Notwithstanding
all that could be done to keep him down, his influence and fame had been
almost constantly rising and spreading.
all that could be done to keep him down, his influence and fame had been
almost constantly rising and spreading.
Macaulay
Doctor Dennis
Granville, who had quitted the richest deanery, the richest archdeaconry
and one of the richest livings in England, rather than take the oaths,
gave mortal offence by asking leave to read prayers to the exiles of his
own communion. His request was refused; and he was so grossly insulted
by his master's chaplains and their retainers that he was forced to
quit Saint Germains. Lest some other Anglican doctor should be equally
importunate, James wrote to inform his agents in England that he wished
no Protestant divine to come out to him. [422] Indeed the nonjuring
clergy were at least as much sneered at and as much railed at in his
palace as in his nephew's. If any man had a claim to be mentioned with
respect at Saint Germains, it was surely Sancroft. Yet it was reported
that the bigots who were assembled there never spoke of him but with
aversion and disgust. The sacrifice of the first place in the Church,
of the first place in the peerage, of the mansion at Lambeth and the
mansion at Croydon, of immense patronage and of a revenue of more than
five thousand a year was thought but a poor atonement for the great
crime of having modestly remonstrated against the unconstitutional
Declaration of Indulgence. Sancroft was pronounced to be just such a
traitor and just such a penitent as Judas Iscariot. The old hypocrite
had, it was said, while affecting reverence and love for his master,
given the fatal signal to his master's enemies. When the mischief had
been done and could not be repaired, the conscience of the sinner had
begun to torture him. He had, like his prototype, blamed himself and
bemoaned himself. He had, like his prototype, flung down his wealth at
the feet of those whose instrument he had been. The best thing that he
could now do was to make the parallel complete by hanging himself. [423]
James seems to have thought that the strongest proof of kindness which
he could give to heretics who had resigned wealth, country, family, for
his sake, was to suffer them to be beset, on their dying beds, by his
priests. If some sick man, helpless in body and in mind, and deafened
by the din of bad logic and bad rhetoric, suffered a wafer to be thrust
into his mouth, a great work of grace was triumphantly announced to the
Court; and the neophyte was buried with all the pomp of religion. But
if a royalist, of the highest rank and most stainless character, died
professing firm attachment to the Church of England, a hole was dug in
the fields; and, at dead of night, he was flung into it and covered
up like a mass of carrion. Such were the obsequies of the Earl of
Dunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with the hazard of
his life and to the utter ruin of his fortunes, who had fought at
Killiecrankie, and who had, after the victory, lifted from the earth the
still breathing remains of Dundee. While living he had been treated with
contumely. The Scottish officers who had long served under him had in
vain entreated that, when they were formed into a company, he might
still be their commander. His religion had been thought a fatal
disqualification. A worthless adventurer, whose only recommendation was
that he was a Papist, was preferred. Dunfermline continued, during a
short time, to make his appearance in the circle which surrounded the
Prince whom he had served too well; but it was to no purpose. The bigots
who ruled the Court refused to the ruined and expatriated Protestant
Lord the means of subsistence; he died of a broken heart; and they
refused him even a grave. [424]
The insults daily offered at Saint Germains to the Protestant religion
produced a great effect in England. The Whigs triumphantly asked whether
it were not clear that the old tyrant was utterly incorrigible; and many
even of the nonjurors observed his proceedings with shame, disgust and
alarm. [425] The Jacobite party had, from the first, been divided into
two sections, which, three or four years after the Revolution, began to
be known as the Compounders and the Noncompounders. The Compounders were
those who wished for a restoration, but for a restoration accompanied by
a general amnesty, and by guarantees for the security of the civil and
ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. The Noncompounders thought
it downright Whiggery, downright rebellion; to take advantage of His
Majesty's unfortunate situation for the purpose of imposing on him any
condition. The plain duty of his subjects was to bring him back. What
traitors he would punish and what traitors he would spare, what laws he
would observe and with what laws he would dispense, were questions to be
decided by himself alone. If he decided them wrongly, he must answer for
his fault to heaven and not to his people.
The great body of the English Jacobites were more or less Compounders.
The pure Noncompounders were chiefly to be found among the Roman
Catholics, who, very naturally, were not solicitous to obtain any
security for a religion which they thought heretical, or for a polity
from the benefits of which they were excluded. There were also some
Protestant nonjurors, such as Kettlewell and Hickes, who resolutely
followed the theory of Filmer to all the extreme consequences to which
it led. But, though Kettlewell tried to convince his countrymen that
monarchical government had been ordained by God, not as a means of
making them happy here, but as a cross which it was their duty to
take up and bear in the hope of being recompensed for their sufferings
hereafter, and though Hickes assured them that there was not a single
Compounder in the whole Theban legion, very few churchmen were inclined
to run the risk of the gallows merely for the purpose of reestablishing
the High Commission and the Dispensing Power.
The Compounders formed the main strength of the Jacobite party in
England; but the Noncompounders had hitherto had undivided sway at Saint
Germains. No Protestant, no moderate Roman Catholic, no man who dared to
hint that any law could bind the royal prerogative, could hope for the
smallest mark of favour from the banished King. The priests and the
apostate Melfort, the avowed enemy of the Protestant religion and of
civil liberty, of Parliaments, of trial by jury and of the Habeas Corpus
Act, were in exclusive possession of the royal ear. Herbert was called
Chancellor, walked before the other officers of state, wore a black robe
embroidered with gold, and carried a seal; but he was a member of the
Church of England; and therefore he was not suffered to sit at the
Council Board. [426]
The truth is that the faults of James's head and heart were incurable.
In his view there could be between him and his subjects no reciprocity
of obligation. Their duty was to risk property, liberty, life, in order
to replace him on the throne, and then to bear patiently whatever he
chose to inflict upon them. They could no more pretend to merit
before him than before God. When they had done all, they were still
unprofitable servants. The highest praise due to the royalist who shed
his blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary
monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the severe
discipline which the deposed King had undergone, he was still as much
bent on plundering and abasing the Church of England as on the day when
he told the kneeling fellows of Magdalene to get out of his sight, or
on the day when he sent the Bishops to the Tower. He was in the habit
of declaring that he would rather die without seeing England again than
stoop to capitulate with those whom he ought to command. [427] In the
Declaration of April 1692 the whole man appears without disguise, full
of his own imaginary rights, unable to understand how any body but
himself can have any rights, dull, obstinate and cruel. Another paper
which he drew up about the same time shows, if possible, still more
clearly, how little he had profited by a sharp experience. In that paper
he set forth the plan according to which he intended to govern when he
should be restored. He laid it down as a rule that one Commissioner of
the Treasury, one of the two Secretaries of State, the Secretary at War,
the majority of the Great Officers of the Household, the majority of
the Lords of the Bedchamber, the majority of the officers of the army,
should always be Roman Catholics. [428]
It was to no purpose that the most eminent Compounders sent from
London letter after letter filled with judicious counsel and earnest
supplication. It was to no purpose that they demonstrated in the
plainest manner the impossibility of establishing Popish ascendancy in
a country where at least forty-nine fiftieths of the population and much
more than forty-nine fiftieths of the wealth and the intelligence were
Protestant. It was to no purpose that they informed their master that
the Declaration of April 1692 had been read with exultation by his
enemies and with deep affliction by his friends, that it had been
printed and circulated by the usurpers, that it had done more than all
the libels of the Whigs to inflame the nation against him, and that it
had furnished those naval officers who had promised him support with a
plausible pretext for breaking faith with him, and for destroying the
fleet which was to have convoyed him back to his kingdom. He continued
to be deaf to the remonstrances of his best friends in England
till those remonstrances began to be echoed at Versailles. All the
information which Lewis and his ministers were able to obtain touching
the state of our island satisfied them that James would never be
restored unless he could bring himself to make large concessions to his
subjects. It was therefore intimated to him, kindly and courteously,
but seriously, that he would do well to change his counsels and his
counsellors. France could not continue the war for the purpose of
forcing a Sovereign on an unwilling nation. She was crushed by public
burdens. Her trade and industry languished. Her harvest and her vintage
had failed. The peasantry were starving. The faint murmurs of the
provincial Estates began to be heard. There was a limit to the amount
of the sacrifices which the most absolute prince could demand from those
whom he ruled. However desirous the Most Christian King might be to
uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy and of pure religion all
over the world, his first duty was to his own kingdom; and, unless a
counterrevolution speedily took place in England, his duty to his own
kingdom might impose on him the painful necessity of treating with the
Prince of Orange. It would therefore be wise in James to do without
delay whatever he could honourably and conscientiously do to win back
the hearts of his people.
Thus pressed, James unwillingly yielded. He consented to give a share
in the management of his affairs to one of the most distinguished of the
Compounders, Charles Earl of Middleton.
Middleton's family and his peerage were Scotch. But he was closely
connected with some of the noblest houses of England; he had resided
long in England; he had been appointed by Charles the Second one of the
English Secretaries of State, and had been entrusted by James with the
lead of the English House of Commons. His abilities and acquirements
were considerable; his temper was easy and generous; his manners were
popular; and his conduct had generally been consistent and honourable.
He had, when Popery was in the ascendant, resolutely refused to purchase
the royal favour by apostasy. Roman Catholic ecclesiastics had been sent
to convert him; and the town had been much amused by the dexterity with
which the layman baffled the divines. A priest undertook to demonstrate
the doctrine of transubstantiation, and made the approaches in the usual
form. "Your Lordship believes in the Trinity. " "Who told you so? " said
Middleton. "Not believe in the Trinity! " cried the priest in amazement.
"Nay," said Middleton; "prove your religion to be true if you can; but
do not catechize me about mine. " As it was plain that the Secretary
was not a disputant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the
controversy ended almost as soon as it began. [429] When fortune
changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy with a
stedfastness which was the more respectable because he would have had no
difficulty in making his peace with the new government. His sentiments
were so well known that, when the kingdom was agitated by apprehensions
of an invasion and an insurrection, he was arrested and sent to the
Tower; but no evidence on which he could be convicted of treason was
discovered; and, when the dangerous crisis was past, he was set at
liberty. It should seem indeed that, during the three years which
followed the Revolution, he was by no means an active plotter. He saw
that a Restoration could be effected only with the general assent of the
nation, and that the nation would never assent to a Restoration without
securities against Popery and arbitrary power. He therefore conceived
that, while his banished master obstinately refused to give such
securities, it would be worse than idle to conspire against the existing
government.
