Chapter II: Marlborough (1)

A thorough estimate of Marlborough would fill a volume, and I must confine myself to the military career of one described by a great historian as “a prodigy of turpitude,” who “combined the genius of Richelieu with the genius of Turenne.” John Churchill was born in 1650, the offspring of parents who ranked among the landed gentry of Devon and Dorset, and who, without apparent gifts of their own, transmitted supreme ability to two descendants. Little is known about the first years of the boy; but the attachment he felt through life for the Church of England was probably more due to his Cavalier birth than to the assiduous care of a clerical tutor; and, unlike the Great Condé, Turenne, and Villars, he was not trained to arms by constant practice and study. It is, perhaps, mere gossip that he owed his first commission to the shame of a sister, Arabella Churchill, the mother of Berwick by James II.; and we might pass over his amour with Barbara Palmer, if it did not bring out, at an early age, proof of the love of money, which was a master vice of his richly endowed but most complex nature. He first saw war in an admirable school, having been placed on the staff of Turenne; he served under that great commander in the memorable campaigns of 1672 and 1674; soon attracted the special notice of his chief as an officer of extraordinary promise, and was publicly thanked by him on the field of Entzheim for the cool intrepidity which was one of his distinctive qualities. It is impossible to doubt that this experience was of the greatest advantage to the future warrior; and though there is a difference in the genius of the men, we may, I think, trace the example of Turenne in more than one of the great feats of Marlborough. The young, but already distinguished, soldier in 1678 married Sarah Jennings, then a beauty of Grammont, but long afterwards to become the Atossa of Pope’s vengeance, and the marriage, which led to a domestic history of a most strange and eventful kind, had a decisive effect on the fortunes alike of Churchill, of England, and even of Europe. The pair flourished at the little Court of the Duke of York, held in his provincial capital; and it is unnecessary to tell how the wife became Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess Anne, and acquired an ascendency over the future Queen which was to be followed by the most momentous results. During these years, Churchill first gave proof of the diplomatic skill which, at a later time, was to make him the master of the Grand Alliance. He negotiated some of the underhand bargains of Charles II. with Louis XIV., designed to make England a vassal of France, and for this and other services he obtained the reward of a Scotch, then akin to an Irish, peerage.

At the accession of James II. to the throne, Lord Churchill was made again an agent to obtain a bribe from the great Bourbon Sovereign; but though he was raised to the English Peerage, and he really crushed the rising of Monmouth by his direction of the Royal troops at Sedgemoor, he was left rather in the shade during the trying time when the King was carrying out his fatal policy against the laws, the liberties, and the Church of England. I do not justify his desertion of James, when at the head of his men, at a critical moment, but his guilt was shared by the first men of the time; and if self-interest, perhaps, was his ruling motive, the strong sympathy he certainly felt for the Church in part, I believe, determined his conduct. He participated in the Revolution and its spoils, was made Earl of Marlborough, and was given a seat at the Council of Nine, which ruled England, under Mary, in the absence of William; and he again gave proof of his military gifts in a sharp combat in the Low Countries, in his admirable conduct of the war in Ireland, and in his always able and successful advice. He was already the foremost of English soldiers, and his genius and promise had been recognized by more than one of the King’s veterans; but he was never really liked by William III., and the great captain who, had he been in command, would have changed the fortunes of Steenkirk and Landen, was usually kept at home in a subordinate place. Marlborough betrayed and abandoned William in turn. I shall not attempt to excuse the act; but soaring ambition, wounded to the quick, and the scorn of inferior men raised over his head, had probably more to do with his conduct than alarm at the prospect of the return of James, or a desire to place the Princess Anne on the throne; and in judging these things, we must never forget that many of his peers and colleagues were no less to blame, and that Revolution had destroyed loyalty, divided allegiance, and blighted good faith in the hearts of three-fourths of our leading statesmen. At this conjuncture, however, one act of Marlborough stands out marked as a foul deed of shame; he treacherously disclosed the descent on Brest, caused the death of an honoured companion-in-arms, and involved a large British force in destruction; and, corrupt and bad as the age was, had the crime and its author become known, the head of the criminal would, no doubt, have justly fallen on the block at Tower Hill. Marlborough, in fact, could not endure his late disgrace; he feared for his life, and made up his mind to come to terms at St. Germains, at any risk, and he sacrificed Talmash, without scruple, in order to weaken a detested Government, and to promote his own selfish ends.

