worth more than 4d.; the other of these being the Monte Video government, whose "policy in every respect is the reverse, for it "gives every part of the republic all the advantages of foreign commerce."*

دو

We conclude by showing, and that by a single extract from the letter of General O'Brien to Lord Clarendon, how deep an interest unfortunate Ireland has, or had, in the defeat of Rosas, and the pacification of all the states around La Plata:

"My Lord," (says General O'Brien, writing in 1848), "I left England last year for the purpose of giving effect to the same plan, which, if I had been permitted, I would have accomplished in 1823, and I resolved, if it were possible, to secure it in some place which might be sheltered from the aggressions of Rosas, (should he be inclined to attack men merely because they were Irish emigrants,) whilst they should be safe from the distractions of civil war.

"My Lord, I have now returned to England: I have so far succeeded in the project I have so long cherished. I have, (to commence with,) secured for Irish emigrants on the east side of the Uruguay, nearly a million of acres of the finest land in the world-a pure virgin soil, abundantly supplied with wood and water, and the worst acre of which is equal to the best land in England.

"The fee simple of this is purchasable from 3s. 6d. to 5s 6d. per acre, the price varying between these two points according to locality. And I have secured this land in the very heart of the Orientals, who are ready to receive the Irish as brothers-to greet them as the compatriots of those who shed their best blood in fighting for, and winning the independence of the several states of South America.

"There is a home-there is welcome-there is food-there is land-there is the certainty of prosperity for the Irishman in the Oriental Republic del Uruguay. All that is required-all that is wanted to raise him from his squalid misery, is the expense of transit from Ireland to Monte Video, a steam voyage of thirty days. This can be effected at an expense of about £8 for each individual.

"Bear in mind, my Lord, that the Uruguay, on the banks of which I propose to place those Irish emigrants, is navigable for more than a thousand miles-that it passes through rich and fruitful countries to the back settlements of Brazil-that it finds access to Paraguay, to Bolivia, and to Peru, by the two great navigable rivers, the Bermejo and the Pilcamajo-that it runs along soils

* Observations on the present state of the affairs of the River Plate, by Thomas Baines, pp. 3-11.

rich in everything but inhabitants; for even the Oriental Republic del Uruguay may be said to be uninhabited, when its native population has not more than eighty thousand, if it makes population fill a space of land as large as that of England; and yet, that it, as well as the countries beyond it, which have been visited by the officers of Her Majesty's Navy, have been the constant subject of their wonder, their admiration, and their praise. My Lord, there is not an admiral, a commodore, nor a captain in her majesty's service who has been in those countries, to whom I do not refer you, perfectly confident that they will bear out my assertion, when I declare, that in climate as in soil, they may be regarded as the very finest portions of the globe."*

ART. III.-1. The Military Life of John, Duke of Marlborough. By ARCHIBALD ALISON, F.R.S., author of the "History of Europe. With Maps and Plans. Blackwood, 1848.

2. Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, with his Original Correspondence. By WILLIAM COXE, &c. A new edition, revised, (and with Notes,) by JOHN WADE. Three vols., with Maps and Plans. Bohn's Standard Library.' Bohn, 1848.

3. The Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies, vol. xi, 'Knight's Weekly Volume for all Readers.' Cox, 1846.

4. The Letters and Dispatches of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, from 1702 to 1712. Edited by General the Right Hon. Sir GEORGE MURRAY. Five vols. London, Murray, 1845. 5. Journals of Sieges carried on by the Army under the Duke of Wellington in Spain, during the years 1811 to 1814; with Meтоranda relative to the Lines thrown up to cover Lisbon in 1810. By the late Major-General Sir JOHN T. JONES, Bart. K.C.B. Third edition, with Notes and Additions. Edited by Lieutenant-Colonel H. D. JONES, R. E. Three vols. 8vo. Weale, 1846.

6. Aide-Memoire to the Military Sciences; framed from contributions of Officers of the different Services, and edited by a Committee of the Corps of Royal Engineers. Vol. i., and vol. ii. part 1. London: Weale, 1845-1848.

a

IT is not very easy for civilian to judge the merit of military achievements, otherwise than by the authority

* Letter of General O'Brien to the Earl of Clarendon, lithographed for private circulation.

of military men; nor sometimes very easy even by that authority. To say nothing of Colonel Mitchel and Napoleon, go back no further than the Seven Years' War. We see there, renowned generals, fierce battles, rapid marches; a scanty population in an open country, defending itself against confederate nations who assail it on all sides; the unequal contest maintained for seven campaigns by the genius of one man, against experience, valour, and numbers; the capacity of the generals on both sides lauded with a rare unanimity, and alike by critics professional and non-professional; the war itself creating, or supposed to create, a new era in the military art; to have shared in it a proof of merit from which there was no appeal; new exercise and new evolutions introduced into every army of Europe on the faith of Prussian victories; "short clothes, little hats, tight breeches, high-heeled shoes," becoming everywhere the rage as military equipments, because they were Prussian; and finally, the author of this costume, of these exercises, of these wonderful victories, of this heroic constancy and marvellous fertility of resources, unanimously crowned by astonished and admiring Europe, with a style and title of "the Great." What is here wanting in the shape of authority, to impress the judgment of the unlearned student? The verdict both of friends and enemies was unanimous, and even time so far sanctioned it, that it was growing into a venerable and unchallenged antiquity of merit, when thirty years later the French revolution burst upon the world, and defaced this, as well as so many older and more seasoned relics of bygone times.

