MARLBOROUGH.
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.
[Illustration: MARLBOROUGH.]
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.
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration: THEATRE OF
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.
At this crisis, indeed, the condition of France was such as might
have made even men like Richelieu and Turenne begin to despair. The
convulsive effort of 1707 had failed; the Allies were on the verge of
Artois; and the Monarchy in decline, and the exhausted nation seemed
unable to confront the mass of their enemies. Yet Louis XIV. did not
lose heart; he refused the insolent proposals of the Dutch to take up
arms against his own grandson, and he appealed, not in vain, to an
heroic people. Recruits flocked in thousands to defend the lilies;
the misery, in truth, and the prostration of France, increased the
numbers that joined her armies; but everything that constitutes
organized force--supplies, depôts, and magazines, were wanting. The
King, however, throwing prejudice aside, at last confided the army
on his northern frontier to the one commander who had never failed
in the calamitous war of the Spanish Succession. History and gossip
have alike been unjust to Villars; he was ridiculed in England and
hated at Versailles, but he was a general of extraordinary powers,
for he combined almost in the highest degree the great faculties of
Turenne and Condé. Yet when Villars, in the spring of 1709, assumed the
command of his master’s army, he was almost appalled at the prospect
before him; he was at the head of perhaps 100,000 men, but he was so
ill supplied that he could make no movement. It is on occasions like
these that French soldiers, when ably directed, show at their best.
Villars in a few weeks had obtained the means of operating with some
hope of success, and he had breathed into his troops that extreme
self-confidence which was one of his most distinctive qualities. By the
early summer he was in positions of formidable strength, in the space
between the heads of the Lys and the Scheldt, and covering the low
ranges overlooking Artois; and he had protected himself with defensive
lines that extended almost from the feeders of the Scheldt to the sea.
Marlborough and Eugene were now at the head of from 110,000 to 120,000
men, and Marlborough, with true strategic insight, proposed to turn
the French lines by the coast, combining the attack with a descent on
Boulogne, supported by British troops and a fleet, and then, passing
the Somme and masking its fortresses, to press forward boldly to the
capital of France. This was a recurrence to the “great design” of
1703, and worthy of a chief of supreme genius; and it is an additional
proof that Marlborough perceived, with perfect clearness, the immense
importance to an English army of the command of the sea. The Dutch
deputies, however, refused to sanction a movement they doubtless could
not understand; and Eugene, I believe, agreed with them, for, as we
shall see, he had formed a plan of quite a different kind to invade
France. The Allies had now “to take the bull by the horns,” and to
enter France through the network of fortresses, of rivers, canals,
and intricate woodland, which still covers her northern frontier; and
issuing from Lille in great strength, they proceeded to invest the
stronghold of Tournay, in order to secure and widen their base. The
place fell after a weak resistance, and Marlborough and Eugene now
turned against Mons, still pursuing the same methodical warfare, and
hoping to master the line of the Sambre. This was too much for Villars,
who would have been placed in extreme difficulty had the Allies gained
the heads of the Sambre without a contest. He issued from his lines
in the first week of September, and by the 10th he had taken a strong
position in a wide opening between two masses of woodland, not far from
the beleaguered fortress, which overlook the heathy plain and the
hamlet of Malplaquet, ever since a great name. He fortified ground,
naturally perilous to attack, with all the resources of the art of the
engineer; and he boldly awaited the advance of the enemy.
The allied chiefs had meant to attack Villars before he had made these
formidable lines; but, as usual, they were crossed by the deputies
of the States, and the result proved how disastrous had been their
meddling. In the early dawn of the 11th of September, Marlborough and
Eugene put their army in motion, and the French army was soon descried
holding a position which has been aptly described as “an infernal
gulf surrounded by fire.” The French right and left were respectively
covered by the woods of Lanière and of Taisnière, which crescent-like
converged towards each other; the wood of Sart spread beyond that of
Taisnière; and the French centre holding the space between, in the
opening that leads to the plain of Malplaquet, was massed behind a
triple line of entrenchments, with apertures to allow the free use of
cavalry. The position, in short, was of extraordinary strength, and it
was held by troops who, under the spell of Villars, ably seconded by
the gallant Boufflers, who had volunteered to assist his colleague,
were animated by heroic ardour. Yet Marlborough and Eugene did not
hesitate; and they marshalled their forces for the most desperate and
best contested struggle of the war, in which princely soldiers from
all the lands of Europe took part, like knights in a tournament to
the death. The numbers on each side were not far from equal,[8] the
Allies having a slight advantage--about 100,000 to 90,000 men; but,
prodigiously strong as its position was, the French army, crowded with
rude levies, could not be compared as an efficient force with the
victorious legions of many campaigns, and the allied chiefs possibly
trusted too much to an inferiority repeatedly proved.
