John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough

English general

• Born: May 26, 1650
• Birthplace: Ashe, Devonshire, England
• Died: June 16, 1722
• Place of death: Windsor Lodge, Windsor, England

Marlborough was a skillful diplomat and a brilliant general whose stunning victories over France in the War of the Spanish Succession established Great Britain as a major power and ended King Louis XIV’s dreams of French hegemony over Europe.

Early Life

John Churchill was the son of Sir Winston Churchill, a member of the lower gentry and a committed supporter of the Stuart monarchy, and Elizabeth Churchill (née Drake). Parliament’s victory in the English Civil War left Sir Winston destitute, and he and his growing family (there were twelve children, five of whom survived infancy) were forced to live with his mother-in-law, a Puritan and a staunch Parliamentarian. The poverty and likely family tension of John Churchill’s early years were ended only by the restoration of Charles II in 1660. His father stood relatively high in favor with the new regime, and John prospered as well. In late 1665, he left St. Paul’s School to become a page of honor to James, duke of York, and two years later, he began his military career as an ensign in the foot guards.

Intelligent, superbly handsome, charming, and doubtless aided by his sister Arabella’s position as James’s mistress, Churchill continued to prosper at court in the 1670’s. He also gained valuable experience abroad. He was for a time at Tangier and served with distinction under the duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate son, in the Dutch War.

It was in this same period that Churchill fell in love with Sarah Jennings, an attendant upon Princess Anne. The courtship was prolonged and obstructed, first by his own lack of wealth and second by his parents’ desire for a richer marriage. Contrary to his later reputation for greed and an overwhelming desire for wealth, however, Churchill rejected his parents’ wishes and secretly married Sarah in 1678.

Life’s Work

Despite his rising stature at court, Churchill became a figure of national significance only following the accession of James II in 1685. In May, he was created Baron Churchill of Sandridge, a reward for his loyalty during the Exclusion Crisis, and in June and July he played an important role in crushing Monmouth’s ill-fated invasion and rebellion. Churchill soon grew disenchanted, however, with the new king’s policies. He refused royal pressure to convert to Roman Catholicism, and in January, 1688, he openly remonstrated with James about the likely consequences of his religious and political program. At the same time, he informed William III and of Orange of his unshakable loyalty to the Protestant religion and pledged his support to the Dutch prince. Action followed words. On November 24, he deserted his command and the Royal Army at Salisbury to join William’s invading force. Although he was only one of many in the political nation to desert James’s service, Churchill’s decision was critical in ensuring the disintegration of the Royal Army and thus in determining that the Glorious Revolution would not degenerate into a bloody and disastrous civil war.

Churchill initially prospered under the new regime. In 1689, he was appointed to the Privy Council, created earl of Marlborough, and given command of English troops in the Netherlands for the Battle of Walcourt. One year later, he conceived and led a short, brilliant campaign that captured Cork and Kinsdale and brought southeastern Ireland under English control. His relationship with William III and Mary II, however, then deteriorated. In part, the problem lay with his Jacobite contacts. Along with many other prominent Englishmen, Marlborough was in communication with the exiled Stuart court at St. Germain, offering vague promises of support as a sort of insurance policy against an uncertain future. William generally chose to overlook these contacts, recognizing their innocuous character. Marlborough’s case proved different, however, largely because of his influence within the English army and with Princess Anne. The earl was a spokesman for many English officers who resented the preferential treatment William appeared to give to foreign officers and to Englishmen and Scotsmen who had entered his service before 1688. In late 1691, he was urging a parliamentary address from the House of Commons, calling on William to deny command of English troops to foreign or naturalized officers. At the same time, William and Mary IIII25IIII believed that he was responsible for the growing estrangement between the queen and her sister Anne. In January, 1692, the royal couple responded by removing Marlborough from all offices and places of trust.

