Note 1540 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

This couplet and the next have a view to his supposed peculation as commander-in-chief, and his prolongation of the war on this account.—Wakefield.

The charges were the calumnies of an infuriated faction. His military career while he was commander-in-chief was free from reproach. He was never known to sanction an act of wanton harshness, or to exceed the recognised usages of war. The pretence that he prolonged the contest for the sake of gain does not require a refutation, for his accusers could never produce a fragment of colourable evidence in support of the allegation. The Duke of Wellington ridiculed the notion, and said that however much Marlborough might have loved money he must have loved his military reputation more. The poet, who denounced him as a man "stained with blood," and "infamous for plundered provinces," could, at ver. 100, call Turenne "god-like," though he gave the atrocious command to pillage and burn the Palatinate, and turned it into a smouldering desert. "Habit," says Sismondi, "had rendered him insensible to the sufferings of the people, and he subjected them to the most cruel inflictions."