The plan of Eugene and Marlborough seems to have been to turn the
French left and to force the left centre, making only a secondary
effort against the right; and Eugene, after a prolonged contest,
fairly expelled the enemy from the wood of Sart. The Prince, supported
by Marlborough in force, now advanced upon the wood of Taisnière, and
a murderous struggle kept fortune in suspense, until Villars, drawing
a body of troops from his centre, drove back Eugene in a furious
onslaught, conspicuous for the valour of the Irish exiles,[9] “ever and
everywhere, true” to the Bourbon lilies. The situation of the Allies
was now critical, when a wound deprived the French of the genius of
their chief; and as the detachment made by Villars had weakened their
line to a considerable extent--he was hurrying to the endangered
point when he fell--Marlborough, seizing the occasion with his
wonted judgment, made a tremendous attack on the enemy’s centre. The
first range of entrenchments was ere long carried, but the obstacles
presented by the lines behind, and the heroism of the defence, kept the
issue doubtful. A magnificent effort made by the household troops of
France for a time forced the assailants back; and even when the inner
entrenchments were won the French centre prolonged the still undecided
battle. Meanwhile the false attack on the French right had been turned
into an attack in full force. The Prince of Orange, carried away by
excitement, advanced along the wood of Lanière, and tried to storm the
hostile entrenchments in front, and his troops were literally mown
down in thousands by enemies who suffered little loss. The battle was
raging until 3 P.M., when a flank movement, most skilfully
made by Eugene, outside the verge of the wood of Taisnière, began to
endanger the French left, and threatened the only line of retreat; and
this caused Boufflers, now in supreme command, to draw gradually off
from the scene of carnage. The Allies, utterly worn out, and cruelly
stricken, made no attempt to molest the enemy, and the French fell back
a few miles only, in perfect order, and not the least disheartened.
Villars, it is said, exclaimed from his litter, that “he expected his
army to fight again, as soon as it had had a moment of repose.”
Marlborough and Eugene won this terrible battle, the greatest by far
of the eighteenth century, in what may be called a military sense;
for the French army retired from the field, and Mons fell a few weeks
afterwards. But it was not an inconsiderate boast of Villars that
Malplaquet was truly a Pyrrhic victory; the Allies lost fully 20,000
men, the French probably not half that number; the Dutch contingent
never recovered from the fight; and the frightful slaughter of the
allied soldiery provoked angry discontent in England, and sent a thrill
of alarm through the enemies of France. Eugene and Marlborough, in the
actual battle, displayed as usual their great powers; but the whole
enterprise was, perhaps, too hazardous; and if, as has been alleged,
Marlborough chose to fight in order to keep up the war party at home,
he was justly punished for an unprincipled act, for Malplaquet shook
the Grand Alliance to its base. Villars showed admirable skill in
choosing his ground, and strengthening a naturally strong position,
and in arranging his troops upon it; he, too, was a master of the new
tactics, and he would not improbably have repulsed his foes had he not
been disabled at a critical moment. As it is, Malplaquet does him the
highest honour; it is a proof of his extraordinary gifts, that, with an
army inferior in every respect, he should have inflicted losses on the
allied army at least twofold greater than that of his own, and that he
successfully stemmed the tide of misfortune which had for years set in
against France.
I shall merely refer to the two campaigns of 1710 and 1711, for
Marlborough is not their real hero, and his great qualities, though
seen in them, do not appear in their accustomed splendour, owing to
adverse circumstances which combined against him. He was supported
by Eugene in the first of these years; and the allied chiefs, in the
absence of Villars, forced the lines he had made the year before, and
invested and took the place of Douay, on the second line of the French
fortresses of the north. Villars, however, though still suffering from
his wound, was in command by the end of May, and he constructed a new
great defensive barrier, extending from the Scarpe to the neighbourhood
of Boulogne, and adding enormously to the many obstacles of a region
already protected by nature and art. The Allies reached the lines,
and Eugene, as was his wont, for a daring exploit, gave his voice
for an attack in force; but the Dutch, remembering Malplaquet, held
back; Marlborough, it is believed, agreed with them, and the two great
captains had to content themselves with taking Bethune, St. Vénant,
and Aire, little places around the head of the Lys, which cost them
thousands of their best soldiers. Villars, meanwhile, showed little
sign of life; but he kept on extending his lines until they formed an
immense position of defence, spreading from the coast to the heads of
the Sambre; and he boasted, not, we shall see, in vain, that the enemy
should advance no further. In 1711 Marlborough had not Eugene with him,
but he was at the head of a very large army; and the campaign was spent
in a game of manœuvres, in which Villars and he were fairly matched.
