No More Learning

In 1684 he was convicted at
Bury of having fraudulently counterfeited Sancroft's signature, and was
sentenced to the pillory and to imprisonment. From his dungeon he wrote
to implore the Primate's mercy. The letter may still be read with all
the original bad grammar and bad spelling. [279] The writer acknowledged
his guilt, wished that his eyes were a fountain of water, declared that
he should never know peace till he had received episcopal absolution,
and professed a mortal hatred of Dissenters. As all this contrition
and all this orthodoxy produced no effect, the penitent, after swearing
bitterly to be revenged on Sancroft, betook himself to another device.
The Western Insurrection had just broken out. The magistrates all over
the country were but too ready to listen to any accusation that might be
brought against Whigs and Nonconformists. Young declared on oath that,
to his knowledge, a design had been formed in Suffolk against the life
of King James, and named a peer, several gentlemen, and ten Presbyterian
ministers, as parties to the plot. Some of the accused were brought to
trial; and Young appeared in the witness box; but the story which he
told was proved by overwhelming evidence to be false. Soon after the
Revolution he was again convicted of forgery, pilloried for the fourth
or fifth time, and sent to Newgate. While he lay there, he determined to
try whether he should be more fortunate as an accuser of Jacobites than
he had been as an accuser of Puritans. He first addressed himself to
Tillotson. There was a horrible plot against their Majesties, a plot as
deep as hell; and some of the first men in England were concerned in it.
Tillotson, though he placed little confidence in information coming
from such a source, thought that the oath which he had taken as a Privy
Councillor made it his duty to mention the subject to William. William,
after his fashion, treated the matter very lightly. "I am confident," he
said, "that this is a villany; and I will have nobody disturbed on such
grounds. " After this rebuff, Young remained some time quiet. But when
William was on the Continent, and when the nation was agitated by the
apprehension of a French invasion and of a Jacobite insurrection, a
false accuser might hope to obtain a favourable audience. The mere oath
of a man who was well known to the turnkeys of twenty gaols was not
likely to injure any body. But Young was master of a weapon which is, of
all weapons, the most formidable to innocence. He had lived during
some years by counterfeiting hands, and had at length attained such
consummate skill in that bad art that even experienced clerks who
were conversant with manuscript could scarcely, after the most minute
comparison, discover any difference between his imitations and the
originals. He had succeeded in making a collection of papers written by
men of note who were suspected of disaffection. Some autographs he had
stolen; and some he had obtained by writing in feigned names to ask
after the characters of servants or curates. He now drew up a paper
purporting to be an Association for the Restoration of the banished
King. This document set forth that the subscribers bound themselves in
the presence of God to take arms for His Majesty, and to seize on the
Prince of Orange, dead or alive. To the Association Young appended the
names of Marlborough, of Cornbury, of Salisbury, of Sancroft, and of
Sprat, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster.

The next thing to be done was to put the paper into some hiding place in
the house of one of the persons whose signatures had been counterfeited.
As Young could not quit Newgate, he was forced to employ a subordinate
agent for this purpose. He selected a wretch named Blackhead, who
had formerly been convicted of perjury and sentenced to have his ears
clipped. The selection was not happy; for Blackhead had none of the
qualities which the trade of a false witness requires except wickedness.
There was nothing plausible about him. His voice was harsh. Treachery
was written in all the lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, no
presence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the lies
taught him by others.

This man, instructed by his accomplice, repaired to Sprat's palace at
Bromley, introduced himself there as the confidential servant of an
imaginary Doctor of Divinity, delivered to the Bishop, on bended knee,
a letter ingeniously manufactured by Young, and received, with the
semblance of profound reverence, the episcopal benediction. The servants
made the stranger welcome. He was taken to the cellar, drank their
master's health, and entreated them to let him see the house. They could
not venture to show any of the private apartments. Blackhead, therefore,
after begging importunately, but in vain, to be suffered to have one
look at the study, was forced to content himself with dropping the
Association into a flowerpot which stood in a parlour near the kitchen.

Every thing having been thus prepared, Young informed the ministers that
he could tell them something of the highest importance to the welfare of
the State, and earnestly begged to be heard. His request reached them
on perhaps the most anxious day of an anxious month. Tourville had just
stood out to sea. The army of James was embarking. London was agitated
by reports about the disaffection of the naval officers. The Queen was
deliberating whether she should cashier those who were suspected, or try
the effect of an appeal to their honour and patriotism. At such a moment
the ministers could not refuse to listen to any person who professed
himself able to give them valuable information. Young and his accomplice
were brought before the Privy Council. They there accused Marlborough,
Cornbury, Salisbury, Sancroft and Sprat of high treason. These great
men, Young said, had invited James to invade England, and had promised
to join him. The eloquent and ingenious Bishop of Rochester had
undertaken to draw up a Declaration which would inflame the nation
against the government of King William. The conspirators were bound
together by a written instrument. That instrument, signed by their
own hands, would be found at Bromley if careful search was made. Young
particularly requested that the messengers might be ordered to examine
the Bishop's flowerpots.

