was not haughty or ostentatious. In council, he was discreet, patient, and deferential, could listen as well as advise; and, with his quick parts, retentive memory, and solid judgment, was able, singly or in concert, to get through a vast deal of business. He had another excellent quality - he was not envious. Satisfied with his own good fortune, he never evinced any jealousy of that of others; not even if threatening to eclipse his own achievements. This noble trait is shown in his connexion with Prince Eugene, who, next to himself, was the most illustrious man of his time. Marlborough's greatest victories were won in concert with this famous warrior; yet, so frank and cordial was their intercourse, that no evidence exists of any ill-will or misunderstanding ever arising between them. They were competitors, too, in the same walks of fame and greatness; they were both eminent in state and war; both governed their respective sovereigns, and led their armies; neither had experienced defeat; both had wonderful address in the management of those around them, in giving them the office and direction most suitable, and in moulding to a general end, jarring intrigues and conflicting aristocracies. With all these in

common-so many things to make little minds perverse and suspicious-they united in the closest bonds Eugene and Marlborough, and nobody in Europe, probably, cherished so hearty a love and admiration of the two heroes as each fervently and mutually felt for the other.

When news arrived of one of Prince Eugene's most splendid victories,—that over Orleans and Feuillade at Turin, won by a happy mixture of enterprise and military science over a very superior force, and most important in its results, driving the French out of Italy, and making old Louis think that fortune does not favour old men,-Marlborough gave way to a transport of exultation that one would hardly have anticipated from his usual level bearing. Writing to his Duchess, he says, It is impossible to express the joy it has given me; for I do not only esteem, but I really love that prince! This glorious action must bring France so low, that if our friends can be persuaded to carry on the war one year longer with vigour, we cannot fail, with the blessing of God, to have such a peace as will give us quiet in our days; but the Dutch are at this time unaccountable.'-'The blessing of God' formed the Duke's common te Deum; though he might think, like General Moreau, that the blessing' was mostly on the 'side of heavy battalions and well-directed artillery.' Amidst so much worth, one is loth to give the shading of so bright a character. But, before we do so, let us see what can be urged

in extenuation from the unfavourable position of Marlborough's youth.

John Churchill was born in 1650. He was the son of a cavalier, and bred at Court; and such a Court, that a much less elegant term might be applied to it. At the age of twelve he was the favourite page of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., from whom he received a pair of colours. He served with distinction in the Low Countries; but his first most successful fields were doubtless about the palace, where his good looks and good manners interested the dames. He became the favourite of the Duchess of Cleveland, Charles II.'s mistress, and his sister Arabella became the mistress of his patron, the king's brother. These advances, and management, with his services in the suppression of Monmouth's mad rebellion, helped Churchill to his first peerage creation, as Baron of Eyemouth.

Reared under such damaging influences, one is surprised at the fewness of the imputations that attach to his reputation, and at the exemplary character he became in after life. Some of his demerits were doubtless black enough. He was capable of duplicity, if not treachery. His desertion of King James, who had deserted himself, and who had been deserted by the most eminent and intelligent of the nation, may be more easily justified than his subsequent intrigues with the abdicated monarch. It is likely that these double practices originated in his previous connexion with that misguided prince, as well as in Marlborough's inherent selfishness, his natural proneness to look to the rising or risen sun. Had Ney's fate hung in the balance, he would have kicked the beam in favour of the Bourbons and the high allied powers. The restoration of the Stuart was not an improbable recurrence, and for this the hero of Blenheim wished to be provided by a little anticipatory treason, in the same way as he had provided for the reception of the abdicated monarch's son-in-law, William III.

His memory has other sins to answer for. Dean Swift, to whom Marlborough was opposed in politics, and who pursued him with a terrible satire after his death, says he was as 'covetous as hell, and as ambitious as the prince of it.' In one of his Examiners (No. 17) he makes it appear that in various grants on account of Woodstock, Blenheim, the Post-office grant, and other sources, he had received £540,000 of the public money. Indeed, his avarice was insatiable. A few anecdotes mentioned in the Biographia Britannica (better authority than the rabid Dean's) will illustrate this weakness in his character. When he was a boy, the first thing he did

was to buy a box to put his money in. The Duchess of Cleveland gave him, when an ensign in the Guards, £5,000, with which he had the precaution to purchase a life-annuity. It is related that he for a long time hesitated to have a pair of wet stockings cut off his legs, though the keeping them on endangered his life. On the eve of a great battle, he was heard reproaching his servant for extravagance in lighting four candles, when Prince Eugene had come to confer with him. He is charged with protracting the war, solely to fill his pockets out of the plunder of the foreign troops and other sources of emolument. In the beginning of the reign of king George, the first regiment of Guards, which the Duke commanded, was on the eve of rebellion. The shirts allowed them were so coarse that the men could hardly be persuaded to wear them. Some were thrown into the garden of the King's Palace and into that of Marlborough. A detachment, in passing through the city, produced them to the view of the shopkeepers and populace, exclaiming "These are the Hanover shirts.' It was on the eve of Marr's rebellion, and the Court ordered these new shirts to be burnt immediately; but even this sacrifice, and an advertisement published by Marlborough in his own vindication, did not acquit the General of suspicion that he was concerned in this mean piece of peculation. His cravings were, indeed, inordinate; nothing hardly was too small or large to escape the clutches of the Marlboroughs, who, at one time, in places and pensions, were in the annual receipt of £90,000 a year.