The Englishman succeeded at last in forcing the lines, which were too
long to be covered at all points; but the capture of the insignificant
place of Bouchain was the only prize of immense efforts; and though
the wits of Versailles and St. James’s cried scorn at the _ne plus
ultra_ of Villars, that great chief had really attained his object,
and had successfully shielded the French frontier. These campaigns,
in fact, have been misdescribed by English partisans in Marlborough’s
interest. The true victor was, beyond dispute, Villars; he had
compelled the Allies to waste their strength in sieges, which simply
had no results; he had proved himself to be a master in defence, as
remarkable as he had been in attack; and, combining genius in politics
and war, he had gained for France what she needed, time to dissolve the
Grand Alliance already weakened. It would be unfair, however, to say
that Marlborough was wanting to himself in this contest; as a military
exploit, his forcing the lines of Villars was an admirable feat; but,
in truth, he was circumscribed and baffled by the turn which affairs
had for some time been taking in England and upon the Continent. He
had for years been almost supreme in England, and had had full control
over her resources for war; but Sarah Jennings and Anne Stuart had
quarrelled; Mrs. Masham had crept to the ear of the Queen; Malplaquet
had aroused a storm in England; the Ministers in power sought means
to destroy him; he received no real support from the Whigs; and he had
become the object of grave charges, partly the clamours of faction,
but, in part, well founded. On the other hand, France had triumphed in
Spain; the success of Villars had saved her in the north; the Dutch and
the English had had enough of war; and the Grand Alliance was being
broken up largely owing to the rapacity of the House of Austria. In
1710 and 1711, Marlborough had no scope for his commanding genius; he
was no longer able to make great efforts; he knew that his splendid
career was drawing to a close.
Before the beginning of 1712, Marlborough had been deprived of all his
military commands, dismissed from office amidst shouts of obloquy, and
threatened with impeachment for crimes against the State. He was not
brought to a public trial; and some of the accusations heaped upon
him were certainly false, and now seem ridiculous. But he wisely left
England with his disgraced wife; and though he was not convicted of
malversation and fraud, the unscrupulous ambition and avaricious greed
which were perhaps his most distinctive vices were dragged into light
by a great deal of evidence. It is remarkable, too, though no commander
has ever been more beloved by his troops, that he was distrusted
by some of his best officers; and if his treason at Brest remained
unknown, he was disliked and suspected by both Whigs and Tories.
The value, however, of his genius in war, was conspicuously proved, in
an indirect way, in the memorable campaign of 1712. England had now
withdrawn from the Grand Alliance, but the Emperor still maintained
the struggle; and Eugene, who hated Louis XIV., and had confirmed his
master in his warlike purpose, was placed at the head of a great army
intended to invade and to subdue France. He was now in possession of
most of the fortresses which cover the northern French frontier, and
his position was so formidable that Louis XIV., when he gave Villars
once more the army of the North, and bade the warrior farewell at
Versailles, exclaimed that, should fortune prove adverse, “the King
and the Marshal would perish together.” The plan of Eugene, his base
now secure, was to capture the strongholds near the heads of the
Oise, and then marching down the open valley of the stream, the path
followed for ages by the House of Austria and its generals in assailing
France, to pass by the fortified lines of the Somme, and to finish the
war by an advance on the capital. He sate down to invest Landrecies,
now almost the only obstacle in his way, and his army was so confident
in itself and its chief that it called its lines “the approaches to
Paris.” This resembled, in some respects, the daring march on Turin in
1706; but Eugene had made a strategic mistake; arguing from what he
thought was the timid attitude of Villars, in the campaign of 1710,
he believed that the Marshal would never attack, and he spread his
army, in ill-connected posts, from Landrecies to near Marchiennes on
the frontier, leaving a detachment to guard a weak point at Denain.