Such was the man whom James, in consequence of strong representations
from Versailles, now invited to join him in France. The great body
of Compounders learned with delight that they were at length to be
represented in the Council at Saint Germains by one of their favourite
leaders. Some noblemen and gentlemen, who, though they had not approved
of the deposition of James, had been so much disgusted by his perverse
and absurd conduct that they had long avoided all connection with him,
now began to hope that he had seen his error. They had refused to
have any thing to do with Melfort; but they communicated freely with
Middleton. The new minister conferred also with the four traitors whose
infamy has been made preeminently conspicuous by their station, their
abilities, and their great public services; with Godolphin, the great
object of whose life was to be in favour with both the rival Kings at
once, and to keep, through all revolutions and counterrevolutions, his
head, his estate and a place at the Board of Treasury; with Shrewsbury,
who, having once in a fatal moment entangled himself in criminal and
dishonourable engagements, had not had the resolution to break through
them; with Marlborough, who continued to profess the deepest repentance
for the past and the best intentions for the future; and with Russell,
who declared that he was still what he had been before the day of La
Hogue, and renewed his promise to do what Monk had done, on condition
that a general pardon should be granted to all political offenders,
and that the royal power should be placed under strong constitutional
restraints.
Before Middleton left England he had collected the sense of all the
leading Compounders. They were of opinion that there was one expedient
which would reconcile contending factions at home, and lead to the
speedy pacification of Europe. This expedient was that James should
resign the Crown in favour of the Prince of Wales, and that the Prince
of Wales should be bred a Protestant. If, as was but too probable, His
Majesty should refuse to listen to this suggestion, he must at least
consent to put forth a Declaration which might do away the unfavourable
impression made by his Declaration of the preceding spring. A paper such
as it was thought expedient that he should publish was carefully drawn
up, and, after much discussion, approved.
Early in the year 1693, Middleton, having been put in full possession of
the views of the principal English Jacobites, stole across the Channel,
and made his appearance at the Court of James. There was at that Court
no want of slanderers and sneerers whose malignity was only the more
dangerous because it wore a meek and sanctimonious air. Middleton found,
on his arrival, that numerous lies, fabricated by the priests who feared
and hated him, were already in circulation. Some Noncompounders too
had written from London that he was at heart a Presbyterian and a
republican. He was however very graciously received, and was appointed
Secretary of State conjointly with Melfort. [430]
It very soon appeared that James was fully resolved never to resign the
Crown, or to suffer the Prince of Wales to be bred a heretic; and it
long seemed doubtful whether any arguments or entreaties would induce
him to sign the Declaration which his friends in England had prepared.
It was indeed a document very different from any that had yet appeared
under his Great Seal. He was made to promise that he would grant a free
pardon to all his subjects who should not oppose him after he should
land in the island; that, as soon as he was restored, he would call
a Parliament; that he would confirm all such laws, passed during the
usurpation, as the Houses should tender to him for confirmation; that
he would waive his right to the chimney money; that he would protect and
defend the Established Church in the enjoyment of all her possessions
and privileges; that he would not again violate the Test Act; that he
would leave it to the legislature to define the extent of his dispensing
power; and that he would maintain the Act of Settlement in Ireland.
He struggled long and hard. He pleaded his conscience. Could a son of
the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church bind himself to protect and
defend heresy, and to enforce a law which excluded true believers from
office? Some of the ecclesiastics who swarmed in his household told
him that he could not without sin give any such pledge as his undutiful
subjects demanded. On this point the opinion of Middleton, who was a
Protestant, could be of no weight. But Middleton found an ally in
one whom he regarded as a rival and an enemy. Melfort, scared by the
universal hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, and afraid
that he should be held accountable, both in England and in France, for
his master's wrongheadedness, submitted the case to several eminent
Doctors of the Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced the
Declaration unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The great
Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who was regarded by the Gallican Church as a
father scarcely inferior in authority to Cyprian or Augustin, showed,
by powerful arguments, both theological and political, that the scruple
which tormented James was precisely of that sort against which a
much wiser King had given a caution in the words, "Be not righteous
overmuch. " [431] The authority of the French divines was supported by
the authority of the French government. The language held at Versailles
was so strong that James began to be alarmed. What if Lewis should take
serious offence, should think his hospitality ungratefully requited,
should conclude a peace with the usurpers, and should request his
unfortunate guests to seek another asylum? It was necessary to submit.
On the seventeenth of April 1693 the Declaration was signed and sealed.
The concluding sentence was a prayer. "We come to vindicate our own
right and to establish the liberties of our people; and may God give
us success in the prosecution of the one as we sincerely intend the
confirmation of the other! " [432] The prayer was heard. The success of
James was strictly proportioned to his sincerity. What his sincerity
was we know on the best evidence. Scarcely had he called on heaven to
witness the truth of his professions, when he directed Melfort to send a
copy of the Declaration to Rome with such explanations as might satisfy
the Pope. Melfort's letter ends thus: "After all, the object of this
Declaration is only to get us back to England. We shall fight the battle
of the Catholics with much greater advantage at Whitehall than at Saint
Germains. " [433]
Meanwhile the document from which so much was expected had been
despatched to London. There it was printed at a secret press in the
house of a Quaker; for there was among the Quakers a party, small
in number, but zealous and active, which had imbibed the politics of
William Penn. [434] To circulate such a work was a service of some
danger; but agents were found. Several persons were taken up while
distributing copies in the streets of the city. A hundred packets were
stopped in one day at the Post Office on their way to the fleet. But,
after a short time, the government wisely gave up the endeavour to
suppress what could not be suppressed, and published the Declaration at
full length, accompanied by a severe commentary. [435]
The commentary, however, was hardly needed. The Declaration altogether
failed to produce the effect which Middleton had anticipated. The truth
is that his advice had not been asked till it mattered not what advice
he gave. If James had put forth such a manifesto in January 1689, the
throne would probably not have been declared vacant. If he had put forth
such a manifesto when he was on the coast of Normandy at the head of an
army, he would have conciliated a large part of the nation, and he might
possibly have been joined by a large part of the fleet. But both in 1689
and in 1692 he had held the language of an implacable tyrant; and it
was now too late to affect tenderness of heart and reverence for the
constitution of the realm. The contrast between the new Declaration and
the preceding Declaration excited, not without reason, general suspicion
and contempt. What confidence could be placed in the word of a Prince
so unstable, of a Prince who veered from extreme to extreme? In 1692
nothing would satisfy him but the heads and quarters of hundreds of poor
ploughmen and boatmen who had, several years before, taken some rustic
liberties with him at which his grandfather Henry the Fourth would have
had a hearty laugh. In 1693 the foulest and most ungrateful treasons
were to be covered with oblivion. Caermarthen expressed the general
sentiment. "I do not," he said, "understand all this. Last April I was
to be hanged. This April I am to have a free pardon. I cannot imagine
what I have done during the past year to deserve such goodness. "
The general opinion was that a snare was hidden under this unwonted
clemency, this unwonted respect for law. The Declaration, it was said,
was excellent; and so was the Coronation oath. Every body knew how King
James had observed his Coronation oath; and every body might guess how
he would observe his Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus,
the Whig jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of the
Noncompounders, meantime, uttered indignant murmurs. The King was in bad
hands, in the hands of men who hated monarchy. His mercy was cruelty of
the worst sort. The general pardon which he had granted to his enemies
was in truth a general proscription of his friends. Hitherto the judges
appointed by the usurper had been under a restraint, imperfect indeed,
yet not absolutely nugatory. They had known that a day of reckoning
might come, and had therefore in general dealt tenderly with the
persecuted adherents of the rightful King. That restraint His Majesty
had now taken away. He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should land
in England, they might hang royalists without the smallest fear of being
called to account. [436]
But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much disgust
and indignation as by the native aristocracy of Ireland. This then was
the reward of their loyalty. This was the faith of kings. When England
had cast James out, when Scotland had rejected him, the Irish had still
been true to him; and he had, in return, solemnly given his sanction to
a law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been
despoiled. Nothing that had happened since that time had diminished
their claim to his favour. They had defended his cause to the last; they
had fought for him long after he had deserted them; many of them, when
unable to contend longer against superior force, had followed him into
banishment; and now it appeared that he was desirous to make peace with
his deadliest enemies at the expense of his most faithful friends. There
was much discontent in the Irish regiments which were dispersed through
the Netherlands and along the frontiers of Germany and Italy. Even the
Whigs allowed that, for once, the O's and Macs were in the right, and
asked triumphantly whether a prince who had broken his word to his
devoted servants could be expected to keep it to his foes? [437]
While the Declaration was the subject of general conversation in
England, military operations recommenced on the Continent. The
preparations of France had been such as amazed even those who estimated
most highly her resources and the abilities of her rulers. Both her
agriculture and her commerce were suffering. The vineyards of Burgundy,
the interminable cornfields of the Beauce, had failed to yield their
increase; the looms of Lyons were silent; and the merchant ships were
rotting in the harbour of Marseilles. Yet the monarchy presented to its
numerous enemies a front more haughty and more menacing than ever. Lewis
had determined not to make any advance towards a reconciliation with the
new government of England till the whole strength of his realm had been
put forth in one more effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but too
exhausting to be repeated. He made an immense display of force at once
on the Pyrenees and on the Alps, on the Rhine and on the Meuse, in the
Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. That nothing might be wanting which
could excite the martial ardour of a nation eminently highspirited, he
instituted, a few days before he left his palace for the camp, a new
military order of knighthood, and placed it under the protection of his
own sainted ancestor and patron. The new cross of Saint Lewis shone on
the breasts of the gentlemen who had been conspicuous in the trenches
before Mons and Namur, and on the fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk; and
the sight raised a generous emulation among those who had still to win
an honourable fame in arms. [438]
In the week in which this celebrated order began to exist Middleton
visited Versailles. A letter in which he gave his friends in England
an account of his visit has come down to us. [439] He was presented to
Lewis, was most kindly received, and was overpowered by gratitude and
admiration. Of all the wonders of the Court,--so Middleton wrote,--its
master was the greatest. The splendour of the great King's personal
merit threw even the splendour of his fortunes into the shade. The
language which His Most Christian Majesty held about English politics
was, on the whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing this
accomplished prince and his able and experienced ministers were
strangely mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion
that the Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared
to undeceive them; but they were under an incurable delusion. They saw
through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech appeared to them
a leviathan. It ought to have occurred to Middleton that possibly the
delusion might be in his own vision and not in theirs. Lewis and the
counsellors who surrounded him were far indeed from loving William. But
they did not hate him with that mad hatred which raged in the breasts of
his English enemies. Middleton was one of the wisest and most moderate
of the Jacobites. Yet even Middleton's judgment was so much darkened
by malice that, on this subject, he talked nonsense unworthy of his
capacity. He, like the rest of his party, could see in the usurper
nothing but what was odious and contemptible, the heart of a fiend, the
understanding and manners of a stupid, brutal, Dutch boor, who generally
observed a sulky silence, and, when forced to speak, gave short testy
answers in bad English. The French statesmen, on the other hand, judged
of William's faculties from an intimate knowledge of the way in which he
had, during twenty years, conducted affairs of the greatest moment
and of the greatest difficulty. He had, ever since 1673, been playing
against themselves a most complicated game of mixed chance and skill
for an immense stake; they were proud, and with reason, of their own
dexterity at that game; yet they were conscious that in him they had
found more than their match. At the commencement of the long contest
every advantage had been on their side. They had at their absolute
command all the resources of the greatest kingdom in Europe; and he was
merely the servant of a commonwealth, of which the whole territory was
inferior in extent to Normandy or Guienne. A succession of generals
and diplomatists of eminent ability had been opposed to him. A powerful
faction in his native country had pertinaciously crossed his designs.
