Meanwhile the war had become general. In May 1702 Marlborough, who had been appointed to the chief command of the English forces by Anne, and had been elected captain-general of the Dutch forces by the states-general, took command of the allied army in the Netherlands. He had under him about 10,000 English troops, about 20,000 Dutch troops, and about as many mercenaries, chiefly Germans, in the pay of England and the United Provinces. It is interesting to notice how small the body of purely British soldiers was who fought in the armies of Marlborough. They were never as numerous as the mercenaries, though they increased in numbers regularly as the war went on. At the commencement of hostilities, owing no doubt to the great jealousy of a standing army evinced by all Englishmen, and to the national distrust of William III., there were very few English soldiers fit to take the field against the veterans of France. [Sidenote: =His military qualities.=] What England lost through want of training among her soldiers was more than made up to her by the eminent capacity of her general. Marlborough had learned his first lessons of war in the school of Turenne, he had shown his talents for command in his successful management of an expedition to the south of Ireland in 1689, but no one could have anticipated from his past, when he was appointed to the supreme command in 1702, the singular combination of qualities which made him incomparably the first man in Europe. Full of resource, gifted with a notable mastery over men, and thoroughly trained in the science of war, he is one of the few generals who have had the power of conceiving and executing combined movements on a large scale. His provident eye could take in the whole of Europe as a theatre of operations, and direct the movements of four or five armies to a common end. As a strategist, he was too seldom permitted freedom of action for his originality and resourcefulness fully to display themselves. In this he must be compared, not with Frederick the Great or Napoleon or Moltke, but with Wellington or Turenne, and he need not fear the result. Even when driven by the timidity and unreasonableness of the Dutch, or by political danger at home into the commonplace, his campaigns show a grasp of the proportion of things, which is only found in the highest order of intellects. He fixes with lightning rapidity upon the important thing to be done, and sees at once how best to do it with the resources at his command. He never fritters away his strength, he never wastes life,[7] or runs risks unnecessarily, or for mere effect. He strikes directly at the key of the position, his combinations are all aimed at the central point of the enemies’ power. In this capacity to appreciate exactly the ratio of his strength and resources to those of the enemy, he strongly resembles his great successor Wellington. Like him he never lost a battle, unlike him he never failed in a campaign.