(2) A FAMOUS VICTORY AND A LUCKY CAPTURE.
1. When William died, in 1702, he was preparing for a new war, with his old enemy, Louis XIV., to prevent the union of the Crowns of France and Spain. It is known as the War of the Spanish Succession, and arose from the fact that the King of Spain had willed the crown to a French prince. "There are no longer any Pyrenees," said Louis, as he contemplated the union of the two crowns. Such an union would have put the other kingdoms of Europe under the feet of France. Accordingly, an alliance was formed between England, Holland, and Austria to keep the Pyrenees in their place and the two nations apart.
2. Louis must have heard of the death of King William with deep satisfaction. A queen now sat on the throne of England, but fortunately she had in Lord Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, a general who was better qualified even than William as Commander-in-chief, and whose good fortune as a commander proved so remarkable that in the whole course of the war he suffered no defeat; he never besieged a fortress he did not take, nor fought a battle he did not win. Of his many victories the most splendid was that of Blenheim, a little village on the Danube, in Bavaria.
3. The Bavarians having joined the French as allies, the way lay open, through their country, into the very heart of Austria. The French, under Marshal Tallard, were marching on Vienna, when they were pulled up at Blenheim by the allied forces under Marlborough. The right wing of the French army was posted in this village with the river Danube on their flank. In front of the village the French had erected strong palisades; they had also barricaded the streets and loopholed the houses.
4. Marlborough first attempted to dislodge the French from this strong position. Nothing could be finer than the onset of the British, but they were bound to fail. Behind the palisades knelt long lines of French troops, as brave as their assailants, whilst a second line standing erect fired over the heads of their kneeling comrades. Some of our men tried to tear up the palisades with their hands, or clamber over them by mounting on each other's shoulders, but the task proved beyond them. Marlborough withdrew his men, but bade them keep up the feint of an attack upon Blenheim, whilst he prepared to throw his cavalry on the French centre.
5. Marshal Tallard seems to have trusted to the protection of a swamp which here separated the two armies. Across this swamp our general led his cavalry, having first made tracks by laying down faggots of wood. At the sound of the trumpet, about 8000 splendidly-mounted horsemen, who had made their way across moved up the gentle slope, and then gradually quickening their pace, fell on the French centre. So deadly was the volley of the French infantry that the foremost of our squadrons recoiled and all was wild confusion. The moment had come far the French cavalry to charge, but they let the opportunity slip by. As soon as the British cavalry had reformed, they renewed the attack with redoubled fury. The French horsemen fired their carbines, wheeled, and fled. This decided the day.
6. The French centre, flung back on the Danube, was forced to surrender; their right, cooped up in Blenheim, and cut off from retreat, also became prisoners of war. Marshal Tallard was caught before he could make his escape. The French general, in command of the troops posted in Blenheim, tried to swim his horse across the Danube, and was drowned in the attempt. Before nightfall, Marlborough wrote to his wife half-a-dozen lines in pencil, on the back of an old hotel bill, to tell her to "give his duty to the queen, and let her know that her army has won a glorious victory. M. Tallard and two other generals are in my coach, and I am following the rest."
"'It was the English,' Kaspar cried,
'Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out,
But everybody said,' quoth he,
'That 'twas a famous victory.'"
And it really was "a famous victory;" for it put an end to the danger of France being able to lord it over the rest of Europe, and to replace the Stuarts on the throne of England. Our free government and our present line of sovereigns are among the results which we owe to the genius of Marlborough and to the bravery of his troops.
7. But there was one other victory won in the same year as that of Blenheim, which, though it was gained almost by accident, with little fighting and little loss, has left us a prize which half the world covets. This was the capture of Gibraltar by Admiral Sir George Rooke (1704). Gibraltar was not then the strong fortress that it is now; but it was so strong by nature that the Spaniards thought a small garrison sufficient for holding it. Rooke first seized the narrow strip of land by which the Rock of Gibraltar is joined to the mainland. The next day, while the Spanish sentries were at church, some English sailors climbed up the rock and hoisted the English flag. That flag has waved over the Rock of Gibraltar from that day to this.