1714. CHAP. desperate battles, so memorable in warlike annals, which XII. 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 highspirited and daring in action-often skilful in tacticsgenerally 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. Great 3. change were paid ment. But when armies were raised at the expense, not of nobles, but of kings-when their cost became a lasting when armies and heavy drain on the royal exchequer, and they were by Govern- 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 costly. 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, XII. the only resource was to spare both the blood of the CHAP. soldiers and the expenses of the government as much as possible. Durable conquests, acquisitions of towns and 1714. provinces which could yield revenues and furnish men, became the great object of ambition. The point of feudal honour 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, at a little cost in men or money, his successes made to the revenues of his sovereign, than by the note with which the trumpet of Fame proclaimed his own exploits. 4. He Turenne introduced and brought tion. Turenne was the first, and, in his day, the greatest general in this new and scientific system of war. first applied to the military art the resources of prudent this system, foresight, deep thought, and profound combination; and it to perfecthe results of his successes completely justified the discernment which had prompted Louis XIV. to place him at the head of his armies. His methodical and far-seeing campaigns in Flanders, Franche-Comté, Alsace, and Lorraine, in the early part of the reign of that monarch, added these valuable provinces of France, which have never since been abandoned. 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 CHAP. entailed lasting wounds on France. Turenne's slow, or XII. more methodical and cautious conquests, have proved 1714. 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 1 See Mon- generals; and his very interesting analysis of his cami. p.74, 85. paigns is not the least important part of his invaluable memoirs.1 tholon, vol. 5. of Condé. Condé, though living in the same age, and alternately Character the the enemy and comrade of Turenne, belonged to a totally different class of generals, and, indeed, seemed to pertain 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 might 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 skilfully directed as those by which Hannibal overthrew the Roman legions at Trasymene and Cannæ. His genius was animated by the spirit of the fourteenth, but it was guided by the knowledge of the seventeenth, century. CHAP. 6. character general. Bred in the school of Turenne, placed, like him, at 1714. the head of a force raised with difficulty, and maintained Peculiar with still greater trouble, Marlborough was the greatest of Marlbogeneral of the methodical or scientific school which rough as a modern Europe has produced. He united the combinations of Turenne to the daring of Condé. 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 Ramilies and Malplaquet, are mainly 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 unrivalled 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 XII. 1714. CHAP. 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 motley array of various languages, habits, and religionheld in subjection by nothing else but the strong bond of admiration for their general, and a desire to share in his triumphs. 7. His extra ordinary and address. Consummate address, and never-failing prudence, especially characterised the English commander. With prudence such judgment did he measure his strength against that of his adversary-so skilfully did he choose the points of attack, whether in strategy or tacties-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, during nine campaigns, to all his manoeuvres, however trivial; and it has been already noticed, that the first disaster of any moment which occurred to his arms during that long period, so chequered with disaster to others, was the destruction of a convoy destined for the siege of St Venant, in October 1710, by one of Villars' detachments. A combination of daring in design, with caution and wisdom in execution, was his great characteristic. The councils of war and the field-deputies of Holland, to whom he submitted his projects for consideration, never failed to object to them from the extreme hazard with which they were attended; subsequent times have supposed that they must have been attended with no |