Books in Brief: Marlborough as Military Commander

MARLBOROUGH AS MILITARY COMMANDER, by David Chandler (Scribner’s, 368 pp., illus., $14.95).

If for no other reason, “The Great Duke of Marlborough” ought to be remembered as the only successful enemy general ever to work his way into a French folk song. In addition he possessed a rare blend of common sense and broad vision that allowed him to lead a squabbling coalition of European powers to victory over, or at least to “containment” of, the continent’s first modern superpower, France. In his private character was a curious mix of the sublime and the seamy—of compassion for human suffering and notorious stinginess, of arrant opportunism and deep-dyed patriotism—it was the the sublime that won in the end, and has now been thoroughly and intelligently chronicled by British military historian David (Campaigns of Napoleon) Chandler, Deputy Head of the Department of War Studies at Sandhurst. The Duke of Wellington once remarked that he could think of no finer spectacle than Marlborough at the head of an English Army. David Chandler agrees and puts forth a plausible case for Marlborough as the greatest of English captains. While he does not develop the point, he might also have claimed credit for Marlborough as the prime inspiration for a certain pudgy, lisping momma’s boy who, modeling himself on his illustrious ancestor, grew up to become “The Lion’s Roar” in England’s most desperate hour. The younger son of a younger son of a later Duke of Marlborough, Winston Churchill even based some of his own imposing funeral arrangements (which, ever with an eye to history, he painstakingly charted out in advance) on the ceremonies that marked the passing of “The Great Duke” in 1722. Good maps, good illustrations, and an excellent text.

AB

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Aram Bakshian Jr.

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MARLBOROUGH AS MILITARY COMMANDER, by David Chandler (Scribner’s, 368 pp., illus., $14.95).

If for no other reason, “The Great Duke of Marlborough” ought to be remembered as the only successful enemy general ever to work his way into a French folk song. In addition he possessed a rare blend of common sense and broad vision that allowed him to lead a squabbling coalition of European powers to victory over, or at least to “containment” of, the continent’s first modern superpower, France. In his private character was a curious mix of the sublime and the seamy—of compassion for human suffering and notorious stinginess, of arrant opportunism and deep-dyed patriotism—it was the the sublime that won in the end, and has now been thoroughly and intelligently chronicled by British military historian David (Campaigns of Napoleon) Chandler, Deputy Head of the Department of War Studies at Sandhurst. The Duke of Wellington once remarked that he could think of no finer spectacle than Marlborough at the head of an English Army. David Chandler agrees and puts forth a plausible case for Marlborough as the greatest of English captains. While he does not develop the point, he might also have claimed credit for Marlborough as the prime inspiration for a certain pudgy, lisping momma’s boy who, modeling himself on his illustrious ancestor, grew up to become “The Lion’s Roar” in England’s most desperate hour. The younger son of a younger son of a later Duke of Marlborough, Winston Churchill even based some of his own imposing funeral arrangements (which, ever with an eye to history, he painstakingly charted out in advance) on the ceremonies that marked the passing of “The Great Duke” in 1722. Good maps, good illustrations, and an excellent text.