Justice would rather demand that the great captain should be judged by the light in the eyes of his men, by the endurance under him of immense fatigues, by the exact accomplishment of one hundred separate things a day, each clearly designed and remembered, by his grasp of great sweeps of landscape, by his digestion of maps and horizons, and finally and particularly by this--that the great captain, whether he loses or he wins, _risks_ well: he smells the adventure of war, and is the opposite of those who, whether in their fortunes or their bodies, chiefly seek security. Judged by all these tests, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, was a supreme commander; and it is not the least part in our recognition of this, that the first and chief of the great actions upon which his fame reposes was an action essentially and typically hazardous, and one the disastrous loss of which was as probable as, or more probable than, the successful issue which it obtained. He could not know the special factor of weakness in his opponent's cavalry; he was to misjudge the first element in the position when he broke his best infantry in the futile attack upon the village. But he was to benefit by those small, hidden, momentary things which determine great battles, and which make of soldiers, as of men who follow the sea, determined despisers of success, and as determined worshippers of the merit which may or may not attain it. To have led his army as he had led it for now three months, to have designed the general plan that he had designed, and to have accomplished it; to have effected the splendid concentration but a few hours since upon the Kessel--these formed a work sufficient to deserve the reward of victory, Marlborough had the fortune not only to deserve, but to achieve. The night of that Tuesday fell with no alarm upon the one side or upon the other. In the camp of Marlborough and of Eugene was the knowledge that the twin commanders had determined upon an action; in that of Tallard and the Elector the belief that it was more probable their opponents would follow the general rules of war, and fall back to recruit their supplies by the one route that was widely open to them. Midnight passed. It was already the morning of Wednesday the 13th before the one had moved, or the other had guessed the nature of his enemy's plan. It was moonless and pitch-dark, save for the dense white mist which, in the marshy lands of that river valley, accompanies the turn of the August night. This mist had risen and covered the plain. The little villages were asleep after their disturbance by the advent of so many armed men. The cockcrows of midnight were now well past when there was stir in Marlborough's camp, and from this moment, somewhere about two of the morning of Wednesday, August the 13th, the action of Blenheim begins. PART V THE ACTION