The ministers were seriously alarmed. The story was circumstantial; and
part of it was probable. Marlborough's dealings with Saint Germains were
well known to Caermarthen, to Nottingham, and to Sidney. Cornbury was
a tool of Marlborough, and was the son of a nonjuror and of a notorious
plotter. Salisbury was a Papist. Sancroft had, not many months before,
been, with too much show of reason, suspected of inviting the French to
invade England. Of all the accused persons Sprat was the most unlikely
to be concerned in any hazardous design. He had neither enthusiasm
nor constancy. Both his ambition and his party spirit had always been
effectually kept in order by his love of ease and his anxiety for his
own safety. He had been guilty of some criminal compliances in the hope
of gaining the favour of James, had sate in the High Commission, had
concurred in several iniquitous decrees pronounced by that court, and
had, with trembling hands and faltering voice, read the Declaration of
Indulgence in the choir of the Abbey. But there he had stopped. As soon
as it began to be whispered that the civil and religious constitution
of England would speedily be vindicated by extraordinary means, he had
resigned the powers which he had during two years exercised in defiance
of law, and had hastened to make his peace with his clerical brethren.
He had in the Convention voted for a Regency; but he had taken the oaths
without hesitation; he had borne a conspicuous part in the coronation of
the new Sovereigns; and by his skilful hand had been added to the Form
of Prayer used on the fifth of November those sentences in which the
Church expresses her gratitude for the second great deliverance wrought
on that day. [280] Such a man, possessed of a plentiful income, of a
seat in the House of Lords, of one agreeable house among the elms
of Bromley, and of another in the cloisters of Westminster, was very
unlikely to run the risk of martyrdom. He was not, indeed, on perfectly
good terms with the government. For the feeling which, next to
solicitude for his own comfort and repose, seems to have had the
greatest influence on his public conduct, was his dislike of
the Puritans; a dislike which sprang, not from bigotry, but from
Epicureanism. Their austerity was a reproach to his slothful and
luxurious life; their phraseology shocked his fastidious taste; and,
where they were concerned, his ordinary good nature forsook him.
Loathing the nonconformists as he did, he was not likely to be
very zealous for a prince whom the nonconformists regarded as their
protector. But Sprat's faults afforded ample security that he would
never, from spleen against William, engage in any plot to bring back
James. Why Young should have assigned the most perilous part in an
enterprise full of peril to a man singularly pliant, cautious and
selfindulgent, it is difficult to say.

The first step which the ministers took was to send Marlborough to the
Tower. He was by far the most formidable of all the accused persons; and
that he had held a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains was a
fact which, whether Young were perjured or not, the Queen and her chief
advisers knew to be true. One of the Clerks of the Council and several
messengers were sent down to Bromley with a warrant from Nottingham.
Sprat was taken into custody. All the apartments in which it could
reasonably be supposed that he would have hidden an important document
were searched, the library, the diningroom, the drawingroom, the
bedchamber, and the adjacent closets. His papers were strictly examined.
Much food prose was found, and probably some bad verse, but no treason.
The messengers pried into every flowerpot that they could find, but to
no purpose. It never occurred to them to look into the room in which
Blackhead had hidden the Association: for that room was near the offices
occupied by the servants, and was little used by the Bishop and his
family. The officers returned to London with their prisoner, but without
the document which, if it had been found, might have been fatal to him.

Late at night he was brought to Westminster, and was suffered to
sleep at his deanery. All his bookcases and drawers were examined; and
sentinels were posted at the door of his bedchamber, but with strict
orders to behave civilly and not to disturb the family.

On the following day he was brought before the Council. The examination
was conducted by Nottingham with great humanity and courtesy. The
Bishop, conscious of entire innocence, behaved with temper and firmness.
He made no complaints. "I submit," he said, "to the necessities of State
in such a time of jealousy and danger as this. " He was asked whether
he had drawn up a Declaration for King James, whether he had held
any correspondence with France, whether he had signed any treasonable
association, and whether he knew of any such association. To all these
questions he, with perfect truth, answered in the negative, on the
word of a Christian and a Bishop. He was taken back to his deanery. He
remained there in easy confinement during ten days, and then, as nothing
tending to criminate him had been discovered, was suffered to return to
Bromley.

Meanwhile the false accusers had been devising a new scheme. Blackhead
paid another visit to Bromley, and contrived to take the forged
Association out of the place in which he had hid it, and to bring
it back to Young. One of Young's two wives then carried it to the
Secretary's Office, and told a lie, invented by her husband, to explain
how a paper of such importance had come into her hands. But it was not
now so easy to frighten the ministers as it had been a few days before.
The battle of La Hogue had put an end to all apprehensions of invasion.
Nottingham, therefore, instead of sending down a warrant to Bromley,
merely wrote to beg that Sprat would call on him at Whitehall. The
summons was promptly obeyed, and the accused prelate was brought face
to face with Blackhead before the Council. Then the truth came out fast.
The Bishop remembered the villanous look and voice of the man who had
knelt to ask the episcopal blessing. The Bishop's secretary confirmed
his master's assertions. The false witness soon lost his presence of
mind. His cheeks, always sallow, grew frightfully livid. His voice,
generally loud and coarse, sank into a whisper. The Privy Councillors
saw his confusion, and crossexamined him sharply. For a time he answered
their questions by repeatedly stammering out his original lie in the
original words. At last he found that he had no way of extricating
himself but by owning his guilt. He acknowledged that he had given an
untrue account of his visit to Bromley; and, after much prevarication,
he related how he had hidden the Association, and how he had removed it
from its hiding place, and confessed that he had been set on by Young.

