Marlborough, His Life and Times, Vols. Iii-Iv
THE MAN of the MONTH
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‘THE greatest servant who remained a servant of any sovereign in history,’ says Mr. Churchill of his hero. How magnificent, the encomium.! From Belisarius to Chatham and beyond, monarchs have enjoyed the services of men of superlative abilities. But in all the splendid roster Marlborough’s record is unique. Supreme among British soldiers, he ranks with the highest among British statesmen. Cæsar and Napoleon, who in their own persons became the State, are, since Alexander, alone in a higher category of dual eminence. Only because Marlborough’s military genius still dazzles the world is his skill in statecraft apt to be underestimated.
Admirably does Mr. Churchill fill in this gap in our education. His monumental biography shows Marlborough as a diplomat among soldiers, a statesman among diplomats, and among courtiers the perfect nonpareil. None else could have carried on in their intricate complexity the inchoate European alliances against the Great King of France. Charm, poise, dignity, understanding, prodigious common sense, combined to form the exquisite mechanism of his genius. Like William III before him, he kept, his hand on a thousand levers; threatening this State, cajoling that, ingratiating himself with canny Dutchmen, whipping Portugal into line, snaring the Empire still called Holy and Roman, holding fast to Savoy, putting the German princes, as we should say. ‘on the spot,’ never forgetting Scandinavia, and keeping his insistent eye on Whig and Tory at home, Marlborough did the work of a dozen chancellories; and with the most recalcitrant allies that ever a general had, in a decade’s warfare against the best soldiers in the world, he was never worsted in a campaign, nor lost a battle.
If a reader may be persuaded, Churchill’s Circean style will persuade him. and his multitudinous array of facts are ample warrant that here was a man in versatility of judgment and decision of character beyond the men of three centuries at least. Yet was he, as the historian avers, a commander of the first order? His tactical skill was great as ever graced a battlefield, but would the other supreme captains of history have ever permitted a decisive victory in the field to be the culmination of a campaign? Battles are fought, not to furnish posterity with model instances, but to win wars. With Scipio and Cæsar, Turenne and Wellington, Lee and Foch, victory was a means and not an end. Six weeks after Blenheim, Napoleon would have dictated the terms of a final peace.
But with Marlborough the case is different. Perched on the summit of successive victories, he stands as though his work for the year were done. True, there is a strong place or two to be invested, but never does he make the conqueror’s eagle-swoop which breaks an enemy’s will to fight and makes peace certain. Almost one wonders whether the classical sense of ‘nothing too much is ever banished from Marlborough’s mind. A world in which the great King was humbled to the dust, the Empire destroyed, and the last Pretender obliterated, would be a world in which a general’s genius would no longer be a necessity to a Ministry at home. Did the first of British soldiers realize how essential was some continuance of the Balance of Power to his own career? Or did be hesitate from a fundamental dread of destroying the foundation stones of European order? These are questions the deliberate reader will pause to ask himself, and he may find a partial answer in the humiliation and neglect which overtook the Great Captain once his country was free from acute danger. But that is another story, to be pondered in another volume.
One of the most interesting chapters in these remarkable volumes compares old battles with new. ‘In the process of enlargement,’says Churchill, ‘the sublime function of military genius has been destroyed forever.’ The Chief of the Great General Staff, a dozen miles behind the heat and blood of battle, moves little flags upon his great blue maps. But the General spurring through the dun smoke, turning rout into triumph, signaling the charge with his upraised sword, is become the figure of a legend wherein Marlborough’s name shines in the brightest constellation.
To those reflective readers who care to muse upon the vicissitude of things, this magnificent book offers food a-plenty. The eighteenth was the century of manners. It was the age of externals. Battles were tournaments and courtesy was king. What a commentary upon the brutishness of modern war lies in Marlborough’s polished notes to opposing generals offering safe-conducts through his lines to enable them, during the ‘off season’ of war, to enjoy the delights of Versailles a fortnight earlier than had otherwise been possible; or in watching him send a basket of wine to some attractive countess whose tastes led her to prefer Paris to London! Those were the days when ladies and gentlemen made up the consequence of life. On peasants grunting in mud and sweat was bestowed the privilege of paying for the show. This charmed world lived on after Marlborough had gone.
‘Gentlemen of the French Guard fire first,’ called Lord Hay in after years at Fontenoy. To which the Comte d’Auteroches exquisitely replied, ‘Sir, we never fire first. Please to fire yourself.’
ELLERY SEDGWICK