A Battle and A General You May Not Know ...

British and Austrian Infantry Advance on Blindheim Village¹
Source

The Battle of Blenheim (which you may or may not have heard of) was the greatest victory of a British general on the continent since Henry V defeated the French at Agincourt some 300 years earlier. It would be eclipsed by the Battle of Waterloo a little over a hundred years later. Which may be why you've never heard of it.

Sir John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was a member of the family which gave the world Sir Winston Churchill as well as Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. (Whose older brother Charles wrote an excellent account of the Battle of Blenheim which I'm nearly done reading.) He's the general you may or may not have heard of and the victor at Blenheim.

In order to rectify any gaps in your knowledge of European history which might exist, I give you the following, from a fellow on YouTube known as The History Chap². Sorry lads and lassies if I've given ye another way to waste time. But history is important. And sometimes it rhymes ...

So yes, I'll be spending some more time with The History Chap and I'm starting to hear from The Muse that the War of the Spanish Succession might be a great setting for a bit of historical fiction. It's a fascinating period in European history what with Louis XIV³ throwing his weight around.

By the way, the aforementioned war was fought because the King of Spain died without leaving an heir. So Louis XIV volunteered his grandson to take that throne. Other European countries, particularly Austria, objected. So, true to European custom (and truth be told, human custom), they fought a war over it, killing thousands to benefit the few.

The "noble" few.

Sigh, there's an old story there. Which is why we Americans threw off that particular yoke.

Do we ever learn?

Hard to say.

Editor's Note: As I write this, it's snowing, again. Yay, sarcastically, of course. It's pretty, but enough already!

¹ Blindheim is known as Blenheim in English.

² The fellow is a great storyteller, though his pronunciation of Bavaria drives me nuts. Then again, I know it as Bayern, not Bavaria, regardless of that latter name's pronunciation. 🙄

³ The Sun King, surely you've heard of him? (Sorry for calling you Shirley ...)