Titans of History

It was a resounding victory for Marlborough. After the battle was over, he scrawled a note to his wife on a tavern bill: “I have not time to say more, but to beg you will give my duty to the Queen and let her know her army has had a glorious victory.” From that moment, Marlborough’s fame spread throughout Europe. In England, as a reward for his success, Marlborough was granted funds to build the magnificent Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock in Oxfordshire.

At home, Marlborough was also the political partner of the chief minister Earl Godolphin, making him a unique force in politics, in war and at court.

Other famous victories followed: Ramillies in 1706, Oudenarde in 1708 and Malplaquet in 1709. These were notably bloody affairs, but Marlborough’s reputation soared. Throughout all of the campaigns between 1702 and 1710, Marlborough showed himself to be a shrewd tactician and a daring and confident commander, able to unify the forces of the disparate states of the Grand Alliance against the aggressively expansionist Louis XIV.

After 1710, royal intrigues and domestic politics started to undermine Marlborough. He and his wife lost favor at court when Sarah Marlborough haughtily argued with her former best friend, Queen Anne. Sarah Marlborough became a vicious and embittered enemy of the queen, whom she accused of lesbianism and whose reputation she ruined. The satirist Jonathan Swift aimed repeated barbs at the duke, accusing him of corruption. But, with the foresight of natural courtiers, the Marlboroughs simply aligned themselves with the elector of Hanover, who in 1714 became King George I and reappointed the duke as captain general.

However, by now Marlborough’s powers were fading. He suffered two strokes in 1716 and was thereafter largely confined to Blenheim. In 1722 a final stroke killed him, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey. A century later the duke of Wellington declared, “I can conceive of nothing greater than Marlborough at the head of an English army,” and since then military historians have largely agreed that Marlborough was the finest general England has ever produced.

Over three hundred years later, the Churchill family again produced an outstanding statesman who dominated his age: Winston Churchill.

PETER THE GREAT

1672–1725

I have conquered an empire but I have not been able to conquer myself.

Peter I of Russia was a physical giant—6 feet 8 inches tall—and dynamic ruler whose astonishing political acumen, colossal ambitions, ruthless methods and eccentric energy, transformed Russia into a European great power, vastly expanded his empire and founded the city of St. Petersburg. He is often described as a pro-Western reformer but that is simplistic: he was certainly a reformer and advocate of Western technology but at heart he was a brutal autocrat, the ultimate personification of the hero-monster.

He grew up in a rough school: like other practitioners of political autocracy such as Tsar Ivan the Terrible and King Louis XIV, his early years were dangerous and uncertain, overshadowed by terrifying coups and intrigues. Peter was the son of the second tsar of a new dynasty—the Romanovs—and when his father Alexei died, his weak and sickly eldest brother Fyodor succeeded to the throne for a few years, but powerful boyar (noble) families effectively ruled in his stead. On Fyodor’s death in 1682, the next two brothers in the family, Ivan V and Peter I succeeded jointly—Ivan too was unfit to rule and both were very young so Russia was ruled by their mother as regent. The revolt of Moscow’s old court guardsmen, the streltsy, enabled Peter’s formidable sister Sophia to seize power and rule in the boys’ name.

Peter developed into an extraordinary figure—amazingly tall though with a somewhat small head, highly intelligent and indefatigable though sometimes affected by twitches and strange illnesses—he may have been epileptic. From an early age he was fascinated with all matters military, naval and technological, creating his own mini-army with regiments made up of his friends and cronies.

In 1689, Peter removed his sister and started to rule in his own right. He also married and had children. One of his first actions was attack the Ottomans and the Crimean Tartars to the south, hoping to capture Azov, but this enterprise failed and it was not until 1696 that he managed to take the city.

In 1697, he set off on his fact-finding adventure—the Grand Embassy—around western Europe, where he visited Holland and England amongst many other places and studied shipbuilding. The trip was bizarre—part technological research, part political investigation, part road trip and part hooliganish stag party.