instant success, and they could not be dealt out without the risk of receiving as many. The fact of his maintaining the struggle against such desperate odds proves the general wisdom of his policy. No man ever made more skilful use of an interior line of communication, or flew with greater rapidity from one threatened part of his dominions to another. None ever, by the force of skill in tactics and sagacity in strategy, gained such astonishing successes with forces so inferior. And if some generals have committed fewer faults, none were impelled by such desperate circumstances to a hazardous course; and none had ever greater magnanimity in confessing and explaining them for the benefit of future times.

CHAP.

XII.

1714.

of Frederick

leon.

The only general in modern times who can bear a 55. comparison with Frederick, if the difficulties of his situa- Comparison tion are considered, is Napoleon. It is a part only of and Napohis campaigns, however, which sustains the analogy. There is no resemblance between the mighty conqueror pouring down the valley of the Danube, at the head of one hundred and eighty thousand men, invading Russia with five hundred thousand, or overrunning Spain with three hundred thousand, and Frederick the Great, with thirty thousand or forty thousand, turning every way against quadruple the number of Austrians, French, Swedes, and Russians. Yet a part, and the most brilliant part, of Napoleon's career bears a close resemblance to that of the Prussian hero. In Lombardy in 1796, in Saxony in 1813, and in the plain of Champagne in 1814, he was upon the whole inferior in force to his opponents, and owed the superiority which he generally enjoyed, at the point of attack, to the rapidity of his movements, and the skill with which, like Frederick, he availed himself of an interior line of communication.

CHAP.

XII,

1714.

56.

of resem

blance.

His immortal campaign in France in 1814, in particular, where he bore up with seventy thousand men against two hundred and fifty thousand enemies, bears the closest resemblance to those which Frederick sustained for six years against the forces of the coalition.

Both were often to appearance rash, because the Their points affairs of each were so desperate that nothing could save them but an audacious policy. Both were indomitable in resolution, and preferred ruin to sitting down on a dishonoured throne. Both were from the outset of the struggle placed in circumstances apparently hopeless, and each succeeded in protracting it solely by his astonishing talent and resolution. The fate of the two was widely different: the one transmitted an honoured and aggrandised throne to his successors; the other, overthrown and discrowned, terminated his days on the rock of St Helena, But success is not always the test of real merit the verdict of ages is often different from the judgment or fate of present times. Hannibal conquered, has left a greater name among men than Scipio victorious. In depth of thought, force of genius, variety of information, and splendour of success, Frederick will bear no comparison with Napoleon. But Frederick's deeds, as a general, were more extraordinary than those of the French emperor, because he bore up longer against greater odds. It is the highest praise of Napoleon to say, that he did in one campaign—his last and greatest -what Frederick had continued to do for six.

57.

If the campaigns of Eugene and Frederick suggest a Of Marlbo comparison with those of Napoleon, those of Marlborough Wellington. challenge a parallel with those of the other great commander of our day-Wellington. Their political and

rough and

military situations were in many respects alike. Both

combated at the head of the forces of a coalition, composed of dissimilar nations, actuated by separate interests, inflamed by different passions. Both had the utmost difficulty in soothing the jealousies and stifling the selfishness of these nations; and both found themselves often more seriously impeded by the allied cabinets in their rear, than by the enemy's forces in their front. Both were the generals of a nation which, albeit covetous of military glory, and proud of warlike renown, is to the last degree impatient of previous preparation; which ever frets at the cost of wars that its political position renders unavoidable, or that in its ambitious spirit it had readily undertaken. Both were compelled to husband the blood of their soldiers, and spare the resources of their governments, from the consciousness that they had already been strained to the uttermost in the cause, and that any further demands would render the war so unpopular as speedily to lead to its termination. The career of both occurred at a time when political passions were strongly roused in their country; when the war in which they were engaged was waged against the inclination, and, in appearance at least, against the interests, of a large and powerful party at home, who sympathised from political feeling with their enemies, and were ready to decry every success and magnify every disaster of their own arms, from a secret feeling that their party elevation was identified rather with the successes of the enemy than with those of their own countrymen. The Tories were to Marlborough precisely what the Whigs were to Wellington. Both were opposed to the armies of the most powerful monarch, led by the most renowned generals of Europe, whose forces preponderating over those of the

CHAP.

XII.

1714.

XII.

CHAP. adjoining states, had come to threaten the liberties of all Europe, and against whom there had at last been formed a general coalition, to restrain the ambition from which so much detriment had already been experienced.

1714.

58.

Points in

which their

differed.

But while in these respects the two British heroes were placed very much in the same circumstances, in other particulars, not less material, their situations were widely different. Marlborough had never any difficulties in the field to struggle with, approaching those which beset Wellington. By great exertions, both on his own part and that of the British and Dutch government, his force was generally almost equal to that with which he had to contend. It was often exactly so. War at that period, in the Low Countries at least, consisted chiefly of a single battle during a campaign, followed by the siege of two or three frontier fortresses. The number of strongholds with which the country bristled, rendered any further or more extensive operations, in general, impossible. This state of matters at once rendered success more probable to a general of superior abilities, and made it more easy to repair disaster. No vehement passions had been roused, bringing whole nations into the field, and giving one state, where they had burnt the fiercest, a vast superiority in point of numbers over its more pacific or less excited neighbours. But in all these respects, the circumstances in which Wellington was placed were not only not parallel, they were contrasted. From first to last, in the Peninsula, he was enormously outnumbered by the enemy. Until the campaign of 1813, when his force in the field was, for the first time, equal to that of the French, the superiority to which he was opposed was so prodigious that the

only surprising thing is, how he was not driven into the CHAP.

sea at the very first encounter.

XII.

1714.

59.

riority of

which Wel

to contend.

While the French had never less than two hundred thousand effective troops at their disposal, after provid- Great supeing for all their garrisons and communications, the force with English general had never more than thirty thousand lington had effective British, and twenty thousand Portuguese, around his standard. The French were directed by the Emperor, who, intent on the subjugation of the Peninsula, and wielding the inexhaustible powers given by the conscription for the supply of his armies, cared not though he lost a hundred thousand men in every campaign, provided he purchased success by their sacrifice. Wellington was supported at home by a government which, raising its soldiers by voluntary enrolment, could with difficulty supply a drain of fifteen thousand men a-year from their ranks for service in every quarter of the globe. He was watched by a party which decried every advantage, and magnified every disaster, in order to induce the entire withdrawal of the troops from the Peninsula.

60.

circum

the soldiers

leon, Marl

and Wel

Napoleon sent into Spain a host of veterans trained in fifteen years' combats, who had carried the French Opposite standards into every capital of Europe. Wellington led stances of to their encounter troops admirably disciplined, indeed, of Napobut almost all unacquainted with actual war, and having borough, often to learn the rudiments even of the most necessary lington. field operations in presence of the enemy. Marlborough's troops, though heterogeneous and dissimilar, had been trained to their practical duties in the preceding wars under William III., and brought into the field a degree of experience noways inferior to that of their opponents.