natural arena in the last extremity, they were more allied to the resignation of the martyr than the heroism of the soldier. Between the two, there extended a long period of above a century and a half, during which governments had acquired the force, and mainly relied on the power, of standing armies; but the resources at their disposal for their support were so limited, that the greatest economy in the husbanding both of men and money was indispensable.

Nature of the

Richard Cœur de Lion, Edward III., and Henry V. were the models of feudal leaders, and their wars were a 2. faithful mirror of the feudal contests. Setting forth feudal wars. at the head of a force, which, if not formidable in point of numbers, was generally extremely so from equipment and the use of arms, the nobles around them were generally too proud and high-spirited to decline a combat, even on any possible terms of disadvantage. They took the field, as the knights went to a champ clos, to engage their adversaries in single conflict; and it was deemed equally dishonorable to retire without fighting from the one as the other. But they had no permanent force at their disposal to secure a lasting fruit, even from the greatest victories. The conquest of a petty province, a diminutive fortress, was often their only result. Hence the desperate battles, so memorable in warlike annals, which they fought, and hence the miserable and almost nugatory results which almost invariably followed the greatest triumphs. Cressy, Poictiers, and Azincour, followed by the expulsion of the English from France; Methven and Dunbar, by their ignominious retreat from Scotland; Ascalon and Ptolemais, by their being driven from the Holy Land, must immediately occur to every reader. This state of war necessarily imprinted a corresponding character on the feudal generals. They were high-spirited and daring in action; often skillful in tactics; generally ignorant of strategy; covetous of military renown, but careless of national advancement; and often more solicitous to conquer an adversary in single conflict, than to reduce a fortress or win a province.

D D

3.

Great change

were paid by

But when armies were raised at the expense, not of nobles, but of kings-when their cost became a lasting and when armies heavy drain on the royal exchequer, and they were government. yet felt to be indispensable to national securitysovereigns grew desirous of a more durable and profitable result from their victories. Standing armies, though commonly powerful-often irresistible when accumulated in large bodies -were yet extremely expensive. Their expense was felt the more from the great difficulty of getting the people in every country, at that period, to submit to any considerable amount of direct taxation. More than one flourishing province had been lost, or powerful monarchy overturned, in the attempt to increase such burdens; as, for example, the loss of Holland to Spain, and the execution of Charles I. in England. In this dilemma, arising from the experienced necessity of raising standing armies on the one hand, and the extreme difficulty of permanently providing for them on the other, the only resource was to spare both the blood of the soldiers and the expenses of the government as much as possible. Durable conquests, acquisitions of towns and provinces which could yield revenues and furnish men, became the great object of ambition. The point of feudal honor was forgotten in the inanity of its consequences; the benefits of modern conquests were felt in the reality of their results. A methodical cautious system of war was thus made imperative upon generals by the necessities of their situation, and the objects expected from them by their respective governments. To risk little and gain much became the great object: skill and stratagem gradually took the place of reckless daring; and the reputation of a general came to be measured rather by the permanent addition which his successes made to the revenues of his sovereign, than by the note with which the trumpet of Fame had proclaimed his own exploits.

Turenne was the first, and, in his day, the greatest general in this new and scientific system of war. He first applied to the military art the resources of prudent foresight, deep thought

4. Turenne in

troduced this

system, and

brought it to

and profound combination; and the results of his successes completely justified the discernment which had prompted Louis XIV. in placing him at the head of his armies. His methodical and far-seeing perfection. campaigns in Flanders, Franche Comté, Alsace, and Lorraine, in the early part of the reign of that monarch, added these valuable provinces to France, which have never since been lost. His conquests have proved more durable than those of the great emperor, all of which were lost during the lifetime of their author. Napoleon's legions passed like a desolating whirlwind over Europe, but they gave only fleeting celebrity, and entailed lasting wounds on France. Turenne's slow, or more methodical and cautious conquests, have proved lasting acquisitions to the monarchy. Nancy still owns the French allegiance; Besançon and Strasbourg are to this day two of its frontier fortresses; Lille is yet a leading stronghold in its iron barrier. Napoleon, it is well known, had the highest possible opinion of Turenne. He was disposed to place him at the head of modern generals; and his very interesting analysis of his campaigns is not the least important part of his invaluable memoirs.

