Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 373, November 1846

The spite at the Duke appeared in the difficulties which were now started by the Lords of the Treasury in regard to the prosecution of the works at Blenheim. This noble monument of a nation's gratitude had hitherto proceeded rapidly; the stately design of Vanburgh was rapidly approaching its completion, and so anxious had the Queen been to see it finished, that she got a model of it placed in the royal palace of Kensington. Now, however, petty and unworthy objections were started on the score of expense, and attempts were made, by delaying payment of the sums from the Treasury, to throw the cost of completing the building on the great general. He had penetration enough, however, to avoid falling into the snare, and actually suspended the progress of the work when the Treasury warrants were withheld. He constantly directed that the management of the building should be left to the Queen's officers; and, by steadily adhering to this system, he shamed them into continuing the work.21

Marlborough's name and influence, however, were too great to be entirely neglected, and the party which was now rising into supremacy at court were anxious, if possible, to secure them to their own side. They made, accordingly, overtures in secret to him; and it was even insinuated that, if he would abandon the Whigs, and coalesce with them, he would entirely regain the royal favour, and might aspire to the highest situation which a subject could hold. Lord Bolingbroke has told us what the conditions of this alliance were to be: – "He was to abandon the Whigs, his new friends, and take up with the Tories, his old friends; to engage heartily in the true interests, and no longer leave his country a prey to rapine and faction. He was, besides, required to restrain the rage and fury of his wife. Their offers were coupled with threats of an impeachment, and boasts that sufficient evidence could be adduced to carry a prosecution through both Houses."22 To terms so degrading, the Duke answered in terms worthy of his high reputation. He declared his resolution to be of no party, to vote according to his conscience, and to be as hearty as his new colleagues in support of the Queen's government and the welfare of the country. This manly reply increased the repulsive feelings with which he was regarded by the ministry, who seem now to have finally resolved on his ruin; while the intelligence that such overtures had been made having got wind, sowed distrust between him and the Whig leaders, which was never afterwards entirely removed. But he honourably declared that he would be governed by the Whigs, from whom he would never depart; and that they could not suspect the purity of his motives in so doing, as they had now lost the majority in the House of Commons.23

Parliament met on the 25th November; and Marlborough, in the end of the year, returned to London. But he soon received decisive proof of the altered temper both of government and the country towards him. In the Queen's speech, no notice was taken of the late successes in Flanders, no vote of thanks for his services in the campaign moved by ministers; and they even contrived, by a sidewind, to get quit of one proposed, to their no small embarrassment, by Lord Scarborough. The Duchess, too, was threatened with removal from her situation at court; and Marlborough avowed that he knew the Queen was "as desirous for her removal as Mr Harley and Mr Masham can be." The violent temper and proud unbending spirit of the Duchess were ill calculated to heal such a breach, which, in the course of the winter, became so wide, that her removal from the situation she held, as mistress of the robes, was only prevented by the fear that, in the vehemence of her resentment, she might publish the Queen's correspondence, and that the Duke, whose military services could not yet be spared, might resign his command. Libels against both the Duke and the Duchess daily appeared, and passed entirely unpunished, though the freedom of the press was far from being established. Three officers were dismissed from the army for drinking his health. When he waited on the Queen, on his arrival in England, in the end of December, she said – "I must request you will not suffer any vote of thanks to you to be moved in Parliament this year, as my ministers will certainly oppose it." Such was the return made by government to the hero who had raised the power and glory of England to an unprecedented pitch, and in that very campaign had cut deeper into the iron frontier of France than had ever been done in any former one.24

