XII. 1714. ravelin and a counterscarp were.* He was compelled by CHAP. the pressure of time, and the approach of forces greatly superior to his own, to make assaults as his last chance, when the breaches were scarcely practicable, and the parapets and defences around them had not even been knocked away. The attacks on Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were not regular sieges; they were sudden assaults on strong places by a sort of coup-de-main, under circumstances where methodical approaches were impossible. Whoever weighs these circumstances, so far from wondering at the chequered fortune of Wellington in sieges, will rather be surprised that he was successful at all. 67. remarkable umphs of over France. The examination of the comparative merits of these two illustrious generals, and the enumeration of the Great and names of their glorious triumphs, suggests one reflection land triof a very peculiar kind. That England is a maritime England power, that the spirit of her inhabitants is essentially nautical, and that the sea is the element on which her power has chiefly been developed, need be told to none who reflect on the magnitude of her present colonial empire, and how long she has wielded the empire of the waves. The French are the first to tell us that her strength is confined to that element; that she is, at land, only a third-rate power; and that the military career does not suit the genius of her people. How, then, has it happened that England, the nautical power, and little inured to land operations, has inflicted greater wounds upon France by military success, than any other * This was literally true of the generals of infantry. Picton, whose gallant assault won the castle of Badajoz, and closed its terrible siege, spent some days with a celebrated officer, still alive, whose knowledge of fortification and gunnery is well known, in learning the rudiments of fortification and the attack of places. CHAP. XII. power, and that in almost all the pitched battles which the two nations have fought, during five centuries, the 1714. English have proved victorious? That England's military force is absorbed in the defence of a colonial empire which encircles the earth, is indeed certain; and, in every age, the impatience of taxation in her people has starved down her military establishment, during peace, to so low a point, as rendered the occurrence of disaster, in the first years subsequent to the breaking out of war, a matter of certainty. On the other hand, the military spirit of her neighbours has almost constantly kept theirs at the level which insures early success. Yet with all these disadvantages, and with a population which, down to the close of the last war, was little more than half that of France, she has inflicted far greater land disasters on her redoubtable neighbour than all the military monarchies of Europe put together. 68. of land dis English armies, for a hundred and twenty years, Long series ravaged France; while England has not seen the fires asters sus of a French camp since the battle of Hastings. English France from troops have twice taken the French capital; an English England. king was crowned at Paris; a French king rode captive tained by through London; a French emperor died in English captivity, and his remains were surrendered by English generosity. Twice the English horse marched from Calais to the Pyrenees; once from the Pyrenees to Calais; the monuments of Napoleon in the French capital at this moment owe their preservation from German revenge to an English general. All the great disasters and days of mourning for France, since the battle of Hastings-Tenchebray, Cressy, Poitiers, Azincour, Verneuil, Crevant, Blenheim, Oudenarde, Ramilies, Malplaquet, Minden, Dettingen, Quebec, Egypt, Tala CHAP. XII. 1714. vera, Salamanca, Vitoria, the Pyrenees, Orthes, Waterloo were gained by English generals, and won, for the most part, by English soldiers. Even at Fontenoy, the greatest victory over England of which France can boast since Hastings, every regiment in the French army was, on their own admission, routed by the terrible English column, and victory was snatched from its grasp solely by want of support on the part of the Dutch and Austrians.* No coalition against France has ever been successful, in which England did not take a prominent part; none, in the end, has failed of gaining its objects, in which she stood foremost in the fight. This fact is so 1 Michelet's apparent on the most superficial survey of history that it Hist. de is admitted by the ablest French historians, though they 321. profess themselves unable to explain it.1 Is it that there is a degree of hardihood and courage in the Anglo-Saxon race, which renders them, without "Les Anglais et les Hollandais attaquèrent en même temps sur deux points différentes. Les Anglais s'avancèrent sans que rien étonnat leur audace. Comme le terrain se reserrait, leurs bataillons furent obligés de se rapprocher, et ainsi se forma naturellement cette redoutable