Closer to home than the recent events which had taken place in the Netherlands – if also less neat as a parallel – the behavior of the “Duke of Marlbro” during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) also served as a potentially instructive example in the eyes of South Carolina delegate Pierce Butler of the kinds of executive behavior which he and his colleagues ought to have disqualified at all costs. The individual so named was none other than John Churchill (1650-1722), 1st Duke of Marlborough, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, and one of the most celebrated soldiers in the history of Great Britain. And the “artifices” in question, by which the duke sought to, “Prolong the war of which he had the management” represented exactly the kind of behavior which Mr. Butler most feared a prospective President might indulge in unless their authority was suitably checked. The relevant conflict, it was true, had been concluded by treaty some seven decades prior to Butler’s reference to the same. Among the men then assembled at the Philadelphia Convention, only a scant few – like Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706 – could claim the events in question as having occurred during their lifetime. All the same, Butler’s citation of the Duke of Marlborough would doubtless have struck a chord with his colleagues to an even greater extent than did his aforementioned reference to events in the contemporary Dutch Republic. But for the outcome of the Revolution, after all, the inhabitants of the United States would still have been British subjects. And as it stood, the lot of the delegates then in attendance had been raised and educated in a distinctly Anglocentric fashion. For Butler to name “Marlbro” was to thus invoke a common point of reference; a personage and a significance that scarcely warranted explanation.
For those of us who are less familiar with 18th century British history than the average American statesmen of 1780s, of course, some degree of clarification would appear to be in order. John Churchill, for one thing, was at once a much-heralded and much-benighted figure in the history of Great Britain whose boundless ambition led him alternately to enjoy great successes in one moment and suffer great reverses in the next. The eldest surviving son of minor aristocrat and Member of Parliament Sir Winston Churchill (1620-1688), John had watched his father suffer as a result of the latter’s support of the Royalist cause during the English Civil War (1642-1651) and determined accordingly never to bind himself to any patron as a matter of principle. He developed, as a result, something of a mercenary outlook which served his desire for social advancement very well but also often led to those in power questioning his intentions. His elder sister’s affair with the Duke of York, for example – the man later to ascend the throne as King James II (1633-1701) – led to his appointment as one of the duke’s pages while still an adolescent, and then to his commission as an ensign in the prestigious Foot Guards. This first appointment then led to a series of military postings by which the young Churchill steadily gained favor and fame. By the end of the 1670s he had risen to the rank of Captain; in 1679 he was elected to sit in Parliament; and by 1682, in recognition of his continued support for his longstanding patron, the Duke of York – whose status as both an avowed Catholic and the heir apparent to the British throne had precipitated a major political crisis in the late 1670s – he had at last been elevated to the peerage as Lord Churchill of Eyemouth. As it thereafter became increasingly clear that the duke would indeed ascend the throne, Churchill’s star seemed set to rise yet further than it already had.
The latter half of the 1680s, it turned out, was indeed to be an eventful period in the life of the future Duke of Marlborough, though not necessarily in the way he imagined. His service to the Duke of York initially continued to pay dividends. Upon the latter’s elevation to the throne as King James II in 1685, for example, Churchill served as one of his principal officers during the failed rebellion that resulted – led by Charles II’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth (1649-1685) – and was thereafter rewarded with military promotions and a second title, that of Baron Churchill of Sandridge. Notwithstanding these favors, however, Churchill soon found himself in an increasingly uncomfortable position. Though the king, as aforementioned, was a devout – one might even say fervent – Catholic, his trusted protégé remained a dedicated Protestant, and time and again made it clear that he intended to remain so until the day he died. But while, in the immediate, this sense of conviction did not prove to be much of an obstacle for Churchill’s tireless sense of ambition, other Protestants in positions of power in the realm soon arranged matters so as to force the general to revaluate his prospects. Upon the invitation of several prominent statesman belonging to both major factions represented in Parliament, along with the support of Henry Compton (1632-1713), the sitting Bishop of London, William III (1650-1702), Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and nephew of James II, invaded England in November of 1688 for the purpose of deposing his uncle and claiming the throne for himself. As William was a Protestant, his arrival was viewed with relief by those who deeply distrusted their unapologetically Catholic monarch, and in very short order the king’s overthrow was all but accomplished.