The treason of Marlborough, in the affair of Brest, was unsuspected by the men of his time; but it is characteristic of a revolutionary age that William ere long turned to him again, though in merited disgrace for other offences. His ability, in fact, was necessary to the State, and politicians had few scruples; and the diplomatist who had shown skill and tact in the negotiations of the Stuarts with Louis XIV. was employed, and with marked success, by the King in cementing the Grand Alliance against the Bourbon Monarchy. On the death of William, Marlborough received the command of the English forces destined for the contest with France, and through the influence of Heinsius, the great Dutch Minister, he was placed at the head of the armies of the States. His reputation, already eminent, entitled him to this high position; but almost from the first he gained an ascendency in the direction of the military affairs of England which no other British general has possessed. This, as is well known, was due to the complete control his wife exercised over the Queen; Mrs. Freeman governed Mrs. Morley, and practically nearly guided the State; and Marlborough enjoyed more real authority than belonged to William, in England at least, until near the end of the war of the Spanish Succession. On the other hand, the English commander was by this time in his fifty-second year; he had never conducted war on a great scale, though he had proved himself to be a most able soldier, and it seemed scarcely probable that he could cope, with success, with the trained and experienced generals of France, brought up amidst the traditions of Turenne and Condé. No one dreamed, when Marlborough assumed his command, that Blenheim and Ramillies were not distant; and though the Allies had some advantages which they did not possess in previous contests, France had hitherto confronted Europe with success; and, as Spain and Bavaria were now on her side, the chances seemed to be in the main in her favour.

I must glance at the state of the military art at the beginning of the war of the Spanish Succession. Since the invasion of Holland in 1672, war had assumed ample and even vast dimensions; very large armies had appeared in the field, and the contest which had closed at the Peace of Ryswick had extended from the Shannon to the far wilds of Hungary. The obstacles, to the march of troops, which had existed in the preceding age, had been, to a certain extent, lessened; roads and agriculture had slightly improved; and owing to the great development of the efficacy of the attack, due to the engineering genius of Vauban, the power of fortresses had much declined, and they could scarcely ever offer a prolonged resistance, or permanently shield an endangered frontier. Strategy ought, therefore, to have made distinct progress; but exactly the contrary had been the case. No genius had appeared to turn to account the advantages offered by the new conditions, and the art had retrograded; for while all that belongs to what is material in it conduced to its advance, the intelligence which it requires to give it grandeur, and to rule matter, had been largely wanting. The operations of war during the thirty years before Marlborough emerged on the scene had been comparatively timid and slow; vast as were the masses arrayed in the field, we see scarcely a single great combination, a remarkable march, or a decisive battle, except in the case of the Turkish hordes; campaigns were feebly directed and had few results; and though sieges took much less time than formerly, armies seldom ventured to pass fortresses, or to make daring attempts at invasion. The reason simply was, there were no consummate chiefs; William III., Câtinat, Louis of Baden, Luxemburg, each with special and real merits of his own, were all generals of the second order, and the “sublime part of the art,” in Napoleon’s language, had had no masters to bring out its splendours since the grave had closed on Turenne and Condé. One peculiarity of the strategy of the time deserves the attention of the careful student, and it exhibits a marked backward tendency. The generals of the first half of the seventeenth century had made considerable use of great defensive lines; but Turenne had nearly exploded this system, and his triumphs were mainly due to his masterly movements. During the period that followed, inferior men went back to the routine of the past; as fortresses became of less importance, huge barriers were raised to cover frontiers, and whole campaigns were spent in manœuvres to turn or to force these artificial obstacles. This indicates a decline in the art, though the value of these lines was often great, and[4] it has, perhaps, been underrated in our time.

While strategy had thus, for a moment, declined, a change had passed over the art of tactics. Armies had continued to grow in numbers, and infantry--its importance becoming recognized--was now the arm of greatest force on a field of battle. The bayonet, too, had been invented, and this invention, almost a revolution in itself, by degrees largely modified the old formations of the age of Gustavus, Turenne, and Condé. The masses of pikemen and musketeers arrayed in dense squares and close columns, were gradually replaced by extended lines of infantry, whose weapon combined the powers of the musket and pike; and though these lines were still deep and serried, foot, owing to the change, covered far more ground on a given field than had been the case formerly. The general result of these two circumstances was that, in almost all instances, the front of battles was enlarged to an immense extent; instead of occupying a few hundred yards, armies about to engage filled vast spaces, and as these could scarcely ever be open plains, and usually presented local features, such as woods, streams, hills, and folds of the ground, it became of increased importance to turn to account these peculiarities in any impending conflict. Skill in tactics, accordingly, began to consist less in seizing an opportunity to throw cavalry upon infantry exposed or broken than in so arranging the three arms, and employing them as to derive advantage from the special characteristics of the field; and the old order of battle, horse on either wing, foot in the centre, and guns in front, as a fixed system, became obsolete; and each arm began to be so disposed as to be made most effective, having regard to the actual situation and its accidents of place. This change, though slow, had become manifest; it had been conspicuously seen on the great day of Zenta, where the powers of Eugene were first displayed; and battles, though very different from what they are now, had assumed an essentially modern aspect, troops acting in concert, by no method of routine, but so as always best to support each other, and to make use of the ground with this object in view.

