4.

Turenne in

brought it to

and profound combination; and the results of his successes completely justified the discernment which troduced this had prompted Louis XIV. in placing him at the system, and 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..

nary prudence

Consummate address and never-failing prudence were the great characteristics of the English commander. 7. With such judgment did he measure his strength His extraordi against that of his adversary; so skillfully did he and address. 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.

or in force, he Though inferitained the ini

always main

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 different nations, some of them with little turn for tiative. 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 *Ante, chap. vi., § 13, page 263.

cause.

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 inferior 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 art from what it had been or afterward became. 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

9.

Nature of war

.

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.

aster.

him a matter

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 of necessity. others it behooves him to discharge, and that is, to avoid disThe 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. Unbroken success was to both the condition of existence. Marlborough was