The female coterie who aided at St James's the male opponents of Marlborough, were naturally extremely solicitous to get the Duchess removed from her situations as head of the Queen's household and keeper of the privy purse; and ministers were only prevented from carrying their wishes into effect by their apprehension, if executed, of the Duke's resigning his command of the army. In an audience, on 17th January 1711, Marlborough presented a letter to her Majesty from the Duchess, couched in terms of extreme humility, in which she declared that his anxiety was such, at the requital his services had received, that she apprehended he would not live six months.25 The Queen at first refused to read it; and when at length, at the Duke's earnest request, she agreed to do so, she coldly observed – "I cannot change my resolution." Marlborough, in the most moving terms, and with touching eloquence, intreated the Queen not to dismiss the Duchess till she had no more need of her services, by the war being finished, which, he hoped, would be in less than a year; but he received no other answer, but a peremptory demand for the surrender of the gold key, the symbol of her office, within three days. Unable to obtain any relaxation in his sovereign's resolution, Marlborough withdrew with the deepest emotions of indignation and sorrow. The Duchess, in a worthy spirit, immediately took his resolution; she sent in her resignation, with the gold key, that very night. So deeply was Marlborough hurt at this extraordinary ingratitude for all his services, that he at first resolved to resign his whole command, and retire altogether into private life. From this intention he was only diverted, and that with great difficulty, by the efforts of Godolphin and the Whigs at home, and Prince Eugene and the Pensionary Heinsius abroad, who earnestly besought him not to abandon the command, as that would at once dissolve the grand alliance, and ruin the common cause. We can sympathise with the feelings of a victorious warrior who felt reluctant to forego, by one hasty step, the fruit of nine years of victories: we cannot but respect the self-sacrifice of the patriot who preferred enduring mortifications himself, to endangering the great cause of religious freedom and European independence. Influenced by these considerations, Marlborough withheld his intended resignation. The Duchess of Somerset was made mistress of the robes, and Mrs Masham obtained the confidential situation of keeper of the privy purse. Malignity, now sure of impunity, heaped up invectives on the falling hero. His integrity was calumniated, his courage even questioned, and the most consummate general of that, or perhaps any other age, represented as the lowest of mankind.26 It soon appeared how unfounded had been the aspersions cast upon the Duchess, as well as the Duke, for their conduct in office. Her accounts, after being rigidly scrutinised, were returned to her without any objection being stated against them; and Marlborough, anxious to quit that scene of ingratitude and intrigue for the real theatre of his glory, soon after set out for the army in Flanders.27

Marlborough arrived at the Hague on the 4th March; and, although no longer possessing the confidence of government, or intrusted with any control over diplomatic measures, he immediately set himself with the utmost vigour to prepare for military operations. Great efforts had been made by both parties, during the winter, for the resumption of hostilities, on even a more extended scale than in any preceding campaign. Marlborough found the army in the Low Countries extremely efficient and powerful; diversions were promised on the side both of Spain and Piedmont; and a treaty had been concluded with the Spanish malcontents, in consequence of which a large part of the Imperial forces were rendered disposable, which Prince Eugene was preparing to lead into the Low Countries. But, in the midst of these flattering prospects, an event occurred which suddenly deranged then all, postponed for above a month the opening of the campaign, and, in its final result, changed the fate of Europe. This was the death of the Emperor Joseph, of the smallpox, which happened at Vienna on the 16th April – an event which was immediately followed by Charles, King of Spain, declaring himself a candidate for the Imperial throne. As his pretensions required to be supported by a powerful demonstration of troops, the march of a large part of Eugene's men to the Netherlands was immediately stopped, and that prince himself was hastily recalled from Mentz, to take the command of the empire at Ratisbon, as marshal. Charles was soon after elected Emperor. Thus Marlborough was left to commence the campaign alone, which was the more to be regretted, as the preparations of Louis, during the winter, for the defence of his dominions had been made on the most extensive scale, and Marshal Villars' lines had come to be regarded as the ne plus ultra of field fortification. Yet were Marlborough's forces most formidable; for, when reviewed at Orchies on the 30th April, between Lille and Douay, they were found, including Eugene's troops which had come up, to amount to one hundred and eighty-four battalions, and three hundred and sixty-four squadrons, mustering above one hundred thousand combatants.28 But forty-one battalions and forty squadrons were in garrison, which reduced the effective force in the field to eighty thousand men.

