Chapter II: Marlborough (2)

At this crisis, indeed, the condition of France was such as might have made even men like Richelieu and Turenne begin to despair. The convulsive effort of 1707 had failed; the Allies were on the verge of Artois; and the Monarchy in decline, and the exhausted nation seemed unable to confront the mass of their enemies. Yet Louis XIV. did not lose heart; he refused the insolent proposals of the Dutch to take up arms against his own grandson, and he appealed, not in vain, to an heroic people. Recruits flocked in thousands to defend the lilies; the misery, in truth, and the prostration of France, increased the numbers that joined her armies; but everything that constitutes organized force--supplies, depôts, and magazines, were wanting. The King, however, throwing prejudice aside, at last confided the army on his northern frontier to the one commander who had never failed in the calamitous war of the Spanish Succession. History and gossip have alike been unjust to Villars; he was ridiculed in England and hated at Versailles, but he was a general of extraordinary powers, for he combined almost in the highest degree the great faculties of Turenne and Condé. Yet when Villars, in the spring of 1709, assumed the command of his master’s army, he was almost appalled at the prospect before him; he was at the head of perhaps 100,000 men, but he was so ill supplied that he could make no movement. It is on occasions like these that French soldiers, when ably directed, show at their best. Villars in a few weeks had obtained the means of operating with some hope of success, and he had breathed into his troops that extreme self-confidence which was one of his most distinctive qualities. By the early summer he was in positions of formidable strength, in the space between the heads of the Lys and the Scheldt, and covering the low ranges overlooking Artois; and he had protected himself with defensive lines that extended almost from the feeders of the Scheldt to the sea. Marlborough and Eugene were now at the head of from 110,000 to 120,000 men, and Marlborough, with true strategic insight, proposed to turn the French lines by the coast, combining the attack with a descent on Boulogne, supported by British troops and a fleet, and then, passing the Somme and masking its fortresses, to press forward boldly to the capital of France. This was a recurrence to the “great design” of 1703, and worthy of a chief of supreme genius; and it is an additional proof that Marlborough perceived, with perfect clearness, the immense importance to an English army of the command of the sea. The Dutch deputies, however, refused to sanction a movement they doubtless could not understand; and Eugene, I believe, agreed with them, for, as we shall see, he had formed a plan of quite a different kind to invade France. The Allies had now “to take the bull by the horns,” and to enter France through the network of fortresses, of rivers, canals, and intricate woodland, which still covers her northern frontier; and issuing from Lille in great strength, they proceeded to invest the stronghold of Tournay, in order to secure and widen their base. The place fell after a weak resistance, and Marlborough and Eugene now turned against Mons, still pursuing the same methodical warfare, and hoping to master the line of the Sambre. This was too much for Villars, who would have been placed in extreme difficulty had the Allies gained the heads of the Sambre without a contest. He issued from his lines in the first week of September, and by the 10th he had taken a strong position in a wide opening between two masses of woodland, not far from the beleaguered fortress, which overlook the heathy plain and the hamlet of Malplaquet, ever since a great name. He fortified ground, naturally perilous to attack, with all the resources of the art of the engineer; and he boldly awaited the advance of the enemy.

The allied chiefs had meant to attack Villars before he had made these formidable lines; but, as usual, they were crossed by the deputies of the States, and the result proved how disastrous had been their meddling. In the early dawn of the 11th of September, Marlborough and Eugene put their army in motion, and the French army was soon descried holding a position which has been aptly described as “an infernal gulf surrounded by fire.” The French right and left were respectively covered by the woods of Lanière and of Taisnière, which crescent-like converged towards each other; the wood of Sart spread beyond that of Taisnière; and the French centre holding the space between, in the opening that leads to the plain of Malplaquet, was massed behind a triple line of entrenchments, with apertures to allow the free use of cavalry. The position, in short, was of extraordinary strength, and it was held by troops who, under the spell of Villars, ably seconded by the gallant Boufflers, who had volunteered to assist his colleague, were animated by heroic ardour. Yet Marlborough and Eugene did not hesitate; and they marshalled their forces for the most desperate and best contested struggle of the war, in which princely soldiers from all the lands of Europe took part, like knights in a tournament to the death. The numbers on each side were not far from equal,[8] the Allies having a slight advantage--about 100,000 to 90,000 men; but, prodigiously strong as its position was, the French army, crowded with rude levies, could not be compared as an efficient force with the victorious legions of many campaigns, and the allied chiefs possibly trusted too much to an inferiority repeatedly proved.

