MARLBOROUGH AND HIS METHODS OF WARFARE. 113 
I think that passage, gentlemen, was a fine poetical inspiration and 
almost as good a description of the true merit of Marlborough as any 
narrative by a military critic. 
Now it is not often one reads English history in Latin, and more is 
the pity. I am quite convinced that if Mr. Lecky would only publish 
the history of the British Empire in Latin it would immediately enter 
into the curriculum of the public schools and perhaps be set in due 
time at competitive examinations, and the result would be that Hnglish 
gentlemen, to whom the destinies of their country will in due time be 
entrusted, would know something of the conditions of their country’s 
greatness, and the extreme glory of their nation in the past—but I 
have here a Latin testimonial to Marlborough. Well, gentlemen, I would 
not care for reading it in Latin; you have read quite enough yourselyes— 
but it sets forth that he led from the Thames and from the Meuse a 
strenuous host which entirely overwhelmed the forces of Gaul and 
Bavaria, and which, in the crisis of the German race, delivered it from 
its enemy (see Appendix). Having done this, gentlemen, he gathered 
up the spoils of war in the shape of numerous prisoners, standards and 
weapons, and proceeded westward again. He traversed the Rhine 
near Philippsburg; he invested Tréves and Trarbach and took them ; 
he proposed to invade France again, but he found himself stopped this 
time in the valley of the Moselle. He found himself stopped by an 
entrenched camp at Sierk, now very ably constructed and held by 
Villars. He now learned that Villeroi was invading Belgium and 
had constructed another very extensive entrenched camp from the 
Meuse, cast of Namur, right along for fifty miles to where the Rupel 
joins the Scheldt. Marlborough resolved to break through that en- 
trenched line—behind which Villeroi had some 70,000 men, I think, 
and there were very few officers of the period who would have dared 
to attack him. Marlborough tried and succeeded. He sent the Dutch 
General Overkirk round to the Mehaigne to make a very strong 
demonstration against Villeroi’s right. He himself massed near 
Wacken and withdrawing the other troops to his aid, pushed through 
the centre. The result was that at once Villeroi had to abandon all the 
lines which had been constructed with such great care and to fall back 
on Brussels. Marlborough would have forced the Dyle, and would 
probably have fought a battle on the plain of Waterloo, only for the 
hesitation of the Dutch. Thus ended the campaign of 1705. By the 
way, Wellington admitted his obligations to Marlborough in regard to 
teaching him how to act upon this plain. 
I forgot to mention a very remarkable thing in connection with the 
campaign of 1704. Gentlemen, one advantage of studying the past is 
of course to get a knowledge of the present. Napoleon was a most 
careful student of the history of the past—he was an accomplished 
scholar in military history from his earliest days. He went to Kgypt, 
I believe, because Alexander the Great went there as much as for any- 
thing else ; he went over the Alps because Hannibal passed them, and 
why should not he? and he certainly went to Donawerth on the 
Danube following in the footsteps of the Englishman, Marlborough. 
This admits of no doubt whatever, because he ordered a book to be 
