During the reign of Charles II., and the disgraceful subservience of that prince to Louis XIV., 6,000 English troops were sent over to the Netherlands to assist the French in their unprincipled war against the Dutch. Our men were much admired for their military tenue, and their bravery in action; but the campaigns in which they served are to us chiefly remarkable as having been the practical school of Captain John Churchill, afterwards the great Duke of Marlborough. In this reign also our troops had to contend with the Moors of the African coast, a new and fierce enemy. Obtaining Tangier as part of the portion of his queen, Catherine of Braganza, Charles II. despatched a land force to hold that place. These men, few in number and often badly supplied, sustained a long siege with great credit, and beat the Moors in many sallies and excursions into the country. But Charles grew weary of a possession which rendered no immediate advantage to his always empty treasury, and Tangier was abandoned. During this reign, however, and afterwards under James II., our standing army, though still left very small, was considerably augmented and improved, and the regiments of English guards challenged universal admiration."

The revolution of 1688 gave us a warlike king in the person of William III., the champion of the reformed faith, and the steadfast enemy of French encroachment and of the measureless ambition of Louis XIV., who was, for the full space of fifty years, as dangerous to the liberties of Europe as Napoleon Bonaparte proved himself to be at a later period. William led large bodies of fine English troops to join the armies of the Dutch and other confederates in the Netherlands; and our men were distinguished in every battle and at every siege in which they were employed. Though far from being attended by invariable success, which he ought to have merited by his good generalship and the justice of his cause, William obtained many great and glorious advantages, and checked for the space of fourteen long years a power which had seemed irresistible when he first took the field against it. Retreat has its honours as well as victory. When, on Sunday the 24th of July, 1692, William was worsted in the great battle of Steinkirk, the English grenadiers formed the rear, and so

covered the retreat that it was effected with excellent order, the French infantry scarcely venturing near enough to our men to fire a shot. In the course of this same year, a small English corps, which had been sent into Italy, made more than one day's march into the south of France; for, with the Duke of Savoy and Prince Eugene, they rushed into Dauphiné, crossed the Durance, took several towns, levied large contributions, burned eighty chateaux and villages, threatened Grenoble and even Lyons, the second city in the kingdom. On the approach of winter, the Duke of Savoy was obliged to retire to his own country; but he had demonstrated that France could be invaded, and that Italians, Savoyards, and Englishmen, could retaliate upon the French the excesses which they had so often committed in other countries when they were the invading parties.

In 1694 a most unhappy attempt was made against Brest by a fleet under Lord Berkeley and a small land force, under General Tollemache. Before he had landed a third part of his men the general was defeated and slain. It was long before our governments recovered from the mania of detaching insufficient armaments to the coast of France. During the long siege of Namur, in 1695, the obligations of William to the English troops serving under him were immense. In storming the first counterscarp on the 27th of July, our troops, under Major-General Ramsay and Brigadier Hamilton, were left alone under fire in the midst of mines on the glacis: they were three several times repulsed, yet they still returned to the charge, and at last made themselves masters of the counterscarp. During the stern contest, William, though so phlegmatic, repeatedly exclaimed, "See my brave English! See my brave English!" On the 30th of August, when a general assault was made by Dutch, Bavarians, Brandenburgers, and other troops, the English headed the storm, under the brave Lord Cutts. They suffered a dreadful slaughter, but forced the palisadoes sword in hand, and made a lodgment on the covered way. On the 5th of September Namur surrendered.

As they had been so long exempted from foreign campaigning and the sustained services of a long war, certain deficiencies were observed and criticized by the veteran troops of France; but the headlong intrepidity which the

English infantry displayed in every attack, and the unflinching spirit with which they withstood every assault, raised them and their country in the estimation of their foreign king. Whenever they met in this old battle-field of western Europe the French had good reason to conclude that these were the same manner of men who had fought at Crecy and Azin

court.

But the qualities of an English army were not to be fully developed until their numbers were increased, and they and their co-belligerents were all put under the supreme command of a native English general of popular captivating manners, consummate skill, and high military genius. Courage is not to be spoken of; for William III. and some of his foreign generals were as brave as men could be.