The tactics, however, of this age, in what may be called their subordinate parts, had little in common with those of a later period. Cavalry was still considered the most active arm, and far the most efficient in the shock of battle; the proportion of horsemen to foot was still much larger than it has become in the present century, and a general still mainly relied on cavalry for the decisive movements that assured victory. Though infantry, too, had greatly increased in numbers, and its power in action had been largely multiplied, it was still deemed rather an arm to support, to defend, and to cover the ground, than to strike; the old traditions still clung to it; its lines, four deep at least, were clumsy and heavy, and did not furnish sufficient fire; it often was formed in dense columns, and it had never yet decided a battle by its own special and unaided efforts. As for artillery, guns were still few, and the days of horse artillery had not come; and though the power of the arm had been much augmented, and its true uses had been partly ascertained, it was still in an undeveloped state. The tactics of the day, therefore, so far as regards the handling of the three arms, were still immature; and one of the methods of these, the blending together in single or in successive lines of horsemen and footmen, in an offensive movement, though often witnessed, is now obsolete. For the rest, armies were still loosely formed; they were still arrays of battalions and squadrons, and they were as yet without that complete unity which has made them more perfect instruments of war. As for discipline and equipment, little had been changed since the grand reforms of Louvois and Turenne; armies had become bodies of regular troops with officers, as a rule, of a noble class; and the system of magazines, of depôts of supplies, and of trains remained what it had been, strategic science having made no progress. The organization of the French army was still decidedly the best in Europe; but it had been imitated with more or less success by more than one of the Continental armies; and the difference in this respect was probably less than it had been thirty years previously. As for the British army, it already possessed fine regiments, of unsurpassed worth; but, as has always happened, it was badly organized, and its organization, such as it was, owed much to the care of William III.

I must pass rapidly over the two first campaigns, in which Marlborough held supreme command. The theatre of the war was the Low Countries as, indeed, was usually the case with him; and, as Spain was now in alliance with France, the French armies occupied the Belgian provinces from the mouths of the Scheldt to the Lower Meuse. Either from over-confidence, however, or perhaps, because the incapable Chamillart had become his minister, Louis XIV., at the beginning of the war, paid little attention to this frontier; and Marlborough was largely superior in force when the campaign of 1702 opened. The object of the British commander was to master the course of the Meuse, with a view to gain a base for more decisive efforts; though hampered already by the Dutch deputies, and the many impediments of a coalition, his march was a series of easy triumphs; Venloo, Liège, and other places fell, with Kaiserwerth on the Middle Rhine; and, if Boufflers made a gallant resistance, he was compelled to fall back to the Upper Meuse. Marlborough received a dukedom for these services. The recompense now appears extravagant, and was, doubtless, largely due to the favour of the Queen; but we must recollect that the arms of France had scarcely ever been checked before, and for half a century had been deemed invincible.

The operations of the campaign of 1703 first distinctly brought out the powers of Marlborough in designing great combinations of war, and should be studied by those who deny that he possessed the gift of strategic genius. The French had been forced back to the Upper Meuse, but they still held most of the Belgian strongholds, and they occupied a vast system of defensive lines, formed by the rivers and forests of an intricate country, and extending from the Mehaigne, not far from Namur, to the verge of Antwerp, and thence to Ostend. Marlborough aiming, as he always did, at a vital point, and seeking to carry the war to the frontier of France, but knowing the difficulties of a direct attack, resolved to turn and pass this great obstacle, and thence to advance to the French seaboard; and the measures he took to accomplish his “great design,” as he called it, in perfectly true language, were in the highest degree admirable. The French, largely reinforced, held the lines and the fortresses with probably[5] 130,000 men; the strength of the allies was not 100,000, but Marlborough possessed the immense advantage, ever to be borne in mind by an English chief, of the mastery of the movable base of the sea, and he clearly saw how to turn this to account. His plan, simple alike and excellent, was to hold Boufflers, now supported by Villeroy, in check himself with the bulk of his forces; in the meantime the lines were to be assailed by Cohorn and Opdam with the Dutch army, and this attack was to be combined with a descent on the coast, to be made to the south by an English fleet, in order to harass and perplex the enemy. This grand project which, in its conception, reveals the genius of a great captain, and which ought to have sent the allied armies past the French lines to the Upper Lys, was frustrated by the errors of the Dutch commanders, and by the jealousies and intrigues too common in a league. Cohorn neglected his mission to ravage a province; Opdam made a false and premature movement, and before Marlborough had his grasp on his enemy, Boufflers, leaving Villeroy in Marlborough’s front, and making a forced march with conspicuous skill, anticipated Opdam as he approached Antwerp, and defeated him with heavy loss at Eckeren. The “great design” had thus been revealed and baffled; but Marlborough believed it could yet be accomplished, and moving on Antwerp with the mass of his army, he proposed to force the French to fight a great battle, hoping, if successful, to get across their lines. Timid and divided counsels, however, prevailed; the Dutch commanders refused to second their colleague, and Marlborough, bitterly vexed, returned to the Meuse. The capture of the small place of Huy was the only fruit of the campaign of 1703, and Marlborough was so indignant at the conduct of the Dutch that he was on the point of throwing up his command.

THEATRE OF THE
CAMPAIGN
of 1704.]