The two accomplices were then confronted. Young, with unabashed
forehead, denied every thing. He knew nothing about the flowerpots.
"If so," cried Nottingham and Sidney together, "why did you give
such particular directions that the flowerpots at Bromley should be
searched? " "I never gave any directions about the flowerpots," said
Young. Then the whole board broke forth. "How dare you say so? We all
remember it. " Still the knave stood up erect, and exclaimed, with an
impudence which Oates might have envied, "This hiding is all a trick got
up between the Bishop and Blackhead. The Bishop has taken Blackhead off;
and they are both trying to stifle the plot. " This was too much. There
was a smile and a lifting up of hands all round the board. "Man," cried
Caermarthen, "wouldst thou have us believe that the Bishop contrived
to have this paper put where it was ten to one that our messengers had
found it, and where, if they had found it, it might have hanged him? "

The false accusers were removed in custody. The Bishop, after warmly
thanking the ministers for their fair and honourable conduct, took his
leave of them. In the antechamber he found a crowd of people staring at
Young, while Young sate, enduring the stare with the serene fortitude
of a man who had looked down on far greater multitudes from half the
pillories in England. "Young," said Sprat, "your conscience must tell
you that you have cruelly wronged me. For your own sake I am sorry that
you persist in denying what your associate has confessed. " "Confessed! "
cried Young; "no, all is not confessed yet; and that you shall find
to your sorrow. There is such a thing as impeachment, my Lord. When
Parliament sits you shall hear more of me. " "God give you repentance,"
answered the Bishop. "For, depend upon it, you are in much more danger
of being damned than I of being impeached. " [281]

Forty-eight hours after the detection of this execrable fraud,
Marlborough was admitted to bail. Young and Blackhead had done him an
inestimable service. That he was concerned in a plot quite as criminal
as that which they had falsely imputed to him, and that the government
was to possession of moral proofs of his guilt, is now certain. But his
contemporaries had not, as we have, the evidence of his perfidy before
them. They knew that he had been accused of an offence of which he was
innocent, that perjury and forgery had been employed to ruin him, and
that, in consequence of these machinations, he had passed some weeks in
the Tower. There was in the public mind a very natural confusion between
his disgrace and his imprisonment. He had been imprisoned without
sufficient cause. Might it not, in the absence of all information, be
reasonably presumed that he had been disgraced without sufficient cause?
It was certain that a vile calumny, destitute of all foundation, had
caused him to be treated as a criminal in May. Was it not probable,
then, that calumny might have deprived him of his master's favour in
January?

Young's resources were not yet exhausted. As soon as he had been carried
back from Whitehall to Newgate, he set himself to construct a new
plot, and to find a new accomplice. He addressed himself to a man named
Holland, who was in the lowest state of poverty. Never, said Young, was
there such a golden opportunity. A bold, shrewd, fellow might easily
earn five hundred pounds. To Holland five hundred pounds seemed fabulous
wealth. What, he asked, was he to do for it? Nothing, he was told,
but to speak the truth, that was to say, substantial truth, a little
disguised and coloured. There really was a plot; and this would have
been proved if Blackhead had not been bought off. His desertion had made
it necessary to call in the help of fiction. "You must swear that you
and I were in a back room upstairs at the Lobster in Southwark. Some men
came to meet us there. They gave a password before they were admitted.
They were all in white camlet cloaks. They signed the Association in our
presence. Then they paid each his shilling and went away. And you must
be ready to identify my Lord Marlborough and the Bishop of Rochester as
two of these men. " "How can I identify them? " said Holland, "I never saw
them. " "You must contrive to see them," answered the tempter, "as soon
as you can. The Bishop will be at the Abbey. Anybody about the Court
will point out my Lord Marlborough. " Holland immediately went to
Whitehall, and repeated this conversation to Nottingham. The unlucky
imitator of Oates was prosecuted, by order of the government, for
perjury, subornation of perjury, and forgery. He was convicted and
imprisoned, was again set in the pillory, and underwent, in addition to
the exposure, about which he cared little, such a pelting as had seldom
been known. [282] After his punishment, he was, during some years, lost
in the crowd of pilferers, ringdroppers and sharpers who infested the
capital. At length, in the year 1700, he emerged from his obscurity,
and excited a momentary interest. The newspapers announced that Robert
Young, Clerk, once so famous, had been taken up for coining, then that
he had been found guilty, then that the dead warrant had come down, and
finally that the reverend gentleman had been hanged at Tyburn, and had
greatly edified a large assembly of spectators by his penitence. [283]