He had undergone defeats in the field and defeats in the senate; but his
wisdom and firmness had turned defeats into victories.
Notwithstanding
all that could be done to keep him down, his influence and fame had been
almost constantly rising and spreading. The most important and arduous
enterprise in the history of modern Europe had been planned and
conducted to a prosperous termination by him alone. The most extensive
coalition that the world had seen for ages had been formed by him, and
would be instantly dissolved if his superintending care were withdrawn.
He had gained two kingdoms by statecraft, and a third by conquest; and
he was still maintaining himself in the possession of all three in spite
of both foreign and domestic foes. That these things had been effected
by a poor creature, a man of the most ordinary capacity, was an
assertion which might easily find credence among the nonjuring parsons
who congregated at Sam's Coffee-house, but which moved the laughter of
the veteran politicians of Versailles.
While Middleton was in vain trying to convince the French that
William was a greatly overrated man, William, who did full justice to
Middleton's merit, felt much uneasiness at learning that the Court of
Saint Germains had called in the help of so able a counsellor. [440]
But this was only one of a thousand causes of anxiety which during that
spring pressed on the King's mind. He was preparing for the opening of
the campaign, imploring his allies to be early in the field, rousing the
sluggish, haggling with the greedy, making up quarrels, adjusting points
of precedence. He had to prevail on the Cabinet of Vienna to send timely
succours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on those Northern
potentates who were trying to form a third party in Europe. He had to
act as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in the Netherlands. He had to
provide for the defence of Liege, a matter which the authorities of
Liege coolly declared to be not at all their business, but the business
of England and Holland. He had to prevent the House of Brunswick
Wolfenbuttel from going to blows with the House of Brunswick Lunenburg;
he had to accommodate a dispute between the Prince of Baden and the
Elector of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army on
the Rhine; and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who omitted to
furnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to command the contingents
furnished by other princes. [441]
And now the time for action had arrived. On the eighteenth of May Lewis
left Versailles; early in June he was under the walls of Namur. The
Princesses, who had accompanied him, held their court within the
fortress. He took under his immediate command the army of Boufflers,
which was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a mile off lay the army
of Luxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood under the French
lilies did not amount to less than a hundred and twenty thousand men.
Lewis had flattered himself that he should be able to repeat in 1693 the
stratagem by which Mons had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; and
he had determined that either Liege or Brussels should be his prey.
But William had this year been able to assemble in good time a force,
inferior indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still formidable.
With this force he took his post near Louvain, on the road between the
two threatened cities, and watched every movement of the enemy.
Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be possible for him
to gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in the two preceding
years, to sit down before a great town, to enter the gates in triumph,
and to receive the keys, without exposing himself to any risk greater
than that of a staghunt at Fontainebleau. Before he could lay siege
either to Liege or to Brussels he must fight and win a battle. The
chances were indeed greatly in his favour; for his army was more
numerous, better officered and better disciplined than that of the
allies. Luxemburg strongly advised him to march against William. The
aristocracy of France anticipated with intrepid gaiety a bloody but a
glorious day, followed by a large distribution of the crosses of the new
order. William himself was perfectly aware of his danger, and prepared
to meet it with calm but mournful fortitude. [442] Just at this
conjuncture Lewis announced his intention to return instantly to
Versailles, and to send the Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the army
which was assembled near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who commanded in
the Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated boldly and
earnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity thrown away. If His
Majesty would march against the Prince of Orange, victory was almost
certain. Could any advantage which it was possible to obtain on the
Rhine be set against the advantage of a victory gained in the heart
of Brabant over the principal army and the principal captain of the
coalition? The Marshal reasoned; he implored; he went on his knees; but
in vain; and he quitted the royal presence in the deepest dejection.
Lewis left the camp a week after he had joined it, and never afterwards
made war in person.
The astonishment was great throughout his army. All the awe which he
inspired could not prevent his old generals from grumbling and looking
sullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen, sometimes in curses
and sometimes in sarcasms, and even his common soldiers from holding
irreverent language round their watchfires. His enemies rejoiced with
vindictive and insulting joy. Was it not strange, they asked, that this
great prince should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and then
in a week have gone in the same state back again? Was it necessary
that all that vast retinue, princesses, dames of honour and tirewomen,
equerries and gentlemen of the bedchamber, cooks, confectioners and
musicians, long trains of waggons, droves of led horses and sumpter
mules, piles of plate, bales of tapestry, should travel four hundred
miles merely in order that the Most Christian King might look at his
soldiers and then return? The ignominious truth was too evident to be
concealed. He had gone to the Netherlands in the hope that he might
again be able to snatch some military glory without any hazard to his
person, and had hastened back rather than expose himself to the chances
of a pitched field. [443] This was not the first time that His Most
Christian Majesty had shown the same kind of prudence. Seventeen years
before he had been opposed under the wails of Bouchain to the same
antagonist. William, with the ardour of a very young commander, had most
imprudently offered battle. The opinion of the ablest generals was that,
if Lewis had seized the opportunity, the war might have been ended in a
day. The French army had eagerly asked to be led to the onset. The King
had called his lieutenants round him and had collected their opinions.
Some courtly officers to whom a hint of his wishes had been dexterously
conveyed had, blushing and stammering with shame, voted against
fighting. It was to no purpose that bold and honest men, who prized his
honour more than his life, had proved to him that, on all principles of
the military art, he ought to accept the challenge rashly given by the
enemy. His Majesty had gravely expressed his sorrow that he could not,
consistently with his public duty, obey the impetuous movement of his
blood, had turned his rein, and had galloped back to his quarters. [444]
Was it not frightful to think what rivers of the best blood of France,
of Spain, of Germany and of England, had flowed, and were destined still
to flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted the vulgar courage
which was found in the meanest of the hundreds of thousands whom he had
sacrificed to his vainglorious ambition?
Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by the
departure of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and Boufflers, and
though the allied army was daily strengthened by the arrival of fresh
troops, Luxemburg still had a superiority of force; and that superiority
he increased by an adroit stratagem. He marched towards Liege, and made
as if he were about to form the siege of that city. William was uneasy,
and the more uneasy because he knew that there was a French party among
the inhabitants. He quitted his position near Louvain, advanced to
Nether Hespen, and encamped there with the river Gette in his rear. On
his march he learned that Huy had opened its gates to the French. The
news increased his anxiety about Liege, and determined him to send
thither a force sufficient to overawe malecontents within the city, and
to repel any attack from without. [445] This was exactly what Luxemburg
had expected and desired. His feint had served its purpose. He turned
his back on the fortress which had hitherto seemed to be his object, and
hastened towards the Gette. William, who had detached more than twenty
thousand men, and who had but fifty thousand left in his camp, was
alarmed by learning from his scouts, on the eighteenth of July, that the
French General, with near eighty thousand, was close at hand.
It was still in the King's power, by a hasty retreat, to put the narrow,
but deep, waters of the Gette, which had lately been swollen by rains,
between his army and the enemy. But the site which he occupied was
strong; and it could easily be made still stronger. He set all his
troops to work. Ditches were dug, mounds thrown up, palisades fixed in
the earth. In a few hours the ground wore a new aspect; and the King
trusted that he should be able to repel the attack even of a force
greatly outnumbering his own. Nor was it without much appearance of
reason that he felt this confidence. When the morning of the nineteenth
of July broke, the bravest men of Lewis's army looked gravely and
anxiously on the fortress which had suddenly sprung up to arrest their
progress. The allies were protected by a breastwork. Here and there
along the entrenchments were formed little redoubts and half moons. A
hundred pieces of cannon were disposed along the ramparts. On the left
flank, the village of Romsdorff rose close to the little stream of
Landen, from which the English have named the disastrous day. On the
right was the village of Neerwinden. Both villages were, after the
fashion of the Low Countries, surrounded by moats and fences; and,
within these enclosures, the little plots of ground occupied by
different families were separated by mud walls five feet in height and
a foot in thickness. All these barricades William had repaired and
strengthened. Saint Simon, who, after the battle, surveyed the ground,
could hardly, he tells us, believe that defences so extensive and so
formidable could have been created with such rapidity.
Luxemburg, however, was determined to try whether even this position
could be maintained against the superior numbers and the impetuous
valour of his soldiers. Soon after sunrise the roar of cannon began
to be heard. William's batteries did much execution before the French
artillery could be so placed as to return the fire. It was eight o'clock
before the close fighting began. The village of Neerwinden was regarded
by both commanders as the point on which every thing depended. There an
attack was made by the French left wing commanded by Montchevreuil, a
veteran officer of high reputation, and by Berwick, who, though young,
was fast rising to a high place among the captains of his time. Berwick
led the onset, and forced his way into the village, but was soon driven
out again with a terrible carnage. His followers fled or perished; he,
while trying to rally them, and cursing them for not doing their duty
better, was surrounded by foes. He concealed his white cockade, and
hoped to be able, by the help of his native tongue, to pass himself off
as an officer of the English army. But his face was recognised by one
of his mother's brothers, George Churchill, who held on that day the
command of a brigade. A hurried embrace was exchanged between the
kinsmen; and the uncle conducted the nephew to William, who, as long as
every thing seemed to be going well, remained in the rear. The meeting
of the King and the captive, united by such close domestic ties, and
divided by such inexpiable injuries, was a strange sight. Both behaved
as became them. William uncovered, and addressed to his prisoner a few
words of courteous greeting. Berwick's only reply was a solemn bow. The
King put on his hat; the Duke put on his hat; and the cousins parted for
ever.
By this time the French, who had been driven in confusion out of
Neerwinden, had been reinforced by a division under the command of the
Duke of Bourbon, and came gallantly back to the attack. William, well
aware of the importance of this post, gave orders that troops should
move thither from other parts of his line. This second conflict was long
and bloody. The assailants again forced an entrance into the village.
They were again driven out with immense slaughter, and showed little
inclination to return to the charge.
Meanwhile the battle had been raging all along the entrenchments of
the allied army. Again and again Luxemburg brought up his troops within
pistolshot of the breastwork; but he could bring them no nearer. Again
and again they recoiled from the heavy fire which was poured on their
front and on their flanks. It seemed that all was over. Luxemburg
retired to a spot which was out of gunshot, and summoned a few of his
chief officers to a consultation. They talked together during some time;
and their animated gestures were observed with deep interest by all who
were within sight.
At length Luxemburg formed his decision. A last attempt must be made to
carry Neerwinden; and the invincible household troops, the conquerors of
Steinkirk, must lead the way.
The household troops came on in a manner worthy of their long and
terrible renown. A third time Neerwinden was taken. A third time William
tried to retake it. At the head of some English regiments he charged the
guards of Lewis with such fury that, for the first time in the memory of
the oldest warrior, that far famed band gave way. [446] It was only by
the strenuous exertions of Luxemburg, of the Duke of Chartres, and of
the Duke of Bourbon, that the broken ranks were rallied. But by this
time the centre and left of the allied army had been so much thinned
for the purpose of supporting the conflict at Neerwinden that the
entrenchments could no longer be defended on other points. A little
after four in the afternoon the whole line gave way. All was havoc and
confusion. Solmes had received a mortal wound, and fell, still alive,
into the hands of the enemy. The English soldiers, to whom his name was
hateful, accused him of having in his sufferings shown pusillanimity
unworthy of a soldier. The Duke of Ormond was struck down in the press;
and in another moment he would have been a corpse, had not a rich
diamond on his finger caught the eye of one of the French guards,
who justly thought that the owner of such a jewel would be a valuable
prisoner. The Duke's life was saved; and he was speedily exchanged for
Berwick. Ruvigny, animated by the true refugee hatred of the country
which had cast him out, was taken fighting in the thickest of the
battle. Those into whose hands he had fallen knew him well, and knew
that, if they carried him to their camp, his head would pay for that
treason to which persecution had driven him. With admirable generosity
they pretended not to recognise him, and suffered him to make his escape
in the tumult.
It was only on such occasions as this that the whole greatness of
William's character appeared. Amidst the rout and uproar, while arms and
standards were flung away, while multitudes of fugitives were choking up
the bridges and fords of the Gette or perishing in its waters, the King,
having directed Talmash to superintend the retreat, put himself at the
head of a few brave regiments, and by desperate efforts arrested the
progress of the enemy. His risk was greater than that which others ran.
For he could not be persuaded either to encumber his feeble frame with
a cuirass, or to hide the ensigns of the garter. He thought his star a
good rallying point for his own troops, and only smiled when he was told
that it was a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his right hand and
on his left. Two led horses, which in the field always closely followed
his person, were struck dead by cannon shots. One musket ball passed
through the curls of his wig, another through his coat; a third
bruised his side and tore his blue riband to tatters. Many years later
greyhaired old pensioners who crept about the arcades and alleys of
Chelsea Hospital used to relate how he charged at the head of Galway's
horse, how he dismounted four times to put heart into the infantry, how
he rallied one corps which seemed to be shrinking; "That is not the way
to fight, gentlemen. You must stand close up to them. Thus, gentlemen,
thus. " "You might have seen him," an eyewitness wrote, only four days
after the battle, "with his sword in his hand, throwing himself upon the
enemy. It is certain that one time, among the rest, he was seen at the
head of two English regiments, and that he fought seven with these two
in sight of the whole army, driving them before him above a quarter of
an hour. Thanks be to God that preserved him. " The enemy pressed on him
so close that it was with difficulty that he at length made his way over
the Gette. A small body of brave men, who shared his peril to the last,
could hardly keep off the pursuers as he crossed the bridge. [447]
Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress of civilisation has
produced in the art of war more strikingly illustrated than on that day.
Ajax beating down the Trojan leader with a rock which two ordinary men
could scarcely lift, Horatius defending the bridge against an army,
Richard the Lionhearted spurring along the whole Saracen line without
finding an enemy to stand his assault, Robert Bruce crushing with one
blow the helmet and head of Sir Henry Bohun in sight of the whole array
of England and Scotland, such are the heroes of a dark age. In such an
age bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior.
At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, would
have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were the
souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would have
been exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred years
earlier, have been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot had fallen
on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the muscles is
far inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable that,
among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who were marshalled round
Neerwinden under all the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblest
in body were the hunchbacked dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset
of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of
England.
The French were victorious; but they had bought their victory dear. More
than ten thousand of the best troops of Lewis had fallen. Neerwinden was
a spectacle at which the oldest soldiers stood aghast. The streets were
piled breast high with corpses. Among the slain were some great lords
and some renowned warriors. Montchevreuil was there, and the mutilated
trunk of the Duke of Uzes, first in order of precedence among the
whole aristocracy of France. Thence too Sarsfield was borne desperately
wounded to a pallet from which he never rose again. The Court of Saint
Germains had conferred on him the empty title of Earl of Lucan;
but history knows him by the name which is still dear to the most
unfortunate of nations. The region, renowned in history as the battle
field, during many ages, of the most warlike nations of Europe, has
seen only two more terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day of
Waterloo. During many months the ground was strewn with skulls and bones
of men and horses, and with fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and
holsters. The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand
corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on the
road from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet
spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that the
figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished,
that the earth was disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the
slain. [448]
There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the heaven when
William crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so much exhausted by
marching and fighting that they could scarcely move; and the horses were
in even worse condition than the men. Their general thought it necessary
to allow some time for rest and refreshment. The French nobles unloaded
their sumpter horses, supped gaily, and pledged one another in champagne
amidst the heaps of dead; and, when night fell, whole brigades gladly
lay down to sleep in their ranks on the field of battle. The inactivity
of Luxemburg did not escape censure. None could deny that he had in the
action shown great skill and energy. But some complained that he wanted
patience and perseverance. Others whispered that he had no wish to bring
to an end a war which made him necessary to a Court where he had never,
in time of peace, found favour or even justice. [449] Lewis, who on this
occasion was perhaps not altogether free from some emotions of jealousy,
contrived, it was reported, to mingle with the praise which he bestowed
on his lieutenant blame which, though delicately expressed, was
perfectly intelligible. "In the battle," he said, "the Duke of Luxemburg
behaved like Conde; and since the battle the Prince of Orange has
behaved like Turenne. "
In truth the ability and vigour with which William repaired his terrible
defeat might well excite admiration. "In one respect," said the Admiral
Coligni, "I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, over
Caesar. They won great battles, it is true. I have lost four great
battles; and yet I show to the enemy a more formidable front than ever. "
The blood of Coligni ran in the veins of William; and with the blood had
descended the unconquerable spirit which could derive from failure as
much glory as happier commanders owed to success. The defeat of Landen
was indeed a heavy blow. The King had a few days of cruel anxiety.
If Luxemburg pushed on, all was lost. Louvain must fall, and Mechlin,
Nieuport, and Ostend. The Batavian frontier would be in danger. The cry
for peace throughout Holland might be such as neither States General nor
Stadtholder would be able to resist. [450] But there was delay; and a
very short delay was enough for William. From the field of battle he
made his way through the multitude of fugitives to the neighbourhood of
Louvain, and there began to collect his scattered forces. His character
is not lowered by the anxiety which, at that moment, the most disastrous
of his life, he felt for the two persons who were dearest to him. As
soon as he was safe, he wrote to assure his wife of his safety. [451] In
the confusion of the flight he had lost sight of Portland, who was then
in very feeble health, and had therefore run more than the ordinary
risks of war. A short note which the King sent to his friend a few hours
later is still extant. [452] "Though I hope to see you this evening, I
cannot help writing to tell you how rejoiced I am that you got off so
well. God grant that your health may soon be quite restored. These are
great trials, which he has been pleased to send me in quick succession.
I must try to submit to his pleasure without murmuring, and to deserve
his anger less. "
His forces rallied fast. Large bodies of troops which he had, perhaps
imprudently, detached from his army while he supposed that Liege was the
object of the enemy, rejoined him by forced marches. Three weeks after
his defeat he held a review a few miles from Brussels. The number of men
under arms was greater than on the morning of the bloody day of Landen;
their appearance was soldierlike; and their spirit seemed unbroken.
William now wrote to Heinsius that the worst was over. "The crisis," he
said, "has been a terrible one. Thank God that it has ended thus. " He
did not, however, think it prudent to try at that time the event of
another pitched field. He therefore suffered the French to besiege and
take Charleroy; and this was the only advantage which they derived
from the most sanguinary battle fought in Europe during the seventeenth
century.