The plan of Eugene and Marlborough seems to have been to turn the French left and to force the left centre, making only a secondary effort against the right; and Eugene, after a prolonged contest, fairly expelled the enemy from the wood of Sart. The Prince, supported by Marlborough in force, now advanced upon the wood of Taisnière, and a murderous struggle kept fortune in suspense, until Villars, drawing a body of troops from his centre, drove back Eugene in a furious onslaught, conspicuous for the valour of the Irish exiles,[9] “ever and everywhere, true” to the Bourbon lilies. The situation of the Allies was now critical, when a wound deprived the French of the genius of their chief; and as the detachment made by Villars had weakened their line to a considerable extent--he was hurrying to the endangered point when he fell--Marlborough, seizing the occasion with his wonted judgment, made a tremendous attack on the enemy’s centre. The first range of entrenchments was ere long carried, but the obstacles presented by the lines behind, and the heroism of the defence, kept the issue doubtful. A magnificent effort made by the household troops of France for a time forced the assailants back; and even when the inner entrenchments were won the French centre prolonged the still undecided battle. Meanwhile the false attack on the French right had been turned into an attack in full force. The Prince of Orange, carried away by excitement, advanced along the wood of Lanière, and tried to storm the hostile entrenchments in front, and his troops were literally mown down in thousands by enemies who suffered little loss. The battle was raging until 3 P.M., when a flank movement, most skilfully made by Eugene, outside the verge of the wood of Taisnière, began to endanger the French left, and threatened the only line of retreat; and this caused Boufflers, now in supreme command, to draw gradually off from the scene of carnage. The Allies, utterly worn out, and cruelly stricken, made no attempt to molest the enemy, and the French fell back a few miles only, in perfect order, and not the least disheartened. Villars, it is said, exclaimed from his litter, that “he expected his army to fight again, as soon as it had had a moment of repose.”

Marlborough and Eugene won this terrible battle, the greatest by far of the eighteenth century, in what may be called a military sense; for the French army retired from the field, and Mons fell a few weeks afterwards. But it was not an inconsiderate boast of Villars that Malplaquet was truly a Pyrrhic victory; the Allies lost fully 20,000 men, the French probably not half that number; the Dutch contingent never recovered from the fight; and the frightful slaughter of the allied soldiery provoked angry discontent in England, and sent a thrill of alarm through the enemies of France. Eugene and Marlborough, in the actual battle, displayed as usual their great powers; but the whole enterprise was, perhaps, too hazardous; and if, as has been alleged, Marlborough chose to fight in order to keep up the war party at home, he was justly punished for an unprincipled act, for Malplaquet shook the Grand Alliance to its base. Villars showed admirable skill in choosing his ground, and strengthening a naturally strong position, and in arranging his troops upon it; he, too, was a master of the new tactics, and he would not improbably have repulsed his foes had he not been disabled at a critical moment. As it is, Malplaquet does him the highest honour; it is a proof of his extraordinary gifts, that, with an army inferior in every respect, he should have inflicted losses on the allied army at least twofold greater than that of his own, and that he successfully stemmed the tide of misfortune which had for years set in against France.