Churchill, at least on the surface, remained loyal to his long-term patron for far longer than many of his contemporaries. Indeed, it wasn’t until November 24th, almost three weeks after William’s landing at Brixham, that he chose to depart the king’s camp with some four hundred men in tow. But while James took the desertion of among his most steadfast servants as a sure sign that his cause was well and finally lost, in actual fact Churchill had been contemplating an exchange of loyalties since before William’s arrival in England. Though not yet viewed by his contemporaries as being important enough to include in the initial invitation, the general nevertheless made it clear to certain well-placed English agents in the Stadtholder’s court that he would be quite willing to provide whatever assistance that William might require. In the end, Churchill’s desertion was about the extent of the service he rendered, but the new king was pleased enough that he determined to reward the general all the same. In consequence, upon the coronation of William III and his wife Mary II – who was also, incidentally, James’s daughter and eldest child – Churchill was granted a third peerage in the form of the Earldom of Marlborough, sworn in as a member of the Privy Council, and made one of the Gentlemen of the King’s Bedchamber. The next several years were spent occupying a series of senior military posts – during which time he reorganized the army and commanded an English expeditionary force sent to the Low Countries during the Nine Years War (1688-1697) – at the end of which the young general had accrued substantial fame and success. Victories in Europe, and against a resurgent James II in Ireland, had done much to burnish his reputation, and by the beginning of the 1690s he was among the most prominent men in the kingdom. The only trouble, as it turned out, was that King William didn’t trust him.
Marlborough, in fairness, had rather publicly betrayed his longstanding patron when first he came into William III’s service. And while the king neither doubted the wisdom of his choice nor his value as a solider and strategist, he did come to find it difficult to place very much faith in a man whose loyalty was evidently so flexible. The general’s close relationship with Queen Mary’s sister and heir, Princess Anne (1665-1714), did not help matters much at all, particularly as the royal couple persistently failed to produce a surviving child. The king, as a result, began to show Marlborough a degree of disfavor, passing him up for promotions and refusing him certain awards, which in turn provoked the general to sow discontent in the armed forces. As all this was going on, Marlborough also sought to contact the exiled James II so that he might communicate his regret and seek a pardon for his actions in deserting him some years prior. In part, it has since been concluded, this likely constituted something on the order of an insurance policy on the part of the general. It was not necessarily impossible that James might successfully retake the throne, and Marlborough doubtless believed it prudent to ensure that his position would not suffer, come what may. But it also made sense, if William was determined to drive the general to the sidelines, for word to eventually reach him that one of his most popular officers remained in contact with his predecessor. Marlborough’s desertion, after all, had helped convince James to abandon his throne; perhaps the general might play this role again if his new liege continued to malign him.
There was no second revolution, of course, which replaced James on the throne and deposed William in turn. Rather, owing to the further deterioration of their relationship, the king had Marlborough completely exiled from royal service. First, in the middle of January in 1692, Marlborough was stripped of his positions, relived of his appointments, and forbidden from appearing at court. Then, pursuant to a letter which came into the possession of the queen that was seemingly signed by the general and purported to seek the deposition of William and the restoration of James, Marlborough found himself placed under arrest and imprisoned in the Tower of London for five weeks. When it was revealed, at length, that the letter was a forgery, the general was accordingly released. Several more incidents like this followed, though none with consequences quite so severe. Marlborough had not, in fact, plotted the overthrow of William III, but he had been in contact with the former James II for some time, leading to somewhat frequent accusations that he was passing information to his former patron. This occurred first in 1694 when the disastrous defeat of one of Marlborough’s rival officers during a naval assault on the French port of Brest led to accusations that the defending garrison had been warned as a result of Marlborough’s correspondence with the former king. Then, in 1696, the general was again implicated in a plot to overthrow King William and replace him with King James, this time in cooperation with certain militant Jacobites operating in England. Notwithstanding Marlborough’s continuing and avowed relationship with the deposed James, however, neither charge was ultimately substantiated, and by 1698, William and Marlborough had managed to reconcile. The general’s ranks and his position on the Privy Council were restored and he was appointed to the prestigious position of overseeing the education of Prince William (1689-1700), son of Princess Anne and thus heir to the heir apparent.
All of this is to say, in case the reader was perhaps wondering why they’d just been made to sit through the partial biography of a man who died over fifty years before American independence was even declared, that by the time the War of the Spanish Succession broke out in 1701, John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, was in many ways a man on the make. His career, previously defined by success upon success, had been sidelined for some years as a result of the suspicions of his royal benefactor, and his sense of ambition undoubtedly spurred him to try to make up for lost time. Another war with France provided the ideal opportunity, and Marlborough seized it with characteristic alacrity. The king of Spain, it seemed, had died without issue, and chose to name as his successor the grandson of King Louis XIV (1638-1715). As the ascension of a French prince to the Spanish throne would seem to have augured the eventual union of France and Spain – the latter of which, while increasingly enfeebled, was still possessed of a wide-ranging set of possessions in Europe, the Americas, and even in the Pacific – the great powers of the era were accordingly determined to intervene. The Hapsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire were particularly anxious to stymie the ambitions of their long-term rivals the Bourbons of France, and England, under William III, was eager to join them. This fact was altered not at all by the unexpected death of the king in a riding accident in the spring of 1702. His sister-in-law and successor, Anne, was no less staunch in her antipathy towards a formal union of the Catholic monarchies of Europe. What William’s demise did change, however, were Marlborough’s near-term propositions. The newly crowned Anne was one of his staunchest supporters. His latitude of action had accordingly became greater than it ever had been before.
