however much they may be outweighed by a man's good deeds on a general estimate of his character, we never can feel any cordial liking for the person who has once been guilty of them. Thus, with respect to the Duke of Marlborough, it goes against our feelings to admire the man who owed his first advancement in life to the court favor which he and his family acquired through his sister becoming one of the mistresses of the Duke of York. It is repulsive to know that Marlborough laid the foundation of his wealth by being the paid lover of one of the fair and frail favorites of Charles II.[1] His treachery, and his ingratitude to his patron and benefactor, James II., stand out in dark relief even in that age of thankless perfidy. He was almost equally disloyal to his new master, King William; and a more un-English act can not be recorded than Godolphin's and Marlborough's betrayal to the French court in 1694 of the expedition then designed against Brest, a piece of treachery which caused some hundreds of English soldiers and sailors to be helplessly slaughtered on the beach in Cameret Bay.
It is, however, only in his military career that we have now to consider him; and there are very few generals, of either ancient or modern times, whose campaigns will bear a comparison with those of Marlborough, either for the masterly skill with which they were planned, or for the bold yet prudent energy with which each plan was carried into execution. Marlborough had served while young under Turenne, and had obtained the marked praise of that great tactician. It would be difficult, indeed, to name a single quality which a general ought to have, and with which Marlborough was not eminently gifted. What principally attracted the notice of contemporaries was the imperturbable evenness of his spirit. Voltaire[2] says of him,
"He had, to a degree above all other generals of his time, that calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head [que les Anglais appellent cold head, tête froide], and it was, perhaps, this quality, the greatest gift of nature for command, which formerly gave
- ↑ Marlborough might plead the example of Sylla in this. Compare the anecdote in Plutarch about Sylla when young and Nicopolis, κοινῆς μὲν, εὐπόρου δὲ γυναικὸς, and the anecdote about Marlborough and the Duchess of Cleveland, told by Lord Chesterfield, and cited in Macaulay's "History," vol. i., p. 461.
- ↑ "Siècle de Louis Quatorze."
