no doubt, intellectually the greatest, and certainly stands highest in fame. He was fifty-four years of age; he had won no firstclass battle yet, but during the next seven years he was to win a series of the greatest victories in British history. He lacked, perhaps, Wellington's fighting impulse. Marlborough, during ten campaigns, fought only five pitched battles ; Wellington, in seven, fought fifteen. But Marlborough never fought a battle he did not win, nor besieged a fortress he did not take, and in many respects he is the greatest military genius the British race has produced.

The Margrave Louis of Baden owed his place in the group under the historic tree at Grossheppach rather to his rank than to his military skill; but Prince Eugene of Savoy was in every respect a great soldier. As Stanhope puts it, he was an Italian by descent, a Frenchman by training, and a German by adoption; and in his signature, Eugenio von Savoye,' he used to combine the three languages. A little man, black-haired, black

complexioned, with lips curiously pendulous, and mouth semiopen ; but with eyes through which looked a great and daring spirit. Eugene was a soldier as daring as Ney or Murat, and with their delight in the rapture of the onfall, the thunder of galloping hoofs, and the loud challenge of the cannon. But he was also one of the most loyal and generous of men, and if Marlborough was the brain of the great campaign just beginning, Eugene was its sword.

There is no space to dwell on the intermediate movements, nor even on the desperate fight round the Schellenberg, and the stern courage with which the British at last carried it, but carried it at a loss of nearly one-third their number. On August 11, 1704, the two great armies confronted each other at Blenheim.

Blenheim is a little village on the bank of the Danube; a stream called the Nebel, gathering its sources from the roots of the wooded hills to the west, runs in its front, and, curving round, so that its course is almost from north to south, falls into the Danube. From Lutzingen, on the lower slope of the hills, to Blenheim on the Danube, is a distance of four and a half miles. Blenheim formed the right wing of the French, and in it Tallard had packed nearly 16,000 infantry, the flower of his troops, fortifying the village with strong palisades. Lutzingen, on the extreme left, was held by Marsin and the Bavarian Elector, and, from the nature of the ground, was almost impregnable. Betwixt

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these two positions was a marshy plain through which the Nebel flowed; in the middle of it stood a village called Oberglauh, held by fourteen battalions, amongst which were three Irish regiments destined to play a great part in the fight. Tallard covered his centre by a long screen of cavalry, strengthened by two brigades of infantry. His position thus was of great strength at either extremity, but his centre, though covered by the Nebel, and strengthened by the village of Oberglauh, was of fatal weakness, and through it Marlborough burst late in the fight, winning his great victory by a stupendous cavalry charge. It is curious, however, that Marlborough, though he had a military glance of singular keenness, did not discover the flaw in his opponent's line till the battle had been raging some hours.

Eugene, with 18,000 men, was to attack Tallard's left; Marlborough himself, with his best troops, nearly 30,000 strong9,000 of them being British-was to attack Blenheim and try and turn the French right. His cavalry was to menace the centre. Tallard had under his command 60,000 men, with ninety guns; Marlborough had 56,000 men and sixty-six guns. Marlborough's weakness lay in the strangely composite character of his forces. The battle, in this respect, has scarcely any parallel in history. To quote the historian Green, The whole of the Teutonic race was represented in the strange medley of Englishmen, Dutchmen, Hanoverians, Danes, Würtembergers, and Austrians who followed Marlborough and Eugene.' Nothing less than the warlike genius and masterful will of Marlborough could have welded into effectiveness an army made up of such diverse elements.

Day broke on August 13 heavy with mist; and under its cover the allied forces moved forward to the attack. Tallard was quite unprepared for an engagement, when the fog, lifting for a moment, showed the whole landscape before him peopled with moving battalions and fretted with the gleam of steel. Marlborough waited till Eugene could launch his assault on the left wing of the French, and so difficult was the ground that not till nearly twelve o'clock did an aide-de-camp, galloping at speed, announce that the Prince was ready to engage. The fighting on the wooded ridges round Lutzingen was of the fiercest. Four times Eugene launched his troops in furious onset on the enemy, but such was the strength of the position held by the French and Bavarians, and with such steady valour did they fight, that Eugene's assaults were all repulsed, and he himself was only

saved from disaster by the iron steadfastness of the Prussian infantry, on whose disciplined ranks the Bavarian cavalry flung themselves in vain.

The chief interest of the fight belongs to the left wing and centre, where Marlborough commanded in person. He first attempted to turn Tallard's right by assailing Blenheim. He launched against it a great infantry attack, consisting of five British battalions, with one Hessian battalion, under Rowe, supported by eleven battalions and fifteen squadrons under Cutts.

Nothing could be finer than the on fall of the British. They carried with a single rush some mills which acted as a sort of outpost to Blenheim; then, dressing their ranks afresh, they moved coolly forward to attack the broad front of palisades which covered Blenheim. The village was crowded with 16,000 of Tallard's best troops, behind the palisades knelt long lines of infantry, while a second line standing erect fired over the heads of their kneeling comrades.

