You're the best battle explainer! I'm so bad at it, I usually just wave my hands and mutter something about who won.
re: Wittelsbachs, they also did produce one notable Emperor in the Middle Ages, Ludwig the Bavarian, who ruled in the time the novel (and film) "The Name of the Rose" is set. Like many a medieval Emperor, he clashed with the Pope. Negotiations between his representatives and the papal representatives are why the monastery "The Name of the Rose" is set at is packed with clerical VIPs. (Our detective hero William of Baskerville, btw, is on the Wittelsbach Emperor's side.)
Bavaria teaming up with France was a thing throughout the 18th century; as Mildred notes, this resulted in MT's rival getting crowned early on only to lose Bavaria to Austrian troops before the coronation in Frankfurt was finished. His son Maximilian (Max is a very Southern German name, which is why it shows up in as many Wittelsbach rulers as "Friedrich" and "Wilhelm" does in Hohenzollerns, but also occasionally with the Habsburgs) was the one who promised MT to let go of the Wittelsbach attempts to be Emperor if he can get Bavaria back. But that wasn't the end of the France/Bavaria team-ups. It became a thing again when Napoleon happened. Which is how the Dukedom of Bavaria ended up as the Kingdom of Bavaria (which it remained until 1918), with some neat territorial gains (including my home province of Franconia) when Napoleon officially dissolved the HRE and redrew the map of the German principalities. And a new secular constitution. And no Bonaparte as King as but the previous Wittelsbach Duke (though his daughter married Eugene Beauharnais, Napoleon's step son).
As Mildred said, Bavaria is literally next door to Austria (the Austrian border is just an hour away from where I live, for example), which makes it obvious why the French when fighting the Habsburgs kept teaming up with the Wittelsbachs. The downside of teaming up with Napoleon, btw, came years later when a great many Bavarians died as allies of France in Russia in the infamous Russian winter. After which the King of Bavaria changed sides basically at the last minute which enabled him to sit at the victors' table after Napeoleon's defeat instead of losing his shiny new Kingdom (with territorial gains) and title.
So harmonious and unselfish was their [Eugene and Marlborough's] co-operation that popular medals were struck depicting them as Castor and Pollux.
Horowski also points out they were the military international bromance of the 18th Century, despite being very different men. Re: what was more the norm - remember how the 7 Years War, the first Miracle of the House of Brandenburg happened because after soundly defeating Fritz at Kunersdorf, the anti-Fritz-Alliance didn't march onto Berlin? One explanation for this were hierarchical arguments in the international leadership. On the other side, G2's son Bill the Butcher before failing ignomiously early in the 7 Years War also kept arguing with both his Hannover and his Prussian allies. Marborough and Eugene forming a dream team really was the absolute exception to the rule when it came to big name generals from different realms working together.
ETA: Controversial architectural style has been controversial throughout the ages. Tastes are divided on the matter. I leave you to form your own opinions. :
For the record, this is a very English thing, because the Baroque style never caught on in England; this palace is its one big example. Whereas in Germany, where every big and little prince wanted to have their very own mini Versailles in the late 17th and throughout the 18th century, the Baroque style for palaces is the norm, so most palaces are in that style, and when I first saw it, I didn't immediately get what was supposed to be unusual about it stylistically. Well, other than the tributes to Marlborough himself in the design, for:
This view of the Duke as an omnipotent being is also reflected in the interior design of the palace, and indeed its axis to certain features in the park. It was planned that when the Duke dined in state in his place of honour in the great saloon, he would be the climax of a great procession of architectural mass aggrandising him rather like a proscenium. The line of celebration and honour of his victorious life began with the great column of victory surmounted by his statue and detailing his triumphs, and the next point on the great axis, planted with trees in the position of troops, was the epic Roman style bridge. The approach continues through the great portico into the hall, its ceiling painted by James Thornhill with the Duke's apotheosis, then on under a great triumphal arch, through the huge marble door-case with the Duke's marble effigy above it (bearing the ducal plaudit "Nor could Augustus better calm mankind"), and into the painted saloon, the most highly decorated room in the palace, where the Duke was to have sat enthroned.