The Prince had to deal with a different foe from the chiefs he had
routed in 1706; his adversary was a man of genius, full of resource
and thought, in execution admirable. Villars by this time was in his
lines near Cambray; he quickly detected Eugene’s error, and he took
advantage of it with consummate skill. Breaking up from his camps, he
made a forced march as though he was trying to relieve Landrecies; he
ostentatiously gave out that this was his purpose, and then, screening
the movement with perfect art, and counter-marching with extreme
rapidity, he fell in full force on the communications of his foe, and
attacked Denain in largely superior numbers. The results of this fine
strategy were almost marvellous; the detachment guarding Denain was
destroyed; a large body of troops, hurried up by Eugene to join in the
defence, was utterly routed, and the whole army of invasion, smitten in
the flank, and losing its communications, was compelled to retreat, and
to fall back, baffled, behind the frontier. Villars made the very most
of this splendid success; the siege of Landrecies was instantly raised;
the French fortresses, which had been the prizes of many campaigns,
were soon retaken, and the standards of France were ere long seen
waving in triumph along the course of the Sambre. France was finally
saved by this grand feat of arms, and before a year had passed, Villars
was in the heart of Germany, had driven Eugene beyond the Rhine, and
had compelled the Emperor to sue for peace. France had never such an
awakening again until, rescuing her from defeat and anarchy, Napoleon
won the great fight of Marengo.
In the Revolution which followed the death of Queen Anne, Marlborough
was placed again in command of the army; but he was disliked by George
I. and his ministers; and it is significant that he never regained
anything like his old authority in the State. The last years of
his life were somewhat obscure; he gradually survived his splendid
faculties, and he died, little regretted, in 1722. I cannot notice his
diplomatic career; enough to say that he was the master spirit of the
Grand Alliance during many years; he kept its ill-connected structure
together, and three-fourths of the Princes of Christendom inclined
before the genius of an English subject. As a statesman, Marlborough
was less successful; he misinterpreted the spirit of the time during
the later years of the great war he directed; but his errors and fall
were largely due to the faults and the temper of his imperious wife,
whom he loved with a fondness not unmixed with terror. A word as to
his achievements in the noble art of which he was one of the greatest
masters. Marlborough was endowed with the choicest gifts of a warrior;
it was his special characteristic that daring, constancy, imagination,
and prudence were blended in him in proportions of the happiest kind;
and it is a peculiarity of his career that he attained supreme command,
for the first time, at a period of life when most great captains have
done their work, and that he was never defeated in a pitched battle.
It has been said that he had little strategic genius; but a study of
his campaigns confutes this error; he was capable of great combinations
in war; and if, as a strategist, he accomplished less than other
commanders of the first order, this is partly to be ascribed to the
contracted theatre which usually was the scene of his exploits, and
partly to the interference of the Dutch and their deputies, and to the
jealousies and discords of a divided League. Two strategic gifts he
certainly possessed in a measure accorded to few commanders; he always
perceived the weak point of an enemy on a field of manœuvre as well as
of battle, and he was pre-eminent in making the most of success, and
in drawing decisive results from victory. In pure strategy, however, he
was, I think, inferior in originality to Turenne, and he achieved less
than Villars and Eugene, two great names in this sphere of the art;
but as a strategist he is second alone to those illustrious chiefs of
his era; and he contributed largely to the grand revival of strategy,
after a season of decline, which was seen in the War of the Spanish
Succession. We must go to the field of battle to behold the genius of
Marlborough in its highest perfection. He may have been equalled as a
tactician, but he has never been surpassed; his judgment in placing an
army on the ground and in detecting the vulnerable points of an enemy;
his constancy in pressing an attack home at the spot where success
would be most complete, and his wonderful resource and calmness in
peril, were unrivalled among the men of his time; and neither Eugene
nor Villars can show a Ramillies, a masterpiece of purely tactical
skill. For the rest, Marlborough was a great leader of men, like all
generals of the first order; and “Corporal John” was as adored by his
troops as was the “Little Corporal” of another age. It is melancholy
to observe that deep scars of guilt mar the beauty of this magnificent
figure; and that we must see in it the dimmed brightness and the ruined
glory of the fallen archangel, as well as his majesty and commanding
power. Every allowance ought in justice to be made for Marlborough;
his crimes were those of a revolutionary age; and few of the leading
Englishmen of his day were free from the stain of disloyal, bad faith;
but the treason of Brest was a foul deed of wickedness. A singular vein
of baseness and meanness ran through, like alloy, this grand nature;
and whatever excuses may be made for him, there are “damned spots” upon
Marlborough’s fame.
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