Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

Envy is generally extinguished by death, because the object of it has ceased to stand in the way of those who feel it. Marlborough's funeral obsequies were celebrated with uncommon magnificence, and all ranks and parties joined in doing him honour. His body lay in state for several days at Marlborough House, and crowds flocked together from all the three kingdoms to witness the imposing ceremony of his funeral, which was performed with the utmost magnificence, on the 28th June. The procession was opened by a long array of military, among whom were General, now Lord Cadogan, and many other officers who had suffered and bled in his cause. Long files of heralds, officers-at-arms, and pursuivants followed, bearing banners emblazoned with his armorial achievements, among which appeared, in uncommon lustre, the standard of Woodstock, exhibiting the arms of France on the Cross of St George. In the centre of the cavalcade was a lofty car, drawn by eight horses, which bore the mortal remains of the Hero, under a splendid canopy adorned by plumes, military trophies, and heraldic devices of conquest. Shields were affixed to the sides, bearing the names of the towns he had taken, and the fields he had won. Blenheim was there, and Oudenarde, Ramilies and Malplaquet; Lille and Tournay; Bethune, Douay, and Ruremonde; Bouchain and Mons, Maestricht and Ghent. This array of names made the English blush for the manner in which they had treated their hero. On either side were five generals in military mourning, bearing aloft banderoles, on which were emblazoned the arms of the family. Eight dukes supported the pall; besides the relatives of the deceased, the noblest and proudest of England's nobility joined in the procession. Yet the most moving part of the ceremony was the number of old soldiers who had combated with the hero on his fields of fame, and who might now be known, in the dense crowds which thronged the streets, by their uncovered heads, grey hairs, and the tears which trickled down their cheeks. The body was deposited, with great solemnity, in Westminster Abbey, at the east end of the tomb of Henry VII.; but this was not its final resting-place in this world. It was soon after removed to the chapel at Blenheim, where it was deposited in a magnificent mausoleum; and there it still remains, surmounted by the noble pile which the genius of Vanbrugh had conceived to express a nation's gratitude.36

The extraordinary merit of Marlborough's military talents will not be duly appreciated, unless the peculiar nature of the contest he was called on to direct, and the character which he assumed in his time, is taken into consideration.

The feudal times had ceased – at least so far as the raising of a military force by its machinery was concerned. Louis XIV., indeed, when pressed for men, more than once summoned the ban and arrière-ban of France to his standards, and he always had a gallant array of feudal nobility in his antechambers, or around his headquarters. But war, both on his part and that of his antagonists, was carried on, generally speaking, with standing armies, supported by the belligerent state. The vast, though generally tumultuary array which the Plantagenet or Valois sovereigns summoned to their support, but which, bound only to serve for forty days, generally disappeared before a few months of hostilities were over, could no longer be relied on. The modern system invented by revolutionary France, of making war maintain war, and sending forth starving multitudes with arms in their hands, to subsist by the plunder of the adjoining states, was unknown. The national passions had not been roused, which alone would bring it into operation. The decline of the feudal system forbade the hope that contests could be maintained by the chivalrous attachment of a faithful nobility: the democratic spirit had not been so aroused as to supply its place by popular fervour. Religious passions, indeed, had been strongly excited; but they had prompted men rather to suffer than to act: the disputations of the pulpit were their natural arena: in the last extremity they were more allied to the resignation of the martyr, than the heroism of the soldier. Between the two, there extended a long period of above a century and a half, during which governments had acquired the force, and mainly relied on the power, of standing armies; but the resources at their disposal for their support were so limited, that the greatest economy in the husbanding both of men and money was indispensable.

