johnson tells us, " Never had any writer more success." The people, who had been amused with bonfires and triumphal processions, and looked with idolatry on the General Marlborough, and his friends, who, as they thought, had made England the arbitress of nations, were confounded between shame and rage, when they found that mines of wealth had been exhausted, and millions destroyed, to secure the Dutch, or aggrandize the Emperor, without any advantage to ourselves ; that we had been bribing our neighbors to fight their own quarrel, and, that amongst our enemies, we might number our allies.