This great commander, made for the time, if the time. were not made for him, was John Churchill, at the beginning of the war of the succession, Earl of Marlborough.

Before the death of William III., in 1702, a grand alliance had been framed against Louis XIV., who, through the extinction of the Austrian line of Spanish monarchs, was claiming for his own grandson, Philip, not only all Spain, but also the greater part of Italy, Sicily, the Spanish Netherlands, the vast Spanish colonies in South America, and all the colonies and settlements Spain possessed in either hemisphere. Under William, who had selected him as the best negotiator as well as the best general in England, Marlborough had himself concluded the treaties with the allied states, and prepared the army which he was destined to command. Our native forces were augmented, and from this time, with an English generalissimo, they constituted the most considerable, or always the most foremost and formidable of the confederated hosts.

When Marlborough passed over to the continent, a few weeks after the death of King William, he found the French in the Netherlands with a very great force, and with a conviction which, at the period, was shared in by other nations, that in the field they were, with anything like an equality of numbers, altogether invincible. It was for Churchill and our incomparable infantry to correct that error.

In his first campaign as commander-in-chief, Marlborough out-manœuvred some of the most applauded generals of Louis

XIV., and reduced four important fortresses. In his second campaign in 1703, though thwarted by the obstinate Dutch generals and the deputies they sent into the field to control the operations of their army, he gained various advantages, and proved to the French marshals that they were to expect no advantage over him. In 1704 the dominions of our close ally the emperor, and even Vienna, that sovereign's capital, were threatened by a united army of French and Bavarians. To the astonishment of all Europe Marlborough boldly determined to go up the Rhine and on to the Danube, and to fight a great battle in the heart of Germany for the relief of the emperor. This determination led not to one, but to the two great battles of Schellenberg and Blenheim. The preparations and the march were as admirable as the battles themselves. By paying the closest attention to the commissariat, and to all those parts of the service on which the well-being of the poor soldier depends, the army, after so long a march through different states, was brought into the field in a most perfect condition. Wherever they had passed the English had attracted universal admiration, so well disciplined were they, and so well clad and fed.* One of the German princes on the Rhine had declared them to be an army of gentlemen. They had won the good will of the inhabitants by their own good behaviour, and taking nothing from them without paying for it. It was this rare discipline, which was afterwards still farther improved, that gave Marlborough more than half of the superiority he had over the generals of France.

* Archdeacon Coxe. Memoirs of John, Duke of Marlborough. Dr. Hare. Manuscript journal and manuscript account of the duke's campaigns. These valuable papers, though frequently quoted by Coxe, have never been published or printed entire, though they are well deserving of publication. Dr. Hare was chaplain to the Duke of Marlborough, constantly in attendance on him, and thoroughly in the confidence both of the duke and duchess.

SCHELLENBERG.

A. D. 1704. July 2.

WHEN Marlborough took the field in the heart of Germany, in 1704, the French were fully as confident as in 1808, when Wellington landed on the coast of Portugal to contend with their best troops and most famous generals. They had almost invariably beaten the armies to which they had been opposed. They said that they were invincible, and too many people on the continent were disposed to take them at their word.

Unhappily Marlborough was for some time hampered by Prince Louis, Margrave of Baden, a brave old soldier, but jealous, perverse, and obstinate, who divided authority with him in the allied army.

Marlborough had to attack a prepared position of formidable strength, and defended by an ample force. To this position the enemy were every hour giving more and more strength, yet the Margrave of Baden, if not overruled by the duke, would have delayed the attack. "Every hour we lose," said Marlborough, “will cost us a thousand men!"

On the hill of Schellenberg alone the enemy had twentytwo battalions and nine squadrons of horse, making twelve thousand men.

Many of the English infantry—the corps which suffered most in this sanguinary engagement—were young men who had not before been under fire. No troops could have behaved better.

The Schellenberg is a height overhanging Donawerth and the left back of the Danube. It rises in a gradual though unequal ascent, which, at the intended point of attack, was about a quarter of a mile. The summit forms a flat space, half a mile wide, on which the enemy was encamped in