128 MARLBOROUGH AND HIS METHODS OF WARFARE; 
the great corps of Royal Artillery to turn it to the best advantage. They know 
what is required better than others, and I am sure that if they are given a free 
hand they will be able to point out to us the way which we should travel on the 
path of progress in the matter of guns, and enable us to have the best guns in the 
world, so that we may have other nations copying us, and not we copying them 
servilely, as we have done for so long. 
There was another service created by Marlborough which may not be so inter- 
esting to you all, 1 mean the commissariat service. ‘This is a point that few 
connect with the name of Marlborough. The Duke of Wellington said that 
many a man could command an army in battle, but that very few could feed an 
army as well as he could. Marlborough shewed the actual importance of the 
commissariat service by attending to the question of supplies as if he had been 
educated all his life as a man of business. He organised a system of supply and 
selected men to be responsible for it. The more you study Marlborough’s wars 
and go into the minutize of his campaigns, the more this point will strike you. 
As to the implements of war used in his day, you have such good models here 
that you require little further information about them. But if you do wish to 
know more on this point you can find it in Blenheim Palace at the present 
moment. There you will find some magnificent tapestry pictures of the principal 
battles and sieges engaged in by Marlborough, and around those pictures, which 
are very large ones, there is about eighteen inches of margin on which are re- 
presented, mostly full size, the implements of war of that day. It is quite 
curious to see how little they are changed even at the present day. Down to the 
very tent-pegs they are exactly the same pattern as those now in use. Your 
guns have altered in shape and dimensions, but there you will see the old gabions, 
the old fascines, the same old mortars and interesting tools that we were accustomed 
to in the trenches before Sebastapol. Even the old familiar blue wooden water- 
barrel that we were then cursed with and had to carry about us with its very 
sharp iron hoops bruising our hips as we walked or ran, there you will see it on 
the pictures on the walls of Blenheim Palace. 
As I have already said, the Lecturer has very naturally selected the campaign 
of Blenheim to illustrate Marlborough’s strategical genius. Blenheim is commonly 
recognized as one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world, as the Lecturer has 
reminded us. Creasy’s work on those great battles is an admirable one for any- 
body who is lazy and wants to know something of the great events of the world. 
But if I were asked to advise young officers as to the campaigns they should 
study for lessons in strategy, I would certainly not omit Marlborough’s campaign 
of 1702. It was the first campaign that Marlborough made in his great decade 
of glory, and although no battle took place then, it is full of interest and strategical 
lessons. In 1704 he had already done so much that the Dutch were inclined to 
trust his judgment, and accordingly he had already achieved some fair share of 
power. But in 1702 he had very little influence and still less power. ‘Through- 
out that campaign he was held back by the Dutch deputies, the Dutch people and 
the Dutch ministers. They had as yet no reason to believe in his military genius 
or to trust his judgment. The Queen had made him a Duke, and he had won 
some small minor actions in different parts of the world, and distinguished him- 
self as a young man under Turenne. When very young, his brave conduct at 
the siege of Maestricht had attracted attention. But he had done nothing as a 
general in Europe that would justify the Dutch in following his advice in prefer- 
ence to that given by their own commanders, several of whom had held important 
commands in the field. It was but natural they should turn to them in preference 
to taking his advice. The result is, that you have im this campaign of 1702 the 
best illustration of the difficulties he had to contend with in dealing with timidly 
cautious generals and stupid ministers, who imagined they could teach him a 