Marlborough’s reconciliation with William came slowly. His military talents, though, could not be ignored. By 1698, Marlborough had been restored to his former offices and military rank and was a trusted adviser to William. In 1701, he was named commander in chief of the Anglo-Dutch forces in the Netherlands and a plenipotentiary to negotiations at The Hague that were designed to re-create the Grand Alliance against King Louis XIV and France. When William died and was succeeded by Queen Anne in March, 1702, Marlborough assumed the former’s role as the effective leader of the Grand Alliance in the new war against France.

Marlborough’s first two campaigns in 1702 and 1703 proved to be extremely frustrating. The duke—created the duke of Marlborough in December, 1702—realized that the War of the Spanish Succession could be won and the balance of power in Europe restored only by the defeat of the French armies in the field. He wished to wage an unconventional war of movement and ruthless, decisive battles; his Dutch allies, however, who retained a veto over his freedom of action over a mixed force of English, Dutch, and German troops, preferred to continue the traditional strategy of sieges, maneuvers, and countermaneuvers around the fortresses on the Meuse and the lower Rhine.

The stalemate was broken in 1704. The French threatened to join forces with the elector of Bavaria, march down the Danube to Vienna, and drive Austria out of the war. Marlborough responded with a daring maneuver that startled all of Europe. Without informing his Dutch allies of his final destination, he marched forty thousand men 250 miles up the Rhine and over to the Danube. There he joined forces with Eugene of Savoy, the imperial general, and on August 12, their combined forces surprised and utterly crushed a numerically superior Franco-Bavarian army at the Battle of Blenheim. For the first time since the 1630’s, a French army had been destroyed in combat.

Although Blenheim remained the most dramatic of Marlborough’s victories, other stunning triumphs soon followed. He returned to the Low Countries and destroyed another French army at Ramillies on May 12, 1706. Demoralized and panic-stricken, French garrisons readily surrendered a vast belt of fortresses across the Spanish Netherlands. When, in 1708, King Louis XIV attempted to regain his lost provinces, the French army was caught by Marlborough and Eugène at Oudenarde on July 11 and badly beaten.

Marlborough’s victories had seemingly won the war, but he failed to win the peace. A French king willing to make generous concessions would not accept the humiliating demand that he use force to expel his grandson, Philip V, from the Spanish throne. Marlborough sincerely desired peace and agreed that the allied demands were too severe. Nevertheless, perhaps because he believed that the collapse of France was imminent, he did not press his government to moderate the proposed peace terms.

The failure to achieve peace was poorly received in England. There was a growing belief that English money and men were being poured into a needless war, a sentiment further strengthened by news of the Battle of Malplaquet. On September 11, 1709, Marlborough and Eugène again defeated the French, but at a frightful cost. The unprecedented carnage of twenty thousand allied casualties stunned public opinion. In this atmosphere, there were revived fears of the threat a standing army offered to English liberties and rumors that Marlborough aspired to be a second Oliver Cromwell. Moreover, the duke no longer possessed the confidence of the queen. Her once-passionate friendship with Sarah Churchill had ended in total estrangement. By 1710, Anne was convinced that Marlborough and the Whig ministers she had been pressured to accept into the government were only prolonging the war for their own selfish interests. In August, she turned to Sir Robert Harley to form a new government. He replaced the old ministers with Tories but retained Marlborough, whose presence was deemed necessary to compel the French to negotiate a favorable peace. By December, 1711, however, the preliminaries were completed. Marlborough was dismissed and censured in Parliament for alleged financial corruption. The charges were palpably false; their sole intent was to silence Marlborough and to blacken his reputation. In November, 1712, he chose voluntary exile abroad rather than endure further humiliations at home. During the next two years, he worked with the electoral court of Hanover to ensure a Protestant succession in England. He did not return to England until August 1, 1714, the day of Queen Anne’s death.

Marlborough again enjoyed royal favor following the accession of King George I, but the duke was now an old man. Once remarkable for his intellectual and physical vigor, he had been worn out by his labors and responsibilities. In May and November, 1716, he suffered two paralytic strokes. He recovered, but his remaining years were saddened by bitter quarrels between his wife and surviving children. In June, 1722, he suffered another stroke and died on June 16. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his body was later removed to Blenheim Palace, an elaborate residence begun by Queen Anne in happier times as a monument to his victory over the French.

