"Marlborough" by Richard Holmes

A fascinating biography of the British general who betrayed his friend, his monarch and the father of his sister's children during the Glorious Revolution and went on to win battle after battle during the War of Spanish Succession.

Full of fascinating glimpses of a bygone age:

• “A guinea was worth thirty shillings prior to the recoinage in 1696 and twenty-one shillings thereafter.”
• “In 1703 five dragoon broadswords cost £24 Scots, but just £2 Sterling.”
• Louis XIV refused Prince Eugène a commission because “there were rumours that Eugène had been too fond of other pages at court; his mother, caught up in accusations of witchcraft, was someone the king now regarded with horror, and in any case the lad was shockingly ugly.”
• “High temper rarely makes a successful contribution to labour relations on a building site.”
• “‘Captain’ Peter Drake served in the Spanish, Dutch, English and hahaFrench armies, often joining one without having completed the tiresome formalities which might properly have accompanied his discharge from another.”
• As a young man M enjoyed the favours of the by then aging and experienced Barbara Castlemaine who had been (and potentially still was) one of the mistresses of Charles II. She gave him a handsome £5000 present (possibly because of his gallantry in leaving her bedroom via the window when the King came to call) and a daughter (who later became a nun who had a child by James Douglas, Earl of Arran). Her other lovers included the playwright William Wycherley, and property developer Henry Jermyn. (C 1)
• The mother of Sarah Jennings, who became the wife of Marlborough, was accused of witchcraft: “She was certainly evil-tempered, may actually have been unhinged, and some suggested that she dabbled in the black arts and the procurement of that commodity most sought after by the court, pretty girls.” (C 2)
• When Queen Mary reminded Catherine Sedley that she had been one of the mistresses of James II, Catherine replied: “If I broke one of the commandments with your father, you have broken another against him.” (C 2)
• “We may doubt whether a tiny village like Westonzoyland actually contained sufficient alcohol to induce widespread drunkenness, even if the royal army was unfamiliar with the foot-tangling attributes of the local cider.” (C 2)
• When Anne succeeded William III she immediately sacked William’s chief minister Lord Romsey “though the broad arrow from his coat of arms long survived as an emblem of government property.” (C 4)
• The military ‘tattoo’ was originally a drum-beat designed to call soldiers back to camp from the local villages “its name derived from the Dutch doe ten tap toe ... ‘turn off the tap’ of the wine or beer barrel.” (C 4)
• When captured French general Marshal Tallard was a prisoner in Nottingham he grew celery, introducing it to England. (C 5)
• Q Anne sat either on her throne in Parliament or, when it was cold, on a bench by the fire. (C 6)
• “There is a hoary old tale of a bear-keeper who, hoping to administer physic to the creature, placed the potion in a piece of rolled-up paper, inserted one end into the bear’s mouth and the other into his own, and prepared to blow. The bear, alas, blew first.” (C 6)
• Marlborough’s daughter Henrietta, who became 2nd Duchess after his death, probably had a child by poet William Congreve after visiting Bath whose waters had “a wonderful influence on barren ladies, who often prove with child, even in their husbands’ absence.” (C 8)

August 2017; 482 pages

Richard Holmes has also written:

• The Age of Wonder: a brilliant history of the inventions of the late 1700s and early 1800s
• Coleridge: Early Visions: an excellent biography of the poet.

Another book of military history set in the same era (and also including the Battle of Sedgemoor) is All the King's Men by Saul David.

"All the king's men" by Saul David

This book chronicles "the British redcoat in the era of sword and musket" from the first standing army of Charles II in 1661 to the battle of Waterloo in 1815. It starts with a brilliant prologue describing the (closer than normally accepted) battle of Sedgemoor of 1685 when the irregular rebels of the Duke of Monmouth were defeated by a small royal army that contained the future Duke of Marlborough. It then proceeds through the Glorious Revolution, the anti-Jacobite wars of William of Orange and the War of Spanish Succession culminating in Marlborough's successes at Blenheim etc; the Seven Years War with the Canadian success of James Wolfe; the failures in the American War of Independence; and the triumphs of the Duke of Wellington both in India, the Peninsula, and at Waterloo.

This is an unashamedly 'great man' version of history although there are many moments when the ordinary private is squeezed into the story of the great generals. There are times when David seems uncritical: some of the old stories about Waterloo, for example, are repeated without comment: did Wellington really call Waterloo a 'close-run thing'? But by and large these tactics keep the narrative rattling along; it could easily have been very boring.

I am not really a fan of military histories. I find it incredibly difficult to picture a battlefield and the long descriptions of columns advancing and flanks and wheeling squares leave me hopelessly confused. The maps in this book help little. Some maps of inadequately labelled: I did not realise the idfference between cavalry and infantry on one map until I encountered a better-labelled map later in the book. And I found the campaign maps frustrating: some were on too small a scale so that places mentioned in the text were off the map and others were on too large a scale: one map, for example, showed the entirety of Wellington's Peninsular campaign even though he advanced and retreated over several years.

I always like to pick up trivia. It fascinates me that famous people are often woven in and out of narrative threads that are far apart. Thus the doomed Duke of Monmouth had earlier been exiled for his part in the Rye House plot which had been against his own father. James Wolfe drilled his men in using their bayonets held at the hip rather than the shoulder many years before his martyr's death. William Cobbett 'accidentally' enlisted as a soldier and had to flee England after bringing allegations of corruption against some of his senior officers. The grand old Duke of York who was not much cop as a field commander was a fantastic administrator of the army. And the Duke of Wellington allegedly came up with the name Thomas Atkins (a soldier who had died at Breda against the French in 1794) to go on the specimen page of the Army paybook, thus creating the immortal Tommy.

An enjoyable book with a careful mixture of great men and little. March 2013; 500 pages

"Blenheim" by Charles Spencer

I have also read "Prince Rupert" by this author which is probably a better book if only because the subject is easier. A life, especially one as colourful as Prince Rupert's, has a natural structure and the episodes in a long life lend themselves easily to a narrative. Blenheim is rather more difficult: the first section describes the political conditions of Europe during the latter part of Louis XIV (the Sun King)'s reign; it goes on to describe the career of Marlborough and his partner general at Blenheim, Prince Eugene of Savoy; then there is the dash across Europe from the Netherlands to Bavaria; and finally the battle itself. I am not an aficionado of military history (I know very little about army life) and consequently I am in no position to judge whether Spencer's verdicts on the armies, the generals and the battle have any validity at all. Certainly there seemed to be a significant element of luck in Blenheim and a certain amount of Marlborough's vaunted military prowess seemed to consist in sending squadrons (or are they battalions) of soldiers straight at an enemy position and then slogging it out. Had the opposing general attacked as Marlborough's men were crossing a marshy stream instead of waiting till they were firmly established on the near bank and had he not ordered a significant portion of his army to hold the little village of Blindheim (not Blenheim!) at any cost which allowed Marlborough to encircle them and pen them in until the rest of the battle had been won, things might have gone very differently. When one reads books like this what you most realise is how incompetent everyone seems to be. The French general was so short-sighted he had to have his aides describe the battle to him. One of the Allied generals was so cautious he would only permit the army to besiege towns rather than fight battles; Blenheim was won while he was away besieging. Generals would refuse to combine their forces because they didn't like one another. I am sure (I think) that it is just the benefit of hindsight that allows this perspective but it does sometimes seem as if the world is run by fools. 

 May 2009, 342 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God