ingress into France from the north, and into what we now call Belgium but which in Marlborough's time was known as the Austrian Netherlands, from the south. Hence it naturally followed that a war in that quarter signified a war of sieges; and the French Court was fond of sieges, because it could attend them in state and take charge of the operations with much glory and little discomfort or danger. It must be added that incessant warfare in that unfortunate country had made every feature in it so familiar, that the ordinary tactical and strategical movements in it were as well known as the moves on a chess-board. It was a mark of Marlborough's originality of mind that on this familiar ground he contrived always to do something unexpected. Had he not been hampered by disloyal Dutch Generals and timid Dutch deputies, who controlled the Dutch contingent of his army and therefore the Commander-in-Chief also, he would have driven the French out of Flanders in two campaigns. As it was, these so-called allies deliberately foiled him again and again; and, since the French arms had been uniformly successful against the Imperial troops on the Upper Rhine and Danube, the way to Vienna was by the year 1704 practically open to the French armies. Then it was that Marlborough, seeing that the case was desperate, conceived the magnificent idea of a march of some three hundred miles from the Low Countries to join the Imperial army on the Danube. The difficulties were immense. In the first place he had to gain permission from numbers of petty princes to pass through their territory; in the second he had to provide magazines of food and clothing for his army all along the line of march, as well as money to pay them with; and all this he had to do with secrecy and circumspection for, in the third place, it was essential that the French armies should gain no inkling of his intentions, but should be absolutely deceived by his movements until he was so far advanced upon his way that he could not be caught. It seems impossible that such a thing could have been done; but done it was; and the two victories of the Schellenberg and of Blenheim were the result. Moreover, this campaign, though the most celebrated because of its extreme originality and boldness, by no means stands alone as an example of Marlborough's surpassing skill in the field. You may go through the whole of the campaigns that he fought in Flanders, ten in all; and in every one you will find some salient feature which betrays the master. The forcing of the French lines on the Geete in 1705; the feint which beguiled Vendôme into a fatal blunder at Ramillies in 1706; the wonderful march before Oudenarde in 1708; the investment of Tournay in 1709; the amazing wiles by which he turned the lines of La Bassée in 1711--any one of these achievements would suffice to make the fortune of an ordinary general.