Such as of late o'er pale Britannia pass'd— ADDISON. CHAPTER III. CAMPAIGNS OF 1705 AND 1706.-BATTLE OF RAMILLIES AND CONQUEST OF FLANDERS. of the English voting sup plies. NOTWITHSTANDING the invaluable services thus rendered by 1. Marlborough, both to the Emperor of Germany Backwardness and the Queen of Great Britain, he was far from Parliament in experiencing from either potentate that liberal support for the future prosecution of the war which the inestimable opportunity now placed in their hands, and the formidable power still at the disposal of the enemy, so loudly required. As usual, the English Parliament were exceedingly backward in voting supplies either of men or money; nor was the cabinet of Vienna or that of the Hague inclined to be more liberal in their exertions. Though the House of Commons agreed to give £4,670,000 for the service of the ensuing year, yet the land forces voted were only forty thousand men. The population of Great Britain and Ireland could not be at that period under ten millions, while France, with about twenty millions, had above two hundred thousand under arms. It is this excessive and invariable reluctance of the English Parliament ever to make those efforts at the commencement of a war, which are necessary to turn to a good account the inherent bravery of its commanders, that is the cause of the long duration of our Continental contests, and of three fourths of the national debt which now oppresses the empire, and, in its ultimate results, will endanger its existence. The national forces are, by the cry for economy and reduction which invariably is raised in peace, reduced to so low an ebb, that it is only by successive additions, made in many different years, that they can be raised up to any thing like the amount requisite for successful operations. In the mean time, and before the requisite additions can be made to the land and sea forces, disasters, sometimes serious and irreparable, are sustained on both elements. Thus disaster generally occurs in the commencement of every war; or if, by the genius of any extraordinary commander, as by that of Marlborough, unlooked-for success is achieved in the outset, the nation is unable to follow it up; the war languishes for want of the requisite support. The enemy gets time to recover from his consternation; his danger stimulates him to greater exertions; and many long years of warfare, deeply checkered with disaster, and attended with enormous expense, are required to obviate the effects of previous undue pacific reduction. Bitter sense tertained of monious dis How bitterly Marlborough felt this want of support, on the part of the cabinets both of London and Vienna, 2. which prevented him from following up the victory which Marlof Blenheim with the decisive operations against borough en France which he would otherwise have undoubtedly this pous di commenced, is proved by various parts of his cor- position. respondence. On the 16th of December, 1704, he wrote to Mr. Secretary Harley: "I am sorry to see nothing has been offered yet, nor any care taken by Parliament for recruiting the army. I mean chiefly the foot. It is of that consequence for an early campaign, that without it we may run the hazard of losing, in a great measure, the fruits of the last; and, therefore, I pray leave to recommend it to you to advise with your friends if any proper method can be thought of, that may be laid before the House immediately, without waiting my arrival.' Nor was the cabinet of Vienna, notwithstanding the imminent danger they had recently run, more active in making the necessary efforts to repair the losses of the campaign: "You can not," says Marlborough, say more to us of the supine negligence of the court of Vienna, with refer # Marlborough to Mr. Secretary Harley, 16th Dec., 1704. Disp., i., 556. ence to your affairs, than we are sensible of every where else; and certainly if the Duke of Savoy's good conduct and bravery at Verue had not reduced the French to a very low ebb, the game must have been over before any help could come to you.”* It is ever thus, especially with states such as Great Britain, in which the democratic element is so powerful as to imprint upon the measures of government that disregard of the future, and aversion to present efforts or burdens, which invariably characterizes the mass of mankind. If Marlborough had been adequately supported and strengthened after the decisive blow struck at Blenheim, that is, if the governments of Vienna and London, with that of the Hague, had by a great and timely effort doubled his effective force when the French were broken and disheartened by defeat, he would have marched to Paris in the next campaign, and dictated peace to the Grand Monarque in his gorgeous halls of Versailles. It was short-sighted economy which entailed upon the allied nations the costs and burdens of the next ten years of the War of the Succession, as it did the still greater costs and burdens of the Revolutionary contest, after the still more decisive successes of the allies in the summer of 1793, when the iron frontier of the Netherlands had been entirely broken through, and their advanced