The melancholy tidings of the defeat of Landen found England agitated by
tidings not less melancholy from a different quarter. During many
months the trade with the Mediterranean Sea had been almost entirely
interrupted by the war.
Granville, who had quitted the richest deanery, the richest archdeaconry
and one of the richest livings in England, rather than take the oaths,
gave mortal offence by asking leave to read prayers to the exiles of his
own communion. His request was refused; and he was so grossly insulted
by his master's chaplains and their retainers that he was forced to
quit Saint Germains. Lest some other Anglican doctor should be equally
importunate, James wrote to inform his agents in England that he wished
no Protestant divine to come out to him. [422] Indeed the nonjuring
clergy were at least as much sneered at and as much railed at in his
palace as in his nephew's. If any man had a claim to be mentioned with
respect at Saint Germains, it was surely Sancroft. Yet it was reported
that the bigots who were assembled there never spoke of him but with
aversion and disgust. The sacrifice of the first place in the Church,
of the first place in the peerage, of the mansion at Lambeth and the
mansion at Croydon, of immense patronage and of a revenue of more than
five thousand a year was thought but a poor atonement for the great
crime of having modestly remonstrated against the unconstitutional
Declaration of Indulgence. Sancroft was pronounced to be just such a
traitor and just such a penitent as Judas Iscariot. The old hypocrite
had, it was said, while affecting reverence and love for his master,
given the fatal signal to his master's enemies. When the mischief had
been done and could not be repaired, the conscience of the sinner had
begun to torture him. He had, like his prototype, blamed himself and
bemoaned himself. He had, like his prototype, flung down his wealth at
the feet of those whose instrument he had been. The best thing that he
could now do was to make the parallel complete by hanging himself. [423]
James seems to have thought that the strongest proof of kindness which
he could give to heretics who had resigned wealth, country, family, for
his sake, was to suffer them to be beset, on their dying beds, by his
priests. If some sick man, helpless in body and in mind, and deafened
by the din of bad logic and bad rhetoric, suffered a wafer to be thrust
into his mouth, a great work of grace was triumphantly announced to the
Court; and the neophyte was buried with all the pomp of religion. But
if a royalist, of the highest rank and most stainless character, died
professing firm attachment to the Church of England, a hole was dug in
the fields; and, at dead of night, he was flung into it and covered
up like a mass of carrion. Such were the obsequies of the Earl of
Dunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with the hazard of
his life and to the utter ruin of his fortunes, who had fought at
Killiecrankie, and who had, after the victory, lifted from the earth the
still breathing remains of Dundee. While living he had been treated with
contumely. The Scottish officers who had long served under him had in
vain entreated that, when they were formed into a company, he might
still be their commander. His religion had been thought a fatal
disqualification. A worthless adventurer, whose only recommendation was
that he was a Papist, was preferred. Dunfermline continued, during a
short time, to make his appearance in the circle which surrounded the
Prince whom he had served too well; but it was to no purpose. The bigots
who ruled the Court refused to the ruined and expatriated Protestant
Lord the means of subsistence; he died of a broken heart; and they
refused him even a grave. [424]
The insults daily offered at Saint Germains to the Protestant religion
produced a great effect in England. The Whigs triumphantly asked whether
it were not clear that the old tyrant was utterly incorrigible; and many
even of the nonjurors observed his proceedings with shame, disgust and
alarm. [425] The Jacobite party had, from the first, been divided into
two sections, which, three or four years after the Revolution, began to
be known as the Compounders and the Noncompounders. The Compounders were
those who wished for a restoration, but for a restoration accompanied by
a general amnesty, and by guarantees for the security of the civil and
ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. The Noncompounders thought
it downright Whiggery, downright rebellion; to take advantage of His
Majesty's unfortunate situation for the purpose of imposing on him any
condition. The plain duty of his subjects was to bring him back. What
traitors he would punish and what traitors he would spare, what laws he
would observe and with what laws he would dispense, were questions to be
decided by himself alone. If he decided them wrongly, he must answer for
his fault to heaven and not to his people.
The great body of the English Jacobites were more or less Compounders.
The pure Noncompounders were chiefly to be found among the Roman
Catholics, who, very naturally, were not solicitous to obtain any
security for a religion which they thought heretical, or for a polity
from the benefits of which they were excluded. There were also some
Protestant nonjurors, such as Kettlewell and Hickes, who resolutely
followed the theory of Filmer to all the extreme consequences to which
it led. But, though Kettlewell tried to convince his countrymen that
monarchical government had been ordained by God, not as a means of
making them happy here, but as a cross which it was their duty to
take up and bear in the hope of being recompensed for their sufferings
hereafter, and though Hickes assured them that there was not a single
Compounder in the whole Theban legion, very few churchmen were inclined
to run the risk of the gallows merely for the purpose of reestablishing
the High Commission and the Dispensing Power.
The Compounders formed the main strength of the Jacobite party in
England; but the Noncompounders had hitherto had undivided sway at Saint
Germains. No Protestant, no moderate Roman Catholic, no man who dared to
hint that any law could bind the royal prerogative, could hope for the
smallest mark of favour from the banished King. The priests and the
apostate Melfort, the avowed enemy of the Protestant religion and of
civil liberty, of Parliaments, of trial by jury and of the Habeas Corpus
Act, were in exclusive possession of the royal ear. Herbert was called
Chancellor, walked before the other officers of state, wore a black robe
embroidered with gold, and carried a seal; but he was a member of the
Church of England; and therefore he was not suffered to sit at the
Council Board. [426]
The truth is that the faults of James's head and heart were incurable.
In his view there could be between him and his subjects no reciprocity
of obligation. Their duty was to risk property, liberty, life, in order
to replace him on the throne, and then to bear patiently whatever he
chose to inflict upon them. They could no more pretend to merit
before him than before God. When they had done all, they were still
unprofitable servants. The highest praise due to the royalist who shed
his blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary
monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the severe
discipline which the deposed King had undergone, he was still as much
bent on plundering and abasing the Church of England as on the day when
he told the kneeling fellows of Magdalene to get out of his sight, or
on the day when he sent the Bishops to the Tower. He was in the habit
of declaring that he would rather die without seeing England again than
stoop to capitulate with those whom he ought to command. [427] In the
Declaration of April 1692 the whole man appears without disguise, full
of his own imaginary rights, unable to understand how any body but
himself can have any rights, dull, obstinate and cruel. Another paper
which he drew up about the same time shows, if possible, still more
clearly, how little he had profited by a sharp experience. In that paper
he set forth the plan according to which he intended to govern when he
should be restored. He laid it down as a rule that one Commissioner of
the Treasury, one of the two Secretaries of State, the Secretary at War,
the majority of the Great Officers of the Household, the majority of
the Lords of the Bedchamber, the majority of the officers of the army,
should always be Roman Catholics. [428]
It was to no purpose that the most eminent Compounders sent from
London letter after letter filled with judicious counsel and earnest
supplication. It was to no purpose that they demonstrated in the
plainest manner the impossibility of establishing Popish ascendancy in
a country where at least forty-nine fiftieths of the population and much
more than forty-nine fiftieths of the wealth and the intelligence were
Protestant. It was to no purpose that they informed their master that
the Declaration of April 1692 had been read with exultation by his
enemies and with deep affliction by his friends, that it had been
printed and circulated by the usurpers, that it had done more than all
the libels of the Whigs to inflame the nation against him, and that it
had furnished those naval officers who had promised him support with a
plausible pretext for breaking faith with him, and for destroying the
fleet which was to have convoyed him back to his kingdom. He continued
to be deaf to the remonstrances of his best friends in England
till those remonstrances began to be echoed at Versailles. All the
information which Lewis and his ministers were able to obtain touching
the state of our island satisfied them that James would never be
restored unless he could bring himself to make large concessions to his
subjects. It was therefore intimated to him, kindly and courteously,
but seriously, that he would do well to change his counsels and his
counsellors. France could not continue the war for the purpose of
forcing a Sovereign on an unwilling nation. She was crushed by public
burdens. Her trade and industry languished. Her harvest and her vintage
had failed. The peasantry were starving. The faint murmurs of the
provincial Estates began to be heard. There was a limit to the amount
of the sacrifices which the most absolute prince could demand from those
whom he ruled. However desirous the Most Christian King might be to
uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy and of pure religion all
over the world, his first duty was to his own kingdom; and, unless a
counterrevolution speedily took place in England, his duty to his own
kingdom might impose on him the painful necessity of treating with the
Prince of Orange. It would therefore be wise in James to do without
delay whatever he could honourably and conscientiously do to win back
the hearts of his people.
Thus pressed, James unwillingly yielded. He consented to give a share
in the management of his affairs to one of the most distinguished of the
Compounders, Charles Earl of Middleton.
Middleton's family and his peerage were Scotch. But he was closely
connected with some of the noblest houses of England; he had resided
long in England; he had been appointed by Charles the Second one of the
English Secretaries of State, and had been entrusted by James with the
lead of the English House of Commons. His abilities and acquirements
were considerable; his temper was easy and generous; his manners were
popular; and his conduct had generally been consistent and honourable.
He had, when Popery was in the ascendant, resolutely refused to purchase
the royal favour by apostasy. Roman Catholic ecclesiastics had been sent
to convert him; and the town had been much amused by the dexterity with
which the layman baffled the divines. A priest undertook to demonstrate
the doctrine of transubstantiation, and made the approaches in the usual
form. "Your Lordship believes in the Trinity. " "Who told you so? " said
Middleton. "Not believe in the Trinity! " cried the priest in amazement.
"Nay," said Middleton; "prove your religion to be true if you can; but
do not catechize me about mine. " As it was plain that the Secretary
was not a disputant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the
controversy ended almost as soon as it began. [429] When fortune
changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy with a
stedfastness which was the more respectable because he would have had no
difficulty in making his peace with the new government. His sentiments
were so well known that, when the kingdom was agitated by apprehensions
of an invasion and an insurrection, he was arrested and sent to the
Tower; but no evidence on which he could be convicted of treason was
discovered; and, when the dangerous crisis was past, he was set at
liberty. It should seem indeed that, during the three years which
followed the Revolution, he was by no means an active plotter. He saw
that a Restoration could be effected only with the general assent of the
nation, and that the nation would never assent to a Restoration without
securities against Popery and arbitrary power. He therefore conceived
that, while his banished master obstinately refused to give such
securities, it would be worse than idle to conspire against the existing
government.