Queen Anne did not waste time in showing Marlborough to be her favorite. In short order, the man was made Master-General of the Ordinance – the most senior permanent military position in the realm – a Knight of the Garter, and Captain-General – or Commander-in-Chief – of her majesty’s armed forces. These grants of authority effectively placed Marlborough, notwithstanding his relative youth and inexperience, among the highest echelons of the allied command structure, notably above certain generals in Dutch and Austrian service who had served for far longer and had many more victories to their name. In spite of his relative greenness, however, the general took to his newfound role with great cunning, always paying heed to the concerns of his nominal subordinates so as to ensure their timely cooperation. By the end of 1702, with the assistance of his allies, Marlborough had accordingly managed to outmaneuver his French opponent, the Duc de Boufflers (1644-1711), and capture a series of towns and cities in the Spanish Netherlands. The primary result of this first flush of victory, beyond its strategic importance, was the elevation of the general’s title by Queen Anne. No longer simply an earl, John Churchill was now the Duke of Marlborough. And while it was true that shortly after his elevation the man suffered a personal loss in the death of his son – thus seemingly to stymie any ambitions of laying the groundwork for an enduring dynasty – the war nevertheless continued to prove itself a tremendous boon for the duke’s once-stalled career.
Among the campaigns that followed over the course of the conflict now known to history as the War of the Spanish Succession, perhaps none are more famous – or more commonly associated with the supposed brilliance of a single commander – than that which led to the much-memorialized Battle of Blenheim in 1704. The duke, having endeavored for two years by way of tact and persuasion to hold together the increasingly fragile alliance of nations dedicated to preventing a Franco-Spanish union, found himself at the end of 1703 with something of a crisis in the making on his hands. With the Hapsburg domains threated in the south by both the forces of the Franco-Bavarian alliance and a full-scale revolt in Hungary, it was not at all certain, less than three years into the conflict, whether the Austrians would be forced to prematurely withdrawal. But while Marlborough was eager to prevent such an outcome by marching his forces to the relief of his Austrian allies, the Dutch forces under his command were categorically unwilling to allow for a weakening of their position in the occupied Spanish Netherlands. The duke’s solution to this impasse was ultimately to mislead the Dutch. First moving his forces to the Moselle – a river which forms the southern border between modern Luxembourg and Germany – with full Dutch permission, he then slipped away, journeying south towards the Danube where he caught up with the Franco-Bavarians at Donauwörth (July, 1704) before then crushing them at Blenheim (August, 1704). The Bavarians were thereafter knocked almost entirely out of the war, Louis XIV’s hopes of an early victory were dashed, and the so-called “Grand Alliance” of the Austrians, the English, and the Dutch was decisively saved from disintegration.
More accolades followed, though further such victories did not. Marlborough was granted a lavish estate by the queen in recognition of his triumph at Blenheim, for one thing, and in 1706, following the Battle of Ramillies in the Spanish Netherlands, Parliament confirmed his titles and made them perpetual on his heirs, male or female. Anne even agreed to allow the Hapsburg sovereign to make Marlborough a Prince of the Empire in gratitude for his inestimable service. But by the dawning of 1707, things had perceptibly begun to turn. Military setbacks and diplomatic controversies had led certain members of the reigning Tory government to begin to question Marlborough’s management of the British war effort to that point. And while he was not removed from his office amidst the cabinet re-shuffle that resulted, his standing amongst both his friends in Parliament and with the queen had definitely started to slip. Further successes, like at Oudenarde (July, 1708), did something to arrest this process. So too did the ascension of the Whigs to a position of power, their leadership being in favor of continuing the war while the Tories were increasingly peace minded. By 1710, however, the tables had turned against, with the Tories back in power, peace talks in the offing, and Marlborough held in suspicion by those he ardently professed to serve. When preliminary talks at Geertruidenberg came to nothing, the duke was accused by his detractors of interference. Clearly, they crowed, the general was fearful of what would become of him if the conflict should end. He had gained so much from it already, and a final peace would gain him little.
