The same oblivion of past and inappreciable services, when they were no longer required, pursued the illustrious general in his declining years, on the part of his own countrymen. The got-up stories about embezzlement and dilapidation of the public money, in Flanders, were allowed to go to sleep, when they had answered their destined purpose of bringing about his fall from political power. No grounds were found for a prosecution which could afford a chance of success, even in the swamped and now subservient House of Peers. But every thing that malice could suggest, or party bitterness effect, was done to fill the last days of the immortal hero with anxiety and disquiet. Additional charges were brought against him by the commissioners, founded on the allegation that he had drawn a pistole per troop, and ten shillings a company, for mustering the soldiers, though, in the foreign auxiliaries, it was often not done. Marlborough at once transmitted a refutation of those fresh charges, so clear and decisive, that it entirely silenced those accusations.[32] But his enemies, though driven from this ground, still persecuted him with unrelenting malice. The noble pile of Blenheim, standing, as it did, an enduring monument at once of the Duke's services and the nation's gratitude, was a grievous eyesore to the dominant majority in England, and they did all in their power to prevent its completion.
Orders were first given to the Treasury, on June 1, 1712, to suspend any further payments from the royal exchequer; and commissioners were appointed to investigate the claims of the creditors and expense of the work. They recommended the payment of a third to each claimant, which was accordingly made; but as many years elapsed, and no further payments to account were made, the principal creditors brought an action in the Court of Exchequer against the Duke, as personally liable for the amount, and the court pronounced decree in favour of the plaintiffs, which was affirmed, after a long litigation, in the House of Lords. Meanwhile the works, for want of any paymaster, were at a stand; and this noble pile, this proud monument of a nation's gratitude, would have remained a modern ruin to this day, had it not been completed from the private funds of the hero whose services it was intended to commemorate. But the Duke of Marlborough, as well as the Duchess, were too much interested in the work to allow it to remain unfinished. He left by his will fifty thousand pounds to complete the building, which was still in very unfinished state at the time of his death, and the duty was faithfully performed by the Duchess after his decease. From the accounts of the total expense, preserved at Blenheim, it appears, that out of three hundred thousand pounds, which the whole edifice cost, no less than sixty thousand pounds was provided from the private funds of the Duke of Marlborough.[33]
It may readily be believed that so long-continued and unrelenting a persecution of so great a man and distinguished benefactor of his country, proceeded from something more than mere envy at greatness, powerful as that principle ever is in little minds. In truth, it was part of the deep-laid plan for the restoration of the Stuart line, which the declining state of the Queen's health, and the probable unpopularity of the Hanover family, now revived in greater vigour than ever. During this critical period, Marlborough, who was still on the Continent, remained perfectly firm to the Act of Settlement, and the Protestant cause. Convinced that England was threatened with a counter-revolution, he used his endeavours to secure the fidelity of the garrison of Dunkirk, and offered to embark at its head in support of the Protestant succession. He sent General Cadogan to make the necessary arrangements with General Stanhope for transporting troops to England, to support the Hanoverian succession, and offered to lend the Elector of Hanover £20,000 to aid him in his endeavour to secure the succession. So sensible was the Electoral house of the magnitude of his services, and his zeal in their behalf, that the Electress Sophia entrusted him with a blank warrant, appointing him commander-in-chief of her troops and garrisons, on her accession to the crown.[34]
On the death of Queen Anne, on August 1, 1714, Marlborough returned to England, and was soon after appointed captain-general and master-general of the ordnance. Bolingbroke and Oxford were shortly after impeached, and the former then threw off the mask, by flying to France, where he openly entered into the service of the Pretender at St Germains. Marlborough's great popularity with the army was soon after the means of enabling him to appease a mutiny in the guards, which at first threatened to be alarming. During the rebellion in 1715, he directed, in a great degree, the operations against the rebels, though he did not actually take the field; and to his exertions, its rapid suppression was in a great measure to be ascribed.