The great object of Louis and his generals had been to construct such a line of defences as might prevent the irruption of the enemy into the French territory, now that the interior and last line of fortresses was so nearly broken through. In pursuance of this design, Villars had, with the aid of all the most experienced engineers in France, and at a vast expense of labour and money, constructed during the winter a series of lines and field-works, exceeding any thing yet seen in modern Europe in magnitude and strength, and to which the still more famous lines of Torres Vedras have alone, in subsequent times, afforded a parallel. The works extended from Namur on the Meuse, by a sort of irregular line, to the coast of Picardy. Running first along the marshy line of the Canche, they rested on the forts of Montreuil, Hesdin, and Trevant; while the great fortresses of Ypres, Calais, Gravelines, and St Omer, lying in their front, and still in the hands of the French, rendered any attempt to approach them both difficult and hazardous. Along the whole of this immense line, extending over so great a variety of ground, for above forty miles, every effort had been made, by joining the resources of art to the defences of nature, to render the position impregnable. The lines were not continuous, as in many places the ground was so rugged, or the obstacles of rocks, precipices, and ravines were so formidable, that it was evidently impossible to overcome them. But where*ever a passage was practicable, the approaches to it were protected in the most formidable manner. If a streamlet ran along the line, it was carefully dammed up, so as to be rendered impassible. Every morass was deepened, by stopping up its drains, or letting in the water of the larger rivers by artificial canals into it; redoubts were placed on the heights, so as to enfilade the plains between them; while in the open country, where no advantage of ground was to be met with, field-works were erected, armed with abundance of heavy cannon. To man these formidable lines, Villars had under his command one hundred and fifty-six battalions, and two hundred and twenty-seven squadrons in the field, containing seventy thousand infantry, and twenty thousand horse. He had ninety field guns and twelve howitzers. There was, besides, thirty-five battalions and eighty squadrons detached or in the forts; and, as Eugene soon took away twelve battalions and fifty squadrons from the Allied army, the forces on the opposite side, when they came to blows, were very nearly equal.29

Marlborough took the field on the 1st May, with eighty thousand men; and his whole force was soon grouped in and around Douay. The headquarters of Villars were at Cambray; but, seeing the forces of his adversary thus accumulated in one point, he made a corresponding concentration, and arranged his whole disposable forces between Bouchain on the right, and Monchy Le Preux on the left. This position of the French marshal, which extended in a concave semicircle with the fortresses, covering either flank, he considered, and with reason, as beyond the reach of attack. The English general was meditating a great enterprise, which should at once deprive the enemy of all his defences, and reduce him to the necessity of fighting a decisive battle, or losing his last frontier fortresses. But he was overwhelmed with gloomy anticipations; he felt his strength sinking under his incessant and protracted fatigues, and knew well he was serving a party who, envious of his fame, were ready only to decry his achievements.30 He lay, accordingly, for three weeks awaiting the arrival of his illustrious colleague, Prince Eugene, who joined on the 23d May, and took part in a great celebration of the anniversary of the victory at Ramilies, which had taken place on that day. The plans of the Allied generals were soon formed; and, taking advantage of the enthusiasm excited by that commemoration, and the arrival of so illustrious a warrior, preparations were made for the immediate commencement of active operations. On the 28th, the two generals reviewed the whole army. But their designs were soon interrupted by an event which changed the whole fortune of the campaign. Early in June, Eugene received positive orders to march to Germany, with a considerable part of his troops, to oppose a French force, which was moving towards the Rhine, to influence the approaching election of Emperor. On the 13th June, Eugene and Marlborough separated, for the last time, with the deepest expressions of regret on both sides, and gloomy forebodings of the future. The former marched towards the Rhine with twelve battalions and fifty squadrons, while Marlborough's whole remaining force marched to the right in six divisions.31