There was, in point of fact, some truth to this accusation, though how much, exactly, is rather a matter of perspective. There was no denying that Marlborough had gained a great deal over the course of the conflict in question. At its beginning, he was but an earl and a general who had only recently regained the favor of his sovereign and was little known or remarked upon in the sovereign courts of the Continent. By 1710, conversely, he was a duke, a Captain-General, one of the leading figures of the Grand Alliance, and one of the most famous and well-respected soldiers in all of Europe. He had won an estate for himself in battle, and secured his titles, and was even heralded as a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Clearly, whereas in peace he had nearly found himself sentenced to death for treason, war had once more given him the chance to prosper and flourish. In consequence, while it may not have been politic to say so publicly, Marlborough on some level surely view the perpetuation of the war with France as synonymous with his own good fortune. There was also, no doubt, some amount of the duke’s pride on the line when it came to the subject of the conflict and its conclusion. In nine years, Marlborough had achieved great victories, saved the Grand Alliance from potential collapse, earned the respect of princes, kings, and emperors, and brought the French very nearly to their knees. He was accordingly hesitant, in light of the faith which his allies had come to invest in him, to acquiesce to a peace which might have ended up favoring British interests over those of its supposed partners. This latter concern was made all the more relevant when it became clear that the Tories were willing to allow a Bourbon king on the Spanish throne if it would bring the conflict to a close. The prevention of this exact outcome was the why the Grand Alliance had been formed to begin with, and Marlborough personally felt it something of a betrayal of the agreement for any settlement to be agreed upon which aimed to give the House of Bourbon what they had claimed for themselves all along.
Bearing in mind these various personal and professional considerations, the Duke of Marlborough proceeded through 1710 and into 1711 more or less as he had since the war began. Plans were made among the allies, battle lines were drawn, the season’s campaign was launched with particular objectives in mind – this time into northern France – and a series of victories were won which dazzled contemporary observers. Arrayed against the Duc de Villars (1653-1734), one of the greatest of Louis XIV’s generals, Marlborough deployed a series of feints and forced marches that caught his adversary completely off guard and led to the stunning capture of the fortress of Bouchain. Having thus breached the French line of defense in a manner previously considered unthinkable, the duke had all but ensured that his forces would march on Paris in 1712 and carry the war into its final phase. Unfortunately for Marlborough and his colleagues in the allied command structure, however, the reigning Tory ministry led by Robert Harley (1661-1724) had no intention of allowing the conflict to progress to such an extreme. Harley’s government had worked throughout 1711 to secure what they believed to be a reasonable agreement between the belligerents which would bring the war to a close. Allowing Marlborough to march on Paris, the supporters of this effort were convinced, would surely spoil the entire effort and drag the war out further still. The Whigs, to be sure, offered their resistance to the plan, forcing Harley to ask Queen Anne to name a dozen new peers to the House of Lords to secure the passage of the resulting treaty. But even once this was accomplished, the problem of Marlborough himself remained. Unless the queen consented to remove him – which she showed no signs of doing – the Captain-General of Her Majesty’s Forces would surely never consent to abandon his allies or give up the strategic advantage which his cunning and determination had won.
The solution which Harley and his Tory allies ultimately alighted upon was to publicly disgrace the duke via charges of corruption so that Anne would have no choice but to release him from her service. In part, they accomplished this through an application to the House of Commons. Charges were brought against Marlborough on two counts having to do with the misappropriation of funds, though in both cases there was clear precedent for a commander receiving such additional pay. And at the same time, in terms of public opinion, Tory satirist and pamphleteer Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) penned and published an excoriation of the Whigs, Marlborough, and Britain’s European partners entitled The Conduct of the Allies and of the Late Ministry in Beginning and Carrying on the Present War (1711) in which the duke was painted as a glory-seeking warmonger who cared little for the interests of the British people and far too much for his own. “Whether this War were prudently begun or not,” Swift accordingly observed therein, “It is plain, that the true Spring or Motive of it, was the aggrandising of a particular Family, and in short, a War of the General and the Ministry, and not of the Prince or People [.]” The work proved to be a fantastic success, selling over ten thousand copies by the end of 1712 and shifting popular and parliamentary opinion against Marlborough and in favor of peace. When Harley then approached the queen in December of 1711 to request that she dismiss her former favorite from his post, Anne felt she had no choice but to do as she was asked. Writing to Marlborough in her letter of dismissal, she accordingly made it quite clear that the nature of her decision was more political than personal. “I am sorry for your own sake [,]” she said, “The reasons are become so public which makes it necessary for me to let you know you have render'd it impracticable for you to continue yet longer in my service [.]”
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