CHAPTER XIX

Foreign Policy of William--The Northern Powers--The Pope--Conduct of
the Allies--The Emperor--Spain--William succeeds in preventing the
Dissolution of the Coalition--New Arrangements for the Government of
the Spanish Netherlands--Lewis takes the Field--Siege of Namur--Lewis
returns to Versailles--Luxemburg--Battle of Steinkirk--Conspiracy
of Grandval--Return of William to England--Naval
Maladministration--Earthquake at Port Royal--Distress in England;
Increase of Crime--Meeting of Parliament; State of Parties--The King's
Speech; Question of Privilege raised by the Lords--Debates on the
State of the Nation--Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of
Treason--Case of Lord Mohun--Debates on the India Trade--Supply--Ways
and Means; Land Tax--Origin of the National Debt--Parliamentary
Reform--The Place Bill--The Triennial Bill--The First Parliamentary
Discussion on the Liberty of the Press--State of Ireland--The King
refuses to pass the Triennial Bill--Ministerial Arrangements--The King
goes to Holland; a Session of Parliament in Scotland

WHILE England was agitated, first by the dread of an invasion, and then
by joy at the deliverance wrought for her by the valour of her seamen,
important events were taking place on the Continent. On the sixth of
March the King had arrived at the Hague, and had proceeded to make his
arrangements for the approaching campaign. [284]

The prospect which lay before him was gloomy. The coalition of which he
was the author and the chief had, during some months, been in constant
danger of dissolution. By what strenuous exertions, by what ingenious
expedients, by what blandishments, by what bribes, he succeeded in
preventing his allies from throwing themselves, one by one, at the feet
of France, can be but imperfectly known. The fullest and most authentic
record of the labours and sacrifices by which he kept together, during
eight years, a crowd of fainthearted and treacherous potentates,
negligent of the common interest and jealous of each other, is to
be found in his correspondence with Heinsius. In that correspondence
William is all himself. He had, in the course of his eventful life, to
sustain some high parts for which he was not eminently qualified; and,
in those parts, his success was imperfect. As Sovereign of England, he
showed abilities and virtues which entitle him to honourable mention in
history; but his deficiencies were great. He was to the last a stranger
amongst us, cold, reserved, never in good spirits, never at his ease.
His kingdom was a place of exile. His finest palaces were prisons. He
was always counting the days which must elapse before he should
again see the land of his birth, the clipped trees, the wings of the
innumerable windmills, the nests of the storks on the tall gables, and
the long lines of painted villas reflected in the sleeping canals. He
took no pains to hide the preference which he felt for his native soil
and for his early friends; and therefore, though he rendered great
services to our country, he did not reign in our hearts. As a general
in the field, again, he showed rare courage and capacity; but, from
whatever cause, he was, as a tactician, inferior to some of his
contemporaries, who, in general powers of mind, were far inferior to
him. The business for which he was preeminently fitted was diplomacy, in
the highest sense of the word. It may be doubted whether he has ever had
a superior in the art of conducting those great negotiations on which
the welfare of the commonwealth of nations depends. His skill in this
department of politics was never more severely tasked or more signally
proved than during the latter part of 1691 and the earlier part of 1692.

One of his chief difficulties was caused by the sullen and menacing
demeanour of the Northern powers. Denmark and Sweden had at one time
seemed disposed to join the coalition; but they had early become cold,
and were fast becoming hostile. From France they flattered themselves
that they had little to fear. It was not very probable that her armies
would cross the Elbe, or that her fleets would force a passage through
the Sound. But the naval strength of England and Holland united might
well excite apprehension at Stockholm and Copenhagen. Soon arose
vexatious questions of maritime right, questions such as, in almost
every extensive war of modern times, have arisen between belligerents
and neutrals. The Scandinavian princes complained that the legitimate
trade between the Baltic and France was tyrannically interrupted. Though
they had not in general been on very friendly terms with each other,
they began to draw close together, intrigued at every petty German
court, and tried to form what William called a Third Party in Europe.
The King of Sweden, who, as Duke of Pomerania, was bound to send three
thousand men for the defence of the Empire, sent, instead of them, his
advice that the allies would make peace on the best terms which they
could get.
[285] The King of Denmark seized a great number of Dutch
merchantships, and collected in Holstein an army which caused no small
uneasiness to his neighbours. "I fear," William wrote, in an hour of
deep dejection, to Heinsius, "I fear that the object of this Third Party
is a peace which will bring in its train the slavery of Europe. The day
will come when Sweden and her confederates will know too late how great
an error they have committed. They are farther, no doubt, than we from
the danger; and therefore it is that they are thus bent on working our
ruin and their own. That France will now consent to reasonable terms
is not to be expected; and it were better to fall sword in hand than to
submit to whatever she may dictate. " [286]

