The husband of the Duchess of Marlborough, who governed Queen Anne, possessed mental qualities of a very different order from those which Buckingham had possessed, a genius for politics not inferior to the genius of Richelieu, a genius for war not inferior to the genius of Turenne.
With the Princess Anne on the throne of England, Marlborough might look forward to a time when the armies of England would be commanded by a man with a genius for war very different from that of the Dutchman,—in whose case even the genius of Macaulay has been unable to disprove the maxim that without originality there is no greatness,—by a man whose memorable march into Germany, won the admiration of Napoleon Bonaparte, by whose order a "Histoire de Jean Churchill, Due de Marlborough" (three volumes, octavo, Paris, 1808), was written in a fair spirit. The consummate skill with which the objects of the march into Germany, in 1704, were concealed from the enemy, until it was too late to prevent his real design on the Danube, has been reckoned by competent judges among the greatest achievements of military genius. The successes of Marlborough, too, were gained with an army in which the native British contingent did not exceed 20,000 men, and
