Marlborough: Britain’s Greatest General

Empty Elevation (#litres_trial_promo)

The 1703 Campaign (#litres_trial_promo)

5. High Germany (#litres_trial_promo)

Forging a Strategy (#litres_trial_promo)

The Scarlet Caterpillar (#litres_trial_promo)

Being Strongly Entrenched: The Schellenberg (#litres_trial_promo)

The Harrowing of Bavaria (#litres_trial_promo)

A Glorious Victory: Blenheim (#litres_trial_promo)

6. The Lines of Brabant (#litres_trial_promo)

Ripples of Victory (#litres_trial_promo)

Hark Now the Drums Beat up Again (#litres_trial_promo)

Happy and Glorious: Ramillies (#litres_trial_promo)

7. The Equipoise of Fortune (#litres_trial_promo)

Favourites, Bishops and the Union (#litres_trial_promo)

A Sterile Campaign (#litres_trial_promo)

Politics and Plans (#litres_trial_promo)

The Campaign of 1708 (#litres_trial_promo)

The Devil Must have Carried Them: Oudenarde (#litres_trial_promo)

In the Galley (#litres_trial_promo)

8. Decline, Fall and Resurrection (#litres_trial_promo)

Failed Peace, Thwarted Ambition (#litres_trial_promo)

A Very Murdering Battle: Malplaquet (#litres_trial_promo)

Failed Peace and Falling Government (#litres_trial_promo)

Last Campaigns (#litres_trial_promo)

Dismissed the Service (#litres_trial_promo)

Exile and Return (#litres_trial_promo)

NOTES (#litres_trial_promo)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY (#litres_trial_promo)

INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)

AUTHOR’S NOTE (#litres_trial_promo)

PRAISE (#litres_trial_promo)

OTHER WORKS (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)

THE CHURCHILLS (#ulink_1a0c5d0e-e84e-5785-980f-eecb881e1605)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_89578580-691b-5bfb-a698-abfe4febbd1d)

Portrait of an Age

Marlborough and the Weight of History (#ulink_7df4248b-c15f-5585-85f9-068342c97aa8)

Some will tell you that John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was Britain’s greatest ever general. John Keegan and Andrew Wheatcroft, two wise judges, affirmed that:

There was no talent for war which he did not possess. He had imagination and command of detail to plan a grand strategy: he was an able generalissimo of allied armies, always ready to flatter a foreign ruler for some political advantage. His capacity for innovation really lay off the battlefield … But his greatest strength lay in his attention to the economic underpinning of the war, and in his concern for the morale and welfare of his men … In this combination of military virtues Marlborough’s greatness nestled, but most of all in his understanding that the army was precious and that its value resided in the officers and men who made it up.

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Winston S. Churchill concluded his six-volume biography of his distinguished ancestor by declaring:

He had consolidated all that England had gained by the Revolution of 1688 and the achievements of William III. By his invincible genius in war and his scarcely less admirable qualities of wisdom and management he had completed that glorious process that carried England from her dependency upon France under Charles II to ten years’ leadership of Europe … He had proved himself the ‘good Englishman’ he aspired to be, and History may declare that if he had had more power his country would have had more strength and happiness, and Europe a surer progress.

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Another assessment added private virtue to public achievement to make Marlborough the very model of the Christian soldier:

He was by nature pure and temperate, kind and brave. He had supreme genius, personal beauty, and the art of pleasing. He was born to shine in courts, and understood the graces of life to perfection. He met with glory and ingratitude, infamy and fame. So, moving splendidly through a splendid world, he saw more fully to the share of most men, of human nature and the human lot.

He was honourable in his public life because he was also honourable in his private life. He was kind and chivalrous abroad, because he was kind and chivalrous at heart, and in his own home, and to his best beloved. He had a deep, strong faith, which never failed him.

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Marlborough’s contemporary, Archdeacon William Coxe, concluded his three-volume biography, which still repays study, with the lapidary declaration that he was simply: ‘THE GREATEST GENERAL AND … THE GREATEST MINISTER that our country, or any other, has produced.’