While the King was thus disquieted by the conduct of the Northern
powers, ominous signs began to appear in a very different quarter. It
had, from the first, been no easy matter to induce sovereigns who hated,
and who, in their own dominions, persecuted, the Protestant religion,
to countenance the revolution which had saved that religion from a great
peril. But happily the example and the authority of the Vatican had
overcome their scruples. Innocent the Eleventh and Alexander the Eighth
had regarded William with ill concealed partiality. He was not indeed
their friend; but he was their enemy's enemy; and James had been, and,
if restored, must again be, their enemy's vassal. To the heretic nephew
therefore they gave their effective support, to the orthodox uncle only
compliments and benedictions. But Alexander the Eighth had occupied the
papal throne little more than fifteen months. His successor, Antonio
Pignatelli, who took the name of Innocent the Twelfth, was impatient to
be reconciled to Lewis. Lewis was now sensible that he had committed
a great error when he had roused against himself at once the spirit of
Protestantism and the spirit of Popery. He permitted the French Bishops
to submit themselves to the Holy See. The dispute, which had, at one
time, seemed likely to end in a great Gallican schism, was accommodated;
and there was reason to believe that the influence of the head of the
Church would be exerted for the purpose of severing the ties which bound
so many Catholic princes to the Calvinist who had usurped the British
throne.

Meanwhile the coalition, which the Third Party on one side and the Pope
on the other were trying to dissolve, was in no small danger of falling
to pieces from mere rottenness. Two of the allied powers, and two only,
were hearty in the common cause; England, drawing after her the other
British kingdoms; and Holland, drawing after her the other Batavian
commonwealths. England and Holland were indeed torn by internal
factions, and were separated from each other by mutual jealousies
and antipathies; but both were fully resolved not to submit to French
domination; and both were ready to bear their share, and more than
their share, of the charges of the contest. Most of the members of the
confederacy were not nations, but men, an Emperor, a King, Electors,
Dukes; and of these men there was scarcely one whose whole soul was in
the struggle, scarcely one who did not hang back, who did not find some
excuse for omitting to fulfil his engagements, who did not expect to be
hired to defend his own rights and interests against the common enemy.
But the war was the war of the people of England and of the people of
Holland. Had it not been so, the burdens which it made necessary would
not have been borne by either England or Holland during a single year.
When William said that he would rather die sword in hand than humble
himself before France, he expressed what was felt, not by himself alone,
but by two great communities of which he was the first magistrate. With
those two communities, unhappily, other states had little sympathy.
Indeed those two communities were regarded by other states as rich,
plaindealing, generous dupes are regarded by needy sharpers. England and
Holland were wealthy; and they were zealous. Their wealth excited the
cupidity of the whole alliance; and to that wealth their zeal was
the key. They were persecuted with sordid importunity by all their
confederates, from Caesar, who, in the pride of his solitary dignity,
would not honour King William with the title of Majesty, down to the
smallest Margrave who could see his whole principality from the cracked
windows of the mean and ruinous old house which he called his palace. It
was not enough that England and Holland furnished much more than their
contingents to the war by land, and bore unassisted the whole charge of
the war by sea. They were beset by a crowd of illustrious mendicants,
some rude, some obsequious, but all indefatigable and insatiable. One
prince came mumping to them annually with a lamentable story about his
distresses. A more sturdy beggar threatened to join the Third Party, and
to make a separate peace with France, if his demands were not granted.
Every Sovereign too had his ministers and favourites; and these
ministers and favourites were perpetually hinting that France was
willing to pay them for detaching their masters from the coalition, and
that it would be prudent in England and Holland to outbid France.

Yet the embarrassment caused by the rapacity of the allied courts was
scarcely greater than the embarrassment caused by their ambition and
their pride. This prince had set his heart on some childish distinction,
a title or a cross, and would do nothing for the common cause till his
wishes were accomplished. That prince chose to fancy that he had been
slighted, and would not stir till reparation had been made to him.
The Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg would not furnish a battalion for the
defence of Germany unless he was made an Elector. [287] The Elector
of Brandenburg declared that he was as hostile as he had ever been
to France; but he had been ill used by the Spanish government; and he
therefore would not suffer his soldiers to be employed in the defence
of the Spanish Netherlands. He was willing to bear his share of the war;
but it must be in his own way; he must have the command of a distinct
army; and he must be stationed between the Rhine and the Meuse. [288]
The Elector of Saxony complained that bad winter quarters had been
assigned to his troops; he therefore recalled them just when they should
have been preparing to take the field, but very coolly offered to send
them back if England and Holland would give him four hundred thousand
rixdollars. [289]

It might have been expected that at least the two chiefs of the House
of Austria would have put forth, at this conjuncture, all their strength
against the rival House of Bourbon. Unfortunately they could not be
induced to exert themselves vigorously even for their own preservation.
They were deeply interested in keeping the French out of Italy. Yet they
could with difficulty be prevailed upon to lend the smallest assistance
to the Duke of Savoy. They seemed to think it the business of England
and Holland to defend the passes of the Alps, and to prevent the armies
of Lewis from overflowing Lombardy. To the Emperor indeed the war
against France was a secondary object. His first object was the war
against Turkey. He was dull and bigoted. His mind misgave him that
the war against France was, in some sense, a war against the Catholic
religion; and the war against Turkey was a crusade. His recent campaign
on the Danube had been successful. He might easily have concluded an
honourable peace with the Porte, and have turned his arms westward. But
he had conceived the hope that he might extend his hereditary dominions
at the expense of the Infidels. Visions of a triumphant entry into
Constantinople and of a Te Deum in Saint Sophia's had risen in his
brain. He not only employed in the East a force more than sufficient to
have defended Piedmont and reconquered Loraine; but he seemed to think
that England and Holland were bound to reward him largely for neglecting
their interests and pursuing his own. [290]

