Consummate address and never-failing prudence were the great characteristics of the English commander. With such judgment did he measure his strength with those of his adversary--so skilfully did he choose the points of attack, whether in strategy or tactics--so well weighed were all his enterprises, so admirably prepared the means of carrying them into execution, that none of them ever miscarried. It was a common saying at the time, which the preceding narrative amply justifies, that he never fought a battle which he did not gain, nor laid siege to a town which he did not take. This extraordinary and unbroken success extended to all his manoeuvres, however trivial; and it has been already noticed, that the first disaster of any moment which occurred to his arms during _nine_ successive and active campaigns, was the destruction of a convoy destined for the siege of St Venant, in October 1710, by one of Villars' detachments.[37] It was the admirable powers of arrangement and combination which he brought to bear on all parts of his army, equally from the highest to the lowest parts, which was the cause of this extraordinary and uninterrupted success. [37] Marlborough's Dispatches. _Blackwood's Magazine_, Nov. 1846, p. He was often outnumbered by the enemy, always opposed by a homogeneous army, animated by one strong national and military spirit; while he was at the head of a discordant array of many different nations, some of them with little turn for warlike exploit, others lukewarm, or even treacherous in the cause. But notwithstanding this, he never lost the ascendant. From the time when he first began the war on the banks of the Maese in 1702, till his military career was closed in 1711, within the iron barrier of France, by the intrigues of his political opponents at home, he never abandoned the initiative. He was constantly on the offensive. When inferior in force, as he often was, he supplied the defect of military strength by skill and combination; when his position was endangered by the faults or treachery of others, as was still more frequently the case, he waited till a false move on the part of his adversaries enabled him to retrieve his affairs by some brilliant and decisive stroke. It was thus that he restored the war in Germany, after the affairs of the Emperor had been wellnigh ruined, by the brilliant cross march into Bavaria, and splendid victory at Blenheim; and regained Flanders for the Archduke by the stroke at Ramilies, after the imperial cause in that quarter had been all but lost by the treacherous surrender of Ghent and Bruges, in the very centre of his water communications.