Blenheim Palace: Victory Tapestries

by Nate Shaffer

Surrender of Marshall Talland, French, to Churchill, Duke of Marlborough

Since Haley pretty much covered everything about Blenheim Palace in her post, I'll take it upon myself to talk about one particularly interesting thing: the tapestries. The series of ten tapestries follows the victories of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, during the Battle of Blenheim, to whom the palace was gifted to for his successes of the war. Many of the tapestries were custom fitted to the walls, even designed accordingly to where they would align into the corners of the rooms.

Siege of Bouchain, 1711

The tapestries are the palaces's most prized attribute, each depiction unique in every detail. They usually display the Duke as the center focus of the tapestry with many significant or symbolic figures and scenes around him. One tapestry that sticks out from the rest is of the Duke riding his horse with company, a man on the distant right being followed by a dog. While looking over the whole tapestry, everything seems to fit nicely together. But if you look closely at the dog following the Duke, you'll notice he has very odd legs; that is, odd in such that they are the legs of a horse.

Dog with horse legs and hoofs

What the tour guide explained was that the idea for the dog was an after thought, as up until then many of the animals depicted in anything were horses. Therefore, the original idea of the dog began as a horse, hence the hoofed feet, but eventually became a dog. It was most likely never corrected due to the time and money already tied up in the cost of the tapestry, considering the mistake was noticed near or shortly after its completion.