Spain already was what she continued to be down to our own time. Of the
Spain which had domineered over the land and the ocean, over the Old
and the New World, of the Spain which had, in the short space of twelve
years, led captive a Pope and a King of France, a Sovereign of Mexico
and a Sovereign of Peru, of the Spain which had sent an army to the
walls of Paris and had equipped a mighty fleet to invade England,
nothing remained but an arrogance which had once excited terror and
hatred, but which could now excite only derision. In extent, indeed, the
dominions of the Catholic King exceeded those of Rome when Rome was
at the zenith of power. But the huge mass lay torpid and helpless, and
could be insulted or despoiled with impunity. The whole administration,
military and naval, financial and colonial, was utterly disorganized.
Charles was a fit representative of his kingdom, impotent physically,
intellectually and morally, sunk in ignorance, listlessness and
superstition, yet swollen with a notion of his own dignity, and quick to
imagine and to resent affronts. So wretched had his education been that,
when he was told of the fall of Mons, the most important fortress in
his vast empire, he asked whether Mons was in England. [291] Among the
ministers who were raised up and pulled down by his sickly caprice, was
none capable of applying a remedy to the distempers of the State. In
truth to brace anew the nerves of that paralysed body would have been a
hard task even for Ximenes. No servant of the Spanish Crown occupied a
more important post, and none was more unfit for an important post, than
the Marquess of Gastanaga. He was Governor of the Netherlands; and in
the Netherlands it seemed probable that the fate of Christendom would
be decided. He had discharged his trust as every public trust was
then discharged in every part of that vast monarchy on which it was
boastfully said that the sun never set. Fertile and rich as was the
country which he ruled, he threw on England and Holland the whole charge
of defending it. He expected that arms, ammunition, waggons, provisions,
every thing, would be furnished by the heretics. It had never occurred
to him that it was his business, and not theirs, to put Mons in a
condition to stand a siege. The public voice loudly accused him of
having sold that celebrated stronghold to France. But it is probable
that he was guilty of nothing worse than the haughty apathy and
sluggishness characteristic of his nation.

Such was the state of the coalition of which William was the head. There
were moments when he felt himself overwhelmed, when his spirits
sank, when his patience was wearied out, and when his constitutional
irritability broke forth. "I cannot," he wrote, "offer a suggestion
without being met by a demand for a subsidy. " [292] "I have refused
point blank," he wrote on another occasion, when he had been importuned
for money, "it is impossible that the States General and England can
bear the charge of the army on the Rhine, of the army in Piedmont, and
of the whole defence of Flanders, to say nothing of the immense cost of
the naval war. If our allies can do nothing for themselves, the sooner
the alliance goes to pieces the better. " [293] But, after every short
fit of despondency and ill humour, he called up all the force of his
mind, and put a strong curb on his temper. Weak, mean, false, selfish,
as too many of the confederates were, it was only by their help that
he could accomplish what he had from his youth up considered as his
mission. If they abandoned him, France would be dominant without a rival
in Europe. Well as they deserved to be punished, he would not, to punish
them, acquiesce in the subjugation of the whole civilised world. He set
himself therefore to surmount some difficulties and to evade others. The
Scandinavian powers he conciliated by waiving, reluctantly indeed, and
not without a hard internal struggle, some of his maritime rights. [294]
At Rome his influence, though indirectly exercised, balanced that of the
Pope himself. Lewis and James found that they had not a friend at the
Vatican except Innocent; and Innocent, whose nature was gentle and
irresolute, shrank from taking a course directly opposed to the
sentiments of all who surrounded him. In private conversations with
Jacobite agents he declared himself devoted to the interests of the
House of Stuart; but in his public acts he observed a strict neutrality.
He sent twenty thousand crowns to Saint Germains; but he excused himself
to the enemies of France by protesting that this was not a subsidy for
any political purpose, but merely an alms to be distributed among poor
British Catholics. He permitted prayers for the good cause to be read in
the English College at Rome; but he insisted that those prayers should
be drawn up in general terms, and that no name should be mentioned.
It was in vain that the ministers of the Houses of Stuart and Bourbon
adjured him to take a more decided course. "God knows," he exclaimed on
one occasion, "that I would gladly shed my blood to restore the King of
England. But what can I do? If I stir, I am told that I am favouring the
French, and helping them to set up an universal monarchy. I am not
like the old Popes. Kings will not listen to me as they listened to
my predecessors. There is no religion now, nothing but wicked, worldly
policy. The Prince of Orange is master. He governs us all. He has got
such a hold on the Emperor and on the King of Spain that neither of them
dares to displease him. God help us! He alone can help us. " And, as the
old man spoke, he beat the table with his hand in an agony of impotent
grief and indignation. [295]

