Titans of History

Amid all this achievement, Newton spent long periods of his later life engaged in furious debates and personal feuds with other European scientists. Yet for all his personal foibles, there was no one then or since who could disagree with the epitaph on his monument in Westminster Abbey: “Let Mortals rejoice That there has existed such and so great an Ornament to the Human Race.”

MARLBOROUGH

1650–1722

If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never share the heart and hand that once belonged to John, Duke of Marlborough

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Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, quoted in W.S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times (1938)

John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough, was Britain’s most brilliant soldier-statesman. He won a string of glorious victories against the French and their allies in the War of the Spanish Succession that prevented Louis XIV and his Catholic absolutism from dominating Europe in the opening years of the 18th century.

From early in his life, Churchill was a protégé of James, the Catholic duke of York, who later became the ill-starred James II. Churchill traveled with James when his brother, Charles II, sent the unpopular duke into exile in the 1670s. At this time James used Churchill as his skilled lobbyist at the royal court. Handsome, charming and clever, young Churchill was seduced by Charles II’s voracious mistress Barbara, duchess of Castlemaine, and once had to leap from her window when the king arrived. He was already showing himself to be a particularly talented soldier; he fought under the legendary musketeer d’Artagnan in 1673 and performed with the utmost bravery, earning himself personal praise from his future enemy, the French king, Louis XIV.

In 1677 Churchill married Sarah Jennings, a strong-willed woman who proved politically astute. As his military career progressed, the couple spent long periods apart, but the marriage was nevertheless an enormously successful one. From 1683 Sarah was the best friend of, and favorite adviser to, Princess Anne—later Queen Anne, a connection vital to Marlborough’s future favor and fortune.

Although he had been a close confidant of James II, Marlborough was at heart a Protestant. When his patron James II ascended the throne in 1685, Churchill was promoted in the army and raised to the peerage. But James proved a disastrous king, alienating the Protestant nobility, who rose against him to back the Dutch prince William and his wife Mary, Protestant daughter of the king himself. The defection of Churchill, now earl of Marlborough, played its part in James’ downfall. Churchill had no difficulty in shifting his allegiance to William of Orange, who became joint monarch with his wife Mary II after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He played an important role in the campaign against James’s forces in Ireland in 1690, and though he was suspected for much of the 1690s of being a closet Jacobite (a supporter of James II), William trusted him enough to appoint him commander-in-chief of British forces in the Low Countries in 1701.

It was under Queen Anne, who came to the throne in 1702, that Marlborough’s career really took off. He was elevated to a dukedom and appointed captain general of the armed forces, taking command of the first campaign of the War of the Spanish Succession. From the very beginning, Marlborough was able to out-think, out-march and outmaneuver the French. During his first campaigning season he succeeded in pushing the French into a highly disadvantageous position. But it was the campaign of 1704 that saw Britain’s greatest success.

Thanks to the complex European dynastic politics of the early 18th century, in 1704 Marlborough found himself commanding a multinational coalition, a combined army of British, Dutch, Hanoverian, Hessian, Danish and Prussian soldiers, which he coordinated with his Austrian ally, Prince Eugene of Savoy, and the difficult, thin-skinned leaders of the Dutch Republic. Near the village of Blindheim (anglicized as Blenheim) on the River Danube in Bavaria, he came up against a force of French and Bavarian troops under the French commander Marshal Tallard. Tallard had more men and a stronger natural position on the battlefield, but he was no match for Marlborough. Throughout the battle of Blenheim, fought on August 13, 1704, Marlborough completely outmaneuvered the Franco-Bavarian army, personally intervening at crucial points of the battle and ensuring that his enemies were never allowed to exploit any small advantage. More than 20,000 of Tallard’s men were killed or wounded, and Tallard himself was captured.