A Virginia Cavalier by Molly Elliot Seawell

"You are asking me more, sir," said Lance, with something like a grim smile on his countenance, "than I could tell you in a month, or two months. But I can tell you how the Duke of Marlborough looked in battle, for I belonged to the foot-soldiers, and we were generally standing still for a time, until the cavalry had showed us where we were wanted, and we could see the generals riding over the field. The duke, you must know, sir, was not so very young when I served under him, but he was still the handsomest man in the British army. They say when he was a lieutenant that all the great ladies fell in love with him, and the one he married, I have read in a book, he was much in love with, but a deal more afraid of her than ever he was of the Grand Monarque and all his armies. They say it was a joke in England that the great duke obeyed his duchess and trembled at her word. But I dare say he is not the only man who ever ruled men and then let his wife rule him. The duke was a noble sight at parade, with his splendid chestnut charger, his uniform of red and gold, his chapeau with plumes, and his great periwig. But, to my mind, he was a finer sight when the French artillerymen were ploughing up the ground -- the French are monstrous good gunners, Mr. Washington, and hang on to their batteries like the devil -- and the musketry screaming around, and that old fox, Marshal Villars, was hammering us in a dozen places at once. Then the duke was as calm as a May morning, and was full of jokes with his officers, and whistling to himself a queer kind of a tune with no tune to it. But old Villars never caught him napping, and was caught napping himself once. That was the time we took Bouchain."

George was very much on his guard not to let Lance know that he had never heard of Bouchain -- or if he had read of it in the life of Marlborough, he had forgotten all about it -- so he only said: