ime
more than sixty thousand effective men into the field, this bold and
decisive course was impossible. The French army in their front was
rarely inferior to theirs, often superior; and how was it possible in
these circumstances to adventure on the perilous course of pushing on
into the heart of the enemy's territory, leaving the frontier
fortresses, yet unsubdued, in their rear? The disastrous issue of the
Blenheim campaign to the French arms, even when supported by the
friendly arms and all the fortresses of Bavaria, in the preceding year,
had shown what was the danger of such a course. The still more
calamitous issue of the Moscow campaign to the army of Napoleon,
demonstrated that even the greatest military talents, and most enormous
accumulation of military force, affords no security against the
incalculable danger of an undue advance beyond the base of military
operations. The greatest generals of the last age, fruitful beyond all
others in military talent, have acted on those principles, whenever they
had not an overwhelming superiority of forces at their command.
Wellington never invaded Spain till he was master of Ciudad Rodrigo and
Badajos; nor France till he had subdued St Sebastian and Pampeluna. The
first use which Napoleon made of his victories at Montenotte and Dego
was to compel the Court of Turin to surrender all their fortresses in
Piedmont; of the victory of Marengo, to force the Imperialists to
abandon the whole strongholds of Lombardy as far as the Adige. The
possession of the single fortress of Mantua in 1796, enabled the
Austrians to stem the flood of Napoleon's victories, and gain time to
assemble four different armies for the defence of the monarchy. The case
of half a million of men, flushed by victory, and led by able and
experienced leaders assailing a single state, is the exception, not the
rule.

Circumstances, therefore, of paramount importance and irresistible
force, compelled Marlborough to fix the war in Flanders, and convert it
into one of sieges and blockades. In entering upon such a system of
hostility, sure, and comparatively free from risk, but slow and
extremely costly, the alliance ran the greatest risk of being
shipwrecked on the numerous discords, jealousies, and separate
interests, which, in almost every instance recorded in history, have
proved fatal to a great confederacy, if it does not obtain decisive
success at the outset, before these seeds of division have had time to