Richard Cœur de Lion, Edward III., and Henry V., were the models of feudal leaders, and their wars were a faithful mirror of the feudal contests. Setting forth at the head of a force, which, if not formidable in point of numbers, was generally extremely so from equipment and the use of arms, the nobles around them were generally too proud and high-spirited to decline a combat, even on any possible terms of disadvantage. They took the field as the knights went to a champ clos, to engage their adversaries in single conflict; and it was deemed equally dishonourable to retire without fighting from the one as the other. But they had no permanent force at their disposal to secure a lasting fruit even from the greatest victories. The conquest of a petty province, a diminutive fortress, was often their only result. Hence the desperate battles, so memorable in warlike annals, which they fought, and hence the miserable and almost nugatory results which almost invariably followed their greatest triumphs. Cressy, Poictiers, and Azincour, followed by the expulsion of the English from France; Methven and Dunbar, by their ignominious retreat from Scotland; Ascalon and Ptolemais, by their being driven from the Holy Land, must immediately occur to every reader. This state of war necessarily imprinted a corresponding character on the feudal generals. They were high-spirited and daring in action – often skilful in tactics – generally ignorant of strategy – covetous of military renown, but careless of national advancement – and often more solicitous to conquer an adversary in single conflict, than reduce a fortress, or win a province.

But when armies were raised at the expense, not of nobles, but of kings – when their cost became a lasting and heavy drain on the royal exchequer – sovereigns grew desirous of a more durable and profitable result from their victories. Standing armies, though commonly powerful, often irresistible when accumulated in large bodies – were yet extremely expensive. They were felt the more from the great difficulty of getting the people in every country, at that period, to submit to any considerable amount of direct taxation. More than one flourishing province had been lost, or powerful monarchy overturned, in the attempt to increase such burdens; witness the loss of Holland to Spain, the execution of Charles I. in England. In this dilemma, arising from the experienced necessity of raising standing armies on the one hand, and the extreme difficulty of permanently providing for them on the other, the only resource was to spare both the blood of the soldiers and the expenses of the government as much as possible. Durable conquests, acquisitions of towns and provinces which could yield revenues and furnish men, became the great object of ambition. The point of feudal honour was forgot in the inanity of its consequences; the benefits of modern conquests were felt in the reality of their results. A methodical cautious system of war was thus impressed upon generals by the necessities of their situation, and the objects expected from them by their respective governments. To risk little and gain much, became the great object: skill and stratagem gradually took the place of reckless daring; and the reputation of a general came to be measured rather by the permanent addition which his successes had made to the revenues of his sovereign, than the note with which the trumpet of Fame had proclaimed his own exploits.

Turenne was the first, and, in his day, the greatest general in this new and scientific system of war. He first applied to the military art the resources of prudent foresight, deep thought, and profound combination; and the results of his successes completely justified the discernment which had prompted Louis XIV. to place him at the head of his armies. His methodical and far-seeing campaigns in Flanders, Franche Comté, Alsace, and Lorraine, in the early part of the reign of that monarch, added these valuable provinces to France, which have never since been lost. They have proved more durable than the conquests of Napoleon, which all perished in the lifetime of their author. Napoleon's legions passed like a desolating whirlwind over Europe, but they gave only fleeting celebrity, and entailed lasting wounds on France. Turenne's slow, or more methodical and more cautious conquests, have proved lasting acquisitions to the monarchy. Nancy still owns the French allegiance; Besançon and Strasbourg are two of its frontier fortresses; Lille yet is a leading stronghold in its iron barrier. Napoleon, it is well known, had the highest possible opinion of that great commander. He was disposed to place him at the head of modern generals; and his very interesting analysis of his campaigns is not the least important part of his invaluable memoirs.