The Duke was to have sat with his back to the great 30-tonne marble bust of his vanquished foe Louis XIV, positioned high above the south portico. Here the defeated King was humiliatingly forced to look down on the great parterre and spoils of his conqueror (rather in the same way as severed heads were displayed generations earlier). The Duke did not live long enough to see this majestic tribute realised, and sit enthroned in this architectural vision. The Duke and Duchess moved into their apartments on the eastern side of the palace, but the entirety was not completed until after the Duke's death.
Given that Louis never visited England and Versailles kept being imitated all across the continent, I'm not sure the intended humiliation was ever felt in France, but hey.
Another thing: by the end of the 19th century Blenheim was pretty run down, until the current Duke of Marlborough in 1895 married American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt and with her money restored its current splendor. In fact, this was the main purpose of the marriage. To quote wiki again:
In November 1896 he coldly and openly without love married the American railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. The marriage was celebrated following lengthy negotiations with her divorced parents: her mother, Alva Vanderbilt, was desperate to see her daughter a duchess, and the bride's father, William Vanderbilt, paid for the privilege. The final price was $2,500,000 ($77.8 million today) in 50,000 shares of the capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company with a minimum 4% dividend guaranteed by the New York Central Railroad Company. The couple were given a further annual income each of $100,000 for life. The bride later claimed she had been locked in her room until she agreed to the marriage. The contract was actually signed in the vestry of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York, immediately after the wedding vows had been made. In the carriage leaving the church, Marlborough told Consuelo he loved another woman, and would never return to America, as he "despised anything that was not British".
Which is another reason why Shaw in his Charles/James conversation about John "Jack" Churchill includes that dig about the Churchills and their meanness.
You're the best battle explainer! I'm so bad at it, I usually just wave my hands and mutter something about who won.
Thank you! I'm glad I managed to make it readable. I will say, it takes a non-trivial amount of effort to get a battle down, but I'm pleased I've managed to do it for Blenheim, which is now more than just a name to me.
In return, I super appreciate your gossipy addenda, and I know cahn does too! I'm unable to reply in full at this time, because I still have three meaty Spanish Succession posts to finish researching and write (Malplaquet, lead-up to the war, and the war in more detail), but after that, I'm hoping to come back to salon.
Meanwhile, I am reading and appreciating both the parts I was already familiar with and those that are new! Excellent contributions that I suspect help make the technical stuff I'm producing more digestible by cahn.
Horowski also points out they were the military international bromance of the 18th Century, despite being very different men. Re: what was more the norm - remember how the 7 Years War, the first Miracle of the House of Brandenburg happened because after soundly defeating Fritz at Kunersdorf, the anti-Fritz-Alliance didn't march onto Berlin? One explanation for this were hierarchical arguments in the international leadership. On the other side, G2's son Bill the Butcher before failing ignomiously early in the 7 Years War also kept arguing with both his Hannover and his Prussian allies. Marborough and Eugene forming a dream team really was the absolute exception to the rule when it came to big name generals from different realms working together.
This is rather fascinating and I love it (...okay fine I am all about military international bromances between very different men). Also every time someone mentions Horowski he's saying something really interesting, argh I need to learn German. (I'm finally back at doing Duolingo, at least, thanks to my child wanting to do Habitica and Duolingo being a habit on my Habitica list.) Or, more realistically, bribe mildred at some point when I have more time (argh, I have proposals due in a month and then RMSE after that) to show me how to use her translation interface...
Re: the military bromance, I see Eugene and Marlborough have their military history issue, but I'm not sure it's worth ordering considering the blurb already makes a massive mistake, for it says:
Marlborough and Eugene were very different characters. The former was a largely self-made man who had risen through merit and court favour, whereas the latter was a man born to aristocratic privilege. While Marlborough was vain, avaricious, and concerned with his own advancement, Eugene took wealth and power for granted.
No, he didn't, because ever since Mom hightailed it out of France, he was a kid without either, and he had to run away from France and work hard to get it. Also, re: Marlborough rising through merit and court favour, here I have to bring up not Shaw's version but Charles II.'s actual quip re: young Jack Churchill/Barbara, and future Marlborough trying to apologize once he realised Charles knew: "I forgive you, young man, for I know you earn your bread this way."