The broad red column, its general, Rowe, leading, came on with iron steadiness, the tramp of the disciplined battalions every moment sounded nearer and more menacing. When the British were within thirty yards the French fired. The long front of palisades sparkled with flame, a furious whirlwind of white smoke covered the whole front, and this was pierced again, and yet again, by the darting flames of new volleys. The British front seemed to crumble under that tempest of shot; yet it never swerved or faltered. On through smoke and flame it came. Rowe led it, moving straight forward, till he struck the palisades with his sword, and bade his men fire. The whole British front broke at the word into flame. Then the men, their officers leading, tried to carry the palisades with the bayonet. The great breach at Badajos did not witness a more fiery valour ; but Blenheim was held by a force double in strength to that attacking it, with every advantage of position, and a front of fire more than double that of the British, and the attempt was hopeless from the outset. Rowe fell badly wounded; the two officers in succession who took command after he fell, were slain. The men, under the whirling smoke, and scorched with the flames of incessant volleys, were trying to tear up the palisades with their hands, or clamber over them by mounting on each other's shoulders.

Suddenly through the smoke on their left came the thunder of galloping hoofs, and with a long-sustained crash twenty squadrons of French horse broke in on the British flank. The men fought in broken clusters and with desperate courage, but Rowe's regiment was almost destroyed, and its colours fell into the enemy's hands. Cutts, however-nicknamed by his men 'the Salamander,' from his lust of fighting and habit of always being found where the fire was hottest—had brought up the second line, and the French cavalry recoiled before the stern valour with which the infantry fought. As they recoiled some squadrons under Lumley came upon them in a gallop, recaptured the colours of Rowe's regiment, and drove the Frenchmen in disorder back to their lines.

Marlborough watched the furious strife around Blenheim with steady eye, and was satisfied that in Blenheim itself Tallard was impregnable. He withdrew his troops from the attack, the men falling sullenly back, full of unsatisfied eagerness for a new assault; but Marlborough had discovered the flaw in Tallard's centre. He kept up the feint of an attack on Blenheim, but commenced to push his cavalry and some battalions of infantry through the marshy ground and across the Nebel which covered Tallard's centre.

It was a difficult feat. Tracks through the marshy bottom had to be made with fascines and planks, and along these the mud-splashed cavalry crept, in single file, and foundered through the Nebel, or crossed by temporary bridges. Tallard committed the fatal mistake of not charging them till they had crossed in great numbers; then, while they were busy re-forming, he flung his squadrons upon them. But Marlborough had stiffened his cavalry with some battalions of infantry, and while the French and Bavarian cavalry broke in furious waves of assault upon them, these stood, like steadfast islets ringed with steel and fire, with exactly the same immovable valour the British squares showed at Waterloo more than a century afterwards. Tallard's horse recoiled, Marlborough's squadrons re-formed, and the moment for the great cavalry assault, which was to break the French centre and win Blenheim, came.

First, however, the village of Oberglauh, which stood as a sort of rocky barrier in the line of the coming charge, and was strongly held by an infantry force, had to be carried. Marlborough launched the Prince of Holstein-Beck, with eleven battalions of Hanoverians, against the village ; but part of the force which held

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the village consisted of the celebrated Irish brigade, the last survivors of the gallant and ill-fated battalions who followed Sarsfield into France. Their departure was long remembered in Ireland itself as the flight of the wild geese,' but the Irish regiments played a brilliant part in continental battles. After Fontenoy, where the Irish regiments alone proved equal to the task of arresting the terrible British column, George II. is reported to have said, "Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects. And at Blenheim the Irish regiments seemed likely, at one moment, to play a part as great as at Fontenoy. They broke from Oberglauh upon the Prince of Holstein's column, tumbled it into ruin, took the Prince himself a prisoner, and hurled his men a mere wreck down the slope. For the moment Marlborough's centre was broken by that wild charge.

The Irish, with characteristic recklessness, were pursuing the routed Hanoverians, when Marlborough broke upon their flank with some squadrons of British cavalry. The Hanoverians themselves, a mere tumult of Aying men, swept round the flank of a line of steady British foot, drawn across the line of their retreat, and this, too, opened a close and deadly fire on the Irish brigade as, breathless and disordered, it came down the slope. With horsemen on its flank, and unbroken infantry scourging it with fire in front, the Irish brigade was fung back in defeat to Oberglaub. Then came the great cavalry charge which decided the fight.

Marlborough resembled Hannibal in his use of cavalry for the deciding stroke in a great battle, and he had now no less than 8,000 horse, a long line of nodding plumes and gleaming swords, ready to launch on Tallard's centre. Behind were steady battalions of infantry, under the cover of whose fire the horsemen might reform if the attack failed. In front was the long slope, soft with grass and elastic to the stroke of the galloping hoofs, an ideal field for a great cavalry charge. Tallard had drawn up his cavalry in two lines, and had interlaced them with batteries of artillery and squares of infantry. These were drawn up slightly below the crest of the ridge, so as to exactly cover the summit with their fire.

At five o'clock Marlborough launched the great attack. Slowly at first, but gathering momentum as they advanced, the long lines of horsemen came on. The air was full of the clangour of scabbard on stirrup, the squadrons were just stretching themselves