I shall merely refer to the two campaigns of 1710 and 1711, for Marlborough is not their real hero, and his great qualities, though seen in them, do not appear in their accustomed splendour, owing to adverse circumstances which combined against him. He was supported by Eugene in the first of these years; and the allied chiefs, in the absence of Villars, forced the lines he had made the year before, and invested and took the place of Douay, on the second line of the French fortresses of the north. Villars, however, though still suffering from his wound, was in command by the end of May, and he constructed a new great defensive barrier, extending from the Scarpe to the neighbourhood of Boulogne, and adding enormously to the many obstacles of a region already protected by nature and art. The Allies reached the lines, and Eugene, as was his wont, for a daring exploit, gave his voice for an attack in force; but the Dutch, remembering Malplaquet, held back; Marlborough, it is believed, agreed with them, and the two great captains had to content themselves with taking Bethune, St. Vénant, and Aire, little places around the head of the Lys, which cost them thousands of their best soldiers. Villars, meanwhile, showed little sign of life; but he kept on extending his lines until they formed an immense position of defence, spreading from the coast to the heads of the Sambre; and he boasted, not, we shall see, in vain, that the enemy should advance no further. In 1711 Marlborough had not Eugene with him, but he was at the head of a very large army; and the campaign was spent in a game of manœuvres, in which Villars and he were fairly matched. The Englishman succeeded at last in forcing the lines, which were too long to be covered at all points; but the capture of the insignificant place of Bouchain was the only prize of immense efforts; and though the wits of Versailles and St. James’s cried scorn at the _ne plus ultra_ of Villars, that great chief had really attained his object, and had successfully shielded the French frontier. These campaigns, in fact, have been misdescribed by English partisans in Marlborough’s interest. The true victor was, beyond dispute, Villars; he had compelled the Allies to waste their strength in sieges, which simply had no results; he had proved himself to be a master in defence, as remarkable as he had been in attack; and, combining genius in politics and war, he had gained for France what she needed, time to dissolve the Grand Alliance already weakened. It would be unfair, however, to say that Marlborough was wanting to himself in this contest; as a military exploit, his forcing the lines of Villars was an admirable feat; but, in truth, he was circumscribed and baffled by the turn which affairs had for some time been taking in England and upon the Continent. He had for years been almost supreme in England, and had had full control over her resources for war; but Sarah Jennings and Anne Stuart had quarrelled; Mrs. Masham had crept to the ear of the Queen; Malplaquet had aroused a storm in England; the Ministers in power sought means to destroy him; he received no real support from the Whigs; and he had become the object of grave charges, partly the clamours of faction, but, in part, well founded. On the other hand, France had triumphed in Spain; the success of Villars had saved her in the north; the Dutch and the English had had enough of war; and the Grand Alliance was being broken up largely owing to the rapacity of the House of Austria. In 1710 and 1711, Marlborough had no scope for his commanding genius; he was no longer able to make great efforts; he knew that his splendid career was drawing to a close.

Before the beginning of 1712, Marlborough had been deprived of all his military commands, dismissed from office amidst shouts of obloquy, and threatened with impeachment for crimes against the State. He was not brought to a public trial; and some of the accusations heaped upon him were certainly false, and now seem ridiculous. But he wisely left England with his disgraced wife; and though he was not convicted of malversation and fraud, the unscrupulous ambition and avaricious greed which were perhaps his most distinctive vices were dragged into light by a great deal of evidence. It is remarkable, too, though no commander has ever been more beloved by his troops, that he was distrusted by some of his best officers; and if his treason at Brest remained unknown, he was disliked and suspected by both Whigs and Tories.

The value, however, of his genius in war, was conspicuously proved, in an indirect way, in the memorable campaign of 1712. England had now withdrawn from the Grand Alliance, but the Emperor still maintained the struggle; and Eugene, who hated Louis XIV., and had confirmed his master in his warlike purpose, was placed at the head of a great army intended to invade and to subdue France. He was now in possession of most of the fortresses which cover the northern French frontier, and his position was so formidable that Louis XIV., when he gave Villars once more the army of the North, and bade the warrior farewell at Versailles, exclaimed that, should fortune prove adverse, “the King and the Marshal would perish together.” The plan of Eugene, his base now secure, was to capture the strongholds near the heads of the Oise, and then marching down the open valley of the stream, the path followed for ages by the House of Austria and its generals in assailing France, to pass by the fortified lines of the Somme, and to finish the war by an advance on the capital. He sate down to invest Landrecies, now almost the only obstacle in his way, and his army was so confident in itself and its chief that it called its lines “the approaches to Paris.” This resembled, in some respects, the daring march on Turin in 1706; but Eugene had made a strategic mistake; arguing from what he thought was the timid attitude of Villars, in the campaign of 1710, he believed that the Marshal would never attack, and he spread his army, in ill-connected posts, from Landrecies to near Marchiennes on the frontier, leaving a detachment to guard a weak point at Denain. The Prince had to deal with a different foe from the chiefs he had routed in 1706; his adversary was a man of genius, full of resource and thought, in execution admirable. Villars by this time was in his lines near Cambray; he quickly detected Eugene’s error, and he took advantage of it with consummate skill. Breaking up from his camps, he made a forced march as though he was trying to relieve Landrecies; he ostentatiously gave out that this was his purpose, and then, screening the movement with perfect art, and counter-marching with extreme rapidity, he fell in full force on the communications of his foe, and attacked Denain in largely superior numbers. The results of this fine strategy were almost marvellous; the detachment guarding Denain was destroyed; a large body of troops, hurried up by Eugene to join in the defence, was utterly routed, and the whole army of invasion, smitten in the flank, and losing its communications, was compelled to retreat, and to fall back, baffled, behind the frontier. Villars made the very most of this splendid success; the siege of Landrecies was instantly raised; the French fortresses, which had been the prizes of many campaigns, were soon retaken, and the standards of France were ere long seen waving in triumph along the course of the Sambre. France was finally saved by this grand feat of arms, and before a year had passed, Villars was in the heart of Germany, had driven Eugene beyond the Rhine, and had compelled the Emperor to sue for peace. France had never such an awakening again until, rescuing her from defeat and anarchy, Napoleon won the great fight of Marengo.

