The impression which he made on Burnet was not favorable. The good bishop could not understand that a mind which seemed to be chiefly occupied with questions about the best place for a capstan and the best way of rigging a jury-mast might be capable, not merely of ruling an empire, but of creating a nation. He claimed that he had gone to see a great prince, and had found only an industrious shipwright. Nor does Evelyn seem to have formed a much more favorable opinion of his august tenant. It was, indeed, not in the character of tenant that the czar was likely to gain the good word of civilized men. With all the high qualities which were peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits which were then common among his countrymen. To the end of his life, while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing codes, organizing tribunals, building cities in deserts, joining distant seas by artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a hog in a sty; and, when he was entertained by other sovereigns, never failed to leave on their tapestried walls and velvet state beds unequivocal proof that a savage had been there. Evelyn’s house was left in such a state that the Treasury quieted his complaints with a considerable sum of money.
Toward the close of March the czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham sea-fight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending fleets with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for his amusement and instruction. After passing more than three months in England, he departed in high good-humor.
DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH.
By WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY.
[John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, born 1650, died 1722. All his early fortunes were due to the favor of James II, but he deserted his patron, and his intrigues carried over a large following of the English nobility to the cause of the Prince of Orange. For this he was rewarded with the dukedom of Marlborough. Politically Marlborough was a traitor to nearly every cause he served, and was continually plotting to undermine William as he had done in the case of James. To Anne, under whom he reaped his great military glory, though he had distinguished himself at an earlier period, he was probably loyal. The victories which established his place among the leading soldiers of modern times were Blenheim, in 1704; Ramillies, in 1706; Oudenarde, in 1708; Malplaquet, in 1709; and the capture of Bouchain, in 1711. He achieved eminence as a statesman and administrator as well as a soldier, but it is in the latter capacity that he ranks among the great men of the world.]
Beyond comparison the greatest of English generals, Marlborough raised his country to a height of military glory such as it had never attained since the days of Poitiers and of Agincourt, and his victories appeared all the more dazzling after the ignominious reigns of the last two Stuarts, and after the many failures that checkered the enterprises of William. His military genius, though once bitterly decried by party malignity, will now be universally acknowledged, and it was sufficient to place him among the greatest captains who have ever lived. Hardly any other modern general combined to an equal degree the three great attributes of daring, caution, and sagacity, or conducted military enterprises of equal magnitude and duration without losing a single battle or failing in a single siege. He was one of the very few commanders who appear to have shown equal skill in directing a campaign, in winning a battle, and in improving a victory. It can not, indeed, be said of him, as it may be said of Frederick the Great, that he was at the head of a small power, with almost all Europe in arms against it, and that nearly every victory he won was snatched from an army enormously outnumbering his own. At Blenheim and Oudenarde the French exceeded by a few thousands the armies of the allies. At Ramillies the army of Marlborough was slightly superior. At Malplaquet the opposing forces were almost equal. Nor did the circumstances of Marlborough admit of a military career of the same brilliancy, variety, and magnitude of enterprise as that of Napoleon.
But both Frederick and Napoleon experienced crushing disasters, and both of them had some advantages which Marlborough did not possess. Frederick was the absolute ruler of a state which had for many years been governed exclusively on the military principle, in which the first and almost the sole object of the government had been to train and discipline the largest and most perfect army the nation could support. Napoleon was the absolute ruler of the foremost military power on the Continent at a time when the enthusiasm of a great revolution had given it an unparalleled energy, when the destruction of the whole hierarchy of rank and the opening of all posts to talent had brought an extraordinary amount of ability to the forefront, and when the military administrations of surrounding nations were singularly decrepit and corrupt. Marlborough, on the other hand, commanded armies consisting in a great degree of confederates and mercenaries of many different nationalities, and under many different rulers. He was thwarted at every step by political obstacles, and by the much graver obstacles arising from divided command and personal or national jealousies; he contended against the first military nation of the Continent, at a time when its military organization had attained the highest perfection, and when a long succession of brilliant wars had given it a school of officers of consummate skill.
But great as were his military gifts, they would have been insufficient had they not been allied with other qualities well fitted to win the admiration of men. Adam Smith has said, with scarcely an exaggeration, that “it is a characteristic almost peculiar to the great Duke of Marlborough, that ten years of such uninterrupted and such splendid successes as scarce any other general could boast of, never betrayed him into a single rash action, scarcely into a single rash word or expression.” Nothing in his career is more admirable than the unwearied patience, the inimitable skill, the courtesy, the tact, the self-command with which he employed himself during many years in reconciling the incessant differences, overcoming the incessant opposition, and soothing the incessant jealousies of those with whom he was compelled to co-operate. His private correspondence abundantly shows how gross was the provocation he endured, how keenly he felt it, how nobly he bore it.
As a negotiator he ranks with the most skillful diplomatists of his age, and it was no doubt his great tact in managing men that induced his old rival Bolingbroke, in one of his latest writings, to describe him as not only the greatest general, but also “the greatest minister our country or any other has produced.” Chesterfield, while absurdly depreciating his intellect, admitted that “his manner was irresistible,” and he added that, of all men he had ever known, Marlborough “possessed the graces in the highest degree.” Nor was his character without its softer side. Though he can not, I think, be acquitted of a desire to prolong war in the interests of his personal or political ambition, it is at least true that no general ever studied more, by admirable discipline and by uniform humanity, to mitigate its horrors. Very few friendships among great political or military leaders have been as constant or as unclouded by any shade of jealousy as the friendship between Marlborough and Godolphin, and between Marlborough and Eugene.
His conjugal fidelity, in a time of great laxity and under temptations and provocations of no common order, was beyond reproach. His attachment to the Church of England was at one time the great obstacle to his advancement. It appears never to have wavered through all the vicissitudes of his life; and no one who reads his most private letters with candor can fail to perceive that a certain vein of genuine piety ran through his nature, however inconsistent it may appear with some portions of his career.
Yet it may be questioned whether, even in the zenith of his fame, he was really popular. He had grave vices, and they were precisely of that kind which is most fatal to public men. His extreme rapacity in acquiring and his extreme avarice in hoarding money contrasted forcibly with the lavish generosity of Ormond, and alone gave weight to the charges of peculation that were brought against him. It is true that this, like all his passions, was under control. Torcy soon found that it was useless to attempt to bribe him, and he declined, as we have seen, with little hesitation, the enormously lucrative post of governor of the Austrian Netherlands when he found that the appointment aroused the strong and dangerous hostility of the Dutch. In these cases his keen and far-seeing judgment perceived clearly his true interest, and he had sufficient resolution to follow it. Yet still, like many men who have risen from great poverty to great wealth, avarice was the passion of his life, and the rapacity both of himself and of his wife was insatiable. Besides immense grants from Blenheim and marriage portions given by the queen to their daughters, they at one time received between them an annual income of public money of more than sixty-four thousand pounds.