122 MARLBOROUGH AND HIS METHODS OF WARFARE. 
breach had been made, for the garrison to surrender. ‘This accounts for how 
Marlborough in the 1702/3 campaigns was able to carry all before him, on the 
Meuse and Maes, from Venloo to Huy, completing four successful sieges in 
almost as many months. He had to cover the besiegers by his army until a 
breach 25 feet square had been effected; and the army being in position for 
assault, the honour of the besieged was then satisfied, and the garrison surrendered 
with the honors of war. 
Ricochet fire was then unknown as such, and the enemy’s ordnance was seldom 
dismounted. 
After the decree of Louis we find, in general, regular or engineer sieges. Then 
parallels had to be formed, with the horrible mine and counter-mine warfare. I 
may here say that all Marlborough’s ordnance, siege and field, was solely of brass 
(bronze); and that Monsieur de Saint Rémi, a contemporary of Vauban and of 
Marlborough, tells us that culverins at 300 yards took many days to make a 
breach—although the English broke ground at 500 yards except when they had 
to resort to the inferior Dutch powder, 
We have a special illustration of the magnitude of a siege-train in the instance 
of that remarkable march of the convoy from Brussels to Lille, 1708, which Dr. 
Maguire has so lucidly explained this evening. This train comprised 90 pieces of 
ordnance, also 60 mortars up to 15 inch, 3000 ammunition wagons, 15,000 horses, 
and extended 15 miles in length; yet arrived before Lille without the loss of a 
single wheel! (The 60 mortars were for firing in volleys of 30). 
Now, with regard to Field Artillery. When we do have the history of the 
artillery of Marlborough brought to light, it will revolutionize all received 
opinions of the actions of his era. In that wonderful march of artillery, possibly 
unprecedented, from the Meuse to the Danube—which the Lecturer has sketched 
—in the terrific heat of July 1704, the Field Artillery train marched 24 miles per 
diem, although it consisted of demi-culverins or 18-pounders, 12-pounders, sakers 
or heavy 6-pounders, and cohorns ; and on the day of arrival fought in the memor- 
able victory of Donawert. And when we can rightly comprehend the still more 
glorious battle of Blenheim, in August, we shall have to alter all our preconceived 
ideas of the organisation and fire discipline of the Field Artillery of that period. It 
was owing to the masterly manner in which Colonel (afterwards Brigadier) Holcroft 
Blood, who commanded the 60 pieces of English and Hessian artillery against 
the French right, availed himself of the order of the commander-in-chief to post 
his guns at discretion on the ridges, to the splendid intuition of Marlborough 
that upon the corps artillery would depend the issue of the day, and to the excellent 
practice of our gunners, that, on the 100 guns of the French right being at last 
silenced, after our brave and devoted infantry had been twice repulsed, Marl- 
borough himself led on his re-inspirited infantry and cavalry—with their battalion 
3-pounders and 14-pounder gallopers—to the third and successful assault which 
consummated his own glory and the moral of the three arms. 
The curiously wrought trophy gun, now before us, and to which the Lecturer 
has alluded, is not a weapon of war but of triumph. With its vent common to 
three tubes it discharged “ fireworks of triomph’’—at the Tower to celebrate the 
Peace of Utrecht, 1718; in St. James’s Park, for the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ; 
in the Green Park, for the Peace of Paris, 1762, which closed the Seven Years 
War; and it was last displayed at the Royal Military Exhibition, 
Iam sorry to have had so long to interpose between his Lordship and the 
gathering. 
Tup Cuatrman—lf there is any other gentleman present who would like to 
say something and give us some further information upon the topic in discussion 
we shall be very glad indeed to hear him. There are a large number of officers 