Though Villars was relieved by the departure of Eugene from a considerable part of the force opposed to him, and he naturally felt desirous of now measuring his strength with his great antagonist in a decisive affair, yet he was restrained from hazarding a general engagement. Louis, trusting to the progress of the Tory intrigues in England, and daily expecting to see Marlborough and the war-party overthrown, sent him positive orders not to fight; and soon after detached twenty-five battalions and forty squadrons, in two divisions, to the Upper Rhine, to watch the movements of Eugene. Villars encouraged this separation, representing that the strength of his position was such, that he could afford to send a third detachment to the Upper Rhine, if it was thought proper. Marlborough, therefore, in vain offered battle, and drew up his army in the plain of Lens for that purpose. Villars cautiously remained on the defensive; and, though he threw eighteen bridges over the Scarpe, and made a show of intending to fight, he cautiously abstained from any steps which might bring on a general battle.32 It was not without good reason that Louis thus enjoined his lieutenant to avoid compromising his army. The progress of the negotiations with England gave him the fairest ground for believing that he would obtain nearly all he desired from the favour with which he was regarded by the British cabinet without running any risk. He had commenced a separate negotiation with the court of St James's, which had been favourably received; and Mr Secretary St John had already transmitted to Lord Raby, the new plenipotentiary at the Hague, a sketch of six preliminary articles proposed by the French king, which were to be the basis of a general peace.33

The high tone of these proposals proved how largely Louis counted upon the altered dispositions of the British cabinet. The Spanish succession, the real object of the war, was evaded. Every thing was directed to British objects, and influenced by the desire to tempt the commercial cupidity of England to the abandonment of the great objects of her national policy. Real security was tendered to the British commerce with Spain, the Indus, and the Mediterranean; the barrier the Dutch had so long contended for was agreed to; a reasonable satisfaction was tendered to the allies of England and Holland; and, as to the Spanish succession, it was to be left to "new expedients, to the satisfaction of all parties interested." These proposals were favourably received by the British ministry; they were in secret communicated to the Pensionary Heinsius, but concealed from the Austrian and Piedmontese plenipotentiaries; and they were not communicated to Marlborough– a decisive proof both of the altered feeling of the cabinet towards that general, and of the consciousness on their part of the tortuous path on which they were now entering.34

After much deliberation, and a due consideration of what could be effected by the diminished force now at his disposal, which, by the successive drafts to Eugene's army, was now reduced to one hundred and nineteen battalions, and two hundred and fifty-six squadrons, not mustering above seventy-five thousand combatants, Marlborough determined to break through the enemies' boasted lines; and, after doing so, undertake the siege of Bouchain, the possession of which would give him a solid footing within the French frontier. With this view, he had long and minutely studied the lines of Villars; and he hoped that, even with the force at his disposal, they might be broken through. To accomplish this, however, required an extraordinary combination of stratagem and force; and the manner in which Marlborough contrived to unite them, and bring the ardent mind and lively imagination of his adversary to play into his hands, to the defeat of all the objects he had most at heart, is perhaps the most wonderful part of his whole military achievements.35

During his encampment at Lewarde, opposite Villars, the English general had observed that a triangular piece of ground in front of the French position, between Cambray, Aubanchocil-au-bac, and the junction of the Sauzet and Scheldt, offered a position so strong, that a small body of men might defend it against a very considerable force. He resolved to make the occupation of this inconsiderable piece of ground the pivot on which the whole passage of the lines should be effected. A redoubt at Aubigny, which commanded the approach to it, was first carried without difficulty. Arleux, which also was fortified, was next attacked by seven hundred men, who issued from Douay in the night. That post also was taken, with one hundred and twenty prisoners. Marlborough instantly used all imaginable expedition in strengthening it; and Villars, jealous of a fortified post so close to his lines remaining in the hands of the Allies, attacked it in the night of the 9th July; and, though he failed in retaking the work, he surprised the Allies at that point, and made two hundred men and four hundred horses prisoners. Though much chagrined at the success of this nocturnal attack, the English general now saw his designs advancing to maturity. He therefore left Arleux to its own resources, and marched towards Bethune. That fort was immediately attacked by Marshal Montesquieu, and, after a stout resistance, carried by the French, who made the garrison, five hundred strong, prisoners. Villars immediately razed Arleux to the ground, and withdrew his troops; while Marlborough, who was in hopes the lure of these successes would induce Villars to hazard a general engagement, shut himself up in his tent, and appeared to be overwhelmed with mortification at the checks he had received.36

