Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/329

 The death of William (8 March 1702) gave the power to Anne and her favourites. Marlborough was at once made a knight of the Garter (14 March) — an honour which Anne and the Prince of Denmark had begged for him at the beginning of William s reign (, pt. ii. bk. vii. p. 255) — captain-general of the forces (15 March), and (26 June) master-general of the ordnance. The countess became groom of the stole, mistress of the robes, and keeper of the privy purse. The rangership of "Windsor Park, previously held by the Duke of Portland, was also bestowed upon Lady Marlborough, and Windsor Lodge became a favourite residence of the countess. The pension of 2,000l. bestowed by William upon the Earl of Sunderland was renewed by Marlborough's request; Godolphin, Marlborough's closest ally, became lord treasurer; and other tories took nearly all the great offices of state. The war policy, however, was continued. Marlborough returned to the Hague on 28 March 1702 (N.S.) as ambassador extraordinary, promised support, and arranged a plan of campaign. He returned at once to London, where the party difficulties already showed themselves. Rochester, the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, protested, according to the then accepted views of his party, against continental alliances, and proposed that England should only appear as an auxiliary in the war. Marlborough, however, overruled this policy, with the support even of the other tories; parliament sanctioned the conventions with other states, voted supplies, and on 4 May war was formally declared. Marlborough left Margate on 15-26 May for Holland, writing a lover-like letter to his wife. (Dates on the continent are given in new style, in England in old style.) He left difficulties behind. Godolphin, his firmest ally, was timid. His brother, George Churchill, a high tory, was at the admiralty, where he had great influence with the queen's husband, Prince Geoege of Denmark, now lord high admiral. The duchess still ruled the queen, but her influence began to decline (as Swift states) from this time. Bickerings began which rose gradually into violent altercations. Lady Marlborough sympathised with the whigs, and her son-in-law, Lord Spencer, slandered Godolphin, interfered in business, and had to be pacified with great difficulty by her husband. Anne's natural sympathies with the tory party remained, though she could still be persuaded into acquiescence.

On reaching Holland Marlborough was appointed to the chief command, with a salary of 10,000l. a year. He had previously endeavoured to secure the nomination of the Prince of Denmark, who not unnaturally suspected the sincerity of his advocacy. Marlborough took command of a motley force of Dutch, English, and Germans. The Earl of Athlone was the Dutch commander. The king of Prussia sent a contingent. Prince Louis of Baden commanded a force on the Upper Rhine. A body of Prussians, Dutch, and Germans, under the Prince of Saarbruck, was already besieging Kaiserswerth on the Lower Rhine, while Dutch forces under Athlone and Cohorn were protecting the Dutch frontier. The French army under the Duke of Burgundy and Marshal Boufflers, foiled by Athlone in an attempt to surprise Nimeguen, had taken up a threatening position between the Waal and the Meuse. Kaiserswerth surrendered on 15 June, and Marlborough, collecting his forces, found himself at the head of sixty thousand men on the line of the Waal, near Nimeguen. He had formed a plan of campaign, which, however, required the co-operation of the Dutch, the Hanoverians, and the Prussians, all of whom raised difficulties only surmounted by tiresome negotiations.

The French occupied the great network of fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, stretching from the Meuse to the sea. The possession of Venloo and Rüremonde, upon the Lower Meuse, gave them the command of the Meuse with the exception of Maestricht into which Athlone had thrown a garrison of twelve thousand men. They also commanded the district between the Meuse and the Rhine; and the Dutch province south of the Waal was thus flanked both to south and east by territory in French hands. Marlborough's first two campaigns enabled him to occupy the lines of the Meuse and the Rhine, with the country between the rivers, and thus to secure a base for operations against the barrier of fortresses to the south.

After the fall of Kaiserswerth he gave up a plan for attacking Rheinberg, a fortress on the Rhine below Düsseldorf. A direct attack on the French army was too hazardous. 'I shall soon deliver you from these troublesome neighbours,' he said to the Dutch deputies; and crossing the Meuse (26 July 1702), he advanced due south towards the Spanish Netherlands. The French army retired, crossed the Meuse at YVnloo and Rüremonde and took up a position to bar his advance. Manœuvring followed between the two armies, and an attack upon the French, which, according to Berwick, must have been successful, was forbidden by the Dutch deputies. At the end of August the armies were exchanging a heavy cannonade, when the delay of his right wing to obey an order to advance again, as Marlborough thought,