The Encyplopedia Britannica's description of the Battle of Blenheim isn't as cool as Mildred's, but it does provide an example of how exactly the Marlborough-and-Eugene team work went:
Prince Eugene mounted a strong diversionary assault on his flank while Marlborough’s general Lord John Cutts mounted two unsuccessful assaults upon Blenheim. Cutts’s attacks forced Tallard to commit more reserves to defend Blenheim than he had intended, and thus served to further weaken the French centre. Since Eugene kept Marsin fully occupied, Marlborough then launched the main attack across the Nebel River against the French centre. Marlborough’s advance was hotly contested by French cavalry attacks, and only his personal direction and Eugene’s selfless loan of one of his own cavalry corps enabled Marlborough to maintain the momentum of his attack. Once successfully launched, however, the attack proved irresistible. The Allied cavalry broke through the French centre, dividing Marsin’s army from that of Tallard, and then wheeled left, sweeping Tallard’s forces into the Danube River.
Have some more quotes:
Eugene about his multinationality: "I have three hearts, a passionate Italian heart with which to confront my enemies, and obedient French heart for my monarch and a loyal German heart for my friends."
(Eugene: lived long before the French Revolution. Seriously though, you can tell he spent his youth in the France of Louis XIV by that remark, which indeed prized obedience to the (absolute) monarch.)
Eugene about Marlborough, when they first joined up: “a man of high quality, courageous, extremely well-disposed, and with a keen desire to achieve something; with all these qualities he understands thoroughly that one cannot become a general in a day, and he is diffident about himself.”
From a doctoral thesis, about which more in a moment:
In spite of historians’ different takes on the generalships of Eugene and Marlborough, Marlborough would later write that “Prince Eugene and I shall never differ about our share of laurels.”216 Both generals, however, “exposed their person repeatedly,” reported one officer. “Eugen went so far that it is almost a miracle that he escaped with his life.”
You can see why Fritz was a fan (though feeling let down when meeting old Eugene in person, which changed somewhat in his recollection once he himself had gotten old).
The doctoral thesis is about the fake memoirs, which in actually were written by Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne, whom we've met before; he was, among other things, part of Joseph's entourage at Neisse when Joseph met Fritz and is responsible for both the "Fritz & Co. wear white uniforms to "spare Austrian feelings" anecdote and the story about Fritz visiting the Antinous statue (which btw used to belong to Eugene, remember? Then Lichtenstein, then Fritz). Now I wronged him in that he didn't write the fake Eugene memoirs for cash; in fact, they were not published within his life time, but only after his death, when they were found among his papers. The doctoral thesis, which compares to the memoirs to their 18th century source, Mauvillon's biography "Life of Prince Eugene", which they are far too close to for, the thesis writer argues, contemporaries not to notice, or they should have, i.e. Ligne didn't expect them to be taken in. He mainly wrote them because he hero-worshipped Eugene and had literary ambitions, plus he wanted to vent about the French (post Diplomatic Revolution Austria's allies, about which de Ligne was not happy). Basically, it's fannish first person RPF. However, whatever his expectations, there were enough people taking the memoirs for the genuine article in the 19th century that they kept being used as sources, and some (i.e. English wiki, though not, note, German wiki) do so to this day.
Googling about Eugene and Marlborough, btw, can bring you weird places. Not this doctoral thesis, something else. Here I was, reading what first came across as a solid esay about Eugene, here, and then there's this passage:
In 1716 Austria and Venice went to war with Turkey and at Peterwardein in present day Serbia, Eugene defeated an army twice his army's size. This earned him from the Pope a consecrated had and sword which was the customary Papal award for victories over the infidel. Dare I hope that such a hat and sword be awarded by His Holiness to Eugene's successor victor over the infidels, Secretary Rumsfeld, for his victory at Baghdad over the infidel Saddam?
....What? thought I. Is this sarcasm? Irony? Alas, no. Later on:
But in a brilliant surprise counterattack, in which Eugene had been careful to well-fortify his troops with wine, brandy and beer, the Turks were again annihilated and Belgrade was won for Christendom (let's pray that Mr. Rumsfeld can pull off a similar coup).