Nothing further can be alleged against this eminent historical personage. The weaknesses of so illustrious a name are to be regretted; but they are lost in the lustre of his great qualities. It is only in Parliament, as an orator, that Marlborough has not left an impression of superiority. His early occupation in war may have been unfavourable to mental culture; but though his 'Letters' evince little evidence of grammar and book-learning, they show that he was not, as Chesterfield represented-illiterate. He was certainly not a man of letters nor erudition, but of action, in a profession that demands the widest range of practical ability. It was as a general that Marlborough was of the first class; his fame has no other pedestal-no other association; and it is in this view we shall for a moment consider him-first taking a glance at the European landscape when he commenced his most famous campaign.

Queen Anne's reign began in a fierce war that ravaged the Continent. Its real object was to check the ambition of France under Louis XIV.; its ostensible object was the

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succession to the throne of Spain, which Charles II. had bequeathed to Philip, Duke of Anjou, grandson of the French king. The Emperor of Germany, who had perhaps an equally family claim, refused to acknowledge Philip, and set up his second son, the Archduke Charles. Bavaria took the

side of France; the English and the Dutch that of Austria. Holland, by the war, might win a better barrier of fortresses in the Netherlands, and Germany make acquisitions on the Rhine; but as to the main point of the quarrel, it was nearly indifferent to England whether Austria or France were aggrandized by the acquisition of Spain and America. But the English entered heartily into the contest; they hated the French king for his alleged ambition, the protection he afforded to the ejected Stuart, and his refusal to acknowledge the protestant settlement of the Hanover family. Our utmost force was exerted in men and money, we subsidized the German States, and had our contingents of troops in Spain, on the Rhine, and in the Low Countries. All the bellige rents were ardent in the cause, especially England and France, but both became thoroughly weary and exhausted before the termination of the struggle. France succeeded in placing Philip on the throne of Spain, but was quite enfeebled, and never recovered under the Bourbons her sacrifices and disasters. England was not so far spent, but, by the peace of Utrecht, was considered by the political party who had not concluded it, but began and carried on the war, to have deserted her allies abruptly, if not ignominiously.

The

Before the war of the succession Europe had become eminently bellicose, and war had become a science profoundly studied. It was the age of the famous engineers Vauban and Cohorn, by whom the chief regular fortresses of the Continent were planned and executed. Every state could pride itself on distinguished and experienced generals. Austrians had Eugene; the Dutch, Auverquerque; the English, Marlborough, his brother Churchill, Cutts, Galway, and Peterborough; and the French, Villars, Boufflers, and Vendôme. The last was a consummate tactician, to whom strategy was an amusement, and who played with the evolutions of divisions and brigades as he would with the knights and bishops of the chess-board. In this way he foiled Marlborough during a whole campaign, and by well-chosen positions and the skilful disposition of his troops prevented him gaining any advantage by siege or battle. He long baffled Prince Eugene in Italy by similar demonstrations. His forte was manoeuvring, never winning any great victory nor suffering signal defeat. His habits were voluptuous, indulging freely

in the pleasures of the table, which made him a late riser in the morning, and Eugene used to pelt his tent with discharges of cannon-balls to rouse him in his mid-day slumbers. The English military were not inferior to the best of the Continent, the unceasing wars of King William having made them well-trained soldiers and accomplished officers. Upon the character of our troops Lord Bolingbroke has the following:

'What I remember to have heard the Duke of Marlborough say before he went to take on him the command of the army in the Low Countries in 1702, proved true. The French misreckoned very much if they made the same comparison between their troops and those of their enemies, as they had made in precedent wars. Those that had been opposed to them in the last were raw for the most part when it began, the British particularly; but they had been disciplined, if I may say so, by their defeats. They were grown to be veterans at the peace of Ryswick; and though many had been disbanded, yet they had been disbanded lately, so that even those were easily formed anew, and the spirit that had been roused continued in all.'-Sketch of the State of Europe.

It is manifest that Marlborough commanded heroes, and he was worthy of them. His conduct of the war in Germany is an imperishable monument to his military genius. In energy and originality of conception, in cautious and masterly execution, it may be doubted whether the most splendid of Bonaparte's campaigns greatly exceeded this of the hero of Blenheim. Napoleon had a great advantage over Marlborough, in possessing the absolute control and disposal of his host. He had no wavering Dutch deputies to conciliate; no divided councils of war to consult; no tardy German mercenaries to concentrate and urge into action. He held the thunderbolt in his own hand, and could direct it with one will and one aim on the precise point and at the precise moment which decides a doubtful battle. Without dwelling on these drawbacks, let us briefly sketch the one year of toil and glory of the British general.

Marlborough, in 1704, was past middle life, but still indefatigable. He left London to consult the Grand Pensionary Heinsius, on the 15th of January, and, despite of intense frost and a boisterous passage, arrived safely at the Hague on the 19th. Elated by the prospect of having 50,000 British troops under his immediate command, he proposed to the Dutch to open the campaign on the Moselle with his own troops, and part of the foreign auxiliaries; the rest, with the Dutch, acting on the defensive in the Netherlands. This, however, was only part of a bold plan he had formed for carrying the war beyond the Rhine, where the Emperor was hard pressed; but, knowing the irresolution of the StatesGeneral, he feared startling them by divulging at once the whole of his daring scheme. He had another reason for