colonne, dont le Duc de Cumberland apprecia toute la puissance. En effet, elle marchait en lançant la mort de toutes ses faces. Rien ne pouvait entamer cette terrible masse. Les régiments Français venaient inutilement: se heurter contre elle et perir. Le premier corps abordé par les Anglais fut le régiment des Gardes Françaises. Avant que le feu commençat, un officier Anglais sort des rangs, ôte son chapeau, et dit, 'Messieurs les Français, tirez!' Un officier s'avance aussitôt, et répond, Les Français ne tirent pas les premiers: nous reponderons.' Les Anglais font feu, et avec tant de précision que toute la première ligne des Gardes tombat. Cette courtoisie intempestive couta la vie à dix-huit officiers. Cependant la colonne avançait toujours lentement, mais avec une inébranlable fermeté. Elle avait depasée de trois cents toises le front de l'armée Française. La bataille paraissait perdue, et les personnes qui entouraient le roi parlaient déjà de la necessité de la retraite. La Maréschal de Saxe, qu'on avait vu toujours au milieu de feu, soit en litière soit à cheval, accourt et s'écrie, 'Quel est le qui donne ce conseil a vôtre Majesté? Avant le combat c'etait mon avis; il est trop tard maintenant.' Tout etait perdu si le roi eut quitté le champ de bataille."DE TOCQUEVILLE, Histoire de Louis XV., 525-526. VOL. II. 2 E France, v. CHAP. XII. the benefit of previous experience in war, adequate to the conquest, on land, even of the most warlike Continental military nations? Is it that the quality of What have dogged resolution, determination not to be conquered, 1714. 69. been the causes of this? bottom, in the familiar English phrase,-is of such value in war that it compensates almost any degree of inferiority in the practical acquaintance with war? Is it that the North brings forth a bolder race of men than the South, and that, other things being equal, the people nursed under a more rigorous climate will vanquish those of a more genial? Is it that the free spirit which, in every age, has distinguished the English people, has communicated a degree of vigour and resolution to their warlike operations, which has rendered them so often victorious in land fights, albeit nautical and commercial in their ideas, over their military neighbours? Or is it that this courage in war, and this vigour in peace, and this passion for freedom at all times, arise from, and are but symptoms of, an ardent and aspiring disposition, imprinted by Nature on the race to whom the dominion of half the globe has been destined? Experience has not yet determined to which of these causes this most extraordinary fact has been owing; but it is one upon which our military neighbours, and especially the French, would do well to ponder, now that the population of the British Isles has turned eight-and-twenty millions. If England has done such things in Continental warfare, with an army which never brought fifty thousand native British sabres and bayonets into the field, what would be the result if national distress, or necessities, or a change in the objects of national desire, were to send two hundred thousand? It is observed by the very eminent historian whose XII. 1714. 70. contempo spondence ing historic labours have thrown such an imperishable light on the CHAP. history of Scotland,* that "historic truth is a plant of the slowest growth: it generally takes several ages for its development; and when it does reach maturity, it is Value of chiefly from the influence of the light of contemporary rary correletters." Never was the justice of this remark more in establish clearly evinced than in the history of the illustrious hero truth. whose biography has now been brought to a close. More perhaps than any other man, Marlborough was the architect of the marvellous edifice of England's greatness; for he at once established on a solid basis the Protestant succession, which secured its religious freedom, and vanquished the formidable enemy which threatened its national independence. His mighty arm bequeathed to his country the honours and the happiness of the eighteenth century: the happiest period, by the admission of all historians, which has dawned upon the world since that of the Antonines in ancient story. 71. effect on rough's He laid the foundation-in preserving and raising its place among the nations, and securing the freedom which Its vast vivified its exertions of the colonial empire, which is Marlbodestined to spread its descendants over half the globe. memory. Nelson and Wellington themselves were less instrumental in producing its greatness. They upheld-but he created. Yet was this mighty genius and noble character the object of unmeasured obloquy in the generation which he had illustrated, and among the people whom he had saved. If there is any contrast more striking than another, it is between Marlborough as drawn by the party writers of the day, and Marlborough as now revealed by the impartial record of his actions, and the unerring testimony of his confidential correspondence. * Mr Tytler. |