But the period had now arrived when the usual fate of mortality awaited this illustrious man. Severe domestic bereavements preceded his dissolution, and in a manner weaned him from a world which he had passed through with so much glory. His daughter, Lady Bridgewater, died in March 1714; and this was soon followed by the death of his favourite daughter, Anne Countess of Sunderland, who united uncommon elegance and beauty to unaffected piety and exemplary virtue. Marlborough himself was not long of following his beloved relatives to the grave. On the 28th May 1716, he was seized with a fit of palsy, so severe that it deprived him, for a time, alike of speech and recollection. He recovered, however, to a certain degree, and went to Bath, for the benefit of the waters; and a gleam of returning light shone upon his mind when he visited Blenheim on the 18th October. He expressed great satisfaction at the survey of the plan; which reminded him of his great achievements; but when he saw, in one of the few rooms which were finished, a picture of himself at the battle of Blenheim, he turned away with a mournful air, with the words—"Something then, but now——" On November 18th he was attacked by another stroke, more severe than the former, and his family hastened to pay the last duties, as they conceived, to their departing parent. The strength of his constitution, however, triumphed for a time even over this violent attack; but though he continued contrary to his own wishes, in conformity with those of his friends, who needed the support of his great reputation, to hold office, and occasionally appeared in parliament, yet his public career was at an end. A considerable addition was made to his fortune by the sagacity of the Duchess, who persuaded him to embark part of his funds in the South Sea scheme; and foreseeing the crash which was approaching, sold out so opportunely, that, instead of losing, she gained £100,000 by the transaction. On the 27th November 1721, he made his last appearance in the House of Lords; but in June 1722, he was again attacked with paralysis so violently, that he lay for some days nearly motionless, though in perfect possession of his faculties. To a question from the Duchess, whether he heard the prayers read as usual at night, on the 15th June, in his apartment; he replied, "Yes; and I joined in them." These were his last words. On the morning of the 16th he sunk rapidly, and, at four o'clock, calmly breathed his last, in the 72d year of his age.[35]
Envy is generally extinguished by death, because the object of it has ceased to stand in the way of those who feel it. Marlborough's funeral obsequies were celebrated with uncommon magnificence, and all ranks and parties joined in doing him honour. His body lay in state for several days at Marlborough House, and crowds flocked together from all the three kingdoms to witness the imposing ceremony of his funeral, which was performed with the utmost magnificence, on the 28th June. The procession was opened by a long array of military, among whom were General, now Lord Cadogan, and many other officers who had suffered and bled in his cause. Long files of heralds, officers-at-arms, and pursuivants followed, bearing banners emblazoned with his armorial achievements, among which appeared, in uncommon lustre, the standard of Woodstock, exhibiting the arms of France on the Cross of St George. In the centre of the cavalcade was a lofty car, drawn by eight horses, which bore the mortal remains of the Hero, under a splendid canopy adorned by plumes, military trophies, and heraldic devices of conquest. Shields were affixed to the sides, bearing the names of the towns he had taken, and the fields he had won. Blenheim was there, and Oudenarde, Ramilies and Malplaquet; Lille and Tournay; Bethune, Douay, and Ruremonde; Bouchain and Mons, Maestricht and Ghent. This array of names made the English blush for the manner in which they had treated their hero. On either side were five generals in military mourning, bearing aloft banderoles, on which were emblazoned the arms of the family. Eight dukes supported the pall; besides the relatives of the deceased, the noblest and proudest of England's nobility joined in the procession. Yet the most moving part of the ceremony was the number of old soldiers who had combated with the hero on his fields of fame, and who might now be known, in the dense crowds which thronged the streets, by their uncovered heads, grey hairs, and the tears which trickled down their cheeks. The body was deposited, with great solemnity, in Westminster Abbey, at the east end of the tomb of Henry VII.; but this was not its final resting-place in this world. It was soon after removed to the chapel at Blenheim, where it was deposited in a magnificent mausoleum; and there it still remains, surmounted by the noble pile which the genius of Vanbrugh had conceived to express a nation's gratitude.[36]
The extraordinary merit of Marlborough's military talents will not be duly appreciated, unless the peculiar nature of the contest he was called on to direct, and the character which he assumed in his time, is taken into consideration.
