If to follow up a great victory promptly, vigorously, and fully, be one of the distinguishing marks of a great commander, then the Duke of Marlborough was certainly one of the greatest generals of whom history tells.  Hardly anything more striking than his long and rapid series of successes in the weeks after Ramillies can be credited to a military leader, not even excepting Wellington and Napoleon.  Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, all fell into his hands.  Menin, Ostend, Dendermonde, and a few other strongholds gave pore trouble, and the brave Marshal Vendome was sent to their assistance.  It was useless; Vendome turned tail and fled, his men refusing to face the terrible English Duke.  “Every one here is ready to doff his hat, if one even mentions the name of Marlborough,” Vendome wrote to his master Louis.  The remaining towns capitulated, and the Netherlands were lost to the Spanish.  Of the more important fortresses only Mons remained.

But Marlborough’s were by no means the only successes that fell to the Allies that wonderful year.  Prince Eugene and the Duke of Savoy, the former after a rapid march, appeared before Turin, and on the 7th of September that notable place fell into the hands of the Prince, after brilliant efforts on both sides.  The result was of the utmost importance; the French were demoralized; Savoy was permanently gained for the Grand Alliance; while Piedmont was lost to the French, who were thus cut off from the kingdom of Naples.

George had often wondered what had become of his old friend Fieldsend, whom he had not seen since the capture of Landau.  But in the autumn of this year, 1706, while Fairburn was quartered at Antwerp, he received a letter from the lieutenant.  It appeared that at his own request Fieldsend had been allowed to return to Spain, and he had served ever since under Lord Peterborough.  The writer’s account of the victories gained by Peterborough and the Earl of Galway in Spain that year read more like a fairy tale than real sober history.  The sum and substance of it was that Peterborough had compelled the forces of Louis to raise the siege of Barcelona, and that Galway had actually entered Madrid in triumph.  Had the Archduke Charles had the wit and the courage to enter his capital too, his cause might have had a very different issue from that which it was now fated to have.

Just before Christmastide George received permission to return to England on leave for a few weeks.  He had never visited his old home all those years, and it was with delight he took his passage in a schooner bound for Hull.  Hardly had he landed at that port when he ran across the old skipper of the Ouseburn Lassie.  The worthy fellow did not at first recognize the schoolboy he had known in the sturdy handsome young fellow wearing a cavalry lieutenant’s uniform, and he was taken aback when George accosted him with a hearty “How goes it, old friend?  How goes it with you?” The skipper saluted in