Condé, though living in the same age, and alternately the enemy and comrade of Turenne, belonged to a totally different class of generals, and, indeed, seemed to belong to another age of the world. He was warmed in his heart by the spirit of chivalry; he bore its terrors on his sword's point. Heart and soul he was heroic. Like Clive or Alexander, he was consumed by that thirst for fame, that ardent passion for glorious achievements, which is the invariable characteristic of elevated, and the most inconceivable quality to ordinary, minds. In the prosecution of this object, no difficulties could deter, no dangers daunt him. Though his spirit was chivalrous – though cavalry was the arm which suited his genius, and in which he chiefly delighted, he brought to the military art the power of genius and the resources of art; and no man could make better use of the power which the expiring spirit of feudality bequeathed to its scientific successors. He destroyed the Spanish infantry at Rocroy and Lens, not by mere desultory charges of the French cavalry, but by efforts of that gallant body as skilfully directed as those by which Hannibal overthrew the Roman legions at Thrasymene and Cannæ. His genius was animated by the spirit of the fourteenth, but it was guided by the knowledge of the seventeenth, century.

Bred in the school of Turenne, placed, like him, at the head of a force raised with difficulty, maintained with still greater trouble, Marlborough was the greatest general of the methodical or scientific school which modern Europe has produced. No man knew better the importance of deeds which fascinate the minds of men; none could decide quicker, or strike harder, when the proper time for action arrived. None, when the decisive crisis of the struggle approached, could expose his person more fearlessly, or lead his reserves more gallantly into the very hottest of the enemy's fire. To his combined intrepidity and quickness, in thus bringing the reserves, at the decisive moment, into action, all his wonderful victories, in particular Ramilies and Malplaquet, are to be ascribed. But, in the ordinary case, he preferred the bloodless methods of skill and arrangement. Combination was his great forte, and there he was not exceeded by Napoleon himself. To deceive the enemy as to the real point of attack – to perplex him by marches and countermarches – to assume and constantly maintain the initiative – to win by skill what could not be achieved by force, was his great delight; and in that, the highest branch of the military art, he was unrivalled in modern times. He did not despise stratagem. Like Hannibal, he resorted to that arm frequently, and with never-failing success. His campaigns, in that respect, bear a closer resemblance to those of the illustrious Carthaginian than those of any general in modern Europe. Like him, too, his administrative and diplomatic qualities were equal to his military powers. By his address, he retained in unwilling, but still effective union, an alliance, unwieldy from its magnitude, and discordant by its jealousies; and kept, in willing multitudes, around his standards, a colluvies omnium gentium, of various languages, habits, and religions – held in subjection by no other bond but the strong one of admiration for their general, and a desire to share in his triumphs.

Consummate address and never-failing prudence were the great characteristics of the English commander. With such judgment did he measure his strength with those of his adversary – so skilfully did he choose the points of attack, whether in strategy or tactics – so well weighed were all his enterprises, so admirably prepared the means of carrying them into execution, that none of them ever miscarried. It was a common saying at the time, which the preceding narrative amply justifies, that he never fought a battle which he did not gain, nor laid siege to a town which he did not take. This extraordinary and unbroken success extended to all his manœuvres, however trivial; and it has been already noticed, that the first disaster of any moment which occurred to his arms during nine successive and active campaigns, was the destruction of a convoy destined for the siege of St Venant, in October 1710, by one of Villars' detachments.37 It was the admirable powers of arrangement and combination which he brought to bear on all parts of his army, equally from the highest to the lowest parts, which was the cause of this extraordinary and uninterrupted success.

He was often outnumbered by the enemy, always opposed by a homogeneous army, animated by one strong national and military spirit; while he was at the head of a discordant array of many different nations, some of them with little turn for warlike exploit, others lukewarm, or even treacherous in the cause. But notwithstanding this, he never lost the ascendant. From the time when he first began the war on the banks of the Maese in 1702, till his military career was closed in 1711, within the iron barrier of France, by the intrigues of his political opponents at home, he never abandoned the initiative. He was constantly on the offensive. When inferior in force, as he often was, he supplied the defect of military strength by skill and combination; when his position was endangered by the faults or treachery of others, as was still more frequently the case, he waited till a false move on the part of his adversaries enabled him to retrieve his affairs by some brilliant and decisive stroke. It was thus that he restored the war in Germany, after the affairs of the Emperor had been wellnigh ruined, by the brilliant cross march into Bavaria, and splendid victory at Blenheim; and regained Flanders for the Archduke by the stroke at Ramilies, after the imperial cause in that quarter had been all but lost by the treacherous surrender of Ghent and Bruges, in the very centre of his water communications.