Such was the man whom James, in consequence of strong representations
from Versailles, now invited to join him in France. The great body
of Compounders learned with delight that they were at length to be
represented in the Council at Saint Germains by one of their favourite
leaders. Some noblemen and gentlemen, who, though they had not approved
of the deposition of James, had been so much disgusted by his perverse
and absurd conduct that they had long avoided all connection with him,
now began to hope that he had seen his error. They had refused to
have any thing to do with Melfort; but they communicated freely with
Middleton. The new minister conferred also with the four traitors whose
infamy has been made preeminently conspicuous by their station, their
abilities, and their great public services; with Godolphin, the great
object of whose life was to be in favour with both the rival Kings at
once, and to keep, through all revolutions and counterrevolutions, his
head, his estate and a place at the Board of Treasury; with Shrewsbury,
who, having once in a fatal moment entangled himself in criminal and
dishonourable engagements, had not had the resolution to break through
them; with Marlborough, who continued to profess the deepest repentance
for the past and the best intentions for the future; and with Russell,
who declared that he was still what he had been before the day of La
Hogue, and renewed his promise to do what Monk had done, on condition
that a general pardon should be granted to all political offenders,
and that the royal power should be placed under strong constitutional
restraints.
Before Middleton left England he had collected the sense of all the
leading Compounders. They were of opinion that there was one expedient
which would reconcile contending factions at home, and lead to the
speedy pacification of Europe. This expedient was that James should
resign the Crown in favour of the Prince of Wales, and that the Prince
of Wales should be bred a Protestant. If, as was but too probable, His
Majesty should refuse to listen to this suggestion, he must at least
consent to put forth a Declaration which might do away the unfavourable
impression made by his Declaration of the preceding spring. A paper such
as it was thought expedient that he should publish was carefully drawn
up, and, after much discussion, approved.
Early in the year 1693, Middleton, having been put in full possession of
the views of the principal English Jacobites, stole across the Channel,
and made his appearance at the Court of James. There was at that Court
no want of slanderers and sneerers whose malignity was only the more
dangerous because it wore a meek and sanctimonious air. Middleton found,
on his arrival, that numerous lies, fabricated by the priests who feared
and hated him, were already in circulation. Some Noncompounders too
had written from London that he was at heart a Presbyterian and a
republican. He was however very graciously received, and was appointed
Secretary of State conjointly with Melfort. [430]
It very soon appeared that James was fully resolved never to resign the
Crown, or to suffer the Prince of Wales to be bred a heretic; and it
long seemed doubtful whether any arguments or entreaties would induce
him to sign the Declaration which his friends in England had prepared.
It was indeed a document very different from any that had yet appeared
under his Great Seal. He was made to promise that he would grant a free
pardon to all his subjects who should not oppose him after he should
land in the island; that, as soon as he was restored, he would call
a Parliament; that he would confirm all such laws, passed during the
usurpation, as the Houses should tender to him for confirmation; that
he would waive his right to the chimney money; that he would protect and
defend the Established Church in the enjoyment of all her possessions
and privileges; that he would not again violate the Test Act; that he
would leave it to the legislature to define the extent of his dispensing
power; and that he would maintain the Act of Settlement in Ireland.
He struggled long and hard. He pleaded his conscience. Could a son of
the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church bind himself to protect and
defend heresy, and to enforce a law which excluded true believers from
office? Some of the ecclesiastics who swarmed in his household told
him that he could not without sin give any such pledge as his undutiful
subjects demanded. On this point the opinion of Middleton, who was a
Protestant, could be of no weight. But Middleton found an ally in
one whom he regarded as a rival and an enemy. Melfort, scared by the
universal hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, and afraid
that he should be held accountable, both in England and in France, for
his master's wrongheadedness, submitted the case to several eminent
Doctors of the Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced the
Declaration unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The great
Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who was regarded by the Gallican Church as a
father scarcely inferior in authority to Cyprian or Augustin, showed,
by powerful arguments, both theological and political, that the scruple
which tormented James was precisely of that sort against which a
much wiser King had given a caution in the words, "Be not righteous
overmuch. " [431] The authority of the French divines was supported by
the authority of the French government. The language held at Versailles
was so strong that James began to be alarmed. What if Lewis should take
serious offence, should think his hospitality ungratefully requited,
should conclude a peace with the usurpers, and should request his
unfortunate guests to seek another asylum? It was necessary to submit.
On the seventeenth of April 1693 the Declaration was signed and sealed.
The concluding sentence was a prayer. "We come to vindicate our own
right and to establish the liberties of our people; and may God give
us success in the prosecution of the one as we sincerely intend the
confirmation of the other! " [432] The prayer was heard. The success of
James was strictly proportioned to his sincerity. What his sincerity
was we know on the best evidence. Scarcely had he called on heaven to
witness the truth of his professions, when he directed Melfort to send a
copy of the Declaration to Rome with such explanations as might satisfy
the Pope. Melfort's letter ends thus: "After all, the object of this
Declaration is only to get us back to England. We shall fight the battle
of the Catholics with much greater advantage at Whitehall than at Saint
Germains. " [433]
Meanwhile the document from which so much was expected had been
despatched to London. There it was printed at a secret press in the
house of a Quaker; for there was among the Quakers a party, small
in number, but zealous and active, which had imbibed the politics of
William Penn. [434] To circulate such a work was a service of some
danger; but agents were found. Several persons were taken up while
distributing copies in the streets of the city. A hundred packets were
stopped in one day at the Post Office on their way to the fleet. But,
after a short time, the government wisely gave up the endeavour to
suppress what could not be suppressed, and published the Declaration at
full length, accompanied by a severe commentary. [435]
The commentary, however, was hardly needed. The Declaration altogether
failed to produce the effect which Middleton had anticipated. The truth
is that his advice had not been asked till it mattered not what advice
he gave. If James had put forth such a manifesto in January 1689, the
throne would probably not have been declared vacant. If he had put forth
such a manifesto when he was on the coast of Normandy at the head of an
army, he would have conciliated a large part of the nation, and he might
possibly have been joined by a large part of the fleet. But both in 1689
and in 1692 he had held the language of an implacable tyrant; and it
was now too late to affect tenderness of heart and reverence for the
constitution of the realm. The contrast between the new Declaration and
the preceding Declaration excited, not without reason, general suspicion
and contempt. What confidence could be placed in the word of a Prince
so unstable, of a Prince who veered from extreme to extreme? In 1692
nothing would satisfy him but the heads and quarters of hundreds of poor
ploughmen and boatmen who had, several years before, taken some rustic
liberties with him at which his grandfather Henry the Fourth would have
had a hearty laugh. In 1693 the foulest and most ungrateful treasons
were to be covered with oblivion. Caermarthen expressed the general
sentiment. "I do not," he said, "understand all this. Last April I was
to be hanged. This April I am to have a free pardon. I cannot imagine
what I have done during the past year to deserve such goodness. "
The general opinion was that a snare was hidden under this unwonted
clemency, this unwonted respect for law. The Declaration, it was said,
was excellent; and so was the Coronation oath. Every body knew how King
James had observed his Coronation oath; and every body might guess how
he would observe his Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus,
the Whig jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of the
Noncompounders, meantime, uttered indignant murmurs. The King was in bad
hands, in the hands of men who hated monarchy. His mercy was cruelty of
the worst sort. The general pardon which he had granted to his enemies
was in truth a general proscription of his friends. Hitherto the judges
appointed by the usurper had been under a restraint, imperfect indeed,
yet not absolutely nugatory. They had known that a day of reckoning
might come, and had therefore in general dealt tenderly with the
persecuted adherents of the rightful King. That restraint His Majesty
had now taken away. He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should land
in England, they might hang royalists without the smallest fear of being
called to account. [436]
But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much disgust
and indignation as by the native aristocracy of Ireland. This then was
the reward of their loyalty. This was the faith of kings. When England
had cast James out, when Scotland had rejected him, the Irish had still
been true to him; and he had, in return, solemnly given his sanction to
a law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been
despoiled. Nothing that had happened since that time had diminished
their claim to his favour. They had defended his cause to the last; they
had fought for him long after he had deserted them; many of them, when
unable to contend longer against superior force, had followed him into
banishment; and now it appeared that he was desirous to make peace with
his deadliest enemies at the expense of his most faithful friends. There
was much discontent in the Irish regiments which were dispersed through
the Netherlands and along the frontiers of Germany and Italy. Even the
Whigs allowed that, for once, the O's and Macs were in the right, and
asked triumphantly whether a prince who had broken his word to his
devoted servants could be expected to keep it to his foes? [437]
While the Declaration was the subject of general conversation in
England, military operations recommenced on the Continent. The
preparations of France had been such as amazed even those who estimated
most highly her resources and the abilities of her rulers. Both her
agriculture and her commerce were suffering. The vineyards of Burgundy,
the interminable cornfields of the Beauce, had failed to yield their
increase; the looms of Lyons were silent; and the merchant ships were
rotting in the harbour of Marseilles. Yet the monarchy presented to its
numerous enemies a front more haughty and more menacing than ever. Lewis
had determined not to make any advance towards a reconciliation with the
new government of England till the whole strength of his realm had been
put forth in one more effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but too
exhausting to be repeated. He made an immense display of force at once
on the Pyrenees and on the Alps, on the Rhine and on the Meuse, in the
Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. That nothing might be wanting which
could excite the martial ardour of a nation eminently highspirited, he
instituted, a few days before he left his palace for the camp, a new
military order of knighthood, and placed it under the protection of his
own sainted ancestor and patron. The new cross of Saint Lewis shone on
the breasts of the gentlemen who had been conspicuous in the trenches
before Mons and Namur, and on the fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk; and
the sight raised a generous emulation among those who had still to win
an honourable fame in arms. [438]
In the week in which this celebrated order began to exist Middleton
visited Versailles. A letter in which he gave his friends in England
an account of his visit has come down to us. [439] He was presented to
Lewis, was most kindly received, and was overpowered by gratitude and
admiration. Of all the wonders of the Court,--so Middleton wrote,--its
master was the greatest. The splendour of the great King's personal
merit threw even the splendour of his fortunes into the shade. The
language which His Most Christian Majesty held about English politics
was, on the whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing this
accomplished prince and his able and experienced ministers were
strangely mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion
that the Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared
to undeceive them; but they were under an incurable delusion. They saw
through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech appeared to them
a leviathan. It ought to have occurred to Middleton that possibly the
delusion might be in his own vision and not in theirs. Lewis and the
counsellors who surrounded him were far indeed from loving William. But
they did not hate him with that mad hatred which raged in the breasts of
his English enemies. Middleton was one of the wisest and most moderate
of the Jacobites. Yet even Middleton's judgment was so much darkened
by malice that, on this subject, he talked nonsense unworthy of his
capacity. He, like the rest of his party, could see in the usurper
nothing but what was odious and contemptible, the heart of a fiend, the
understanding and manners of a stupid, brutal, Dutch boor, who generally
observed a sulky silence, and, when forced to speak, gave short testy
answers in bad English. The French statesmen, on the other hand, judged
of William's faculties from an intimate knowledge of the way in which he
had, during twenty years, conducted affairs of the greatest moment
and of the greatest difficulty. He had, ever since 1673, been playing
against themselves a most complicated game of mixed chance and skill
for an immense stake; they were proud, and with reason, of their own
dexterity at that game; yet they were conscious that in him they had
found more than their match. At the commencement of the long contest
every advantage had been on their side. They had at their absolute
command all the resources of the greatest kingdom in Europe; and he was
merely the servant of a commonwealth, of which the whole territory was
inferior in extent to Normandy or Guienne. A succession of generals
and diplomatists of eminent ability had been opposed to him. A powerful
faction in his native country had pertinaciously crossed his designs.