Happily for the Grand Alliance, ambition and interest diverted Marlborough from this hasty purpose; and the memorable campaign of 1704 was to be the most renowned of his triumphs. Bavaria had joined France in 1703; a real chief, the illustrious Villars, had overcome Louis of Baden on the Rhine, had marched into the Swabian lowlands, and had defeated a German force on the Danube; and had the Elector of Bavaria followed his counsels, and his colleagues in Italy given him aid, he would have anticipated the campaign of 1805, and have ended the war by a march on Vienna. Villars, however, was disliked at Munich and Versailles, and, unlike Marlborough, had an unhappy temper; he was recalled for a squabble with the Elector; and his place was filled by the incompetent Marsin, who could not even comprehend his strategy. Yet the situation of the Empire remained most critical; a combined French and Bavarian army threatened the capital from the Iller and the Inn; the insurrection of Hungary raged in the East; and Austria might be overrun and even subdued if the grand project of Villars were ably carried out. Eugene, the first of the Imperialist chiefs, perceived the danger and sought to avert it; he addressed himself, not in vain, to Marlborough; and a plan of operations was agreed between them, which, it was hoped, would detach Bavaria from France, and at least prevent an advance on Vienna.

The situation of the belligerent armies on the theatre of war shows that it was difficult in the extreme to give effect to any combination of the kind. Marlborough commanded the principal force of the allies; but he was on the Meuse far away from the Danube, and was held in check, as it appeared, by Villeroy, with an army that ought to have sufficed for the purpose; Tallard, at the head of a powerful army, was on the Rhine, confronting a much weaker enemy--the contingent, in fact, defeated by Villars--drawn within the well-known lines of Stolhoffen, formed to prevent an attack from Alsace; and the Elector and Marsin were in Swabia, greatly superior in force to Louis of Baden, who held the approaches from the Black Forest. For Marlborough to attain the heart of the Empire, through these masses of surrounding enemies, seemed to be almost an impossible task; but he encountered the risk, and adopted a project which, I am convinced, was a thought of Eugene’s, for it bears the mark of his peculiar genius, in which grandeur was combined with rashness. Breaking up from the Lower Meuse, on the 19th of May, at the head of, perhaps, 70,000 men, increased as he advanced, by German contingents, he crossed the Rhine and made for Mayence; he then pressed forward to the Main and the Neckar, and having traversed the Franconian plains, he reached the Danube near Ulm on the 22nd of June, and joined hands with Louis of Baden, a movement resembling the best of Turenne’s as regards its admirable speed and decision. His despatches prove that he was fully aware of the peril of this audacious march, with Villeroy in his rear and Tallard on his flank; but possibly no other course was open; and, as always happened with him, he did not hesitate, and he executed his task with consummate skill. Marlborough and Baden were now immensely superior in force to the Elector and Marsin, who, on being informed of the approach of Marlborough, had advanced from the Iller, and attained the Danube; and the allied chiefs did not lose an instant in turning their present advantage to account. Leaving a considerable force to restrain the enemy, they moved down the Danube quickly to Donauwörth; and after a fierce and well-contested struggle stormed the heights of the Schellenberg covering the town, and became masters of the course of the river. Within a few days, the victorious army was overrunning the Bavarian plains and harrying them, after the fashion of the age, in order to force the Elector to yield; Marlborough having completely transformed the situation for a time by operations which had astounded Europe.

While Marlborough had thus attained and overcome the Danube, what had been the conduct of the French commanders he had left behind on the Meuse and the Rhine? Villeroy had nearly 40,000 men in hand; the army of Tallard, even allowing for a detachment sent in the spring to Marsin, must have been about 45,000 strong; and had these chiefs been capable men, they ought to have prevented Marlborough’s movement, though, it is fair to remark, they were bound and hampered by injudicious orders from Versailles. Had they combined their armies and crossed the Rhine, they ought easily to have carried the lines of Stolhoffen--these did not stop Villars a few years afterwards--and crushed the feeble army of defence; and they then ought to have been able to have forestalled Marlborough, in what was a strategic flank march of extreme risk, to have at least fallen on his communications between the Neckar, the Main, and the Danube, and to have perhaps compelled him to fight in positions where the loss of a battle would have been ruinous. Villeroy and Tallard, however, were not great chiefs; they marched and counter-marched, lost many weeks, and allowed their enemy to pass them by; and it was only in July, when Marlborough and Baden were, we have seen, in the heart of Bavaria, that they took anything like a decided course. Their armies, before united, were now again divided; Villeroy crossed the Rhine to observe the lines of Stolhoffen, occupied now by Eugene, at the head of, perhaps, 30,000 men; and Tallard made for the Black Forest, with a force probably 35,000 strong, in order to join hands with the Elector and Marsin.

