Marlborough: Britain’s Greatest General
Bestselling military historian Richard Holmes delivers an expertly written and exhilarating account of the life of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough and Britain's finest soldier, who rose from genteel poverty to lead his country to glory, cementing its position as a major player on the European stage and saviour of the Holy Roman Empire.John Churchill is, by any reasonable analysis, Britain’s greatest-ever soldier. He mastered strategy, tactics and logistics. His big four battles, Blenheim (which saved the Holy Roman Empire), Ramilies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet were events at the very centre of the European stage. He captured Lille, France’s second city, overran Bavaria and beat a succession of French marshals so badly that one, the squat and energetic Bofflers, was rewarded by Louis XIV for only losing moderately.A coalition manager long before the phrase was invented, he commanded a huge polyglot army with centrifugal political tendencies and bending it to his will by sheer force of personality.Yet John Churchill was also deeply controversial. He accepted a pension from one of Charles II’s mistresses for services vigorously rendered. He owed his rise and his peerage to James II yet, determined to be on the winning side, he deserted him in his hour of need in 1688. He maintained regular correspondence with the Jacobites while serving William and Mary and with the French while fighting Louis XIV. He made money on a prodigious scale, but was notoriously tight-fisted, long regretting an annuity given to a secretary whose quick-wittedness saved him from capture. But in the age when commissions were bought and sold, and commanders often owed their position to the hue of their blood, he never lost his soldier’s confidence.
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MARLBOROUGH
Englandâs Fragile Genius
RICHARD HOLMES
I am so entirely yours, that if I might have all the world given me, I could not be happy but in your love.
The Hague, 20 April 1703/Ropley, 20 February 2008
Our horsemen had now the better of the fight; but soon we beheld fresh bodies of horsemen, hastening to the relief of their half-defeated squadrons. Marlborough was at the head of this reserve of cavalry ⦠I can still see him as, undaunted and serene, he rode forward amid the cheers of his troops, shouting âCorporal Johnâ, the name they had given their hero; he was surrounded by his staff, evidently receiving his commands. I fell on his men with my whole regiment; he narrowly escaped being made prisoner â oh! That heaven was so unpropitious to France â but he was extricated, and my troopers were compelled to retreat.
COLONEL GERALD OâCONNOR, commanding anIrish regiment in French service, Ramillies, 1706
This is a world that is subject to frequent revolutions
SARAH DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: Portrait of an Age
Marlborough and the Weight of History
The King Comes Home in Peace Again
Politics, Foreign and Domestic
Domestic Bliss, Public Prosperity
Being Strongly Entrenched: The Schellenberg
Hark Now the Drums Beat up Again
Favourites, Bishops and the Union
The Devil Must have Carried Them: Oudenarde
8. Decline, Fall and Resurrection
Failed Peace, Thwarted Ambition
A Very Murdering Battle: Malplaquet
Some will tell you that John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was Britainâs 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 Marlboroughâs 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.>1
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 yearsâ leadership of Europe ⦠He had proved himself the âgood Englishmanâ 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.>2
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.>3
Marlboroughâs contemporary, Archdeacon William Coxe, concluded his three-volume biography, which still repays study, with the lapidary declaration that he was simply: âTHE GREATEST GENERAL AND ⦠THE GREATEST MINISTER that our country, or any other, has produced.â
