the popular hero of the war. It is said that couriers awaited his arrival at all the home ports to offer him the choice of the Ordnance or the Horse Guards. His appointment to the Ordnance bore the date of the 1st of July 1763, and three years later he became commander-in-chief. In this position he was attacked by “Junius,” and a heated discussion arose, as the writer had taken the greatest pains in assailing the most popular member of the Grafton ministry. In 1770 Granby, worn out by political and financial trouble, resigned all his offices, except the colonelcy of the Blues. He died at Scarborough on the 18th of October 1770. He had been made a privy councillor in 1760, lord lieutenant of Derbyshire in 1762, and LL.D. of Cambridge in 1769.
Two portraits of Granby were painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of which is now in the National Gallery. His contemporary popularity is indicated by the number of inns and public-houses which took his name and had his portrait as sign-board.
GRAN CHACO, an extensive region in the heart of South
America belonging to the La Plata basin, stretching from 20°
to 29° S. lat., and divided between the republics of Argentine,
Bolivia and Paraguay, with a small district of south-western
Matto Grosso (Brazil). Its area is estimated at from 250,000
to 425,000 sq. m., but the true Chaco region probably does not
exceed 300,000 sq. m. The greater part is covered with marshes,
lagoons and dense tropical jungle and forest, and is still unexplored.
On its southern and western borders there are extensive
tracts of open woodland, intermingled with grassy plains,
while on the northern side in Bolivia are large areas of open
country subject to inundations in the rainy season. In general
terms the Gran Chaco may be described as a great plain sloping
gently to the S.E., traversed in the same direction by two great
rivers, the Pilcomayo and Bermejo, whose sluggish courses are
not navigable because of sand-banks, barriers of overturned trees
and floating vegetation, and confusing channels. This excludes
that part of eastern Bolivia belonging to the Amazon basin,
which is sometimes described as part of the Chaco. The greater
part of its territory is occupied by nomadic tribes of Indians,
some of whom are still unsubdued, while others, like the Matacos,
are sometimes to be found on neighbouring sugar estates and
estancias as labourers during the busy season. The forest wealth
of the Chaco region is incalculable and apparently inexhaustible,
consisting of a great variety of palms and valuable cabinet
woods, building timber, &c. Its extensive tracts of “quebracho
Colorado” (Loxopterygium Lorentzii) are of very great value
because of its use in tanning leather. Both the wood and its
extract are largely exported. Civilization is slowly gaining
footholds in this region along the southern and eastern borders.
GRAND ALLIANCE, WAR OF THE (alternatively called the
War of the League of Augsburg), the third[1] of the great aggressive
wars waged by Louis XIV. of France against Spain, the Empire,
Great Britain, Holland and other states. The two earlier wars,
which are redeemed from oblivion by the fact that in them
three great captains, Turenne, Condé and Montecucculi, played
leading parts, are described in the article Dutch Wars. In
the third war the leading figures are: Henri de Montmorency-Boutteville,
duke of Luxemburg, the former aide-de-camp of
Condé and heir to his daring method of warfare; William of
Orange, who had fought against both Condé and Luxemburg
in the earlier wars, and was now king of England; Vauban,
the founder of the sciences of fortification and siegecraft, and
Catinat, the follower of Turenne’s cautious and systematic
strategy, who was the first commoner to receive high command
in the army of Louis XIV. But as soldiers, these men—except
Vauban—are overshadowed by the great figures of the preceding
generation, and except for a half-dozen outstanding episodes,
the war of 1689–97 was an affair of positions and manœuvres.
It was within these years that the art and practice of war began to crystallize into the form called “linear” in its strategic and tactical aspect, and “cabinet-war” in its political and moral aspect. In the Dutch wars, and in the minor wars that preceded the formation of the League of Augsburg, there were still survivals of the loose organization, violence and wasteful barbarity typical of the Thirty Years’ War; and even in the War of the Grand Alliance (in its earlier years) occasional brutalities and devastations showed that the old spirit died hard. But outrages that would have been borne in dumb misery in the old days now provoked loud indignation, and when the fierce Louvois disappeared from the scene it became generally understood that barbarity was impolitic, not only as alienating popular sympathies, but also as rendering operations a physical impossibility for want of supplies.
Thus in 1700, so far from terrorizing the country people
into submission, armies systematically conciliated them by
paying cash and bringing trade into the country.
Formerly, wars had been fought to compel a people
to abjure their faith or to change sides in some
personal or dynastic quarrel. But since 1648 this had noCharacter
of the war.
longer been the case. The Peace of Westphalia established
the general relationship of kings, priests and peoples on a basis
that was not really shaken until the French Revolution, and
in the intervening hundred and forty years the peoples at large,
except at the highest and gravest moments (as in Germany in
1689, France in 1709 and Prussia in 1757) held aloof from active
participation in politics and war. This was the beginning of
the theory that war was an affair of the regular forces only,
and that intervention in it by the civil population was a punishable
offence. Thus wars became the business of the professional
soldiers in the king’s own service, and the scarcity and costliness
of these soldiers combined with the purely political character
of the quarrels that arose to reduce a campaign from an “intense
and passionate drama” to a humdrum affair, to which only
rarely a few men of genius imparted some degree of vigour, and
which in the main was an attempt to gain small ends by a small
expenditure of force and with the minimum of risk. As between
a prince and his subjects there were still quarrels that stirred
the average man—the Dragonnades, for instance, or the English
Revolution—but foreign wars were “a stronger form of diplomatic
notes,” as Clausewitz called them, and were waged with
the object of adding a codicil to the treaty of peace that had
closed the last incident.
Other causes contributed to stifle the former ardour of war. Campaigns were no longer conducted by armies of ten to thirty thousand men. Large regular armies had come into fashion, and, as Guibert points out, instead of small armies charged with grand operations we find grand armies charged with small operations. The average general, under the prevailing conditions of supply and armament, was not equal to the task of commanding such armies. Any real concentration of the great forces that Louis XIV. had created was therefore out of the question, and the field armies split into six or eight independent fractions, each charged with operations on a particular theatre of war. From such a policy nothing remotely resembling the crushing of a great power could be expected to be gained. The one tangible asset, in view of future peace negotiations, was therefore a fortress, and it was on the preservation or capture of fortresses that operations in all these wars chiefly turned. The idea of the decisive battle for its own sake, as a settlement of the quarrel, was far distant; for, strictly speaking, there was no quarrel, and to use up highly trained and exceedingly expensive soldiers in gaining by brute force an advantage that might equally well be obtained by chicanery was regarded as foolish.
The fortress was, moreover, of immediate as well as contingent value to a state at war. A century of constant warfare had impoverished middle Europe, and armies had to spread over a large area if they desired to “live on the country.” This was dangerous in the face of the enemy (cf. the Peninsular War), and it was also uneconomical. The only way to prevent the country people from sending their produce into the fortresses for safety was to announce beforehand that cash would be paid, at a high rate, for whatever the army needed. But even promises
- ↑ The name “Grand Alliance” is applied to the coalition against Louis XIV. begun by the League of Augsburg. This coalition not only waged the war dealt with in the present article, but (with only slight modifications and with practically unbroken continuity) the war of the Spanish Succession (q.v.) that followed.