...yeah. I checked the date - seems the essay was a lecture given in 2003 by one William B. Warren in New York City. Good lord. Well, Fritz had The Worst Fanboys. Go figure that Eugene has The Terrible Fanboys. Just for the record, William B. Warren, I suspect Eugene might have figured out you can't invade a country under a blatantly forged pretext, piss off nearly all your former allies ahead of this, expect the population to applaud you and then leave behind chaos. Given the importance he put on making and keeping alliances, you might say he'd have done the opposite. Also, if you're actually comparing the war against the Turks (who were doing the invading) with the Iraq Invasion, then you were definitely not a member of the reality based community in 2003 already.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Blenheim
Date: 2021-05-22 06:21 am (UTC)You're the best battle explainer! I'm so bad at it, I usually just wave my hands and mutter something about who won.
re: Wittelsbachs, they also did produce one notable Emperor in the Middle Ages, Ludwig the Bavarian, who ruled in the time the novel (and film) "The Name of the Rose" is set. Like many a medieval Emperor, he clashed with the Pope. Negotiations between his representatives and the papal representatives are why the monastery "The Name of the Rose" is set at is packed with clerical VIPs. (Our detective hero William of Baskerville, btw, is on the Wittelsbach Emperor's side.)
Bavaria teaming up with France was a thing throughout the 18th century; as Mildred notes, this resulted in MT's rival getting crowned early on only to lose Bavaria to Austrian troops before the coronation in Frankfurt was finished. His son Maximilian (Max is a very Southern German name, which is why it shows up in as many Wittelsbach rulers as "Friedrich" and "Wilhelm" does in Hohenzollerns, but also occasionally with the Habsburgs) was the one who promised MT to let go of the Wittelsbach attempts to be Emperor if he can get Bavaria back. But that wasn't the end of the France/Bavaria team-ups. It became a thing again when Napoleon happened. Which is how the Dukedom of Bavaria ended up as the Kingdom of Bavaria (which it remained until 1918), with some neat territorial gains (including my home province of Franconia) when Napoleon officially dissolved the HRE and redrew the map of the German principalities. And a new secular constitution. And no Bonaparte as King as but the previous Wittelsbach Duke (though his daughter married Eugene Beauharnais, Napoleon's step son).
As Mildred said, Bavaria is literally next door to Austria (the Austrian border is just an hour away from where I live, for example), which makes it obvious why the French when fighting the Habsburgs kept teaming up with the Wittelsbachs. The downside of teaming up with Napoleon, btw, came years later when a great many Bavarians died as allies of France in Russia in the infamous Russian winter. After which the King of Bavaria changed sides basically at the last minute which enabled him to sit at the victors' table after Napeoleon's defeat instead of losing his shiny new Kingdom (with territorial gains) and title.
So harmonious and unselfish was their [Eugene and Marlborough's] co-operation that popular medals were struck depicting them as Castor and Pollux.
Horowski also points out they were the military international bromance of the 18th Century, despite being very different men. Re: what was more the norm - remember how the 7 Years War, the first Miracle of the House of Brandenburg happened because after soundly defeating Fritz at Kunersdorf, the anti-Fritz-Alliance didn't march onto Berlin? One explanation for this were hierarchical arguments in the international leadership. On the other side, G2's son Bill the Butcher before failing ignomiously early in the 7 Years War also kept arguing with both his Hannover and his Prussian allies. Marborough and Eugene forming a dream team really was the absolute exception to the rule when it came to big name generals from different realms working together.
ETA: Controversial architectural style has been controversial throughout the ages. Tastes are divided on the matter. I leave you to form your own opinions. :
For the record, this is a very English thing, because the Baroque style never caught on in England; this palace is its one big example. Whereas in Germany, where every big and little prince wanted to have their very own mini Versailles in the late 17th and throughout the 18th century, the Baroque style for palaces is the norm, so most palaces are in that style, and when I first saw it, I didn't immediately get what was supposed to be unusual about it stylistically. Well, other than the tributes to Marlborough himself in the design, for:
This view of the Duke as an omnipotent being is also reflected in the interior design of the palace, and indeed its axis to certain features in the park. It was planned that when the Duke dined in state in his place of honour in the great saloon, he would be the climax of a great procession of architectural mass aggrandising him rather like a proscenium. The line of celebration and honour of his victorious life began with the great column of victory surmounted by his statue and detailing his triumphs, and the next point on the great axis, planted with trees in the position of troops, was the epic Roman style bridge. The approach continues through the great portico into the hall, its ceiling painted by James Thornhill with the Duke's apotheosis, then on under a great triumphal arch, through the huge marble door-case with the Duke's marble effigy above it (bearing the ducal plaudit "Nor could Augustus better calm mankind"), and into the painted saloon, the most highly decorated room in the palace, where the Duke was to have sat enthroned.
The Duke was to have sat with his back to the great 30-tonne marble bust of his vanquished foe Louis XIV, positioned high above the south portico. Here the defeated King was humiliatingly forced to look down on the great parterre and spoils of his conqueror (rather in the same way as severed heads were displayed generations earlier). The Duke did not live long enough to see this majestic tribute realised, and sit enthroned in this architectural vision. The Duke and Duchess moved into their apartments on the eastern side of the palace, but the entirety was not completed until after the Duke's death.
Given that Louis never visited England and Versailles kept being imitated all across the continent, I'm not sure the intended humiliation was ever felt in France, but hey.
Another thing: by the end of the 19th century Blenheim was pretty run down, until the current Duke of Marlborough in 1895 married American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt and with her money restored its current splendor. In fact, this was the main purpose of the marriage. To quote wiki again:
In November 1896 he coldly and openly without love married the American railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. The marriage was celebrated following lengthy negotiations with her divorced parents: her mother, Alva Vanderbilt, was desperate to see her daughter a duchess, and the bride's father, William Vanderbilt, paid for the privilege. The final price was $2,500,000 ($77.8 million today) in 50,000 shares of the capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company with a minimum 4% dividend guaranteed by the New York Central Railroad Company. The couple were given a further annual income each of $100,000 for life. The bride later claimed she had been locked in her room until she agreed to the marriage. The contract was actually signed in the vestry of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York, immediately after the wedding vows had been made. In the carriage leaving the church, Marlborough told Consuelo he loved another woman, and would never return to America, as he "despised anything that was not British".
Which is another reason why Shaw in his Charles/James conversation about John "Jack" Churchill includes that dig about the Churchills and their meanness.
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Blenheim
Date: 2021-05-22 02:34 pm (UTC)You're the best battle explainer! I'm so bad at it, I usually just wave my hands and mutter something about who won.
Thank you! I'm glad I managed to make it readable. I will say, it takes a non-trivial amount of effort to get a battle down, but I'm pleased I've managed to do it for Blenheim, which is now more than just a name to me.
In return, I super appreciate your gossipy addenda, and I know
Meanwhile, I am reading and appreciating both the parts I was already familiar with and those that are new! Excellent contributions that I suspect help make the technical stuff I'm producing more digestible by
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Blenheim
Date: 2021-05-23 04:45 am (UTC)This is rather fascinating and I love it (...okay fine I am all about military international bromances between very different men). Also every time someone mentions Horowski he's saying something really interesting, argh I need to learn German. (I'm finally back at doing Duolingo, at least, thanks to my child wanting to do Habitica and Duolingo being a habit on my Habitica list.) Or, more realistically, bribe mildred at some point when I have more time (argh, I have proposals due in a month and then RMSE after that) to show me how to use her translation interface...
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Blenheim
Date: 2021-05-23 09:33 am (UTC)Marlborough and Eugene were very different characters. The former was a largely self-made man who had risen through merit and court favour, whereas the latter was a man born to aristocratic privilege. While Marlborough was vain, avaricious, and concerned with his own advancement, Eugene took wealth and power for granted.
No, he didn't, because ever since Mom hightailed it out of France, he was a kid without either, and he had to run away from France and work hard to get it. Also, re: Marlborough rising through merit and court favour, here I have to bring up not Shaw's version but Charles II.'s actual quip re: young Jack Churchill/Barbara, and future Marlborough trying to apologize once he realised Charles knew: "I forgive you, young man, for I know you earn your bread this way."
The Encyplopedia Britannica's description of the Battle of Blenheim isn't as cool as Mildred's, but it does provide an example of how exactly the Marlborough-and-Eugene team work went:
Prince Eugene mounted a strong diversionary assault on his flank while Marlborough’s general Lord John Cutts mounted two unsuccessful assaults upon Blenheim. Cutts’s attacks forced Tallard to commit more reserves to defend Blenheim than he had intended, and thus served to further weaken the French centre. Since Eugene kept Marsin fully occupied, Marlborough then launched the main attack across the Nebel River against the French centre. Marlborough’s advance was hotly contested by French cavalry attacks, and only his personal direction and Eugene’s selfless loan of one of his own cavalry corps enabled Marlborough to maintain the momentum of his attack. Once successfully launched, however, the attack proved irresistible. The Allied cavalry broke through the French centre, dividing Marsin’s army from that of Tallard, and then wheeled left, sweeping Tallard’s forces into the Danube River.
