The “advice to officers,” printed at Perth in 1795, tells a quaint story of the conduct of the men of the 15th Foot during the battle. One of the senior officers, who knew he was unpopular because of his severity with his men, turned round to them before getting under fire, and confessed he had been to blame, and begged to fall by the hands of the French, not theirs. “March on, sir,” replied a grenadier; “the enemy is before us, and we have something else to do than think of you now.” On the French giving way, the major took off his hat and cried, “Huzzah, gentlemen!--the day is our own”; and, so saying, he fell dead, pierced through the brain; whether even then accidentally or otherwise by some of his own men or by the enemy, will never be known. But the death of officers by other bullets than those of the enemy is no new thing, if past stories and tradition be true. The victory had a twofold aspect. On the one side the political effect was enormous. It had checked for ever the idea of universal dominion which may have been in Louis’ mind. More than this, but for it the whole face of Europe might have been politically altered. Protestantism might have once more been overridden by Roman Catholicism; Stuarts and not Guelphs might have reigned in England; the growth of commercial enterprise and religious freedom might have received a serious check; and, to quote Alison without fully endorsing his views, it is possible that “the Colonial Empire of England might have withered away and perished, as that of Spain has done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo-Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it. The centralised despotism of the Roman Empire would have been renewed in Continental Europe. The chains of Romish tyranny, and with them the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have extinguished or prevented thought in the British Islands.” These are strong views and possibly exaggerated; but whatever danger might have accrued from French aggression, the victory of Blenheim effectually stopped it. On the other hand, from a military standpoint the battle shows a curious change in tactics, which forms a sort of link with those of the time preceding it and those that followed. The actual order of battle shows how little, even then, the true employment of the mounted arms with respect to the infantry was understood. For example, Tallard had sent, besides a crowd of infantry, into the confined village space of Blenheim, where the few could check the many, some twelve dragoon squadrons to be dismounted and fight on foot. He did not, evidently, understand or grasp the proportion of footmen necessary for mere passive defence, or the value of the defensive when the protective nature of the cover afforded by such a place was taken into account.