posts, without any force to oppose them, were within a hundred and sixty miles of Paris. Reasons for converting the war into one of sieges, and placing its seat in Flanders. This parsimony of the allied governments, and their invin3. cible repugnance to the efforts and sacrifices which could alone bring, and certainly would have brought, the war to an early and glorious issue, is the cause of the subsequent conversion of the war into one of blockades and sieges, and of its being transferred to Flanders, where its progress was necessarily slow, and cost enormous, from the vast number of strongholds which required to be reduced at every stage of the allied advance. It was said at the time, that in attacking Flanders in that quarter, Marlborough took the bull by the horns; that France on the * Marlborough to Mr. Hill at Turin, 6th Feb., 1705. Disp., i., 591. side of the Rhine was far more vulnerable, and that the war was fixed in Flanders for the purpose of augmenting the profits of the generals employed, by protracting it. Subsequent writers, not reflecting on the difference of the circumstances, have observed the successful issue of the invasions of France from Switzerland and the Upper Rhine in 1814, and Flanders and the Lower Rhine in 1815, and concluded that a similar result would have attended a like bold invasion under Marlborough and Eugene. There never was a greater mistake. The great object of the war was to wrest Flanders from France. While the lilied standard floated on Brussels and Antwerp, the United Provinces were constantly in danger of being swallowed up; and there was no security for the independence of England, Holland, or any of the German States. If Marlborough and Eugene had had two hundred thousand effective men at their disposal, as Wellington and Blucher had in 1815, or three hundred thousand, as Schwartzenberg and Blucher had in 1814, they might doubtless have left half their forces behind them to blockade the fortresses, and with the other half marched direct to Paris. But as they never had more than a hundred thousand on their muster-rolls, and could not at any time bring more than eighty thousand effective men into the field, this bold and decisive course was impossible. The French army in their front was rarely inferior to theirs, often superior; and how was it possible, in these circumstances, to venture on the perilous course of pushing on into the heart of the enemy's territory, leaving the frontier fortresses yet unsubdued in their rear? 4. Examples of cessity being felt in subse The disastrous issue of the Blenheim campaign to the French, even when supported by the friendly arms and all the fortresses of Bavaria, in the preceding the same neyear, had shown what was the danger of such a course. The still more calamitous issue of the Moscow campaign to the army of Napoleon demonstrated that even the greatest military talents, and most enormous accumulation of military force, affords no security against the in quent times. calculable danger of an undue advance beyond the base of military operations. The greatest generals of the last age, fruitful beyond all others in military talent, have acted on those principles whenever they had not an overwhelming superiority of forces at their command. Wellington never invaded Spain till he was master of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, nor France till he had subdued San Sebastian and Pampeluna. The first use which Napoleon made of his victories at Montenotte and Dego was to compel the court of Turin to surrender their fortresses in Piedmont; of the victory of Marengo, to force the Imperialists to abandon the whole strongholds of Lombardy as far as the Adige. The possession of the single fortress of Mantua, in 1796, enabled the Austrians to arrest the course of Napoleon's victories, and gain time to assemble four different armies for the defense of the monarchy. The case of half a million of men, flushed by victory, and led by able and experienced leaders, assailing a single state, is the exception, not the rule. 5. borough for Circumstances, therefore, of paramount importance and irresistible force, compelled Marlborough to fix the Extraordinary talent of Marl war in Flanders, and convert it into one of sieges and blockades. In entering upon such a system keeping together the alliance. of hostility, sure, and comparatively free from risk but slow and extremely costly, the alliance ran the greatest risk of being shipwrecked in consequence of the numerous discords, jealousies, and separate interests which, in the case of almost every coalition recorded in history, have proved fatal to a great confederacy, if it does not obtain decisive success at the outset, before these seeds of division have had time to come to maturity. With what admirable skill and incomparable address Marlborough kept together the unwieldy alliance, will hereafter appear. Never was a man so qualified by nature for such a task. He was courtesy and grace personified. It was a common saying at the time, that neither man nor woman could resist him. "Of all the men I ever knew," says one who was himself a perfect master of the ele |