The junction was effected on the 4th of August, not far from the central town of Augsburg, and the collected armies must have formed a mass of nearly 70,000 men at least, for the most part troops of the best quality. Meanwhile, Villeroy had altogether failed to hold Eugene along the Rhine in check; that great captain, when aware of the movement of Tallard, resolved to give support to Marlborough and Baden, already menaced by the combined enemies; and he broke up from his lines and flew to the Danube, with a force of about 15,000 men, having left a detachment to keep back Villeroy, and having baffled that most worthless commander. He was at Höchstedt on the 8th of August--the scene of the victory gained by Villars--and, leaving his small force on the northern bank, he crossed the Danube to confer with Marlborough, at the time at Aichach, to the north-east of Augsburg. A grand opportunity was offered again to the French, who, in this campaign, seemed always to miss the occasion. The combined Bavarian and French armies were, at this moment, quite near Höchstedt; and had they made a rapid and decisive movement, they might have crushed the isolated wing of Eugene, and have placed Marlborough, who had been left by Baden, in order to make the siege of Ingoldstadt, in a position of the most critical kind, in a hostile country, with an enemy on his flank, and separated from his base on the Danube. Tallard, Marsin, and the Elector, however, paused; they crossed the Danube, indeed, at Lauingen; but they did not attempt to fall on Eugene; and Marlborough, meanwhile--he clearly saw his danger--marched with extraordinary speed from Aichach, and came into line with his daring colleague, west of Donauwörth on the 11th of August. The allied chiefs decided to attack the enemy, who, by this time, was in a strong position, in a region of marsh and forest, where the stream of the Nebel falls into the Danube through a plain bounded by the villages of Lützingen and Blenheim. Less confident men would hardly have run the risk, for the hostile army already threatened the line of their communications northwards; and a serious defeat might have been destruction.

I can only describe in faint outline the great and decisive battle that followed. By the early dawn of the 13th of August, the allied army had passed the defiles which lead through Dapfheim into the plain of the Nebel, and began to take up its positions for attack. Marlborough and Eugene had hoped to surprise the enemy, and Tallard and Marsin were really unprepared; in fact, with the Elector, they thought that the allies were falling back on Nördlingen, on the line of their communications with the Main. The French and Bavarians, however, were soon ready; but some hours passed before the hostile armies had joined in the actual shock of battle. Each was from 55,000 to 60,000 strong; but the French and Bavarian army, a veteran force, was probably a better instrument of war than the composite masses of many races collected under the allied standards. The dispositions, however, of the French marshals were essentially bad, and gave the great commanders opposed to them a distinct advantage. Tallard and Marsin seem to have been convinced that the Nebel, which ran across their front, was impassable or could be passed only by an enemy with extreme difficulty; and that if Lützingen and Blenheim, with the neighbouring village of Oberglau, were held in strong force, the allies, should they advance on the Nebel, would be stopped at the centre by a powerful obstacle, and on either wing could be easily repelled. They divided their army accordingly into two masses, each, it would seem, of nearly equal force; and while they crowded their right wing at Blenheim, and placed large bodies of men at Oberglau, and at Lützingen on their left wing, their extended centre was weakly occupied by a long line of cavalry only, supported by an insignificant body of footmen. This conception was altogether ill-founded; the obstacle of the Nebel was not very great, and were it once forced it would fare ill with the thin and ill-guarded French centre, and even with the wings--with the right especially, cooped up in Blenheim and close to the Danube. The vice of the arrangement, there is reason to believe, was perceived by Marlborough almost at once; the masses of the allied army were so arrayed as to be ready to assail the hostile centre; and Tallard, who commanded the French right, when he saw this, it is said, asked Marsin, who was in command of the French left, to send reinforcements to the threatened point, but only received an angry refusal.

The battle began at about 9 A.M., Marlborough attacking Blenheim from the allied left, while Eugene made a circuitous march on the right; and the attack on Blenheim--which, I conceive, was a feint only to deceive the enemy--was repulsed with no inconsiderable loss. At about noon, when he had been made aware that Eugene was engaged with Marsin, Marlborough made a first great effort against the French centre; and a mass of cavalry, formed in two lines, with a mass of infantry in their front and their rear, was launched forward to cross the Nebel. The French horsemen, however, were not wanting to themselves; they fell with terrible effect on the hostile array as it was entangled and confused in the passage; and though part of Marlborough’s troops succeeded in the attempt, they were held to the spot and made no progress. Meanwhile, a secondary allied attack on Oberglau had altogether failed; and though Marlborough’s presence restored the contest, it has been thought that had Tallard and Marsin co-operated at this moment in a counter-attack, the French and Bavarian army might have won a victory. Eugene, however, who, with an inferior force, had held Marsin in check by prodigious efforts, sent a detachment to the aid of his colleague, and about 4 P.M. Marlborough was once more free to strike what he had seen from the first was the vulnerable point in the hostile position. Massing footmen and horsemen once more together, he hurled them against the French centre; and though the French cavalry fought to the last, their weak support of infantry gave way, and the centre yielded to the overwhelming pressure. The victorious army, with Marlborough at its head, was now master of the whole position of its foes; and turning in full force against the French right, shut up in Blenheim and pressed against the Danube, it compelled it, almost at once, to surrender. Marsin and the Elector, who, unlike Eugene, had done nothing to aid a companion in arms, contrived to effect their retreat in safety; but an accident only averted their ruin. The loss of the victors was, probably, from 11,000 to 12,000 men; that of the French and Bavarians was 40,000; and the routed army was, in fact, destroyed.

