[47] Marlborough had received the sacrament with great solemnity at the midnight preceding the day of the battle of Blenheim; and shortly before, divine service had been performed at the head of every regiment and squadron in the Allied army. After the battle he said, that "he had prayed to God more frequently during its continuance than all the chaplains of both armies put together which served under his orders."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 166. [48] _Ibid._ ii. 100. Marlborough's funeral obsequies were celebrated with extraordinary magnificence, and all ranks and all parties joined in doing him honour. On the sides of the car bearing the coffin, shields were affixed containing emblematic representations of his battles and sieges. Blenheim was there, and the Schellemberg, Ramilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet; Ruremonde and Liege, Menin and Dendermonde, Antwerp and Brussels, Ostend and Ghent, Tournay and Lille, Mons and Bouchain, Bethune, St Venant, and Aire. "The number, and the recollections with which they were fraught, made the English ashamed of the manner in which they had used the hero who had filled the world with his renown."[49] [49] _Ibid._ p. 307. Thus lived, and thus died, and thus was buried, John Duke of Marlborough, of whom Lord Mahon[50] takes leave in a strain of solemnity and dignity befitting the occasion:-- "England lost one of her noblest worthies in John Duke of Marlborough. His achievements do not fall within my limits, and his character seems rather to belong to the historians of another period. Let them endeavour to delineate his vast and various abilities--that genius which saw humbled before it the proudest mareschals of France--that serenity of temper which enabled him patiently to bear, and bearing to overcome, all the obstinacy of the Dutch deputies, all the slowness of the German generals--those powers of combination so provident of failure, and so careful of details, that it might almost be said of him, that before he gave any battle he had already won it! Let them describe him in council as in arms, not always righteous in his end, but ever mighty in his means!" [50] _History of England_, ii. 41, 42.