Character

Condé, though living in the same age, and alternately the enemy and comrade of Turenne, belonged to a totally 5. different class of generals, and, indeed, seemed to per- of Condé. tain to another age of the world. He was warmed by the spirit of chivalry; he bore its terrors on his sword's point. Heart and soul he was heroic. Like Clive or Alexander, he was consumed by that thirst for fame, that ardent passion for glorious achievements, which is the invariable characteristic of elevated, and the most inconceivable quality to ordinary minds. In the prosecution of this object, no difficulties could deter, no dangers daunt him. Though his spirit was chivalrous; though cavalry was the arm which suited his genius, and in which he chiefly delighted, he brought to the military art the power of genius and the resources of art; and no man could make better use of the power which the expiring spirit

of feudality bequeathed to its scientific successors. He destroyed the Spanish infantry at Rocroy and Lens, not by mere desultory charges of the French horse, but by efforts of that gallant body as skillfully directed as those by which Hannibal overthrew the Roman legions at Thrasymenæ and Cannæ. His genius was animated by the spirit of the fourteenth, but it was guided by the knowledge of the seventeenth century. Bred in the school of Turenne, placed, like him, at the head

Peculiar

6. of a force raised with difficulty, and maintained with character of still greater trouble, Marlborough was the greatest Marlborough as a general. general of the methodical or scientific school which modern Europe has produced. No man knew better the importance of deeds which fascinate the minds of men; none could decide quicker, or strike harder, when the proper time for doing so arrived. None, when the decisive crisis of the struggle approached, could expose his person more fearlessly, or lead his reserves more gallantly into the very hottest of the enemy's fire. To his combined intrepidity and quickness in thus bringing the reserves, at the decisive moment, into action, all his wonderful victories, and, in particular, Ramillies and Malplaquet, are to be ascribed. But, in the ordinary case, he preferred the bloodless methods of skill and arrangement. Combination was his great forte; and in this he was not exceeded by Napoleon himself. To deceive the enemy as to the real point of attack; to perplex him by marches and countermarches; to assume and constantly maintain the initiative; to win by skill what could not be achieved by force, was his great delight; and in that, the highest branch of the military art, he was unrivaled in modern times. He did not despise stratagem. Like Hannibal, he resorted to that arm frequently, and with never-failing success. His campaigns, in that respect, bear a closer resemblance to those of the illustrious Carthaginian than to those of any general in modern Europe. Like him, too, his administrative and diplomatic qualities were equal to his military powers. By his winning manners he retained in unwilling, but still effective union, an alliance,

unwieldy from its magnitude, and discordant by its jealousies; and kept, in willing multitudes, around his standards, a colluvies omnium gentium, of various languages, habits, and religion, held in subjection by nothing else but the strong bond of admiration for their general, and a desire to share in his triumphs.

His extraordinary prudence

and address.

Consummate address and never-failing prudence were the great characteristics of the English commander. 7. With such judgment did he measure his strength against that of his adversary; so skillfully did he choose the point of attack, whether in strategy or tactics; so well weighed were all his enterprises, and so admirably prepared the means of carrying them into execution, that none of his arrangements ever miscarried. It was a common saying at the time, and the preceding narrative amply justifies it, that he never fought a battle which he did not gain, nor laid siege to a town which he did not take. This extraordinary and unbroken success extended to all his maneuvers, however trivial; and it has been already noticed, that the first disaster of any moment which occurred to his arms during nine successive and active campaigns, was the destruction of a convoy destined for the siege of St. Venant, in October, 1710, by one of Villars's detachments.* It was the admirable powers of arrangement and combination which he brought to bear on all parts of his army, equally from the highest to the lowest parts, which was the cause of this extraordinary and uninterrupted success.

He was often outnumbered by the enemy, and was always opposed by a homogeneous army, animated by one 8.

strong national and military spirit; while he was himself at the head of a discordant array of many

or in force, he

Though inferi

tained the inialways main

tiative.

different nations, some of them with little turn for warlike exploit, others lukewarm, or even treacherous in the But, notwithstanding this, he never lost the ascendant. From the time when he first began the war on the

cause.

* Ante, chap. vi., § 13, page 263.