The feudal times had ceased—at least so far as the raising of a military force by its machinery was concerned. Louis XIV., indeed, when pressed for men, more than once summoned the ban and arrière-ban of France to his standards, and he always had a gallant array of feudal nobility in his antechambers, or around his headquarters. But war, both on his part and that of his antagonists, was carried on, generally speaking, with standing armies, supported by the belligerent state. The vast, though generally tumultuary array which the Plantagenet or Valois sovereigns summoned to their support, but which, bound only to serve for forty days, generally disappeared before a few months of hostilities were over, could no longer be relied on. The modern system invented by revolutionary France, of making war maintain war, and sending forth starving multitudes with arms in their hands, to subsist by the plunder of the adjoining states, was unknown. The national passions had not been roused, which alone would bring it into operation. The decline of the feudal system forbade the hope that contests could be maintained by the chivalrous attachment of a faithful nobility: the democratic spirit had not been so aroused as to supply its place by popular fervour. Religious passions, indeed, had been strongly excited; but they had prompted men rather to suffer than to act: the disputations of the pulpit were their natural arena: in the last extremity they were more allied to the resignation of the martyr, than the heroism of the soldier. Between the two, there extended a long period of above a century and a half, during which governments had acquired the force, and mainly relied on the power, of standing armies; but the resources at their disposal for their support were so limited, that the greatest economy in the husbanding both of men and money was indispensable.
Richard Cœur de Lion, Edward III., and Henry V., were the models of feudal leaders, and their wars were a faithful mirror of the feudal contests. Setting forth at the head of a force, which, if not formidable in point of numbers, was generally extremely so from equipment and the use of arms, the nobles around them were generally too proud and high-spirited to decline a combat, even on any possible terms of disadvantage. They took the field as the knights went to a champ clos, to engage their adversaries in single conflict; and it was deemed equally dishonourable to retire without fighting from the one as the other. But they had no permanent force at their disposal to secure a lasting fruit even from the greatest victories. The conquest of a petty province, a diminutive fortress, was often their only result. Hence the desperate battles, so memorable in warlike annals, which they fought, and hence the miserable and almost nugatory results which almost invariably followed their greatest triumphs. Cressy, Poictiers, and Azincour, followed by the expulsion of the English from France; Methven and Dunbar, by their ignominious retreat from Scotland; Ascalon and Ptolemais, by their being driven from the Holy Land, must immediately occur to every reader. This state of war necessarily imprinted a corresponding character on the feudal generals. They were high-spirited and daring in action—often skilful in tactics—generally ignorant of strategy—covetous of military renown, but careless of national advancement—and often more solicitous to conquer an adversary in single conflict, than reduce a fortress, or win a province.
But when armies were raised at the expense, not of nobles, but of kings—when their cost became a lasting and heavy drain on the royal exchequer—sovereigns grew desirous of a more durable and profitable result from their victories. Standing armies, though commonly powerful, often irresistible when accumulated in large bodies—were yet extremely expensive. They were felt the more from the great difficulty of getting the people in every country, at that period, to submit to any considerable amount of direct taxation. More than one flourishing province had been lost, or powerful monarchy overturned, in the attempt to increase such burdens; witness the loss of Holland to Spain, the execution of Charles I. in England. In this dilemma, arising from the experienced necessity of raising standing armies on the one hand, and the extreme difficulty of permanently providing for them on the other, the only resource was to spare both the blood of the soldiers and the expenses of the government as much as possible. Durable conquests, acquisitions of towns and provinces which could yield revenues and furnish men, became the great object of ambition. The point of feudal honour was forgot in the inanity of its consequences; the benefits of modern conquests were felt in the reality of their results. A methodical cautious system of war was thus impressed upon generals by the necessities of their situation, and the objects expected from them by their respective governments. To risk little and gain much, became the great object: skill and stratagem gradually took the place of reckless daring; and the reputation of a general came to be measured rather by the permanent addition which his successes had made to the revenues of his sovereign, than the note with which the trumpet of Fame had proclaimed his own exploits.