XII. 1714. hazard, from the uniform success with which they were CHAP. attended when carried into execution. 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, which was the cause of this extraordinary and uninterrupted success. 8. by Though inwas force, he ferior in always ed the ini He was often outnumbered by the enemy, and was always opposed by a homogeneous army, animated one strong national and military spirit; while he himself at the head of the troops of many different na- maintaintions, some of them with little turn for warlike exploit, tiative. others lukewarm, or even treacherous in the cause. But, notwithstanding this, he never lost the ascendant. From the period when he began the war on the 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, for any length of time, abandoned the initiative. He was almost always 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 well-nigh ruined, by means of the brilliant cross-march into Bavaria, and the splendid victory at Blenheim. Thus also he gained Flanders for the Archduke by the stroke at Ramilies, when the affairs of the Allies there wore the most unpromising aspect; and regained it at Oudenarde, after the Imperial cause in that quarter had been all but lost by CHAP. XII. 1714. 9. war in the time of Marlborough. the treacherous surrender of Ghent and Bruges, in the very centre of his water-communications. War, in the days of Marlborough, was a totally Nature of different art from what it had been, or afterwards became. The conqueror neither swept over the world with 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 neither roused by the fanaticism of Mahommedan 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 generally 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 skilful 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. СНАР. XII. 1714. 10. spection The was in him all a matter of necessity. Prudence and circumspection in the conduct of such a war were not less imposed on Marlborough by his situa- Circumtion than they were in unison with his character. general of a coalition has one duty which beyond others it behoves him to discharge, and that is, if possible, 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, as 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 afterwards, was the situation of Wellington. Unbroken success was to both the condition of existence. Marlborough was ruined by the indecisive result of the campaign of 1711; Wellington all but ruined by the retreat XII. 1714. CHAP. from Talavera in 1809. A fourth part of the defeats from which Frederick or Napoleon recovered, and which were the price at which they purchased their astonishing triumphs, would, from the clamour they raised at home, have destroyed Marlborough or Wellington. A 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 dependent on the fears, and liable to be thwarted by the jealousies, of others. 11. He was compelled system of fix the war The same necessity was the cause of the adoption of the system of sieges, and of the fixing of the war in to adopt the Flanders, which formed such striking features in the sieges, and military career of Marlborough. This matter has been in Flanders. the subject of extraordinary misconception, and unbounded misrepresentation, from the contemporary 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 defenceless 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 almost 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 awanting, we have only to look at Denain and the campaign of 1712, even when the ardent genius of Eugene directed the allied forces. CHAP. XII. 1714. the opposite To have invaded a compact monarchy like France, 12. possessing such vast military resources, and animated by Dangers of so strong a military spirit, with an inferior force, leaving system. the whole triple line of frontier fortresses 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 centre 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. assailing France on the side of the Low Countries, and working by degrees through its iron frontier, Marlborough took the only certain way of bringing down 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 VOL. II. 2 B By |