Significance

The first duke of Marlborough was not without flaws. He was inordinately ambitious for wealth, titles, and fame. These blemishes on his character, however, merely humanize a man who was also an astute diplomat and a brilliant general. William III’s death in 1702 left Marlborough with the task of maintaining the unity of the Grand Alliance and leading its forces to victory over France. Yet his powers and influence were much less than those of William. He was neither a prince of Orange nor a stadtholder of the Netherlands nor a king of England, and thus he could not impose his views as his predecessor had done. Nevertheless, he successfully dissuaded the enigmatic Charles XII of Sweden from attacking the Habsburgs, and he achieved a remarkable degree of harmony and cooperation among the allies in the Low Countries. His one great failure was his inability to use his victories on the battlefield to impose a peace that would satisfy all the principal allies. Marlborough’s was not the sole or even the preeminent voice at the negotiating table. While he might have used his influence more aggressively, there is no certainty that he could have persuaded the Whig junto to moderate the demands made on Louis XIV.

Whatever Marlborough’s failings as a diplomat, there is no doubt that he was the foremost commander of his age. Warfare in the early eighteenth century had evolved into a predictable pattern of long sieges and evasive marches. Marlborough recognized the futility of a strategy of siege warfare in the Low Countries, which could only lead to a lengthy war of attrition and stalemate. Instead, he was determined to force open-field battles which might yield decisive victories. Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde all rewarded his skill and daring to the fullest. These victories established the prestige of English arms in Europe at a level unmatched since Agincourt in the early fifteenth century. More important, Marlborough’s triumphs defeated Louis XIV’s final bid for hegemony and restored the balance of power in Europe; not until Napoleon would France again threaten to dominate the Continent.

Bibliography

Churchill, Winston S. Marlborough: His Life and Times. 6 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933-1938. Perhaps overwritten and certainly sympathetic toward its subject, but still the best biography of Marlborough.

Hibbert, Christopher. The Marlboroughs: John and Sarah Churchill, 1650-1744. New York: Viking Press, 2001. Dual biography focusing on the personal lives and political careers of this eighteenth century “power couple.”

Holmes, Geoffrey. British Politics in the Age of Queen Anne. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967. An indispensable analysis of the structure of politics during Queen Anne’s reign.

Horwitz, Henry. Parliament, Policy, and Politics in the Reign of William III. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1977. A detailed narrative of English politics in the reign of William III. Another indispensable work, but difficult to read.

Jones, J. R. Marlborough. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Jones, who wrote about Marlborough’s role in the Glorious Revolution, later wrote this biography of Marlborough.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Revolution of 1688 in England. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. The best study of the Glorious Revolution. Offers a sympathetic analysis of James II’s policies.

Macaulay, Thomas B. The History of England, from the Accession of James II. Edited by C. H. Firth. 2 vols. 1849. Reprint. Cincinnati, Ohio: E. D. Trunan, 1913-1915. Although dated and marred by the author’s Whig bias, this remains a classic survey of the period. Often harsh in its judgments of Marlborough.

Scouller, R. E. The Armies of Queen Anne. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1966. Scouller’s focus is narrowly confined to the administration, organization, recruitment, and finance of Anne’s armies.

Snyder, H. L., ed. The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1975. Makes available the voluminous written correspondence between the two men from 1702 to 1710.

Trevelyan, George Macaulay. England Under Queen Anne. 3 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1931-1934. Whiggish in its interpretation of events but factually sound and gracefully written. A classic work.

Webb, Stephen Saunders. Lord Churchill’s Coup: The Anglo-American Empire and the Glorious Revolution Reconsidered. New York: Knopf, 1995. Focuses on the military’s role in the Glorious Revolution. Webb argues that the revolution was actually a military coup led by Churchill.