But Irish disturbance and foreign war had brought to the front the greatest soldier that this country has produced, and who was to carry the glory of the British army to the highest point. It was of Marlborough that, with regard to Ireland, the popular remark was made that “he had achieved more important results in one month, than the king’s phlegmatic Dutch friend had done in two campaigns”; it was of him that Prince Vaudemont, no mean judge, spoke, when he told the king that “there is something in the Earl of Marlborough that is inexpressible; for the fire of Kirke, the thought of Lanier, the skill of Mackay, and the bravery of Colchester seem united in his person; and I have lost my knowledge of physiognomy, if any subject you have can ever attain to such military glory as this combination of sublime perfections must advance him.”
He was not merely a fighting man, he was an educated soldier. His apprenticeship in France had shown him the value of discipline, and under William he was able and encouraged to enforce it. But he was above all a student of the art of war, and so left little to chance, for he recognised that “war is not a conjectural art,” but a science.
This was the man whom William, on his deathbed, commended to the coming queen as the fittest man to “conduct her armies or preside over her councils.” He was head and shoulders above the brave and hard-fighting Anglo-Dutch king in military genius, without a doubt. But “the weak point in his position was, that it depended on the personal favour of a stupid woman. When his wife lost her influence over Queen Anne, his political antagonists in England found no great difficulty in bringing about his disgrace.”
CHAPTER V
MARLBOROUGH AND HIS MEN—TO 1714
With the accession of Anne a fresh impetus was given to the national spirit, and therefore to the army, which was its natural exponent. An opinion by itself is valueless, but when backed up by threat of force, must necessarily be listened to. There was much to keep the military spirit alive, nothing to kill it down. There was a threatening and ominous war-cloud beyond the Scottish border, which might accumulate still more, and break with danger to the whole State, so long as there was a pretender to the throne. There was now a greater amount of intelligence, both as regards the understanding of what was going on abroad, as well as at home, among the people; and still greater was the amount and truthfulness of the news regarding such foreign affairs. The spread of information as to what British soldiers were doing elsewhere against the French and others, kept vigorously alive the memory of past success, whether such was counted from Agincourt by land, or Blake at sea. There was the beginning of the national principle of Empire, as compared with the mere cramped vestrydom of home affairs only. A nation that cares for nothing but such as these is provincial, not national, in its tastes and views. But enlarged interests produce enlarged ideas. The increasing necessity for an army was the first unwilling rift in the old provincial policy of isolation. England was being led, or forced, or both, to abandon her insular position and to take her place more actively among the nations, and the consequent need for that permanent national police, the army, was being slowly, though still reluctantly, recognised.
Private 14th Regt. 1742.
But ill deeds take long a-dying. It was not yet a century since kings had tried to crush the freedom of a people, or since an army had taken the place of personal rule and had threatened another and still worse form of autocracy; still matters were mending. National poverty—for the country was then neither populous nor rich—may have had a little to do with past reluctance to enter the arena of European politics; and for a long time a natural dread of a despotism of any kind led a freedom-loving people to refuse supplies that might be used to create a weapon hostile to their continued liberty. But all strong nations, not governed by feminine hysteria or led by ill-balanced doctrinaires, like to feel themselves strong and respected abroad as well as at home. Blake had already shown the value of such a sentiment, but the time was hardly yet ripe for the full influence of his work to be felt. It was possibly but little known, generally, in his lifetime; for information, in the middle of the seventeenth century, was slow in spreading. Certainly it had not been fully grasped. But times were changing. National glory, once tasted, could not be maintained by keeping aloof from the broader work and interests of the world. The wars of Anne’s reign, in which Marlborough was the leading spirit, roused the bold fighting spirit that made the England of the eighteenth century, as the campaigns of the early part of the nineteenth century have kept that spirit from decay.