To keep the German princes steady was no easy task; but it was
accomplished. Money was distributed among them, much less indeed than
they asked, but much more than they had any decent pretence for asking.
With the Elector of Saxony a composition was made. He had, together with
a strong appetite for subsidies, a great desire to be a member of the
most select and illustrious orders of knighthood. It seems that, instead
of the four hundred thousand rixdollars which he had demanded, he
consented to accept one hundred thousand and the Garter. [296] His prime
minister Schoening, the most covetous and perfidious of mankind,
was secured by a pension. [297] For the Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg,
William, not without difficulty, procured the long desired title of
Elector of Hanover. By such means as these the breaches which had
divided the coalition were so skilfully repaired that it appeared still
to present a firm front to the enemy. William had complained bitterly to
the Spanish government of the incapacity and inertness of Gastanaga.
The Spanish government, helpless and drowsy as it was, could not be
altogether insensible to the dangers which threatened Flanders and
Brabant. Gastanaga was recalled; and William was invited to take upon
himself the government of the Low Countries, with powers not less than
regal. Philip the Second would not easily have believed that, within
a century after his death, his greatgrandson would implore the
greatgrandson of William the Silent to exercise the authority of a
sovereign at Brussels. [298]

The offer was in one sense tempting; but William was too wise to accept
it. He knew that the population of the Spanish Netherlands was firmly
attached to the Church of Rome. Every act of a Protestant ruler was
certain to be regarded with suspicion by the clergy and people of those
countries. Already Gastanaga, mortified by his disgrace, had written to
inform the Court of Rome that changes were in contemplation which would
make Ghent and Antwerp as heretical as Amsterdam and London. [299] It
had doubtless also occurred to William that if, by governing mildly
and justly, and by showing a decent respect for the ceremonies and the
ministers of the Roman Catholic religion, he should succeed in obtaining
the confidence of the Belgians, he would inevitably raise against
himself a storm of obloquy in our island. He knew by experience what it
was to govern two nations strongly attached to two different Churches. A
large party among the Episcopalians of England could not forgive him
for having consented to the establishment of the presbyterian polity in
Scotland. A large party among the Presbyterians of Scotland blamed him
for maintaining the episcopal polity in England. If he now took under
his protection masses, processions, graven images, friaries, nunneries,
and, worst of all, Jesuit pulpits, Jesuit confessionals and Jesuit
colleges, what could he expect but that England and Scotland would join
in one cry of reprobation? He therefore refused to accept the government
of the Low Countries, and proposed that it should be entrusted to the
Elector of Bavaria. The Elector of Bavaria was, after the Emperor, the
most powerful of the Roman Catholic potentates of Germany. He was young,
brave, and ambitious of military distinction. The Spanish Court was
willing to appoint him, and he was desirous to be appointed; but much
delay was caused by an absurd difficulty. The Elector thought it beneath
him to ask for what he wished to have. The formalists of the Cabinet of
Madrid thought it beneath the dignity of the Catholic King to give what
had not been asked. Mediation was necessary, and was at last successful.
But much time was lost; and the spring was far advanced before the new
Governor of the Netherlands entered on his functions. [300]

William had saved the coalition from the danger of perishing by
disunion. But by no remonstrance, by no entreaty, by no bribe, could
he prevail on his allies to be early in the field. They ought to have
profited by the severe lesson which had been given them in the preceding
year. But again every one of them lingered, and wondered why the rest
were lingering; and again he who singly wielded the whole power of
France was found, as his haughty motto had long boasted, a match for
a multitude of adversaries. [301] His enemies, while still unready,
learned with dismay that he had taken the field in person at the head of
his nobility. On no occasion had that gallant aristocracy appeared with
more splendour in his train. A single circumstance may suffice to give
a notion of the pomp and luxury of his camp. Among the musketeers of his
household rode, for the first time, a stripling of seventeen, who soon
afterwards succeeded to the title of Duke of Saint Simon, and to whom we
owe those inestimable memoirs which have preserved, for the delight and
instruction of many lands and of many generations, the vivid picture of
a France which has long passed away. Though the boy's family was at that
time very hard pressed for money, he travelled with thirty-five horses
and sumpter mules. The princesses of the blood, each surrounded by a
group of highborn and graceful ladies, accompanied the King; and
the smiles of so many charming women inspired the throng of vain and
voluptuous but highspirited gentlemen with more than common courage. In
the brilliant crowd which surrounded the French Augustus appeared the
French Virgil, the graceful, the tender, the melodious Racine. He had,
in conformity with the prevailing fashion, become devout, had given
up writing for the theatre; and, having determined to apply himself
vigorously to the discharge of the duties which belonged to him as
historiographer of France, he now came to see the great events which
it was his office to record. [302] In the neighbourhood of Mons, Lewis
entertained the ladies with the most magnificent review that had ever
been seen in modern Europe. A hundred and twenty thousand of the finest
troops in the world were drawn up in a line eight miles long. It may be
doubted whether such an army had ever been brought together under the
Roman eagles. The show began early in the morning, and was not over
when the long summer day closed. Racine left the ground, astonished,
deafened, dazzled, and tired to death. In a private letter he ventured
to give utterance to an amiable wish which he probably took good care
not to whisper in the courtly circle: "Would to heaven that all these
poor fellows were in their cottages again with their wives and their
little ones! " [303]

