I beg pardon， whose war machine？ I thought the War of the Spanish Succession was waged by an Alliance rather than England alone。 Not to mention that ‘war machine’ is too much in vogue for modern popular history titles。 All in all， this is a mediocre and biased， but readable overview of the warfare in the beginning of the eighteenth century。 While this book doesn’t advance our knowledge of the subject even by an inch， its value lies in it being a good copy-paste of the great books that are hard t I beg pardon， whose war machine？ I thought the War of the Spanish Succession was waged by an Alliance rather than England alone。 Not to mention that ‘war machine’ is too much in vogue for modern popular history titles。 All in all， this is a mediocre and biased， but readable overview of the warfare in the beginning of the eighteenth century。 While this book doesn’t advance our knowledge of the subject even by an inch， its value lies in it being a good copy-paste of the great books that are hard to reach nowadays: it is heavily based on works of Chandler， Childs， Kemp and other prominent scholars。 The title is a telling one: despite the fact that the war was waged against the French by an allied army， English soldiers are declared the most important part of it and a lot of space is wasted on typical British hymns to the great brilliant genius Marlborough。 Even old Churchill’s book on his distant relative Marlborough got heavy citing for that aim。 Other allied commanders and efforts are underestimated， as you may expect， while usage of non-English sources is close to zero。 The author even defends Marlborough when tells about his pocketing of state money。 。。。more