THE LIFE

OF

MARLBOROUGH.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND EARLY HISTORY OF MARLBOROUGH.-HIS SHARE IN THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.-CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE WAR OF THE SUCCESSION.

Birth and ear

JOHN CHURCHILL, afterward Duke of Marlborough, was born on the 5th of July, 1650 (new style), at Ash, in 1. the county of Devon. His father was Sir Winston ly life of MarlChurchill, a gallant cavalier who had drawn his borough. sword in behalf of Charles I., and had, in consequence, been deprived of his fortune and driven into exile by Cromwell. His paternal family was very ancient, and boasted its descent from the Courcils de Poitou, who came into England with the Conqueror. His mother was Elizabeth Drake, who claimed a collateral connection with the descendants of the illustrious Sir Francis Drake, the great navigator. Young Churchill received the rudiments of his education from the parish clergyman in Devonshire, from whom he imbibed that firm attachment to the Protestant faith by which he was ever afterward distinguished, and which determined his conduct in the most important crisis of his life. He was afterward placed at the school of St. Paul's; and it was there that he first discovered, on reading Vegetius, that his bent of mind was decidedly for the military life. What is usually called genius," says Johnson, "is nothing but strong natural parts accidentally turned in one direction." Like many other men

C

destined to future distinction, he made no great figure as a scholar, a circumstance easily explained, if we recollect that it is on the knowledge of words that the reputation of a schoolboy is founded-of a man, on that of things. But the dispatches now published demonstrate that, before he attained middle life, he was a proficient in at least Latin, French, and English composition; for letters in each, written in a very pure style, are to be found in all parts of his correspondence.

2.

His first ap

early promo

From his first youth, young Churchill was distinguished by the elegance of his manners, and the beauty of his pearance and countenance and figure; advantages which, couption at court. led with the known loyal principles and the sufferings of his father in the royal cause, procured for him, at the early age of fifteen, the situation of page in the household of the Duke of York, afterward James II. His inclination for arms was then so decided, that the prince procured for him a commission in one of the regiments of Guards when he was only sixteen years old. His uncommonly handsome figure then attracted no small share of notice from the beauties of the court of Charles II., and even awakened a passion in one of the royal mistresses herself. Impatient to signalize himself, however, he left their seductions, and embarked as a volunteer in the expedition against Tangiers in 1666. Thus his first essay in arms was made in actions against the Moors. Having returned to Great Britain, he attracted the notice of the Countess of Castlemaine, afterward Duchess of Cleveland, then the favorite mistress of Charles II., who had distinguished him by her regard before he embarked for Africa, and who made him a present of £5000, with which the young soldier bought an annuity of £500, which laid the foundation, says Chesterfield, of all his subsequent fortunes. Charles, to remove a dangerous rival in her unsteady affections, gave him a company in the Guards, and sent him to the Continent with the auxiliary force which, in those days of English humiliation, the cabinet of St. James's furnished to Louis XIV.

His services

under Louis

XIV. and

Turenne in

He distin

to aid him in subduing the United Provinces. Thus, by a singular coincidence, it was under Turenne, Condé, and Vauban that the future conqueror of the Bourbons first learned the art of scientific warfare. Wellington went through the same discipline, but in the inverse order: his first campaigns were made against the French in Flanders, his next against the bastions of Tippoo and the Mahratta horse in Hindostan. Churchill had not been long in Flanders before his talents and gallantry won for him deserved distinction. 3. The campaign of 1672, which brought the French armies to the gates of Amsterdam, and placed the United Provinces within a hair's breadth of de- Flanders. struction, was to him fruitful in valuable lessons. guished himself afterward so much at the siege of Nimeguen, that Turenne, who constantly called him by the soubriquet of "the handsome Englishman," predicted that he would one day be a great man. In the following year he had the good fortune to save the life of his colonel, the Duke of Monmouth, and acquired so much renown at the siege of Maestricht, that Louis XIV. publicly thanked him at the head of his army, and promised him his powerful influence with Charles II. for future promotion. He little thought what a formidable enemy he was then fostering at the court of his obsequious brother sovereign. The result of Louis XIV.'s intercession was, that Churchill was made lieutenant-colonel; and he continued to serve with the English auxiliary force in Flanders, under the French generals, till 1677, when he returned with his regiment to London. Beyond all doubt, it was these five years' service under the great masters of the military art, who then sustained the power and cast a halo round the crown of Louis XIV., which rendered Marlborough the consummate commander that he showed himself to have become, from the moment he was placed at the head of the allied armies. One of the most interesting and instructive lessons to be learned from biography is derived from observing the long steps, the vast amount of previous preparation, the numerous changes,

