Pen Trumps Sword.

Swift's Polemic
Defeats Mighty
Marlborough.

Dr. Ronald Fritze
March 17, 2004

The affair of displacing the Duke of Marlborough
will do all for us we desire.
[Louis XIV to his Ministers]

The War of the Spanish Succession was a long war lasting from 1701-1714. It was a bloody war with 1,250,000 dead. It was a world war that was fought in Europe but also in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. In the English colonies of North America it was known as Queen Anne's War. That name stems from the fact that Queen Anne was the monarch of England during the war.

The English person, however, most closely associated with the War of the Spanish Succession is John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722). Churchill was born into a minor gentry family of royalist sentiments. After he reached adulthood, his royalist pedigree inclined him to support of the Tory party and borderline Jacobitism. Held in suspicion by William III of Orange, Churchill got his chance for command with the coming of the War of the Spanish Succession.

Initially the war looked like it would stalemate militarily in the Spanish Netherlands as it had during the previous War of the League of Augsburg. When French and Bavarian forces threatened the Austrian capital Vienna in 1704, Marlborough engaged in a bold march to the Danube that ended in the great victory of Blenheim. Vienna was saved, Bavaria was knocked out of the war, and the French army's reputation for invincibility was broken. Other victories followed at Ramillies in 1705, Oudenarde in 1708, and Malplaquet in 1709. Slowly but surely Marlborough was breaking down the ability of the juggernaut of Louis XIV's France to continue the war.

Marlborough was one of the great military geniuses of the eighteenth century, but he did not achieve his victories single-handedly. Sidney Godolphin, the lord treasurer, managed the finances of the war; the Whig Junto ran Parliament and the government; and Sarah Churchill kept Queen Anne friendly at the court. Foreign allies also assisted Marlborough. The great Imperial general Eugene of Savoy was a valuable partner for Marlborough, as was Antonius Heinsius, the leader of the Dutch Republic. Marlborough and his war also developed many enemies. Tory voters chaffed under the high war taxes. Tory leaders resented their exclusion from any significant position in the government and Parliament. Queen Anne also came to grow weary of the war. The bloody battle of Malplaquet only served to accelerate the anti-war trend in England.

Marlborough became the target of a campaign of vilification by the Tories under the leadership of Robert Harley. Modern politics suffers too much from negative campaign advertisements and personal attacks on political figures that have nothing to do with their job performance. These tactics are frequently depicted as a modern scourge, but the fact is that nasty and dirty politics have existed throughout history. Marlborough became a victim of a political smear campaign. News of his eventual fall was greeted with delight by the harried Louis XIV.

Interestingly enough, one of the biggest of the political propagandists who brought down Marlborough was Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) of Gulliver's Travels fame. Ironically Swift was a Whig in sentiment, but since his patron Robert Harley was a Tory, Swift wrote Tory propaganda. Although Swift is treated in today's popular culture largely as a writer of a famous and beloved children's story, educated adult readers are generally aware that Swift's Gulliver's Travels was a satirical novel when it appeared in 1726. Its various lands and peoples satirize aspects of the politics and society of Swift's day.

In 1711 Swift produced The Conduct of the Allies and of the Late Ministry in Beginning and Carrying on the Present War. It was a remarkably effective piece of political propaganda that managed to criticize the Dutch, the Austrians, the Whig Junto, and the hitherto hero Marlborough in a convincing and seemingly measured way. Within a few months it had sold 10,000 copies, a rather large sale for printed work in that age. It was also extremely influential. Public and Parliamentary opinion were significantly swayed by Swift's biting satire and bristling criticism. Marlborough lost his position soon after. Swift's pen proved mightier than Marlborough's sword.

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