Lord Chesterfield, who knew him well, said that he was a man of excellent parts, and strong good sense, but of no very shining genius. The uninterrupted success of his campaigns, however, joined to the unexampled address with which he allayed the jealousies and stilled the discords of the confederacy whose armies he led, decisively demonstrates that the polished earl's opinion was not just; and that his partiality for the graces led him to ascribe an undue influence in the great duke's career to the inimitable suavity and courtesy of his manner. His enterprises and stratagems, his devices to deceive the enemy, and counterbalance inferiority of force by superiority of conduct; the eagle eye which, in the decisive moment, he brought to bear on the field of battle, and the rapidity with which in person he struck the final blow from which the enemy never recovered, bespeak the intuitive genius of war. It was the admirable balance of his mental qualities which caused his originality to be under-valued; – no one power stood out in such bold relief as to overshadow all the others, and rivet the eye by the magnitude of its proportions. Thus his consummate judgment made the world overlook his invention; his uniform prudence caused his daring to be forgotten; his incomparable combinations often concealed the capacious mind which had put the whole in motion. He was so uniformly successful, that men forgot how difficult it is always to succeed in war. It was not till he was withdrawn from the conduct of the campaign, and disaster immediately attended the Allied arms, and France resumed the ascendant over the coalition, that Europe became sensible who had been the soul of the war, and how much had been lost when his mighty understanding was no longer at the head of affairs.

A most inadequate opinion would be formed of Marlborough's mental character, if his military exploits alone were taken into consideration. Like all other intellects of the first order, he was equally capable of great achievements in peace as in war, and shone forth with not less lustre in the deliberations of the cabinet, or the correspondence of diplomacy, than in directing columns on the field of battle, or tracing out the line of approaches in the attack of fortified towns. Nothing could exceed the judgment and address with which he reconciled the jarring interests, and smoothed down the rival pretensions, of the coalesced cabinets. The danger was not so pressing as to unite their rival governments, as it afterwards did those of the Grand Alliance in 1813, for the overthrow of Napoleon; and incessant exertions, joined to the highest possible diplomatic address, judgment of conduct, and suavity of manner, were required to prevent the coalition, on various occasions during the course of the war, from falling to pieces. As it was, the intrigues of Bolingbroke and the Tories in England, and the ascendency of Mrs Masham in the Queen's bedchamber councils, at last counterbalanced all his achievements, and led to a peace which abandoned the most important objects of the war, and was fraught, as the event has proved, with serious danger to the independence and even existence of England. His winter campaign at the Allied courts, as he himself said, always equalled in duration, and often exceeded in importance and difficulty, that in summer with the enemy; and nothing is more certain, than that if a man of less capacity had been entrusted with the direction of its diplomatic relations, the coalition would have soon broken up without having accomplished any of the objects for which the war had been undertaken, from the mere selfishness and dissensions of the cabinets by whom it was conducted.