some prosperous, others adverse, by which the powers of a great man are formed, and he is prepared for playing the important part which it is intended he should perform on the theater of the world. Providence does nothing in vain, and when it has selected a particular mind for a great achievement, the events which happen to it all seem to conspire in a mysterious way for its development. Were any one omitted, some essential quality in the character of the future hero, statesman, or philosopher would be found to be wanting.

Manner in

XIV.'s ambi

out its own

ruin.

Here also, as in every other period of history, we may see 4. how unprincipled ambition overvaults itself, and which Louis the measures which seem at first sight most setion worked curely to establish its oppressive reign are the as yet unperceived means by which an overruling Power works out its destruction. Doubtless the other ministers of Louis XIV. deemed their master's power secure when this English alliance was concluded; when the English monarch had become a state pensioner of the court of Versailles; when a secret treaty had united them by apparently indissoluble bonds; when the ministers, alike with the patriots of England, were corrupted by his bribes; when the dreaded fleets of Britain were to be seen in union with those of France, leagued to overpower the squadrons of an inconsiderable republic; when the descendants of the conquerors of Cressy, Poitiers, and Azincour stood side by side with the successors of the vanquished in those disastrous fields, ready to achieve the conquest of Flanders and Holland. Without doubt, so far as human foresight could go, Louvois and Colbert were right. Nothing could appear so decidedly calculated to fix the power of Louis XIV. on an immovable foundation. how vain are the calculations of the great human intellects when put in opposition to the overruling will of Omnipotence! It was that very English alliance which ruined Louis XIV., as the Austrian alliance and marriage, which seemed to put the keystone in the arch of his greatness, afterward ruined Napoleon. By the effect, and one of the most desired effects,

But

of the English alliance, a strong body of British auxiliaries were sent to Flanders; the English officers learned the theory and practice of war in the best of all schools, and under the best of all teachers; that ignorance of the military art, the result in every age of our insular situation, and which generally causes the first four or five years of every war to terminate in disaster, was for the time removed; and that mighty genius was developed under the eye of Louis XIV., and by the example of Turenne, which was destined to hurl back to its own frontiers the tide of Gallic invasion, and close in mourning the reign of the Grand Monarque. "Les hommes agissent," says Bossuet, "mais Dieu les mène."

5.

Churchill's

rapid rise at

Upon Churchill's return to London, the brilliant reputation which had preceded, and the even augmented personal advantages which accompanied him, imme- marriage and diately rendered him the idol of beauty and fashion. court. The ladies of the palace vied for his homage, the nobles of the land hastened to cultivate his society. Like Julius Cæsar, he was carried away by the stream, and plunged into the vortex of courtly dissipation with the ardor which marks an energetic character in the pursuit either of good or evil. The elegance of his person and manners, and the charms of his conversation, prevailed so far with Charles II. and the Duke of York, that soon after, though not yet thirty years of age, he obtained a regiment. In 1680 he married the celebrated Sarah Jennings, the favorite lady in attendance on the Princess Anne, second daughter of the Duke of York, one of the most admired beauties of the court. This alliance increased his influence, already great, with that prince, and laid the foundation of the future grandeur of his fortunes. Shortly after his marriage he accompanied the Duke of York to Scotland, in the course of which they were both nearly shipwrecked on the coast of Fife. On this occasion the duke made the greatest efforts to preserve his favorite's life, and succeeded in doing so, although the danger was such that many of the Scottish nobles perished under his eye. On their