When we recollect all Churchill's intellectual greatness, we are more than ever shocked with his moral failings. Not only was he an intriguer to the backbone, but he was grossly and indecently fond of money: he levied contributions on all the public funds that passed through his hands, was open to presents from every quarter, and did not shrink from gross favouritism where his interests moved him.
1704—Marlborough moves to Bavaria.
The first great campaign in which Marlborough showed his full powers was that of 1704. When it opened, his army lay on the Meuse and Lower Rhine, holding back the French from Holland. But meanwhile Lewis XIV. had pushed forward another army into South Germany to join the Bavarians, and their united forces held the valley of the Upper Danube, and seriously threatened Austria. Seeing that the sphere of decisive action lay in Bavaria, and not on the Meuse, Marlborough resolved to transfer himself to the point of danger by a rapid march across Germany. After with great difficulty persuading the Dutch to allow him to move their army eastward, he executed a series of skilful feints which led the French to imagine that he was about to invade Alsace. But having thoroughly misled them as to his intentions, he struck across Wurtemburg by forced marches, and appeared in the valley of the Danube. By storming the great fortified camp of the Bavarians on the Schellenberg, he placed himself between the enemy and Austria, and rendered any further advance towards Vienna impossible to them. When joined by a small Austrian army under Eugéne of Savoy, he found himself strong enough to fight the whole force of the French and Bavarians.
The Battle of Blenheim.
Accordingly he marched to attack them, and found them 56,000 strong, arrayed in a good position behind a marshy stream called the Nebel, which falls into the Danube near the village of Blenheim. Formidable though their line appeared, Marlborough thought that it might be broken. He sent Prince Eugéne with 20,000 men to keep employed the enemy's left wing, where the Bavarians lay. He himself with 32,000 assailed the French marshals Marsin and Tallard, who formed the hostile centre and right. On the two flanks the Anglo-Austrian army was brought to a standstill opposite the fortified villages of Blenheim and Oberglau, and could advance no further. But between them Marlborough himself found a weak point, just where the French and Bavarian armies joined. He made his men wade through the marshy stream, and then directed a series of furious cavalry charges against the hostile centre. After a stout resistance it broke, and the French and Bavarians were thrust apart. The Elector and his men got off without much hurt, for Prince Eugéne's force had been too much cut up early in the day to be able to pursue them. But the enemy's right wing fared very differently: Marlborough's victorious cavalry rolled it up and drove it southward into the Danube. The French had no choice but to drown or to surrender. Tallard was captured on the river-bank. Eleven thousand men laid down their arms in Blenheim village when they saw that their retreat was cut off; 15,000 more were drowned, slain, or wounded, and not half the Franco-Bavarian army succeeded in escaping (August 13, 1704).
BLENHEIM
AUG. 13, 1704.
This crushing blow saved Austria. The whole of Bavaria fell into Marlborough's hands, the French retired behind the Rhine, and for the future Germany was quite safe from the assaults of King Lewis. The duke then transferred himself back to the Dutch frontier so rapidly that the French had no time to do any mischief before his return. Next spring he was again on the Meuse, and threatening the Spanish Netherlands on their eastern flank.