[2008.06.19]The Duke of Marlborough马尔伯罗公爵

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[2008.06.19]The Duke of Marlborough马尔伯罗公爵
The Duke of Marlborough
Aristocracy at work
Jun 19th 2008 From The Economist print edition
马尔伯罗公爵
尽职的贵族

Bridgeman Art Library



2008-6-26 00:12
A new life of a general who moved through court and battlefield with equal verve老将新传——从宫廷到战场，活力依旧
Marlborough: England's Fragile GeniusBy Richard HolmesHarper Press; 564 pages; £25Buy it atAmazon.co.uk


ARISTOCRACY seems such a quaint form of government now that it is sometimes hard to remember that it was once thought to be the only viable option, at least for a state above a certain size. The life of the first Duke of Marlborough is, in part, an illustration of how effective it could be. The page boy, sent to court to restore his family’s wealth, got his break in the army after catching the king’s eye.
贵族政治似乎是如此奇妙的一种政体形式。因为曾经一度人们认为，至少对于某种规模程度以上的国家，贵族政治是唯一可行的选择。贵族政治能多高效？马尔伯罗一世公爵约翰的事迹一定范围内作了注解。这个小侍童被送到宫中以恢复家族的财富，却在得到国王的赏识后于军中取得了突破性的成就。

This sounds like a hopelessly inefficient way to pick a military leader, but Marlborough turned out to be a brilliant commander who, as his descendant and biographer, Winston Churchill, wrote, never fought a battle he did not win or saw a town he could not take.
这听起来似乎是一种无望的遴选将领的低效途径，胆识马尔伯罗却成为了一名辉煌的指挥官。他正如其后人，也是其传记作者，温斯顿，丘吉尔所述，从未陷于一场没有把握的仗，从不留恋一座无法攻克的城。

Ever since Churchill described Marlborough’s childhood at Ashe House in Devon, the duke’s urge to get on has been ascribed to the discomfort he felt at the disjuncture between his family’s high social status and its empty pockets. His family had been on the losing side during the English civil war and it had cost them. Yet the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 created opportunities for impecunious Royalists, and Marlborough availed himself of them.
从丘吉尔所述的在德文郡的阿什的童年起，马尔伯罗公爵便已早怀急于出人头地之志了。而这要归功于他对于家族高贵的社会地位与经济上的家道中落两者之间的反差的失落。他的家族在英格兰内战中没落，现在轮到他们来品尝这苦果。然而1660年王室的复兴给没落的保皇党人创造了机会，而马尔伯罗抓住了它们。

At court, he used his looks to charm the right women and his ability to avoid making enemies. He was a diplomat before he became a commander, something that proved useful later when he had to keep together the coalition of armies ranged against France. His most significant conquest at court was not a rich dowager but Sarah, who became his wife.
在宫中，他利用自己英俊的相貌来迎合那些贵妇，并且凭借自己的才干避免树敌。在成为一名指挥官之前，他是一位外交家。当之后不得不维持军事上的反法同盟时，指挥官的较色显然很有效。他在宫廷中最重要的征服并非哪一位富有的遗孀，而是成为他妻子的莎拉。

She, like him, was less grand than her presence in royal circles implied. She was beautiful and pushy and they loved each other, which seems surprising given the age and the velvet-and-brocade backdrop to their courtship. She also had a tough streak; she quarrelled so often with Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect of the Marlboroughs’ palace at Blenheim in Oxfordshire, that she ended up banning him from the place, denying Vanbrugh the chance to look at his masterpiece. Her children, pictured above with their duke and duchess, found her equally hard to get along with. Yet she fed Marlborough’s ambition and together they perfected the skill of negotiating the circles of influence at court.
她的存在，如同马尔伯罗，在已提到的王室社交圈中意义非凡。她美貌，有进取心，并且与马尔伯罗互相爱着对方。就当时的年代与两人相恋时期的浮华背景看来，这很令人惊讶。她也有着粗暴的个性；她与牛津郡布伦亨的马尔伯罗宫（丘吉尔宫）的建筑设计师范布勒爵士争吵如此频繁以至于将他赶出了马尔伯罗宫，拒绝给他欣赏自己杰作的机会。她的子女在上图中与公爵及其夫人一同所示。他们发现她同样难以相处。然而她满足了马尔伯罗的野心，而且两人一同完美的展示了与宫中各派系势力周旋妥协的艺术。

