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FALLING between the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great, the continental wars of Louis XIV have traditionally been of little interest to military historians. The one exception is the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14); the one exceptional commander, John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, English captain-general and commander of Allied armies. Allied with the Austrian Habsburgs, the Dutch Republic, and a host of minor allies, Marlborough led the charge against not only Bourbon France and Spain, but also against conventional notions of how war was to be waged. He sought quick and decisive battlefield victories rather than remain content with the slow pace of sieges. His quest for decisive battle reached fruition, say his biographers, in his victory at Ramillies on 23 May 1706. According to their narratives of the campaign, the battle destroyed the Spanish Netherlands by forcing its major fortresses to surrender without a fight.1 The results of this one victory validated Marlborough's battle-seeking strategy, illustrating battle's potential for decision.
The constant repetition of this theme is at odds with the outlook of many other military historians of the early modern era who have abandoned the belief in "decisive" battles and instead stress the role of fortresses and logistics in limiting military mobility. That Ramillies could eliminate the need for sieges in the well-fortified Flanders theater is a paradox. Marlborough's proponents resolve the paradox of pursuit in a fortified theater by arguing that the stopping power of fortresses was as much psychological as physical. Once a commander was willing to see beyond the confines of a conventional siege strategy, decision could be returned to warfare. But does the 1706 campaign really support the view that eighteenth-century military strategy was indecisive by choice rather than by necessity? The importance of Marlborough to Anglo-American military history and Ramillies's implications for the larger issue of decisiveness in early modern warfare demand that we reconcile these two views.
The Battle-Siege Dichotomy in Marlborough Historiography
Popular and scholarly treatments of the War of the Spanish Succession remain entrenched in "great commanders" biography.2 In the English-language literature, only Marlborough's campaigns (1702-3, 1705-11 in Flanders; 1704 in Germany) have won serious attention.3 Narratives of these campaigns construct a strict dichotomy between Marlborough's pursuit of a decisive battle...