BLENHEIM
August 13: 1704
Oft hast thou acted thy part,
My country, worthily thee!
Lifted up often thy load
Atlantean, enormous, with glee:—
For on thee the burden is laid to uphold
World-justice; to keep the balance of states;
On thee the long cry of the tyrant-oppress’d,
The oppress’d in the name of liberty, waits:—
Ready, aye ready, the blade
In its day to draw forth, unafraid;
Thou dost not blench from thy fate!
By thy high heart, only, secure; by thy magnanimity, great.
E’en so it was on the morn
When France with Spain, in one realm
Welded, one thunderbolt, stood,
With one stroke the world to o’erwhelm.
—They have pass’d the great stream, they have stretch’d their white camp
Above the protecting morass and the dell,
Blenheim to Lutzingen, where the long wood
In summer-thick leafage rounds o’er the fell:
—England! in nine-fold advance
Cast thy red flood upon France;
Over marsh over beck ye must go,
Wholly together! or, Danube to Rhine, all slides to the foe!
As the lava thrusts onward its wall,
One mass down the valley they tramp;
Fascine-fill the marsh and the stream;
Like hornets they swarm up the ramp,
Lancing a breach through the long palisade,
Where the rival swarms of the stubborn foe,
While the sun goes high and goes down o’er the fight,
Sting them back, blow answering blow:—
O life-blood lavish as rain
On war’s red Aceldama plain!
While the volleying death-rattle rings,
And the peasant pays for the pride and the fury-ambition of kings!
And as those of Achaia and Troia
By the camp on the sand, so they
In the aether-amber of evening
Kept even score in the fray;
Rank against rank, man match’d with man,
In backward, forward, struggle enlaced,
Grappled and moor’d to the ground where they stood
As wrestlers wrestling, as lovers embraced:—
And the lightnings insatiable fly,
As the lull of the tempest is nigh,
And each host in its agony reels,
And the musket falls hot from the hand, enflamed by the death that it deals.
But, as when through the vale the rain-clouds
Darker and heavier flow,
Above them the dominant summit
Stands clad in calmness and snow;
So thou, great Chief, awaiting the turn
Of the purple tide:—And the moment has come!
And the signal-word flies out with a smile,
And they charge the foe in his fastness, home:—
As one long wave when the wind
Urges an ocean behind,
One line, they sweep on the foe,
And France from our battle recoils, and Victory edges the blow.
As a rock by blue lightning divided
Down the hillside scatters its course,
So in twain their army is parted
By the sabres sabring in force:
They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now
Crumble and shatter, and sheer o’er the bank
Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls
Slant and hurry in rankless rank:—
There are sixty thousand the morn
’Gainst the Lions marching in scorn;
But twenty, when even is here,
Broken and brave and at bay, the Lilied banner uprear.
—So be it!—All honour to him
Who snatch’d the world, in his day,
From an overmastering King,
A colossal imperial sway!
Calm adamantine endurant chief,
Fit forerunner of him, whose crowning stroke,
Rousing his Guards on the Flandrian plain,
Unvassall’d Europe from despot yoke!
He who from Ganges to Rhine
Traced o’er the world his red line
Irresistible; while in the breast
Reign’d devotedness utter, and self for England suppress’d!
O names that enhearten the soul,
Blenheim and Waterloo!
In no vain worship of glory
The poet turns him to you!
O sung by worthier song than mine,
If the day of a nation’s weakness rise,
Of the little counsels that dare not dare,
Of a land that no more on herself relies,—
O breath of our great ones that were,
Burn out this taint in the air!
The old heart of England restore,
Till the blood of the heroes awake, and shout in her bosom once more!
—Morning is fresh on the field
Where the war-sick champions lie,
By the wreckage of stiffening dead,
The anguish that yearns but to die.
Ah note of human agony heard
The paean of victory over and through!
Ah voice of duty and justice stern
That, at e’en this price, commands them to do!
And a vision of Glory goes by,
Veil’d head and remorseful eye,
A triumph of Death!—And they cried
‘Only less dark than defeat is the morning of conquest’;—and sigh’d.
Blenheim is fully described in Lord Stanhope’s Reign of Queen Anne. Its importance as a critical battle in European history lies in the fact that the work of liberating the Great Alliance against the paramount power of France under Lewis XIV, (which England had unwisely fostered from Cromwell to James II), was secured by this victory. ‘The loss of France could not be measured by men or fortresses. A
hundred victories since Rocroi had taught the world to regard the armies of Lewis as all but invincible, when Blenheim and the surrender of the flower of the French soldiery broke the spell’: (Green: History of the English People: B. VIII: ch. iii).
‘The French and Bavarians, who numbered, like their opponents, some fifty thousand men, lay behind a little stream which ran through swampy ground to the Danube . . . It was not till midday that Eugene, who commanded on the right, succeeded in crossing the stream. The English foot at once forded it on the left.’ They were repelled for the time. But, in the centre, Marlborough, ‘by making an artificial road across the morass which covered it,’ in two desperate charges turned the day.
A map of 1705 in the Annals of Queen Anne’s Reign, shows vast hillsides to the right of the Allies covered with wood. This map also specifies the advance of the English in nine columns.
Only less; ‘Marlborough,’ says Lord Stanhope, ‘was a humane and compassionate man. Even in the eagerness to pursue fresh conquests he did not ever neglect the care of the wounded.’