Power that came like this could easily be taken away. Marlborough deserted his long-time patron, James II, in favour of William of Orange. Yet he later found himself sidelined under suspicion of having sympathies with the deposed monarch’s line, before coming back into favour. Sarah’s great moment came with the accession of her friend Anne to the throne, and yet when she fell out with the monarch she too was dumped. In a final fit of pique Sarah had all the fixtures and fittings removed from her apartments in the royal household. Her queen responded by suspending payments on Blenheim Palace.
悖入悖出，权力亦不能免俗。马尔伯罗抛弃了他的长期赞助人詹姆斯二世，转投奥兰治亲王威廉。然而不久他发现自己在重蒙恩宠之前，因有同情旧主废王阵线的嫌疑而被边缘化了。莎拉的好日子随着其闺中密友安妮登上王位而到来，但随之当她与安妮撕破脸皮时，她也被弃之一隅。她将王室中自己的房间里所有的家具衣服拿走以作为在愤怒驱使下最后的反击。女王则回馈以延宕支付布伦亨宫开支的方式。

Richard Holmes has written a lot of military history, and has also taught it at Sandhurst, a British school for army officers. He is a good storyteller and has a rather 17th-century way of sketching characters: Charles XII of Sweden, for example, “abstained from women and alcohol, but enjoyed wrestling with bears”. His chief interest, though, remains those battles where maps and tactics are more important than charm, uncertainty and luck.
Richard Holmes已经写了许多军事史，也在英国的桑德赫斯特军事学院（丘吉尔亦曾于此学习）教授军事史。他是一个很好的讲故事者，并且具有标准的17世纪的叙事方式：举例而言，瑞典的查尔斯十二世，“对女人与酒精退避三舍，却热衷于与狗熊摔跤” 。当然，相比于魅力，无常与运气，他主要的兴趣仍旧保持在那些规划与战略占据更重要地位的战役中。

Although Marlborough was no original tactician, Mr Holmes argues persuasively that the duke’s skill lay in probing his opponent’s defences, then moving quickly and committing troops when a weakness opened up. He did this again and again, and with the exception of the battle of Malplaquet, loss of life on his own side was relatively low.
虽然马尔伯罗并非天生帅才，Holmes先生依旧令人信服的指出公爵的战争艺术建立在试探对手的防线，随后快速移动并在发现对手弱点时集中兵力突击的基础上。他一次次的重复这个战术，然而马尔普拉奎特战役却是个例外，除此之外联军这边的损失相对均比较低。

After all this winning, though, Marlborough ended up being brought low by an inquiry into the use of public funds during the war, which found that he had been raking off 2.5% of the money paid to the soldiers serving abroad and had also accepted a large cheque from the merchants who supplied the men with bread. Yet the king forgave the boy from Ashe House these indiscretions, which allowed his descendants to grow up in a palace where they live to this day.
然而在取得这些胜利之后，马尔伯罗却因一场对于战争中公共经费使用的质询而陷入低谷。他被发现贪墨了本应给予海外作战士兵的经费的2.5%，并且也曾接受过供应军队面包的商人的巨额支票回扣。然而国王还是原谅了这个从阿什小镇走出的男孩的这些轻率之举，而这也确保了他的后代能在马尔伯罗宫中安然成长（这其中自然有大名鼎鼎的温斯顿，丘吉尔），直到今天也是如此。
Marlborough: England’s Fragile Genius.By Richard Holmes.Harper Press; 564 pages; £25

[ 本帖最后由 showcraft 于 2008-6-26 18:34 编辑 ]

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