When the critic of Napoleon's campaigns touches upon this once famous struggle, he treats it with very scanty reverence. So far from being a war with giants, he almost finds it to be a war of pigmies. The military art at that period, instead of advancing, went back a step, and brought us not very far from the ignorance of the middle age. In the Austrian armies especially it was a decided retrogression and not improvement. Though Marshal Daun, who then enjoyed a huge reputation, understood pretty well how to arrange an encampment and to draw up a line of battle, he had no title to the credit of a great captain, and in his

* General Lloyd.

place an ordinary general of our times would have crushed Frederic and seized Prussia. Frederic indeed towers above the small fry by whom he is surrounded; but, as a warrior, is great mainly by the contrast. Strategy, the art of profiting by victory, the great operations of war, were unknown to him; he was saved by nothing but the extravagantly absurd conduct of his enemies; and his fall was become inevitable, just when their impolicy gave him life by the peace of Hubertsberg. Thus writes the great military critic of our age; and when instructed professional judgments, with only an interval of ten years between them, f can thus fluctuate with regard to an art which in its main principles is admitted to be stationary, which with every possible discrepancy of detail, is the same in substance under Hannibal and Cæsar as under Napoleon and Wellington, what security can the civilian feel in the accuracy or value of his unprofessional guesses after the truth?

*

And yet here, as in so many other things, Time is the great rectifier of mistaken opinions. What has stood the test of many changes of form-what is equally appreciated by different ages, different nations, different characters of men-what is recognized as containing an essential value under all shiftings of fashion, methods and details this in any art may safely be pronounced genuine. Upon these matters, therefore, many rehearings are necessary, and it is only when Time has probed the case on all sides, and fathomed its deepest recesses, that a final verdict can be said to be pronounced.

With such an example before us, however, those readers of history who are studious of their country's military fame, may be disposed to shrink a little from apprehension, lest under the searching investigation of later times, other great names, of which we are habitually proud, may have a like fate with that of Frederic. We say nothing of Cromwell, whose military skill forms, perhaps, a subordinate part of his just fame; but what shall we say of Marlborough? the "Great Duke" of the eighteenth century; the rival and friend of Prince Eugene; the hero of Blenheim and Ramilies; the terror and humbler of France, in what was

* Jomini on the Seven Years' War-passim, and particularly vol. i. pp. 50, 323: vol. iii. pp. 238, 323, 336.

† Jomini's first work was written in 1803.

then the very plenitude of her strength? Is this another instance of exaggerated reputation? Is the manor of Woodstock, not merely in its present keeping, but in the very source and origin of the grant, a quackery and a sham? Was Marlborough, too, only Gulliver among the Lilliputians, and did he seem great only because his antagonists were dwarfs? The loudly expressed verdict of his own times was very different, and in various ways succeeding generations of Englishmen have made known that they still feel it right to be proud of the only military reputation pretending to the highest grade that we have to show between Cromwell and Wellington; that is, during a century and a half.

A suspicious mind would hardly be satisfied, however, with this tacit English complacency. The things done seem great still, but have they really been subjected to a fresh examination? Is what we now hear more than the echo of past homage? Or have the achievements with which all Europe rung when they were performed, been strictly tested by the principles of our later warfare? Jomini, so far as our knowledge of his writings extends, says little of Marlborough. He speaks of him, indeed, in the same breath with Eugene and Turenne, a trio whom he seems to contrast, rather than compare, with Frederic. Eugene he calls with admiration, "the greatest captain of his age;" he speaks of Cæsar, Scipio, and the cousul Nero applying the true principles of war as well as Marlborough and Eugene, not to say better;" and in other places he treats the campaigns of these heroes of the eighteenth century as not unworthy to be named with those of his own time.*

We must not forget, too, the testimony of a greater than Jomini. Napoleon had a very high opinion of the military genius of the English captain; regretted that the "hero of Blenheim" was not better known to French readers; and to put an end to this neglect, ordered the French life of Marlborough to be written, printed at the imperial press, and adorned with a map of the theatre of war, gravée par ordre de sa Majesté imperiale et royale Napoleon ler." How far this work can be taken as expressing Napoleon's views in detail, it is hard to say. It

* Precis, vol. i. pp. 17, 125, 273, 289.

: