WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.
The death of King William, on the 8th of March, 1702, at first seemed likely to paralyze the league against France; "for, notwithstanding the ill success with which he made war generally, he was looked upon as the sole center of union that could keep together the great confederacy then forming; and how much the French feared from his life had appeared a few years before, in the extravagant and indecent joy they expressed on a false report of his death. A short time showed how vain the fears of some, and the hope of others were."Queen Anne, within three days after her accession, went down to the House of Lords, and there declared her resolution to support the measures planned by her predecessor, who had been " the great support, not only of these kingdoms, but of all Europe." Anne was married to Prince George of Denmark, and by her accession to the English throne the confederacy against Louis obtained the aid of the troops of Denmark ; but Anne's strong attachment to one of her female friends led to far more important advantages to the anti-Gallican confederacy than the acquisition of many armies, for it gave them Marlborough as their captain general. There are few successful commanders on whom France has shone BO unwillingly as upon John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, prince of the Holy Roman Empire, victor of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, captor of Liege, Bonn, Limburg, Landau, Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Oudenarde, Ostend, Menin, Dendermonde, Ath, Lille, Tournay, Mons, Dounay, Aire, Bethune, and Bouchain; who never fought a battle that he did not win, and never besieged a place that he did not take. Marlborough's own character is the cause of this. Military glory may and too often does, dazzle both contemporaries and posterity, until the crimes as well as the vices of heroes are forgotten. But even a few stains of personal meanness will dim a soldier's reputation irreparably; and Marlborough's faults were of a peculiarly base and mean order. Our feelings toward historical personages are in this respect like our feelings toward private acquaintances. There are actions of that shabby nature, that however much they may be outweighed by a man's good deeds on a general estimate of his character, we never can feel any cordial liking for the person who has once been guilty of them. Thus, with respect to the Duke of Marlborough, it goes against our feelings to admire the man who owed his first advancement in life to the court, favor which he and his family acquired through his sister becoming one of the mistresses of the Duke of York. It is repulsive to know that Marlborongh laid the foundation of his wealth by being the paid lover of one of the fair and frail favorites of Charles II. His treachery, and ingratitude to his patron and benefactor, James II., stand out in dark relief, even in that age of thankless perfidy. He was almost equally disloyal to his new master, King William; and a more un-English act cannot be recorded than Godolphin's and Marlborough's betrayal to the French court in 1694 of the expedition then designed against Brest, a piece of treachery which caused some hundreds of English soldiers and sailors to be helplessly slaughtered on the beach in Cameret Bay. It is, however, only in his military career that we have now to consider him; and there are very few generals, of either ancient or modern times, whose campaigns will bear a comparison with those of Marlborough, either for the masterly skill with which they were planned, or for the bold yet prudent energy with which each plan was carried into execution. Marlborough had served while young under Turenne, and had obtained the marked praise of that great tactician. It would be difficult, indeed, to name a single quality’ which a general ought to have, and with which Marlborough was not eminently gifted. What principally attracted the notice of contemporaries was the imperturbable evenness of his spirit. Voltaire(xiii) says of him. "He had, to a degree above all other generals of his time, that calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head and it was, perhaps, this quality, the greatest gift of nature for command, which formerly gave the English so many advantages over the French in the plains of Cressy, Poitiers, and Agincourt."
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