rest of the continent.

Thus England had three objects at stake:
(1) The maintenance of Protestant government at home.
(2) The maintenance of the Protestant power of Holland.
(3) The retention of a large part of the American continent.

For this reason the War of the Spanish Succession may be regarded as
the beginning of a second Hundred Years' War between England and
France (S237),[2] one destined to decide which was to build up the
great empire of the future in the western hemisphere.[3]

[2] During the next eighty years fighting was going on between England
and France, directly or indirectly, for a great part of the time.
[3] Seeley's "Expansion of England."

509. Marlborough; Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Other Victories
(1702-1709).

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (S491), commanded the English and
Dutch forces, and had for his ally Prince Eugene of Savoy, who led the
German armies. The Duke, who was known in the enemy's camps by the
flattering name of "the handsome Englishman," had risen from
obscurity. He owed the beginning of his success to his good looks and
a court intrigue. In politics he sympathized chiefly with the Tories
(S479), but his interests in the war led him to support the Whigs
(S479).

He was avaricious, unscrupulous, and teacherous. James II trusted
him, and he deceived him and went over to William (S491); William
trusted him, and he deceived him and opened a treasonable
correspondence with the dethroned James; Anne trusted him, and he
would undoubtedly have betrayed her if the so-called "Pretender"
(SS490, 491) had been able to bid high enough, or if he could have
shown him that his cause was likely to be successful. In his greed
for money the Duke hesitated at nothing; he took bribes from army
contractors, and robbed his soldiers of their pay.[1]

[1] See Hallam, Macaulay; and Thackeray's "Henry Esmond."

As a soldier, Marlborough had no equal. Voltaire says of him with
truth that "he never besieged a fortress which he did not take, nor
fought a battle which he did not win." This man, at once so able and
so false, to whom war was a private speculation rather than a contest
for right or principle, now opened the campaign. He captured those
fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands which Louis XIV had garrisoned
with French troops to menace Holland, but he could not induce the
enemy to rish a battle in the open field.

At length, Marlborough, by a brilliant movement (1704),