After this superb pageant Lewis announced his intention of attacking
Namur. In five days he was under the walls of that city, at the head
of more than thirty thousand men. Twenty thousand peasants, pressed in
those parts of the Netherlands which the French occupied, were compelled
to act as pioneers. Luxemburg, with eighty thousand men, occupied a
strong position on the road between Namur and Brussels, and was prepared
to give battle to any force which might attempt to raise the siege.
[304] This partition of duties excited no surprise. It had long been
known that the great Monarch loved sieges, and that he did not love
battles. He professed to think that the real test of military skill was
a siege. The event of an encounter between two armies on an open plain
was, in his opinion, often determined by chance; but only science could
prevail against ravelins and bastions which science had constructed. His
detractors sneeringly pronounced it fortunate that the department of
the military art which His Majesty considered as the noblest was one in
which it was seldom necessary for him to expose to serious risk a life
invaluable to his people.

Namur, situated at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, was one
of the great fortresses of Europe. The town lay in the plain, and had
no strength except what was derived from art. But art and nature had
combined to fortify that renowned citadel which, from the summit of a
lofty rock, looks down on a boundless expanse of cornfields, woods and
meadows, watered by two fine rivers. The people of the city and of the
surrounding region were proud of their impregnable castle. Their boast
was that never, in all the wars which had devastated the Netherlands,
had skill or valour been able to penetrate those walls. The neighbouring
fastnesses, famed throughout the world for their strength, Antwerp and
Ostend, Ypres, Lisle and Tournay, Mons and Valenciennes, Cambray and
Charleroi, Limburg and Luxemburg, had opened their gates to conquerors;
but never once had the flag been pulled down from the battlements of
Namur. That nothing might be wanting to the interest of the siege,
the two great masters of the art of fortification were opposed to
each other. Vauban had during many years been regarded as the first of
engineers; but a formidable rival had lately arisen, Menno, Baron of
Cohorn, the ablest officer in the service of the States General. The
defences of Namur had been recently strengthened and repaired under
Cohorn's superintendence; and he was now within the walls. Vauban was in
the camp of Lewis. It might therefore be expected that both the attack
and the defence would be conducted with consummate ability.

By this time the allied armies had assembled; but it was too late. [305]
William hastened towards Namur. He menaced the French works, first from
the west, then from the north, then from the east. But between him and
the lines of circumvallation lay the army of Luxemburg, turning as he
turned, and always so strongly posted that to attack it would have been
the height of imprudence. Meanwhile the besiegers, directed by the skill
of Vauban and animated by the presence of Lewis, made rapid progress.
There were indeed many difficulties to be surmounted and many hardships
to be endured. The weather was stormy; and, on the eighth of June,
the feast of Saint Medard, who holds in the French Calendar the same
inauspicious place which in our Calendar belongs to Saint Swithin, the
rain fell in torrents. The Sambre rose and covered many square miles on
which the harvest was green. The Mehaigne whirled down its bridges to
the Meuse. All the roads became swamps. The trenches were so deep in
water and mire that it was the business of three days to move a gun from
one battery to another. The six thousand waggons which had accompanied
the French army were useless. It was necessary that gunpowder, bullets,
corn, hay, should be carried from place to place on the backs of the war
horses. Nothing but the authority of Lewis could, in such circumstances,
have maintained order and inspired cheerfulness. His soldiers, in truth,
showed much more reverence for him than for what their religion had made
sacred. They cursed Saint Medard heartily, and broke or burned every
image of him that could be found. But for their King there was nothing
that they were not ready to do and to bear. In spite of every obstacle
they constantly gained ground. Cohorn was severely wounded while
defending with desperate resolution a fort which he had himself
constructed, and of which he was proud. His place could not be supplied.
The governor was a feeble man whom Gastanaga had appointed, and whom
William had recently advised the Elector of Bavaria to remove. The
spirit of the garrison gave way. The town surrendered on the eighth day
of the siege, the citadel about three weeks later. [306]

The history of the fall of Namur in 1692 bears a close resemblance
to the history of the fail of Mons in 1691. Both in 1691 and in 1692,
Lewis, the sole and absolute master of the resources of his kingdom, was
able to open the campaign, before William, the captain of a coalition,
had brought together his dispersed forces. In both years the advantage
of having the first move decided the event of the game. At Namur, as at
Mons, Lewis, assisted by Vauban conducted the siege; Luxemburg covered
it; William vainly tried to raise it, and, with deep mortification,
assisted as a spectator at the victory of his enemy.

In one respect however the fate of the two fortresses was very
different. Mons was delivered up by its own inhabitants. Namur might
perhaps have been saved if the garrison had been as zealous and
determined as the population. Strange to say, in this place, so long
subject to a foreign rule, there was found a patriotism resembling that
of the little Greek commonwealths. There is no reason to believe that
the burghers cared about the balance of power, or had any preference
for James or for William, for the Most Christian King or for the Most
Catholic King. But every citizen considered his own honour as bound up
with the honour of the maiden fortress. It is true that the French did
not abuse their victory.