This splendid campaign, decisive as it was, cannot be deemed a strategic masterpiece. The project of the march from the Meuse to the Danube, with Villeroy in the rear and Tallard on the Rhine, was too hazardous to deserve high praise;[6] and Eugene, I repeat, was, I think, its author, though Marlborough is, of course, responsible for it. Had Condé been in the place of Villeroy, and Turenne held the staff of Tallard, Marlborough, I believe, would not have attained Donauwörth, and the great campaign of 1704 would have probably had a different issue. Remarkable, too, as was the skill of Eugene in eluding Villeroy, and pushing on to the Danube, in order to join his colleague, he ought not to have left an isolated detachment in little force within reach of an enemy fourfold in strength; and had Tallard and Marsin been real chiefs, they would have crushed Eugene and have placed Marlborough in extreme peril, when he stood alone and inferior in force in his camp at[7] Aichach. Apart, however, from these risks and mistakes, Eugene and Marlborough, especially the last, carried out their plans with consummate ability. The march from the Meuse, by the Main, to the Danube, was a prodigy of execution for the age; the advance to the Schellenberg was rapid and brilliant; and the forced march from Aichach to join Eugene was admirable for its quickness and boldness. The decision, too, to give battle at Blenheim was characteristic of great captains; it was hazardous, but a retreat would have lost the whole fruits of a successful campaign, and very probably would have been fatal.

Nevertheless, it is upon the field of Blenheim that Marlborough’s genius becomes most manifest. With that perfect insight which never failed him, he at once perceived what was false and defective in the disposition of the hostile army. He concentrated his forces against the one weak point; and though he was beaten back and even placed in danger, he never relaxed his efforts, carrying out his purpose with inflexible constancy and calm firmness until he had pierced the enemy’s centre, and made a decisive victory certain. Here we see the development of what we may call the new tactics in full perfection. Tallard and Marsin did not comprehend the ground, and unskilfully arrayed their troops upon it. Marlborough took in the situation at a glance, and so conducted the battle that an overwhelming mass was brought to bear on the decisive spot. Nothing, too, could have been more admirable than the loyalty of Eugene to his colleague; but for his support Marlborough might have lost the battle; and the result of Blenheim was, in fact, due to the unrivalled tactics of the one chief and the chivalrous and unselfish zeal of the other. As for the French Marshals, the arrangements they made might have succeeded against inferior men; but, if formidable in appearance they were radically bad; though Tallard of the two is the least to blame, for he understood the mistake that was made; and Marsin deserves the severest censure for disregarding Tallard’s advice, and for neglecting all through to send him assistance--a too characteristic fault of the warriors of France. The conduct of the allied army was such as great chiefs almost always obtain from the troops they lead. English, Austrians, and Prussians fought like heroes; but the French and Bavarians had perhaps the better army--and the French cavalry made magnificent efforts, if the surrender at Blenheim betrays the weakness of the French soldier in the hour of defeat. Blenheim, in truth, was a general’s not a soldier’s battle; the triumph of genius in command, not of mere valour.

Blenheim saved the Empire, and set Germany free; and the defeated army, a shattered wreck, reaching the Rhine in fragments, fled into Alsace. Having cleared the German bank of the river, the Allies sat down before the great place of Landau, which covered the approaches to the French frontier; but, though the fortress made an heroic resistance, Marlborough had entered the Palatinate by the close of autumn, had seized the important points of Trarbach and Trêves, and had secured a base for the invasion of France. Everything, he hoped, would be ready by the early spring--armies still seldom held the field in winter--and his purpose was to advance into Lorraine by the valleys of the Moselle and the Sarre, with an army of 100,000 men formed of contingents of many nations, the line long afterwards marked out by Gneisenau, and followed by Moltke in 1870. This indicates a true strategic eye; and, in fact, in strategy as well as in tactics Marlborough always detected the fault in the cuirass, and seized the vulnerable point on the scene before him. The great Englishman, however, had not the good fortune of the renowned Dane many years afterwards. Marlborough was not seconded as Moltke was. Louis of Baden, who on the field of manœuvre held the place of the Crown Prince of Prussia in August 1870, refused to move even a man from the Rhine; and though Marlborough advanced to the Moselle, in the early summer of 1705, in order to force the hand of his colleague, he had not sufficient force to make a decisive movement. Marlborough, too, had a very different man to cope with from Napoleon III.; his antagonist was Villars, already proved to be incomparably the greatest of living French chiefs, and destined to justify the proud title of “Invincible,” given by a grateful Sovereign. The operations of Villars were able in the extreme; assailing the heads of Marlborough’s columns, but taking care to cover his own flanks, he retreated to the well known position of Sierk, resting on the Moselle and a chain of heights, and he calmly awaited the victor of Blenheim. The hostile armies were each about 50,000 strong--the Memoirs of Villars are incorrect in making out that his foe had 80,000 men; but Marlborough, deprived of the support of Baden, did not venture to risk an attack, and, after waiting some days, he recoiled, baffled, and fell back to the country round Trêves. He was so angry that he sent a message to Villars to explain the cause of his retreat; but though his colleague was wholly to blame, Villars had gained his object and had saved France from an invasion which might have ended the war.

