The Battle of Malplaquet was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession which was fought in 1709 between an allied British-Dutch-German-Austrian army and a French army in northern France.
By 1709, the French strategic position was dire. Only the fortress at Mons lay between the Allied army and Paris. In spring 1709, the French king peremptorily dismissed the Allies' peace terms and instructed Marshal Claude de Villars to run any risk in order to save Mons and, with it, his capital. Villars was the only French general who was an equal of Marlborough. He chose his position at Malplaquet, where the terrain favored his outnumbered forces, and stationed his flanks in two woods, with the area between them fortified with earthqorks and the cavalry held in reserve. Marlborough and his ally Prince Eugene of Savoy launched massed attacks upon the French flanks, hoping that this would bring Villars to weaken his center, but on both wings the Allied army sustained heavy losses. The appearance of Allied cavalry on his extreme left brought Villars to weaken his center, just as Marlborough had hoped. The French center batteries were then seized. At this point the 30,000-strong Allied cavalry swept through to engage Louis XIV's horsemen. A disorganized but ferocious melee ensued. The French, although pushed back, were able to withdraw the bulk of their army in excellent order into the fortified lines of La Bassee, which commanded the road from Lille to Paris. Both sides subsequently claimed victory in the battle. The war dragged on for another four years until it was finally terminated by a series of treaties over the period 1713-1720 that allowed Louis XIV's grandson, Philip of Anjou, to become Felipe V of Spain while compensating the Allies with territorial gains, including Gibraltar and Menorca for Britain.