soldiers, but with a fair leaven of old ones; and the country flattered itself that it would escape with no further burden. But, as usual, Parliament had forgotten the Empire. Bad news came just at the same moment from the West Indies, and it was imperative to send two thousand more men to that quarter. Thus at one fell swoop the garrison of Ireland was snatched away, and it was necessary to raise at once ten thousand new recruits and four new battalions. Before the end of the year Louis XIV recognised the son of James II as King of England; and Parliament, at last roused to indignation, agreed to furnish a contingent of forty thousand men--eighteen thousand British, and the rest foreigners. Thereupon orders were issued for the raising of fifteen more new regiments, at enormous expense; for, in consequence of the ill-treatment of the army by Parliament at the close of the last war, men could not be tempted to enlist except by large bounties. In 1703 the English share in the contest extended to the Spanish Peninsula, and eight new regiments were raised for the purpose. In 1704 the capture of Gibraltar and other operations demanded the levying of six more regiments; in 1706 thirteen new regiments were added; and to make a long story short, before the war ended in 1713 sixty-nine new corps of horse and foot had been formed to carry on the war. But we must not leave that war without a sketch of the greatest of English generals who conducted it. John Churchill was born, you remember, in 1650, received his first commission in the Guards in 1667, saw active service against the Moors in Tangier a year or two later, and serious warfare in 1672 against the United Provinces under Condé, Turenne and Luxemburg, continuing to serve them under the colours of Louis XIV, as was not uncommon at the time, until 1677. In the course of those five years he learned his work under the great master Turenne, while fighting another great master, Montecuculi. In 1689 he commanded a small contingent of British troops against the French once more in Flanders; besides which, saving a little work in Ireland, he was employed no more by William until 1698; being suspected, I fear with justice, of treasonable relations with the exiled King James II. Finally in 1702 he was appointed to the command of the Allied Forces in the Low Countries, thus finding himself for the first time a general-in-chief at the age of fifty-two. In those days of bad roads there were few districts where armies could keep the field, owing to the difficulty of feeding them; for a campaign, as I told you in my first lecture, is a picnic. The delta of the Rhine and Meuse was a cock-pit because it was in the first place rich in food, and in the second traversed by navigable rivers and canals, which made the transport of victuals, of heavy guns, and of ammunition comparatively easy. But being a cock-pit, its water-ways were studded with innumerable fortresses, constructed to prevent