Marlborough was ere long recalled to the theatre which had been the scene of his first exploits. Villeroy by this time had returned to the Meuse with an army greatly strengthened since the year before, and, at the head of about 70,000 men, he had retaken Huy, advanced down the Meuse, and seized the important town of Liège. Terror now prevailed in the councils of the States; their chief commander, Auverquerque, had been defeated; and Marlborough was compelled to break up from Trêves, to abandon the hope of invading France, and to try to restore the war in the Low Countries. He had joined Auverquerque by the first week of July, and he instantly assumed a bold offensive at the head of about 60,000 men. Villeroy, a noisy braggart and an incapable chief, was out-manœuvred and lost Huy; and he had soon fallen back to the great French lines extending across Belgium from the Mehaigne to the sea, which had been the scene of operations in 1703. Marlborough, despite a protest of the Dutch deputies--they hampered him in all his great movements--resolved, to master and pass the obstacle; he marched across the well-known field of Landen, which had witnessed Luxemburg’s brilliant triumph, and deceiving Villeroy by well-designed feints, he forced the lines near Tirlemont on the Gheete, winning a bloody combat, and taking many prisoners. The beaten army fell back to the Dyle, in the hope of covering Louvain and Brussels, but Marlborough crossed the stream at Genappe; and on the 18th of August he was about to assail the French in position not far from Waterloo--a village then wholly unknown to fame--when once more Dutch fears and jealousies prevented his fighting a decisive battle. He was again so indignant that he wrote to England, declaring that he would leave his command; and his operations, in truth, had been shamefully thwarted. Deserted by Baden in the beginning of the year, he had failed in his project of invading France; crossed by the Generals and Commissioners of the States, he had not been able to bring Villeroy to bay, and the only result of the campaign of 1705, which might have seen the Allies on the Marne and the Seine, was the capture of the French lines in Belgium, a result important indeed, but not very remarkable.

Marlborough spent the winter of 1705–6 in visiting crowned heads of the Grand Alliance; a master of diplomacy as well as of war, he threw the spell of commanding genius over the King of Denmark and the King of Prussia, and secured pledges of support for the ensuing campaign. He had been so ill-treated by the States that he wished to invade the South of France in 1706, in concert with his loyal colleague, Eugene; and it would be a curious speculation whether this effort, which failed in his absence in 1706–7, and has never yet been attended with success, would have succeeded had Marlborough been in command. He was, however, induced to return to the Low Countries, and he advanced towards the Meuse to threaten Namur, a great strategic point for a march into France, with an army of about 60,000 men. With the infatuation that befalls despots, Louis XIV. still had faith in Villeroy, and though deprived of the protection of the lines, the Marshal was ordered to take the offensive. Villeroy was advancing towards Leuwe with an army equal in numbers, at least, to that of his foe, when he met Marlborough on his march southwards, in a country of marsh, woodland, and low hills, between the Mehaigne and the lesser Gheete, crowned by the insignificant village of Ramillies.

THE

CAMPAIGNS

in

Belgium and North of France.]

A few words must suffice to trace the incidents of the great battle that followed. On the 23rd of May 1706, the French army, with a Bavarian wing--the Elector still clung to the fortunes of France--was seen arrayed on a range of upland, extending from near the course of the Mehaigne to beyond the little Gheete, on the hill of St. André, the villages of Ramillies and Autre Eglise, and a morass formed by the Gheete and its feeders, covering the position across three-fourths of its front. Villeroy had formed his army into two masses, his right nearly upon the Mehaigne, but strongly occupying an old Roman road which led across the plain in a line with the river, his centre and left along the marshes of the Gheete; and he held Ramillies and Autre Eglise as fortified outposts. The position seemed formidable, as at Blenheim, but the eagle eye of Marlborough saw at a glance that his enemy’s arrangements had two marked defects, and that able manœuvring would assure him victory. Villeroy’s centre and left, especially the left, covered by an impassable swamp, was not assailable; but neither could he attack that side; and Marlborough held the chord of the arc in front of the French Marshal’s position. Marlborough prepared his battle with that unerring judgment which scarcely ever forsook him in war; and the result was a splendid and complete triumph. The English chief began by a feint against the French left, which, of course, was repelled without difficulty; but it had the effect which Marlborough hoped for; Villeroy detached from his right to support his left, weakening thus his army at the real point of attack. Marlborough fell once more on the French left, in order to distract the attention of his foe; and then, turning his shorter line to account, and moving rapidly a great body of troops unseen by Villeroy, behind a hill and a wood, he struck the French right in overwhelming force, his men threefold in numbers, at the critical point, pressing forward along the Roman causeway into the very heart of the hostile position. The French centre and left, held bound to the spot, and scarcely able to move, saw the battle lost, and made few efforts to avert defeat; and though the French right fought well for a time, the resistance was not like that at Blenheim, for the French soldier had lost the moral power of success. The villages of Ramillies and Autre Eglise were quickly stormed, without heavy loss; and the French right was ere long overpowered, and fled from the field in despair and rout. Villeroy’s centre and left, being not assailable, drew off for a time in fair order; but the contagion of defeat soon affected the men, and his whole army became a horde of fugitives, abandoning guns and standards, and were captured by thousands. Marlborough followed up his victory with the strokes of a master; he was free to act and he achieved wonders; and in a few days at most the whole of Belgium and its fortresses had become his spoils. Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp, and even Ostend fell with a rapidity for that age surprising; the French, hopelessly demoralized, made no stand, and, before the autumn had closed, the allied standards had been carried to the Lys and the Scheldt, and waved ominously near the frontier of France.

