The Battle Of Blenheim - free ebook by Hilaire Belloc

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM

Plate I. The Battle of Blenheim. Frontispiece....

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PART I

The proper understanding of a battle and of its historical significance is only possible in connection with the campaign of which it forms a part; and the campaign can only be understood when we know the political object which it was designed to serve. A battle is no more than an incident in a campaign. However decisive in its immediate result upon the field, its value to the general conducting it depends on its effect upon the whole of his operations, that is, upon the campaign in which he is e

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PART II

In order to grasp the strategic problem presented to Marlborough and the allies in the spring of 1704, it is first necessary to understand the diplomatic position at the outbreak of the war, and the military disposition of the two years 1702 and 1703, and thus the general position of the armies which preceded Marlborough’s march to the Danube. Louis XIV. recognised his grandson as king of Spain late in 1700. The coalition immediately formed against him was at first imperfect. Savoy, with its com

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PART III

The position of the enemy at the moment when Marlborough’s march to the Danube from the Netherlands was conceived may be observed in the sketch map on page 59. Under Villeroy, who must be regarded as the chief of the French commanders of the moment, lay the principal army of Louis XIV., with the duty of defending the northern front and of watching the Lower Rhine. It was this main force which was expected to have to meet the attack of Marlborough and the Dutch in the same field of operations as

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PART IV

From the day when the Duke had appeared upon the southern side of the mountains, and was debouching into the plains of the Danube, to the day when he broke the French line at Blenheim, is just over seven weeks; to be accurate, it is seven weeks and three days. It was on the last Sunday but one of the month of June that he passed the mountains; it was upon the second Wednesday of August that he won his great victory. These seven weeks divide themselves into three clear phases. The first is the ma

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PART V

The field of Blenheim has changed in its physical aspect less than any other of the great battlefields of Europe during the two hundred years and more that have passed since Marlborough’s victory. He who visits to-day this quiet Bavarian corn-land, with its pious and happy peasantry, its modest wealth, and its contempt for haste and greed, sees, if he come in the same late summer of the year, just what the mounted parties saw who rode out upon that Wednesday before the eight columns of Marlborou

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BRITISH BATTLE BOOKS

Later volumes will deal with Crecy, Poitiers, Corunna, Talaveras, Flodden, The Siege of Valenciennes, Vittoria, Toulouse. London: STEPHEN SWIFT &amp; CO., LTD., 10 John St., Adelphi BY WILFRED SCAWEN BLUNT 15 s. net PRIVATE AND INTIMATE This book follows the lines of the author’s works on Egypt and India, consisting mainly of a private diary of a very intimate kind, and will bring down his narrative of events to the end of 1885. The present volume is designed especially as an answer to Lor

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GORDON AT KHARTOUM

BY MONROE ROYCE Crown 8 vo. Cloth. 5 s. net MODERN AMERICA UNVEILED Mr Monroe Royce is a fearless and discerning critic, and The Passing of the American is no ordinary book. With refreshing candour the author reveals the prevailing conditions of his own race to-day, not in the spirit of a carping cynic, but of one who would arrest the downward trend of the national character. Not since “Henry George” wrote Social Problems has a more powerful, brilliant, and startling presentation of the indust

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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN

BY JUVENAL Crown 8 vo. 5 s. net VIVID ORIGINALITY In these notes and studies on life in New York, Juvenal, by his vivid originality and his masterly deductions, has surpassed all other writers who have written on the same subject. Mr Eden Phillpotts writes of the Author: “The things seen are brilliantly set down. He writes with great force and skill.” London: STEPHEN SWIFT &amp; CO., LTD., 10 John St., Adelphi...

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AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK

And Other Essays BY FRANCIS GRIERSON F’cap 8 vo. 3 s. 6 d. net CHARACTERISTICALLY INCISIVE This volume contains the latest work of the greatest Essayist of our time. Maurice Maeterlinck has said of the Author, “He has, in his best moments, that most rare gift of casting certain shafts of light, at once simple and decisive, upon questions the most difficult, obscure, and unlooked for in Art, Morals, and Psychology ... essays among the most subtle and substantial that I know.” This opinion has b

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THE HUMOUR OF THE UNDERMAN

BY FRANCIS GRIERSON F’cap. 8 vo. 3 s. 6 d. net PENSÉES PIQUANTES, INDÉPENDANTES Sully Prudhomme (de l’Académie Française):—“J’ai trouvé ces méditations pleines d’aperçus profonds et sagaces. J’ai été frappé de l’originalité puissante de la pensée de l’auteur.” Jules Claretie (de l’Académie Française):—“J’ai été charmé par les idées originales et justes.” L’Abbé Joseph Roux :—“Il y a là des vues originales, des appréciations neuves et frappantes.” Frédéric Mistral :—“Ces pensées m’ont paru neuv

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LA VIE ET LES HOMMES

Frédéric Mistral :—“Ces pensées m’ont paru neuves et piquantes, et indépendantes de cette ambiance de préjugés à laquelle il est si difficile d’échapper.” Le Père P. V. Delaporte , S.J. (Rédacteur des Etudes Religieuses):—“J’ai admiré dans ces pages délicates l’artiste, le penseur et l’écrivain, et j’ai été singulièrement touché de la façon dont vous appréciez le génie français. Vous avez su le comprendre et vous avez dit votre pensée franchement, je pouvais ajouter françaisement .” London: STEP

