126 MARLBOROUGH AND HIS METHODS OF WARFARE. 
refer to one topic that has been mentioned by the Lecturer. He referred to the 
study of Latin, and to the great misfortune it was that English people did not 
study history more than Latin. Now Marlborough knew Latin tolerably well, 
and as a boy he turned that knowledge to account by reading Vegetius, from 
whose pages he obtained a good knowledge of the art of war in classical times. 
In his case at least a knowledge of Latin served some good purpose. Apropos 
of the question now talked of a great deal in educational circles, as to whether 
the young gentlemen who go up for army examination should know anything of 
Latin or not—on the one side you have all the great head-masters of the English 
public schools, who tell you there is nothing like Latin, and on the other hand 
there is another, perhaps I may call them a more advanced class of instructors, 
who tell you it is great folly spending hours or months or years of boyhood in 
pouring over Latin which can be of so little use to you in after life. But I will 
tell you a curious little circumstance that occurred to me the other day. I do 
not mention it for the purpose of crying up the great advantage of knowing 
Latin, for I think the question at issue is a difficult one to decide. I was lately 
anxious to obtain information about a man whom the Lecturer referred to once 
or twice this evening, Heinsius, the great pensioner of Holland and a trusted 
friend of Marlborough during all his wars. Next to Marlborough, he was, I 
think, the most remarkable man in Hurope of his day, and one of the greatest 
statesmen that Europe ever produced. I looked in encyclopzedias, and they told 
one the usual conventional things, when he was born, how many children he had, 
and when he died; beyond that I learnt very little. At last I wrote to a friend 
in Holland, and he said that the only work he could refer me to was a Latin 
book, which he sent to me. I poured over it and—with the greatest possible 
difficulty, I need scarcely say—I made out what I wanted. If I had not had 
during my boyhood a considerable knowledge of Latin I could not have done 
this. 
If I were asked to institute a parallel drawn from ancient history between 
Marlborough and the great leaders of classical times, I should be inclined to 
describe him as the Hannibal of England. If you study his system of strategy, 
I do not know any man, except Napoleon—who came after him—whose strategy re- 
sembled Hannibal’s more than his. It was always a grand offensive strategy. His 
strategy marked a new departure in the conduct of war. His opponents were the 
great generals of Louis XIV., who still adhered to-the old-fashioned policy of 
defensive lines—regarding which we have heard much this evening from the 
Lecturer—great lines which were always weak because of their enormous length. 
It is an interesting fact that during the whole of Marlborough’s campaigns he 
never resorted to those lines himself, and that he invariably took them when they 
were made by his enemy. From first to last his policy was strictly and purely 
offensive. Napoleon was, I think, the greatest master of the offensive that the 
world has ever produced, but he came after Marlborough, and I have no doubt 
whatever in my own mind that, great as was his own intuitive genius for war, he 
derived a great deal of information from the study of Marlborough’s campaigns, 
which study he himself initiated in France. At the same time—as was the case 
with Napoleon—it is difficult to say whether Marlborough was greater as a 
strategist or as a tactician. 
The Lecturer naturally singled out the battle of Blenheim as an illustration of 
Marlborough’s great tactical powers, and the more you study it the more you 
gain information as to his absolute coolness under fire, you will find that in the 
midst of a very noisy battle such as Blenheim was from the time it began till it 
ended in the evening, he was calmly self confident. Throughout the battle he 
took part in some of the cavalry charges himself, but notwithstanding this fact, 
he never for a moment lost sight of the great tactical points, whose possession he 