With one blot, for which neither the justice of history, nor the partiality of biography either can or should attempt to make any apology, Marlborough's private character seems to have been unexceptionable, and was evidently distinguished by several noble and amiable qualities. That he was bred a courtier, and owed his first elevation to the favour with which he was regarded by one of the King's mistresses, was not his fault: – It arose, perhaps, necessarily from his situation, and the graces and beauty with which he had been so prodigally endowed by nature. The young officer of the Guards, who in the army of Louis XIV. passed by the name of the "handsome Englishman," could hardly be expected to be free from the consequences of female partiality at the court of Charles II. But in maturer years, his conduct in public, after William had been seated on the throne, was uniformly consistent, straightforward, and honourable. He was a sincere patriot, and ardently attached both to his country and the principles of freedom, at a time when both were wellnigh forgotten in the struggles of party, and the fierce contests for royal or popular favour. Though bred up in a licentious court, and early exposed to the most entrancing of its seductions, he was in mature life strictly correct, both in his conduct and conversation. He resisted every temptation to which his undiminished beauty exposed him after his marriage, and was never known either to utter, or permit to be uttered in his presence, a light or indecent expression. He discouraged to the utmost degree any instances of intemperance or licentiousness in his soldiers, and constantly laboured to impress upon his men a sense of moral duty and Supreme superintendence. Divine service was regularly performed in all his camps, both morning and evening; previous to a battle, prayers were read at the head of every regiment, and the first act, after a victory, was a solemn thanksgiving. "By those means," says a contemporary biographer, who served in his army, "his camp resembled a quiet, well-governed city. Cursing and swearing were seldom heard among the officers; a drunkard was the object of scorn: and even the soldiers, many of them the refuse and dregs of the nation, became, at the close of one or two campaigns, tractable, civil, sensible, and clean, and had an air and spirit above the vulgar."

In political life, during his career after that event, he was consistent and firm; faithful to his party, but more faithful still to his country. He was a generous friend, an attached, perhaps too fond a husband. During the whole of his active career, he retained a constant sense of the superintendence and direction of the Supreme Being, and was ever the first to ascribe the successes which he had gained, to Divine protection; a disposition which appeared with peculiar grace amidst the din of arms, and the flourish of trumpets for his own mighty achievements. Even the one occasion on which, like David, he fell from his high principles, will be regarded by the equitable observer with charitable, if not forgiving eyes. He will recollect, that perfection never yet belonged to a child of Adam; he will measure the dreadful nature of the struggle which awaits an upright and generous mind when loyalty and gratitude impel one way, and religion and patriotism another. Without attempting to justify an officer who employs the power bestowed by one government to elevate another on its ruins, he will yet reflect, that in such a crisis, even the firmest heads and the best hearts may be led astray. If he is wise, he will ascribe the fault – for fault it was – not so much to the individual, as the time in which he lived; and feel a deeper thankfulness that his own lot has been cast in a happier age, when the great moving passions of the human heart act in the same direction, and a public man need not fear that he is wanting in his duty to his sovereign, because he is performing that to his country.

Marlborough was often accused of avarice: but his conduct through life sufficiently demonstrated that in him the natural desire to accumulate a fortune, which belongs to every rational mind, was kept in subjection to more elevated principles. His repeated refusal of the government of the Netherlands, with its magnificent appointment of L.60,000 a-year, was a sufficient proof how much he despised money when it interfered with public duty; his splendid edifices, both in London and Blenheim, attest how little he valued it for any other sake but as it might be applied to noble and worthy objects.38 He possessed the magnanimity in every thing which is the invariable characteristic of real greatness. Envy was unknown, suspicion loathsome, to him. He often suffered by the generous confidence with which he trusted his enemies. He was patient under contradiction; placid and courteous both in his manners and demeanour; and owed great part of his success, both in the field and in the cabinet, to the invariable suavity and charm of his manner. His humanity was uniformly conspicuous. Not only his own soldiers, but his enemies never failed to experience it. Like Wellington, his attention to the health and comforts of his men was incessant; and, with his daring in the field and uniform success in strategy, endeared him in the highest degree to the men. Troops of all nations equally trusted him; and the common saying, when they were in any difficulty, "Never mind – 'Corporal John' will get us out of it," was heard as frequently in the Dutch, Danish, or German, as in the English language. He frequently gave the weary soldiers a place in his carriage, and got out himself to accommodate more; and his first care, after an engagement, invariably was to visit the field of battle, and do his utmost to assuage the sufferings of the wounded, both among his own men and those of the enemy.