Ayrshire > Volume 2

268 HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE
Representative Peers. For Lord Mar he seems to have
entertained a high regard. Mar, on the death of his first
wife in 1707, meditated matrimony a second time.
Writing to him, the Earl observed — " To be happy and
marry twice is too much good fortune for any one man
to expect ... I am not glad to see so good a friend
change certain tranquility for so cruel an uncertainty."
In 1708 the Earl was back on the Continent serving
under Marlborough, and he was present at the victory of
Oudenarde, the third of Marlborough's four great
triumphs over the French army. Stair carried the Duke's
dispatches home. His own description of the battle, in
a letter to Lord Mar, is given with soldierly brevity : —
" We beat them all in one day. The action began to be
warm about six, and lasted till night. It was chiefly an
affair of foot. The French infantry, one may reckon, is
entirely ruined. We had the day after the battle about
7000 prisoners, 13 or 17 general officers, above 70 colours
and standards." The siege and capture of Lille followed
Oudenarde. The reduction of the city was long
protracted. The difficulties of feeding the army were
enormous, and the French clung to their defences with
desperate tenacity. Oudenarde was fought in July ; it
was in the end of October that Lille capitulated ; and,
says Stair with great nonchalance, " as soon as ever the
siege ended, it began to rain." The Earl was sent to
Warsaw in 170Q as envoy-extraordinary, in the hope of
persuading the Polish King to augment his forces with a
view to crushing the French, and he remained there till
1710, when, at his own request, and promoted to the
rank of Lieutenant-General and given a Knighthood of
St. Andrew, he returned to service in the field. When
Douay was taken that year, other French frontier towns
fell into the hands of the Allies, and so reduced were the
defensive power and resources of France that, according
to Voltaire, Lord Stair — who later was on terms of
personal acquaintance and correspondence with Voltaire
— proposed sending flying squadrons of cavalry right up
to the gates of Paris. By this time the British Govern-