Villars was so much elated with these successes, and the accounts he received of Marlborough's mortification, that he wrote to the king of France a vain-glorious letter, in which he boasted that he had at length brought his antagonist to a ne plus ultra. Meanwhile, Marlborough sent off his heavy baggage to Douay; sent his artillery under a proper guard to the rear; and, with all imaginable secresy, baked bread for the whole troops for six days, which was privately brought up. Thus disencumbered and prepared, he broke up at four in the morning on the 1st of August, and marched in eight columns towards the front. During the three following days, the troops continued concentrated, and menacing sometimes one part of the French lines and sometimes another, so as to leave the real point of attack in a state of uncertainty. Seriously alarmed, Villars concentrated his whole force opposite the Allies, and drew in all his detachments, evacuating even Aubigny and Arleux, the object of so much eager contention some days before. On the evening of the 4th, Marlborough, affecting great chagrin at the check he had received, spoke openly to those around him of his intention of avenging them by a general action, and pointed to the direction the attacking columns were to take. He then returned to the camp, and gave orders to prepare for battle. Gloom hung on every countenance of those around him; it appeared nothing short of an act of madness to attack an enemy superior in number, and strongly posted in a camp surrounded with entrenchments, and bristling with cannon. They ascribed it to desperation, produced by the mortifications received from the government, and feared that, by one rash act, he would lose the fruit of all his victories. Proportionally great was the joy in the French camp, when the men, never doubting they were on the eve of a glorious victory, spent the night in the exultation which, in that excitable people, has so often been the prelude to disaster.37

Having brought the feeling of both armies to this point, and produced a concentration of Villars's army directly in his front, Marlborough, at dusk on the 4th, ordered the drums to beat; and before the roll had ceased, orders were given for the tents to be struck. Meanwhile Cadogan secretly left the camp, and met twenty-three battalions and seventeen squadrons, drawn from the garrisons of Lille and Tournay, which instantly marched; and continuing to advance all night, passed the lines rapidly to the left, without opposition at Arleux, at break of day. A little before nine, the Allied main army began to defile rapidly to the left, through the woods of Villers and Neuville – Marlborough himself leading the van, at the head of fifty squadrons. With such expedition did they march, still holding steadily on to the left, that before five in the morning of the 5th they reached Vitry on the Scarpe, where they found pontoons ready for their passage, and a considerable train of field artillery. At the same time, the English general here received the welcome intelligence of Cadogan's success. He instantly dispatched orders to every man and horse to press forward without delay. Such was the ardour of the troops, who all saw the brilliant manœuvre by which they had outwitted the enemy, and rendered all their labour abortive, that they marched sixteen hours without once halting; and by ten next morning, the whole had passed the enemies' lines without opposition, and without firing a shot! Villars received intelligence of the night-march having begun at eleven at night; but so utterly was he in the dark as to the plan his opponent was pursuing, that he came up to Verger, when Marlborough had drawn up his army on the inner side of the lines in order of battle, attended only by a hundred dragoons, and narrowly escaped being made prisoner. Altogether, the Allied troops marched thirty-six miles in sixteen hours, the most part of them in the dark, and crossed several rivers, without either falling into confusion or sustaining any loss. The annals of war scarcely afford an example of such a success being gained in so bloodless a manner. The famous French lines, which Villars boasted would form the ne plus ultra of Marlborough, had been passed without losing a man; the labour of nine months was at once rendered of no avail, and the French army, in deep dejection, had no alternative but to retire under the cannon of Cambray.38