I would select Ramillies as the most distinctive and characteristic of Marlborough’s battles. Eugene shares the honours of Blenheim with him, and the issue hung in suspense at Blenheim; but Ramillies was a masterpiece all his own, and the victory was never for a moment doubtful. The day was won by a single stroke of tactics; and here again we see the peculiar excellence of Marlborough in the highest perfection, his genius in taking advantage of the ground, and in turning to account the faults of his enemy. France seemed fallen after the campaign of 1706, marked, not only by this immense disaster, but by Eugene’s grand campaign on the Po, through which the French were expelled from Italy; yet the exhausted nation suddenly made one of those prodigious and heroic efforts which have so often astounded Europe. Berwick, a nephew of Marlborough, and in war a Churchill, reconquered Spain in the great fight of Almanza; and an attempt to invade Provence and to besiege Toulon, though conducted by Eugene, completely failed. Meanwhile Louis XIV., taught at last by misfortune, had replaced Villeroy in his command by Vendôme, a man of many gifts and many evil qualities; and the King strained the resources of his realm to the utmost to make head against his foes in the Low Countries. Vendôme took the field with about 100,000 men; Marlborough certainly was inferior in force; and the campaign of 1707 was spent in manœuvres between the Lys, the Scheldt, and the Sambre, with little results.

I shall only glance at the campaign of 1708, for though Marlborough gained a succession of triumphs, it was less marked, perhaps, by his peculiar genius than by the fatal dissensions of the French chiefs, and the profound demoralization of the French army. Vendôme recovered Ghent, and the line of the Lys; he even passed the Scheldt, and advanced to the Dender, and though he failed to capture Oudenarde, he held a favourable position when he confronted Marlborough on the Dender, in the first days of July. He was embarrassed, however, by a fatal burden; the Duke of Burgundy, rather a monk than a soldier, shared with him an ill-defined command; and the Duke insisted on falling back to the Scheldt, renouncing the initiative with timid weakness. Marlborough by this time had been joined by Eugene, who had moved from the Moselle into Belgium; and the two chiefs advanced to the relief of Oudenarde, resolved, if possible, to fight a great battle. The march of the French had been extremely slow, owing to the bickerings of the Duke and Vendôme; but they were collected upon the Scheldt near Gaveren; and they ought to have made the Allies rue an audacious attempt to cross the river. The divided chiefs, however, sent forward only a weak detachment to dispute the passage. This was cut to pieces after a short struggle; and Marlborough and his colleague bridged the Scheldt under the beard, so to speak, of the ill-directed enemy. The hostile armies met, on the 11th of July, in a region of plain and forest outside Oudenarde. Each was probably about 70,000 strong; and the fortunes of France were once more marred by timidity and divided counsels. Marlborough had gained ground on the French right, when Vendôme wished to attack from his left, but the Duke of Burgundy had resolved to fall back; and though the retreat began in good order, the French troops, hard pressed and wretchedly led, broke up by degrees in ignominious flight. The defeated army was unable to rally until it had found a refuge near Ghent; and Marlborough and Eugene, pressing boldly forward, overran the country between the Lys and the Scheldt, and sate down before the vast stronghold of Lille. I cannot dwell on the great siege that followed, the most remarkable of the whole contest. Lille was a place of extraordinary strength. It was defended by Boufflers with a large garrison; it was surrounded by neighbouring friendly fortresses, and it had the support of the army that had fought at Oudenarde, and of another army of relief which, under Berwick, had followed the steps of Eugene from the Moselle. To capture such a stronghold appeared impossible--Vendôme ridiculed the very notion, and yet Marlborough and Eugene accomplished the task, though Boufflers made an heroic resistance. This undoubtedly was in a great measure due to the ability and daring of the allied chiefs. Eugene clung to the fortress with tenacious constancy, and Marlborough gave proof of extraordinary resource in covering the siege and in maintaining his communications open through all kinds of obstacles. Yet Lille would probably not have fallen but for the animosities of the French commanders. Vendôme openly quarrelled with the Duke of Burgundy, and Berwick sullenly stood aloof from both; and the two armies of relief did almost nothing. The moral power, too, of the French soldiery was fatally injured by these disputes and failures; and when Lille fell, the war seemed about to close in a triumphant march of the Allies on Paris.