in seven, fought fifteen, in every one of which he proved CHAP. victorious.* Marlborough's consummate generalship, throughout XII. 1714. 62. daring but ardous than rough's. his whole career, kept him out of disaster. It was said, Wellington's policy with justice, that he never fought a battle which he did was more not gain, nor laid siege to a town which he did not take. more hazHe took above twenty fortified places of the first order, Marlbogenerally in presence of an enemy's army superior to his own. Wellington's more desperate circumstances frequently involved him in peril, and on some occasions caused serious losses to his army; but they were the price at which he purchased his transcendent successes. Wellington's bolder strategy gained for him advantages which the more circumspect measures of his predecessor never could have attained. Marlborough would never, with scarcely any artillery, have hazarded the attack on Burgos, nor incurred the perilous chances of the retreat from that town; but he never would have delivered the south of the Peninsula in a single campaign, by throwing himself, with forty thousand men, upon the communications, in the north, of a hundred and fifty thousand. It is hard to say which was the greatest general, if their merits in the field alone are considered; but Wellington's successes were the more vital to his country, for they delivered it from the greater peril; and they were more honourable to himself, for they were achieved against greater odds. And his fame in future times will be proportionally brighter; for the final overthrow of Napoleon, and the destruction of the Revolutionary power, in a single battle, present an object * Viz: Vimeira, the Douro, Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes d'Onoro, Salamanca, Vitoria, the Pyrenees, the Bidassoa, the Nive, the Nivelle, Orthes, Toulouse, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo. CHAP. XII. 1714. 63. Marlbo rough made of surpassing interest, to which there is nothing in history perhaps parallel, and which, to the latest generation, will fascinate the minds of men. Marlborough laid great stress on cavalry in war; his chief successes in the field were owing to the skilful use more use of made of a powerful reserve body of horse in the decisive Wellington point, and at the decisive moment. It was thus that he -and why overthrew the French centre at Blenheim, by the charge cavalry than of six thousand cavalry headed by himself in person, in the interval between that village and Oberglau; struck the decisive blow at Ramilies by the charge of a reserve of twenty squadrons drawn from the rear of the right; and broke through the formidable intrenchments at Malplaquet, by instantly following up the irruption of Lord Orkney into the centre of the lines by a vigorous charge of thirty squadrons of cavalry in at the opening. The proportion of horse to infantry was much greater in his armies than it has since been in the British service; it was never under eighty, and at last as high as a hundred and sixty squadrons, which, at the usual rate of a hundred and fifty to a squadron, must, when complete, have mustered twelve and twenty-four thousand sabres. This was from a fourth to a fifth of their amount at each time. His horse, in great part composed of the steady German dragoons, was in general of the very best description. Wellington's victories were, for the most part, less owing to the action of cavalry; but that was because the country which was the theatre of war -Portugal, Spain, and the south of France-was commonly too rocky or mountainous to admit of the use of horse on an extended scale, and he had not nearly so large a body of cavalry at his disposal. Where they could be rendered available, he made the best use of this powerful arm, as was shown in Le Marchant's noble charge at Salamanca, Bock's with the heavy Germans next day, and Ponsonby's, Vivian's, and Somerset's at Waterloo. CHAP. XII. 1714. 64. and Hanni of cavalry. In recent times, and especially since the campaigns of Frederick the Great, the importance of cavalry has Napoleon's been too much underrated by military men. Napoleon bal's opinion had the highest opinion of the value of that arm in war; he constantly said, that, if the courage and leading on both sides were equal, horse should break the steadiest infantry. Almost all his great victories Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Borodino, Dresden, Montmirail, Vauchamps-were owing to the terrible charge at the close of the day by Murat, or his successors, with his immense body of heavy horse. This vehemence all but reft the day from the British at Waterloo opposed by any other infantry, it unquestionably would have done so. Hannibal's victories were all gained by his Numidian cavalry the sight of the uniform of two or three of them was sufficient after Cannæ to make a whole Roman legion stand to arms. This is adverse to the general doctrine of military men at this period; but there are phases in opinion on war as in other things: what is commonly thought at a particular time is not always right. The recent victories of Aliwal and Sobraon in India have gone far to shake the validity of the more current opinion; and if authority is to decide the matter, he is a bold man who gainsays the united judgment of Hannibal, Marlborough, and Napoleon. Marlborough was more fortunate than Wellington, perhaps more so than any general of modern times, in sieges. He took nearly all the strongest places in Europe in presence of an enemy's army, always equal, XII. 1714. 65. Marlbo rough was more suc cessful than in sieges. CHAP. generally superior to his own: he never once laid siege to a fortress that he did not subdue. His reduction of Lille, with its noble garrison of fifteen thousand men, in presence of Vendôme at the head of a hundred and twenty thousand, was the most wonderful achievement Wellington of the kind which modern Europe had witnessed. Wellington was less fortunate in this branch of warfare. He made three successful sieges, those of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and San Sebastian; but he sustained three bloody repulses, at Badajoz in 1811, Burgos in 1812, and San Sebastian in the first siege in 1813. But in justice to Wellington, the essential difference between his situation and that of Marlborough in this respect must be considered. The latter carried on the war in Flanders close to the strongholds of Austria and Holland, at no great distance from the arsenals of England, and with the facilities of water-carriage in general for bringing up his battering-trains. His troops, trained by experience in the long war which terminated with the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, had become as expert as their enemies in all the branches of the military art. 66. Causes of this circumstance. Wellington carried on the war at a great distance from the resources of Great Britain, with little aid from the inefficient or distracted councils of Portugal or Spain, in a mountainous country, where water-communication could only penetrate a short way into the interior, in presence of an enemy's force always double, often triple, his own, and with troops whom a century of domestic peace, bought by Marlborough's victories, had caused so completely to forget the practical details of war, that even some of the best of the general officers, when they embarked for the Peninsula, had to be told what a 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. remarkable umphs of over France. The examination of the comparative merits of these 67. 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. VOL. II. 2 E |