He had undergone defeats in the field and defeats in the senate; but his
wisdom and firmness had turned defeats into victories.
Notwithstanding
all that could be done to keep him down, his influence and fame had been
almost constantly rising and spreading. The most important and arduous
enterprise in the history of modern Europe had been planned and
conducted to a prosperous termination by him alone. The most extensive
coalition that the world had seen for ages had been formed by him, and
would be instantly dissolved if his superintending care were withdrawn.
He had gained two kingdoms by statecraft, and a third by conquest; and
he was still maintaining himself in the possession of all three in spite
of both foreign and domestic foes. That these things had been effected
by a poor creature, a man of the most ordinary capacity, was an
assertion which might easily find credence among the nonjuring parsons
who congregated at Sam's Coffee-house, but which moved the laughter of
the veteran politicians of Versailles.
While Middleton was in vain trying to convince the French that
William was a greatly overrated man, William, who did full justice to
Middleton's merit, felt much uneasiness at learning that the Court of
Saint Germains had called in the help of so able a counsellor. [440]
But this was only one of a thousand causes of anxiety which during that
spring pressed on the King's mind. He was preparing for the opening of
the campaign, imploring his allies to be early in the field, rousing the
sluggish, haggling with the greedy, making up quarrels, adjusting points
of precedence. He had to prevail on the Cabinet of Vienna to send timely
succours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on those Northern
potentates who were trying to form a third party in Europe. He had to
act as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in the Netherlands. He had to
provide for the defence of Liege, a matter which the authorities of
Liege coolly declared to be not at all their business, but the business
of England and Holland. He had to prevent the House of Brunswick
Wolfenbuttel from going to blows with the House of Brunswick Lunenburg;
he had to accommodate a dispute between the Prince of Baden and the
Elector of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army on
the Rhine; and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who omitted to
furnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to command the contingents
furnished by other princes. [441]
And now the time for action had arrived. On the eighteenth of May Lewis
left Versailles; early in June he was under the walls of Namur. The
Princesses, who had accompanied him, held their court within the
fortress. He took under his immediate command the army of Boufflers,
which was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a mile off lay the army
of Luxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood under the French
lilies did not amount to less than a hundred and twenty thousand men.
Lewis had flattered himself that he should be able to repeat in 1693 the
stratagem by which Mons had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; and
he had determined that either Liege or Brussels should be his prey.
But William had this year been able to assemble in good time a force,
inferior indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still formidable.
With this force he took his post near Louvain, on the road between the
two threatened cities, and watched every movement of the enemy.
Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be possible for him
to gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in the two preceding
years, to sit down before a great town, to enter the gates in triumph,
and to receive the keys, without exposing himself to any risk greater
than that of a staghunt at Fontainebleau. Before he could lay siege
either to Liege or to Brussels he must fight and win a battle. The
chances were indeed greatly in his favour; for his army was more
numerous, better officered and better disciplined than that of the
allies. Luxemburg strongly advised him to march against William. The
aristocracy of France anticipated with intrepid gaiety a bloody but a
glorious day, followed by a large distribution of the crosses of the new
order. William himself was perfectly aware of his danger, and prepared
to meet it with calm but mournful fortitude. [442] Just at this
conjuncture Lewis announced his intention to return instantly to
Versailles, and to send the Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the army
which was assembled near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who commanded in
the Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated boldly and
earnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity thrown away. If His
Majesty would march against the Prince of Orange, victory was almost
certain. Could any advantage which it was possible to obtain on the
Rhine be set against the advantage of a victory gained in the heart
of Brabant over the principal army and the principal captain of the
coalition? The Marshal reasoned; he implored; he went on his knees; but
in vain; and he quitted the royal presence in the deepest dejection.
Lewis left the camp a week after he had joined it, and never afterwards
made war in person.
The astonishment was great throughout his army. All the awe which he
inspired could not prevent his old generals from grumbling and looking
sullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen, sometimes in curses
and sometimes in sarcasms, and even his common soldiers from holding
irreverent language round their watchfires. His enemies rejoiced with
vindictive and insulting joy. Was it not strange, they asked, that this
great prince should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and then
in a week have gone in the same state back again? Was it necessary
that all that vast retinue, princesses, dames of honour and tirewomen,
equerries and gentlemen of the bedchamber, cooks, confectioners and
musicians, long trains of waggons, droves of led horses and sumpter
mules, piles of plate, bales of tapestry, should travel four hundred
miles merely in order that the Most Christian King might look at his
soldiers and then return? The ignominious truth was too evident to be
concealed. He had gone to the Netherlands in the hope that he might
again be able to snatch some military glory without any hazard to his
person, and had hastened back rather than expose himself to the chances
of a pitched field. [443] This was not the first time that His Most
Christian Majesty had shown the same kind of prudence. Seventeen years
before he had been opposed under the wails of Bouchain to the same
antagonist. William, with the ardour of a very young commander, had most
imprudently offered battle. The opinion of the ablest generals was that,
if Lewis had seized the opportunity, the war might have been ended in a
day. The French army had eagerly asked to be led to the onset. The King
had called his lieutenants round him and had collected their opinions.
Some courtly officers to whom a hint of his wishes had been dexterously
conveyed had, blushing and stammering with shame, voted against
fighting. It was to no purpose that bold and honest men, who prized his
honour more than his life, had proved to him that, on all principles of
the military art, he ought to accept the challenge rashly given by the
enemy. His Majesty had gravely expressed his sorrow that he could not,
consistently with his public duty, obey the impetuous movement of his
blood, had turned his rein, and had galloped back to his quarters. [444]
Was it not frightful to think what rivers of the best blood of France,
of Spain, of Germany and of England, had flowed, and were destined still
to flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted the vulgar courage
which was found in the meanest of the hundreds of thousands whom he had
sacrificed to his vainglorious ambition?
Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by the
departure of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and Boufflers, and
though the allied army was daily strengthened by the arrival of fresh
troops, Luxemburg still had a superiority of force; and that superiority
he increased by an adroit stratagem. He marched towards Liege, and made
as if he were about to form the siege of that city. William was uneasy,
and the more uneasy because he knew that there was a French party among
the inhabitants. He quitted his position near Louvain, advanced to
Nether Hespen, and encamped there with the river Gette in his rear. On
his march he learned that Huy had opened its gates to the French. The
news increased his anxiety about Liege, and determined him to send
thither a force sufficient to overawe malecontents within the city, and
to repel any attack from without. [445] This was exactly what Luxemburg
had expected and desired. His feint had served its purpose. He turned
his back on the fortress which had hitherto seemed to be his object, and
hastened towards the Gette. William, who had detached more than twenty
thousand men, and who had but fifty thousand left in his camp, was
alarmed by learning from his scouts, on the eighteenth of July, that the
French General, with near eighty thousand, was close at hand.
It was still in the King's power, by a hasty retreat, to put the narrow,
but deep, waters of the Gette, which had lately been swollen by rains,
between his army and the enemy. But the site which he occupied was
strong; and it could easily be made still stronger. He set all his
troops to work. Ditches were dug, mounds thrown up, palisades fixed in
the earth. In a few hours the ground wore a new aspect; and the King
trusted that he should be able to repel the attack even of a force
greatly outnumbering his own. Nor was it without much appearance of
reason that he felt this confidence. When the morning of the nineteenth
of July broke, the bravest men of Lewis's army looked gravely and
anxiously on the fortress which had suddenly sprung up to arrest their
progress. The allies were protected by a breastwork. Here and there
along the entrenchments were formed little redoubts and half moons. A
hundred pieces of cannon were disposed along the ramparts. On the left
flank, the village of Romsdorff rose close to the little stream of
Landen, from which the English have named the disastrous day. On the
right was the village of Neerwinden. Both villages were, after the
fashion of the Low Countries, surrounded by moats and fences; and,
within these enclosures, the little plots of ground occupied by
different families were separated by mud walls five feet in height and
a foot in thickness. All these barricades William had repaired and
strengthened. Saint Simon, who, after the battle, surveyed the ground,
could hardly, he tells us, believe that defences so extensive and so
formidable could have been created with such rapidity.
