The first campaign was indecisive, the only considerable advantage secured by either side being that Churchill rendered a French invasion of Holland impossible, by capturing the north-eastern fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands, Venloo and Ruremonde, and by overrunning the electorate of Cologne and the bishopric of Liège. On his return to England, he was given the title by which he is best known, that of Duke of Marlborough.
Military genius of Marlborough.
Hitherto Churchill had shown himself an able general, but no one had taken the true measure of his abilities, or recognized the fact that he was by far the greatest military man that England had ever known. But now the ignominious political antecedents of Queen Anne's favourite were about to be hidden from view by the laurels that he was to win. John Churchill, when once he had intrigued his way to power, showed that he was well fitted to hold it. As a soldier he was the founder of a new school of scientific strategy: on the battle-field he was alert and vigorous, but he was greater in the operations that precede a battle. He had an unrivalled talent for careful and scientific combinations, by which he would deceive and circumvent an enemy, so as to attack him when least expected and at the greatest advantage. Where generals of an older school would run headlong into a fight and win with heavy loss, he would outflank or outmarch his enemy, and hustle him out of his positions with little or no bloodshed. On one occasion—as we shall see—he drove an army of 60,000 French before him and seized half the duchy of Brabant, without losing more than 80 men. Yet when hard blows were necessary he never shrank from the most formidable problems, and would lead his troops into the hottest fire with a cool-headed courage that won every man's admiration.
THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS
1702.
Marlborough as a diplomatist.
Great as were Marlborough's talents as a general, he was almost as notable as a diplomatist and administrator. He had all the gifts of a statesman: suave, affable, patient, and plausible, he was the one personage who could keep together the ill-assorted allies who had combined to attack Lewis XIV. The Dutch, the Austrians, and the small princes of the Empire had such divergent interests that it was a hard task to get them to work together. That they were kept from quarrelling and induced to combine their efforts was entirely Churchill's work. The organization of the allied army was in itself no mean problem; the English troops in it formed only a quarter or a third of the whole, and to manage the great body of Dutch, Prussians, Hanoverians, and Danes, who formed the bulk of the host, required infinite tact and discretion. Yet under Marlborough this motley array never marched save to victory, and never failed from lukewarmness or disunion.
His avarice.