Dave
which one of the following middle names did your mother choose for you:
John
Churchill
Marlborough
Earl
Duke
Sarah!
you've bitten hard on this one
Reasonably good response I think, but you seem to have neatly navigated around the less positive bits
Actually, you know I am no great fan of Napoleon so I am afraid I won't nibble on that hook!
The French bias is a scurulous rumour started by R2E players (non French) who were a little disgruntled by some close line calls
I will consider myself chastised by the devotees of CJ and confine myself to sniping from the sidelines in the fashion of someone we both know and love
As a parting shot however I would observe that devotees of Marlborough tend to accept almost everything positive about him as gospel. Quoting history or paragraphs from books at me doesn't help much either as somebody wrote it and they too may well also have had an opinion, agenda, patron who wanted a point pushed. As an example look at how some modern historians are rewriting WW2 and airbrushing the British out of anything significant.
Dave, his diaries and letters may well be interesting reading but the art of 'writing for posterity' is an old one. Politicians keep diaries now with a view to publishing them in their dotage to justify decisions or corroborate their version of events. Even you Churchill accolytes have conceded he was an extremely political man who kept all of his options open. Might you not concede that such a shrewd politician and intelligent thinker as you have painted him may also have had the foresight to make his own role appear as difficult as possible, the performance of his allies as poor as possible and the courage of his enemies as fierce as possible?
The fact that the Dutch in particular(having spent so long, so much money, so many lives and so much energy) on fighting the French suddenly between 1697 and 1704 become such a bunch of puddings strikes me as ever so slightly partizan.
Of course, I think Dave slightly missed my point about the Marlborough cult
I never suggested he started it himself. I was, I thought, pointing out that BEFORE he came to prominence, Britain(or England if you prefer) had very little to celebrate miltarily in the preceding decade. This perhaps goes some way to explaining two of the points I was actually trying to make:
1. The reason the NYW is so obscure in the English speaking world is exactly that... the lack of British success and the reason why the army only begins to celebrate its success post Namur 1695.
2. See 1 above... the advent of a 'home boy' hero provides collateral to expunge the frustrations of the previous war AND the bandwagon starts to roll at that point. The bandwagon is rolling along with the rising power and influence of Britain in Europe and further afield hence the cult begins... I think that's how religions start too! Not too many people asking too many difficult questions and all the heads nodding in agreement
I always was a non conformist
Seriously though, I would like personally to read something written by a non English historian and see if there is an alternative perspective on your hero.
Anyone know of anything objective?