Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/582

554 pushed MARLBOROUGH and his friends to extremities there were no other statesmen on whom he could rely, contented himself with ignoring the confessions of Sir John Fenwick, and with executing that conspirator himself. Not long afterwards the forgiven traitor was made governor to the young duke of Gloucester, the only one of Anne s numerous children who gave promise of attaining to manhood. Daring the last years of William s reign Marlborough once more was placed in positions of responsibility. His daughters were married into the most prominent families of the land : the eldest became the wife of the eldest son of Lord Godolphin ; the second, the loveliest woman at the court, with her father s tact and temper and her mother s beauty, married the only son of Lord Sunderland. Higher honours were in store for his family, and they came on the accession of Queen Anne in March 1702. She had not been more than three days upon the throne before the knighthood of the Garter was conferred upon Marlborough. He was made captain-general of the English troops both at home and abroad, and master-general of the ordnance. The new queen did not forget the life-long service of his wife ; three positions at the court by which she was enabled to continue by the side of the sovereign as closely as she had lived with the princess were united in her person. The queen showed her devotion to her friend by another signal mark of favour. The rangerskip of Windsor Park was granted her for life, with the especial object of enabling Lady Marlborough to live in the Great Lodge. These were the opening days of many years of fame and power. A week or two after the death of William it was agreed by the three great powers, England, Holland, and Austria, which formed the grand alliance, that war should be declared against France on the same day, and on May 4, 1702, the declaration was made by the three countries. Marlborough was made commander-in-chief of the united armies of England and Holland, but throughout the war his plans were impeded by the jealousy of the commanders who were nominally his inferiors, and by the opposite aims of the various countries that were striving to break the power of France. He himself wished to penetrate into the French lines ; the anxiety of the Dutch was for the maintenance of their frontier and for an augmentation of their territory ; the desire of the Austrian emperor was to ensure his son s rule over Spain. To secure concerted action by these different powers taxed all the diplomacy of Marlborough, but he succeeded for the most part in his desires. In the first year of the campaign it was shown that the armies of the French were not invincible. Several fortresses which Louis XIV. had seized upon surrendered themselves to the allies. Kaiserswerth on the Rhine and Venloo on the Meuse soon passed from the hamls of the French to the English. The prosperous commercial town of Li6ge with its commanding citadel quickly capitulated. The successes of Marlborough caused much rejoicing in his own country, and for these brilliant exploits he was raised to the highest rank in the peerage, and rewarded with a handsome annuity. In the spring of the following year a crushing blow fell upon the duke and duchess. Their eldest and only surviving son, the marquis of Blandford, was seized whilst at King s College, Cambridge (under the care of Hare, afterwards bishop of Chichester), with the small-pox, and died on the 20th February 1703, in his seventeenth year. If the character of the youth which is given by Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, can be accepted as true, and Cole was not likely to be prejudiced in favour of the family of Churchill, his talents had already justified the prediction that he would rise to the highest position in the state.

The result of the campaign of 1703 inspired the French king with fresh hopes of ultimate victory. The dashing plans of Marlborough were frustrated by the opposition of his Dutch colleagues. When he wished to invade the French territory they urged him to besiege Bonn, and he was compelled to accede to their wishes. After this digression from his first purpose he returned to his original plan of attacking Antwerp ; but, in consequence of the incapacity of the Dutch leaders, the generals (Yilleroi and Boufflers) of the French army surprised the Dutch division and inflicted on it a loss of many thousands of men. Marlborough was forced to abandon his enterprise, and all the compensation which he received was the capture of the insignificant forts of Huy and Limburg. After a year of comparative failure for the allies, Louis XIV. was emboldened to enter upon an offensive movement against Austria ; and Marlborough, smarting under the misadven tures of 1703, and conscious that the war could only be brought to an end by more decisive measures, was eager to meet him. A magnificent army was sent by the French king under the command of Marshal Tallard, with instruc tions to strike a blow at Vienna itself. Marlborough divined the intention of the expedition, and, without com municating his intentions to his colleagues, led his troops into Bavaria. The two armies (that under Marlborough and Prince Eugene numbering more than fifty thousand men, whilst Tallard s forces were nearly ten thousand stronger) met in battle array near the village of Blenheim. The French commander made the mistake of supposing that the enemy s attack would be directed against his position in the village, and he concentrated an excessive number of his troops at that point. The early part of the fight was in favour of the French. Three times were the troops led by Prince Eugene driven back in confusion ; Marlborough s cavalry failed on their first attack in breaking the line of the enemy. But in the end the victory of the allies was conclusive. Nearly thirty thousand of the French and Bavarians were killed and wounded, and in Blenheim alone ten thousand were made prisoners. Never was a victory more eagerly welcomed than this, and never was a conquering leader more rewarded than Marlborougli. On his return to his own country he was received with enthusiasm on all sides. Poets and prose writers were employed to do him honour, and the lines of Addison com paring the English commander to the angel who passed over &quot; pale Britannia &quot;in the storm of 1703 have been famous for nearly two centuries. The manor of Wood stock, which was transferred by Act of Parliament from the crown to the duke, was a reward more after his own heart. The gift even in that form was a noble one, but the queen heightened it by instructing Sir John Vanbrugh to build a palace in the park at the royal expense, and, although the works subsequently caused much anxiety to the duke and duchess, 240,000 of public money was spent on the buildings.

The following year was not marked by any stirring incident. Marlborough was hampered by tedious forma lities at the Hague and by jealousies at the German courts. The armies of the French were again brought up to their full standard, but the generals of Louis were instructed to entrench themselves behind earthworks and to act on the defensive. In the darkness of a July night these lines were broken through, and the French were forced to take shelter under the walls of Lou vain. Marlborough urged an attack upon them in their new position, but his passionate arguments were spent in vain, and when 1705 had passed away the forces of the French king had suffered no diminution. This immunity from disaster tempted Villeroi in the next spring into meeting the allied forces in an open fight, but his assurance proved his ruin. The battle of Ramillies (23d May 1706) ended in the total rout of the French, and caused the transference of nearly