Luxemburg, however, was determined to try whether even this position
could be maintained against the superior numbers and the impetuous
valour of his soldiers. Soon after sunrise the roar of cannon began
to be heard. William's batteries did much execution before the French
artillery could be so placed as to return the fire. It was eight o'clock
before the close fighting began. The village of Neerwinden was regarded
by both commanders as the point on which every thing depended. There an
attack was made by the French left wing commanded by Montchevreuil, a
veteran officer of high reputation, and by Berwick, who, though young,
was fast rising to a high place among the captains of his time. Berwick
led the onset, and forced his way into the village, but was soon driven
out again with a terrible carnage. His followers fled or perished; he,
while trying to rally them, and cursing them for not doing their duty
better, was surrounded by foes. He concealed his white cockade, and
hoped to be able, by the help of his native tongue, to pass himself off
as an officer of the English army. But his face was recognised by one
of his mother's brothers, George Churchill, who held on that day the
command of a brigade. A hurried embrace was exchanged between the
kinsmen; and the uncle conducted the nephew to William, who, as long as
every thing seemed to be going well, remained in the rear. The meeting
of the King and the captive, united by such close domestic ties, and
divided by such inexpiable injuries, was a strange sight. Both behaved
as became them. William uncovered, and addressed to his prisoner a few
words of courteous greeting. Berwick's only reply was a solemn bow. The
King put on his hat; the Duke put on his hat; and the cousins parted for
ever.
By this time the French, who had been driven in confusion out of
Neerwinden, had been reinforced by a division under the command of the
Duke of Bourbon, and came gallantly back to the attack. William, well
aware of the importance of this post, gave orders that troops should
move thither from other parts of his line. This second conflict was long
and bloody. The assailants again forced an entrance into the village.
They were again driven out with immense slaughter, and showed little
inclination to return to the charge.
Meanwhile the battle had been raging all along the entrenchments of
the allied army. Again and again Luxemburg brought up his troops within
pistolshot of the breastwork; but he could bring them no nearer. Again
and again they recoiled from the heavy fire which was poured on their
front and on their flanks. It seemed that all was over. Luxemburg
retired to a spot which was out of gunshot, and summoned a few of his
chief officers to a consultation. They talked together during some time;
and their animated gestures were observed with deep interest by all who
were within sight.
At length Luxemburg formed his decision. A last attempt must be made to
carry Neerwinden; and the invincible household troops, the conquerors of
Steinkirk, must lead the way.
The household troops came on in a manner worthy of their long and
terrible renown. A third time Neerwinden was taken. A third time William
tried to retake it. At the head of some English regiments he charged the
guards of Lewis with such fury that, for the first time in the memory of
the oldest warrior, that far famed band gave way. [446] It was only by
the strenuous exertions of Luxemburg, of the Duke of Chartres, and of
the Duke of Bourbon, that the broken ranks were rallied. But by this
time the centre and left of the allied army had been so much thinned
for the purpose of supporting the conflict at Neerwinden that the
entrenchments could no longer be defended on other points. A little
after four in the afternoon the whole line gave way. All was havoc and
confusion. Solmes had received a mortal wound, and fell, still alive,
into the hands of the enemy. The English soldiers, to whom his name was
hateful, accused him of having in his sufferings shown pusillanimity
unworthy of a soldier. The Duke of Ormond was struck down in the press;
and in another moment he would have been a corpse, had not a rich
diamond on his finger caught the eye of one of the French guards,
who justly thought that the owner of such a jewel would be a valuable
prisoner. The Duke's life was saved; and he was speedily exchanged for
Berwick. Ruvigny, animated by the true refugee hatred of the country
which had cast him out, was taken fighting in the thickest of the
battle. Those into whose hands he had fallen knew him well, and knew
that, if they carried him to their camp, his head would pay for that
treason to which persecution had driven him. With admirable generosity
they pretended not to recognise him, and suffered him to make his escape
in the tumult.
It was only on such occasions as this that the whole greatness of
William's character appeared. Amidst the rout and uproar, while arms and
standards were flung away, while multitudes of fugitives were choking up
the bridges and fords of the Gette or perishing in its waters, the King,
having directed Talmash to superintend the retreat, put himself at the
head of a few brave regiments, and by desperate efforts arrested the
progress of the enemy. His risk was greater than that which others ran.
For he could not be persuaded either to encumber his feeble frame with
a cuirass, or to hide the ensigns of the garter. He thought his star a
good rallying point for his own troops, and only smiled when he was told
that it was a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his right hand and
on his left. Two led horses, which in the field always closely followed
his person, were struck dead by cannon shots. One musket ball passed
through the curls of his wig, another through his coat; a third
bruised his side and tore his blue riband to tatters. Many years later
greyhaired old pensioners who crept about the arcades and alleys of
Chelsea Hospital used to relate how he charged at the head of Galway's
horse, how he dismounted four times to put heart into the infantry, how
he rallied one corps which seemed to be shrinking; "That is not the way
to fight, gentlemen. You must stand close up to them. Thus, gentlemen,
thus. " "You might have seen him," an eyewitness wrote, only four days
after the battle, "with his sword in his hand, throwing himself upon the
enemy. It is certain that one time, among the rest, he was seen at the
head of two English regiments, and that he fought seven with these two
in sight of the whole army, driving them before him above a quarter of
an hour. Thanks be to God that preserved him. " The enemy pressed on him
so close that it was with difficulty that he at length made his way over
the Gette. A small body of brave men, who shared his peril to the last,
could hardly keep off the pursuers as he crossed the bridge. [447]
Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress of civilisation has
produced in the art of war more strikingly illustrated than on that day.
Ajax beating down the Trojan leader with a rock which two ordinary men
could scarcely lift, Horatius defending the bridge against an army,
Richard the Lionhearted spurring along the whole Saracen line without
finding an enemy to stand his assault, Robert Bruce crushing with one
blow the helmet and head of Sir Henry Bohun in sight of the whole array
of England and Scotland, such are the heroes of a dark age. In such an
age bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior.
At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, would
have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were the
souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would have
been exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred years
earlier, have been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot had fallen
on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the muscles is
far inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable that,
among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who were marshalled round
Neerwinden under all the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblest
in body were the hunchbacked dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset
of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of
England.
The French were victorious; but they had bought their victory dear. More
than ten thousand of the best troops of Lewis had fallen. Neerwinden was
a spectacle at which the oldest soldiers stood aghast. The streets were
piled breast high with corpses. Among the slain were some great lords
and some renowned warriors. Montchevreuil was there, and the mutilated
trunk of the Duke of Uzes, first in order of precedence among the
whole aristocracy of France. Thence too Sarsfield was borne desperately
wounded to a pallet from which he never rose again. The Court of Saint
Germains had conferred on him the empty title of Earl of Lucan;
but history knows him by the name which is still dear to the most
unfortunate of nations. The region, renowned in history as the battle
field, during many ages, of the most warlike nations of Europe, has
seen only two more terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day of
Waterloo. During many months the ground was strewn with skulls and bones
of men and horses, and with fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and
holsters. The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand
corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on the
road from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet
spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that the
figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished,
that the earth was disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the
slain. [448]
There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the heaven when
William crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so much exhausted by
marching and fighting that they could scarcely move; and the horses were
in even worse condition than the men. Their general thought it necessary
to allow some time for rest and refreshment. The French nobles unloaded
their sumpter horses, supped gaily, and pledged one another in champagne
amidst the heaps of dead; and, when night fell, whole brigades gladly
lay down to sleep in their ranks on the field of battle. The inactivity
of Luxemburg did not escape censure. None could deny that he had in the
action shown great skill and energy. But some complained that he wanted
patience and perseverance. Others whispered that he had no wish to bring
to an end a war which made him necessary to a Court where he had never,
in time of peace, found favour or even justice. [449] Lewis, who on this
occasion was perhaps not altogether free from some emotions of jealousy,
contrived, it was reported, to mingle with the praise which he bestowed
on his lieutenant blame which, though delicately expressed, was
perfectly intelligible. "In the battle," he said, "the Duke of Luxemburg
behaved like Conde; and since the battle the Prince of Orange has
behaved like Turenne. "
In truth the ability and vigour with which William repaired his terrible
defeat might well excite admiration. "In one respect," said the Admiral
Coligni, "I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, over
Caesar. They won great battles, it is true. I have lost four great
battles; and yet I show to the enemy a more formidable front than ever. "
The blood of Coligni ran in the veins of William; and with the blood had
descended the unconquerable spirit which could derive from failure as
much glory as happier commanders owed to success. The defeat of Landen
was indeed a heavy blow. The King had a few days of cruel anxiety.
If Luxemburg pushed on, all was lost. Louvain must fall, and Mechlin,
Nieuport, and Ostend. The Batavian frontier would be in danger. The cry
for peace throughout Holland might be such as neither States General nor
Stadtholder would be able to resist. [450] But there was delay; and a
very short delay was enough for William. From the field of battle he
made his way through the multitude of fugitives to the neighbourhood of
Louvain, and there began to collect his scattered forces. His character
is not lowered by the anxiety which, at that moment, the most disastrous
of his life, he felt for the two persons who were dearest to him. As
soon as he was safe, he wrote to assure his wife of his safety. [451] In
the confusion of the flight he had lost sight of Portland, who was then
in very feeble health, and had therefore run more than the ordinary
risks of war. A short note which the King sent to his friend a few hours
later is still extant. [452] "Though I hope to see you this evening, I
cannot help writing to tell you how rejoiced I am that you got off so
well. God grant that your health may soon be quite restored. These are
great trials, which he has been pleased to send me in quick succession.
I must try to submit to his pleasure without murmuring, and to deserve
his anger less. "
His forces rallied fast. Large bodies of troops which he had, perhaps
imprudently, detached from his army while he supposed that Liege was the
object of the enemy, rejoined him by forced marches. Three weeks after
his defeat he held a review a few miles from Brussels. The number of men
under arms was greater than on the morning of the bloody day of Landen;
their appearance was soldierlike; and their spirit seemed unbroken.
William now wrote to Heinsius that the worst was over. "The crisis," he
said, "has been a terrible one. Thank God that it has ended thus. " He
did not, however, think it prudent to try at that time the event of
another pitched field. He therefore suffered the French to besiege and
take Charleroy; and this was the only advantage which they derived
from the most sanguinary battle fought in Europe during the seventeenth
century.
The melancholy tidings of the defeat of Landen found England agitated by
tidings not less melancholy from a different quarter. During many
months the trade with the Mediterranean Sea had been almost entirely
interrupted by the war.