In the Revolution which followed the death of Queen Anne, Marlborough was placed again in command of the army; but he was disliked by George I. and his ministers; and it is significant that he never regained anything like his old authority in the State. The last years of his life were somewhat obscure; he gradually survived his splendid faculties, and he died, little regretted, in 1722. I cannot notice his diplomatic career; enough to say that he was the master spirit of the Grand Alliance during many years; he kept its ill-connected structure together, and three-fourths of the Princes of Christendom inclined before the genius of an English subject. As a statesman, Marlborough was less successful; he misinterpreted the spirit of the time during the later years of the great war he directed; but his errors and fall were largely due to the faults and the temper of his imperious wife, whom he loved with a fondness not unmixed with terror. A word as to his achievements in the noble art of which he was one of the greatest masters. Marlborough was endowed with the choicest gifts of a warrior; it was his special characteristic that daring, constancy, imagination, and prudence were blended in him in proportions of the happiest kind; and it is a peculiarity of his career that he attained supreme command, for the first time, at a period of life when most great captains have done their work, and that he was never defeated in a pitched battle. It has been said that he had little strategic genius; but a study of his campaigns confutes this error; he was capable of great combinations in war; and if, as a strategist, he accomplished less than other commanders of the first order, this is partly to be ascribed to the contracted theatre which usually was the scene of his exploits, and partly to the interference of the Dutch and their deputies, and to the jealousies and discords of a divided League. Two strategic gifts he certainly possessed in a measure accorded to few commanders; he always perceived the weak point of an enemy on a field of manœuvre as well as of battle, and he was pre-eminent in making the most of success, and in drawing decisive results from victory. In pure strategy, however, he was, I think, inferior in originality to Turenne, and he achieved less than Villars and Eugene, two great names in this sphere of the art; but as a strategist he is second alone to those illustrious chiefs of his era; and he contributed largely to the grand revival of strategy, after a season of decline, which was seen in the War of the Spanish Succession. We must go to the field of battle to behold the genius of Marlborough in its highest perfection. He may have been equalled as a tactician, but he has never been surpassed; his judgment in placing an army on the ground and in detecting the vulnerable points of an enemy; his constancy in pressing an attack home at the spot where success would be most complete, and his wonderful resource and calmness in peril, were unrivalled among the men of his time; and neither Eugene nor Villars can show a Ramillies, a masterpiece of purely tactical skill. For the rest, Marlborough was a great leader of men, like all generals of the first order; and “Corporal John” was as adored by his troops as was the “Little Corporal” of another age. It is melancholy to observe that deep scars of guilt mar the beauty of this magnificent figure; and that we must see in it the dimmed brightness and the ruined glory of the fallen archangel, as well as his majesty and commanding power. Every allowance ought in justice to be made for Marlborough; his crimes were those of a revolutionary age; and few of the leading Englishmen of his day were free from the stain of disloyal, bad faith; but the treason of Brest was a foul deed of wickedness. A singular vein of baseness and meanness ran through, like alloy, this grand nature; and whatever excuses may be made for him, there are “damned spots” upon Marlborough’s fame.