20 pages • 40 minutes read
The Battle of Blenheim
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Themes
The Human Cost of War
The character of Kaspar may not know much about the cause of the battle or have a developed moral sense, but he is nonetheless aware of what happened to civilians as well as combatants. His father’s home was burned down and the family had to flee, with nowhere safe to go. Kaspar also speaks of the deaths of pregnant women and newborn babies, likely also due to the burning of the village. He does not express any revulsion at this, and he does not appear to believe that he will be shocking or upsetting the children by telling them about it. However, Southey’s intent as the poet is for the reader to see a moral issue in the tale about the appalling human cost of the battle.
Kaspar speaks of the devastating cost of war to those who were not involved in the fighting. This is a common story throughout the history of war. Through no fault of their own, civilians in towns and villages are caught up in the chaos and mayhem of battles. Kaspar is also remembering correctly what he was told. French forces occupied and fortified Blindheim (Blenheim), but when the English-Austrian allies advanced, the French fled the town, burning it down as they left. The French also torched other villages they had occupied around the Nebel river. Not only were many people killed, but livestock and crops were also destroyed (in August, not long before harvest). After the soldiers departed, the returning and surviving villagers were left to rebuild their lives and communities as best they could and try to ward off famine for the winter.
Kaspar also comments on the thousands of corpses left on the battlefield: “[M]any thousand bodies here / Lay rotting in the sun” (Lines 51-52). The battle was fought in the heat of August, so it would not have taken long for the bodies to start to decompose. The stench must have been horrible, but Kaspar spares his grandchildren any further details. During that time, it was common for the dead to be buried in mass graves or cremated after battles. No mass graves have been discovered at Blenheim, however, and some historians point to reports that some of the bodies may have been disposed of in the nearby river Danube. Neither of those facts invalidates those two lines from the poem, though, and the graphic image of thousands of corpses left on the battlefield powerfully conveys another strand of the poem’s antiwar theme.
Age Versus Youth
Kaspar is defined by his age; he is “Old” Kaspar (Line 1). As an old man, he has knowledge about the past that his two grandchildren cannot possess. In particular, he knows about the titular momentous battle that took place many decades ago, and he is very confident in his view of that battle. Although he knows that many thousands of people died in it, civilians as well as soldiers, he sees no reason to condemn the slaughter or make any moral judgment about it. Instead, he repeatedly tells the children that it was a great and famous victory, even though he does not know what the battle was all about. He is old and set in his views and not likely to change them.
The two grandchildren, Wilhelmine and Peterkin, look up to Kaspar as an authority figure, but after they hear about the battle of Blenheim, they adopt a different perspective than that of their grandfather. This is in keeping with how the English Romantic poets viewed children. For Southey’s friends Wordsworth and Coleridge, children possessed innocence, simplicity, a natural goodness, and a spontaneous spiritual insight. Their purity of heart gave them a wisdom seemingly beyond their years. To this, Southey adds a superior moral awareness. Wilhelmine and Peterkin not only have a natural curiosity that seems to have been drummed out of Kaspar—they eagerly want to know what the battle was about—but also, when they hear about the thousands of deaths, they are full of a natural indignance about such tragic loss of life. Wilhelmine says, “‘twas a very wicked thing!” (Line 57), and Peterkin wants to know “what good came of it at last?” (Line 63). Unfortunately for them, their grandfather is not going to be drawn into a discussion of good and evil, and he has no answer at all to the boy’s simple but penetrating question.
Ignorance and Complacency
The poem characterizes old Kaspar as the kind of man who, at least in regard to historical events, is not curious and does not want to think or acquire knowledge for himself, even though he has had ample time to do so. He is instead a person who prefers the easier option in which he simply accepts the received, majority opinion without question. He does not want to complicate matters by going into more detail, even in the case of the battle of Blenheim, which took place in his own neighborhood and had a devastating effect on his own family—his father’s house was burned down and the family was forced to flee.
Southey’s theme is that through ignorance, complacency, and a lack of curiosity, too many people accept militarism; they passively accept the views propagated by the victors, that, in this particular case, the battle was a “great victory” (Lines 18, 24). People ignore the fact that the governments that control the actions of armies have a vested interest in claiming that they are on the side of justice, truth, and morality, when the reality may be very different. The poem suggests that the docile recipients of a version of history that suits certain rulers and victors may be forgetting their larger duty to humanity.
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