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THE MASTERY OF LIFE

BY ARTHUR LYNCH, M.A., C.E., L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S.E., M.P. AUTHOR OF “HUMAN DOCUMENTS,” ETC., ETC. Two Vols. Demy 8 vo. 10 s. 6 d. net each A BASIC WORK OF ANALYSIS This book is dynamic. It is new in the sense in which Schwann’s Cell Theory was new to Physiology, or Dalton’s Atomic Theory to Chemistry. The author has faced the problem in its widest extension: Can the entire realm of knowledge, and the whole possible scope of mental acts, be so resolved that we may formulate the unanalysable eleme

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PRINCIPLES OF A NEW SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY

BY MAX BEERBOHM FACSIMILE REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR Crown Folio. Cloth. 21 s. net HUMOUR, SATIRE, ART “A beautiful quarto page where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.” Sheridan , School for Scandal , Act 1, Sc. 1. These drawings constitute a “John Bull” series, and, though their satire is directed against political situations and national characteristics rather than personal frailties, they yet retain that quality of mordant criticism that is so prominent a feature

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CARICATURES

London: STEPHEN SWIFT &amp; CO., LTD., 10 John St., Adelphi A Poem with Prose Notes BY ARTHUR LYNCH Crown 8 vo. 5 s. net DIRECT—INSPIRING—COMPELLING The cry for something new in literature, the indefinable, the unexpected, has been answered. Prince Azreel comes to claim his place, not as one who has sounded the depths and shoals of the current modes of the day, but as one entirely careless of these things, discoursing freely of life, easily throughout its whole purport and scope. The Devil

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PRINCE AZREEL

BY CHARLES GRANVILLE F’cap 4 to. 5 s. net. REAL POETIC TALENT The present volume is composed of a selection from the previous poetical works of the Author, who is also well known as a writer of prose. The distinctive feature of the poems in this collection—the feature, indeed, that marks off and differentiates the work of this poet from the mass of verse produced to-day—is their spiritual insight. Mr Granville is concerned with the soul of man, with the eternal rather than the transitory, and

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POEMS

Nature Essays BY G. G. DESMOND Crown 8 vo. Cloth. 5 s. net A NATURE BOOK FOR TOWN FOLK This book for all Nature-lovers appeals perhaps most strongly to those in cities pent, for whom a word in season can call up visions of the open moor, the forest, the meadow stream, the flowered lane, or the wild sea-shore. The extreme penalty for reading one of these spring, summer, autumn, or winter chapters is to be driven from one’s chair into the nearest field, there to forget town worries among the tre

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THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS

BY KATHERINE MANSFIELD Crown 8 vo. Cloth. 6 s. DELIGHTFUL LITERARY NOVELTY Never before have Germans, from a social standpoint, been written about with so much insight, or their manners and habits described with such malicious naiveté and minute skill. Miss Mansfield’s power of detailed observation is shown in numerous little touches of character painting which enable us to realise almost as visibly as the authoress herself, the heart, mind, and soul of the quaint Bavarian people. The occasion

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IN A GERMAN PENSION

A Story of the Stage BY J. K. PROTHERO Crown 8 vo. Cloth. 6 s. A BOOK WITH DISTINGUISHED NAMES This story in serial form was the subject of an action for libel founded on the coincidence of the plaintiff’s name with that of one of the characters. As a protest against the absurd state of the law, the author, in revising the novel for publication in book form, has used the names of distinguished writers and journalists who have kindly given their consent. George Bernard Shaw represents a stage d

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MOTLEY AND TINSEL

BY E. A. WHARTON GILL Crown 8 vo. Cloth. 6 s. A FRESH FIELD IN FICTION The writer has opened a fresh field of fiction and has presented a striking picture of life in the Swedish settlements of Western Canada—a district hitherto largely neglected by novelists. The Author is intimately acquainted with the life of these colonists, and has studied his characters on the spot; while his local colour is in every way admirable. He knows the West and its people. And the people in his story are typical

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LOVE IN MANITOBA

BY J. M. KENNEDY Crown 8 vo. Cloth. 3 s. 6 d. net LORDS, GOVERNMENT, LIBERALISM There are unmistakable indications that the system of politics at present pursued by the two chief political parties is not meeting with the approval of the electorate as a whole, though this electorate, as a result of the Caucus methods, finds it increasingly difficult to give expression to its views. In his book on Tory Democracy, Mr J. M. Kennedy, who is already favourably known through his books on modern philo

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TORY DEMOCRACY

Footnotes: [1] It was this success which to Marlborough’s existing earldom added the high dignity of Duke, by letters patent of December 16, 1702. [2] As the French dispatch goes, 7500 men, every horse, and all the waggons, save 120, which had got into difficulties on the way; Fortescue’s note suggesting that 1500 men only reached the Franco-Bavarians (vol. i. p. 42) is based on Quincy. [3] It is, of course, an error to say, as is too often done in our school histories and the official account

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