banks of the Maese in 1702, till his military career was closed in 1711, within the iron barrier of France, by the intrigues of his political opponents at home, he never abandoned the initiative. He was constantly on the offensive. When infe

rior in force, as he often was, he supplied the deficiency of military strength by skill and combination; when his position was endangered by the errors or treachery of others, as was still more frequently the case, he waited till a false move on the part of his adversaries enabled him to retrieve his affairs by some brilliant and decisive stroke.. It was thus that he restored the war in Germany, after the cause of the emperor had been wellnigh ruined, by means of the brilliant crossmarch into Bavaria, and the splendid victory at Blenheim. Thus, also, he regained Flanders for the archduke by the stroke at Ramillies, after the imperial cause in that quarter had been all but lost by the treacherous surrender of Ghent and Bruges, in the very center of his water communications. War, in the days of Marlborough, was a totally different

9. art from what it had been or afterward became. Nature of war in the time of The conqueror neither swept over the world with Marlborough. the fierce tempest of Scythian war, nor mastered it by the steady superiority of Roman discipline. No vehement and universal passions had brought whole nations into the field; mankind were roused neither by the fanaticism of Mohammedan delusion nor the dreams of French democracy. Europe had not risen up as one man to shake off the cruel despotism of a Napoleon. The forces of the powers on either side were very nearly matched, and the armies which their generals led into action were almost constantly equal to each other. Any superiority that did exist in point of numbers was almost invariably on the side of the French; and, in the homogeneous quality of their troops, they always had the advantage. Success in these nicely-balanced circumstances could be gained only by superiority of skill; and the smiles of fortune were reserved, not for the most daring, but the most judicious. A campaign resembled a protracted game at chess

between two players of nearly equal ability, in which the antagonists set out at first uniformly with equal forces, and the victory could only be gained by a skillful plan laid on the one side, or the felicitous advantage taken of a false move on the other. The campaigns of Marlborough and Villars or Vendôme were exactly of this description. And perhaps in no other contests, since the dawn of the military art, was so much talent exerted by the commanders on either side, or was success so evidently the result of the superior generalship of the one who in the end proved victorious.

him a matter

of necessity.

Prudence and circumspection in the conduct of such a war was not less imposed on Marlborough by his situa- 10. Circumspection than in unison with his character. The gen- tion was in eral of a coalition has one duty which beyond all others it behooves him to discharge, and that is, to avoid disaster. The leader of the troops of a popular state must always regard his domestic enemies at home at least as formidable as those to whom he is opposed in the field. They proved more so to Marlborough; he conquered France and Louis XIV., but he was overturned by the Tories and Bolingbroke. Such are the jealousies of governments, so diverse and opposite the interests of nations, that a coalition, unless in the tumult of unhoped-for success, or under the terrors of instant danger, is always on the verge of dissolution. It proved so both with that which Marlborough led, and that which Castlereagh guided. A single considerable disaster at once breaks it up. Long-continued success, by averting danger, has not less certainly the same effect. Of every coalition it may be truly said what Wellington, in a moment of irritation, said of the English army, that it is liable to be dissolved equally by victory or defeat. The general of a confederacy is constantly surrounded by lukewarm, selfish allies ready to fall off, and envenomed domestic factions ready to fall on. Such was the position of Marlborough; such, a century afterward, was the situation of Wellington. was to both the condition of existence.

Unbroken success

Marlborough was

ruined by the indecisive result of the campaign of 1711; Wellington all but ruined by the retreat from Talavera in 1809. A fourth part of the defeats from which Frederic or Napoleon recovered, and which were the price at which they purchased their astonishing triumphs, would, from the clamor they raised at home, have destroyed Marlborough or WellingA despotic monarch commanding his own armies can afford to be daring in the field, for he has to take counsel only from the intrepidity of his own breast; the general of a coalition must be circumspect, for he is dependant on the fears, and liable to be thwarted by the jealousies of others.

ton.

He was com

the war in

Flanders.

The same necessity was the cause of the adoption of the 11. system of sieges, and of the fixing of the war in pelled to adopt Flanders, which formed such striking features in the system of sieges, and fix the military career of Marlborough. This matter has been the subject of extraordinary misconception and unbounded misrepresentation, from the cotemporary period to the present time. It was said that in attacking the enemy in the Low Countries, he took the bull by the horns, while in assaulting him from Lorraine or Alsace, he would have taken him on his defenseless side; and the successful results of the invasions of 1814 and 1815 are referred to as proving what may be expected from disregarding frontier fortresses, and striking at once at the heart of the enemy's power. Those who make these remarks would do well to consider what force Marlborough had at his disposal to make such a daring invasion. He was constantly inferior to the enemy's army immediately opposed to him. The successes which he gained were entirely the result of superior skill in strategy or tactics on his part; their constant recurrence made men forget, and has made posterity forget, the extraordinary difficulties which had to be overcome before they were attained. If we would see what would have been the issue of the war if his tutelary arm and far-seeing genius had been wanting, we have only to look at Denain and the campaign of 1713, even when the ardent genius of Eugene directed the allied forces.

the opposite

To have invaded a compact monarchy like France, possessing such vast military resources, and animated 12. by so strong a military spirit, with an inferior force, Dangers of leaving the whole triple line of frontier fortresses system. behind, would have been to expose the allied army to certain destruction. It must have left half its numbers behind to blockade the fortresses and keep up the communications; the enemy's force, by falling back to the center of his resources, would have been doubled. Arrived on the Oise, Marlborough would have found himself with fifty thousand men in presence of a hundred thousand. The result of the invasions of Germany in 1704 by Tallard, of France in 1792 by the Duke of Brunswick, of Russia in 1812 by Napoleon, demonstrate the extreme danger of penetrating into an enemy's country, even with the greatest force, without adequate regard to the communications of the invading army. The cases of 1814 and 1815, when a million of experienced soldiers fell on a single and exhausted state, is the exception, not the rule; and their narrow escape from defeat in the first of these years proves the hazard of such a proceeding. By assailing France on the side of the Low Countries, and working by degrees through its iron frontier, Marlborough took the only certain way of reducing its power, because he secured his rear as he advanced, and reduced the enemy's strength by the successive captures of the frontier garrisons, till, when the line was broken through, like a knight when his armor was uncased, it lay without defense.

derrated in his

Lord Chesterfield, who knew him well, said that Marlborough was a man of excellent parts, and strong 13. good sense, but of no very shining genius. The Reasons why Marlborough's uninterrupted success of his campaigns, however, genius was unjoined to the unexampled address with which he life. allayed the jealousies and stilled the discords of the confederacy whose armies he led, decisively demonstrates that the polished earl's opinion was not a just one, and that his partiality for the graces led him to ascribe an undue influence in the

great duke's career to the inimitable suavity and courtesy of his manner. His enterprises and stratagems, his devices to deceive the enemy, and counterbalance inferiority of force by superiority of conduct; the eagle eye, which in the decisive moment he brought to bear on the field of battle, and the rapidity with which in person he struck the final blow from which the enemy never recovered, bespeak the intuitive genius of war. It was the admirable balance of his mental qualities which caused his originality to be undervalued: no one power stood out in such bold relief as to overshadow all the others, and rivet the eye by the magnitude of its proportions. Thus his consummate judgment made the world overlook his invention; his uniform prudence caused his daring to be forgotten; his incomparable combinations often concealed the capacious mind which had put the whole in motion. He was so invariably successful, that men forgot how difficult it is always to succeed in war. It was not till he was withdrawn

from the conduct of the campaign, when disaster immediately attended the allied arms, and France resumed the ascendant over the coalition, that Europe became sensible who had been its soul, and how much had been lost when his mighty understanding was no longer at the head of affairs.

14. He was the

genius, ma

perience.

Lord Bolingbroke, whose great abilities caused him to discern exalted merit, even through all the mists of perfection of party prejudice, said that Marlborough was the tured by ex- "perfection of genius matured by experience." He did not say by knowledge. This was really his character: Bolingbroke has said neither more nor less than the truth. Marlborough had received a very limited education; he had never been at a university; he had none of the varied and extensive erudition which enriched the minds of his great rivals in politics, St. John and Harley. Thrown into the Guards at the age of sixteen, having been previously only at a grammar school, and afterward a page to the Duke of York, he entered upon life without any of the vast advantages which knowledge affords. What he subsequently gain