Have some more quotes:
Eugene about his multinationality: "I have three hearts, a passionate Italian heart with which to confront my enemies, and obedient French heart for my monarch and a loyal German heart for my friends."
(Eugene: lived long before the French Revolution. Seriously though, you can tell he spent his youth in the France of Louis XIV by that remark, which indeed prized obedience to the (absolute) monarch.)
Eugene about Marlborough, when they first joined up: “a man of high quality, courageous, extremely well-disposed, and with a keen desire to achieve something; with all these qualities he understands thoroughly that one cannot become a general in a day, and he is diffident about himself.”
From a doctoral thesis, about which more in a moment:
In spite of historians’ different takes on the generalships of Eugene and Marlborough, Marlborough would later write that “Prince Eugene and I shall never differ about our share of laurels.”216 Both generals, however, “exposed their person repeatedly,” reported one officer. “Eugen went so far that it is almost a miracle that he escaped with his life.”
You can see why Fritz was a fan (though feeling let down when meeting old Eugene in person, which changed somewhat in his recollection once he himself had gotten old).
The doctoral thesis is about the fake memoirs, which in actually were written by Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne, whom we've met before; he was, among other things, part of Joseph's entourage at Neisse when Joseph met Fritz and is responsible for both the "Fritz & Co. wear white uniforms to "spare Austrian feelings" anecdote and the story about Fritz visiting the Antinous statue (which btw used to belong to Eugene, remember? Then Lichtenstein, then Fritz). Now I wronged him in that he didn't write the fake Eugene memoirs for cash; in fact, they were not published within his life time, but only after his death, when they were found among his papers. The doctoral thesis, which compares to the memoirs to their 18th century source, Mauvillon's biography "Life of Prince Eugene", which they are far too close to for, the thesis writer argues, contemporaries not to notice, or they should have, i.e. Ligne didn't expect them to be taken in. He mainly wrote them because he hero-worshipped Eugene and had literary ambitions, plus he wanted to vent about the French (post Diplomatic Revolution Austria's allies, about which de Ligne was not happy). Basically, it's fannish first person RPF. However, whatever his expectations, there were enough people taking the memoirs for the genuine article in the 19th century that they kept being used as sources, and some (i.e. English wiki, though not, note, German wiki) do so to this day.
Googling about Eugene and Marlborough, btw, can bring you weird places. Not this doctoral thesis, something else. Here I was, reading what first came across as a solid esay about Eugene, here, and then there's this passage:
In 1716 Austria and Venice went to war with Turkey and at Peterwardein in present day Serbia, Eugene defeated an army twice his army's size. This earned him from the Pope a consecrated had and sword which was the customary Papal award for victories over the infidel. Dare I hope that such a hat and sword be awarded by His Holiness to Eugene's successor victor over the infidels, Secretary Rumsfeld, for his victory at Baghdad over the infidel Saddam?
....What? thought I. Is this sarcasm? Irony? Alas, no. Later on:
But in a brilliant surprise counterattack, in which Eugene had been careful to well-fortify his troops with wine, brandy and beer, the Turks were again annihilated and Belgrade was won for Christendom (let's pray that Mr. Rumsfeld can pull off a similar coup).
...yeah. I checked the date - seems the essay was a lecture given in 2003 by one William B. Warren in New York City. Good lord. Well, Fritz had The Worst Fanboys. Go figure that Eugene has The Terrible Fanboys. Just for the record, William B. Warren, I suspect Eugene might have figured out you can't invade a country under a blatantly forged pretext, piss off nearly all your former allies ahead of this, expect the population to applaud you and then leave behind chaos. Given the importance he put on making and keeping alliances, you might say he'd have done the opposite. Also, if you're actually comparing the war against the Turks (who were doing the invading) with the Iraq Invasion, then you were definitely not a member of the reality based community in 2003 already.
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Blenheim
Date: 2021-05-27 04:41 am (UTC)LOL
He mainly wrote them because he hero-worshipped Eugene and had literary ambitions, plus he wanted to vent about the French
Awwww! Okay, this is actually kinda cute, if true.