1708.]

DEATH OF PRINCE GEORGE OF DENMARK.

339

dead, that he was a hero in every age to be venerated." The sarcasm of Charles II., that he "had tried him drunk and sober, and could find nothing in him," will probably outlive the incense of sir Christopher Wren, who erected the statue in 1713. The great architect could certainly do no less than make prince George "a hero," when in the inscription under the statue of the queen at the opposite end of the same Hall, the sculptor is told that his art is vain, for if he would exhibit the likeness of Anne, he must carve "a goddess." In the eyes of the duchess of Marlborough, whose ascendancy over the queen was gone, the goddess was now something less than Mrs. Morley; for the spiteful Mrs. Freeman says, "Her love to the prince seemed, in the eyes of the world, to be prodigiously great; and great as was the passion of her grief, her stomach was greater, for that very day he died she ate three very large and hearty meals." Dire had been the offence which the queen had given to the haughty duchess during this summer and autumn. Harley had been dismissed, but in the small house at Windsor which she had purchased, Anne "staid all the sultry season . because, from the Park, such persons as Mrs. Masham had a mind to bring to her majesty, could be let in privately by the garden." After the death of the prince, the queen spent many hours every day in the closet where he had been wont to sit. "The true reason of her majesty's having this closet to sit in was, that the back-stairs belonging to it came from Mrs. Masham's lodgings, who, by that means, could secretly bring to her whom she pleased. And that a correspondence was thus carried on with Mr. Harley became every day more and more manifest, by the difficulties and objections which her majesty had learnt to raise against almost everything proposed by her ministers." Such is the testimony, no doubt in great part true, which the duchess of Marlborough has handed down, of the commencement of that system of political intrigue which is so difficult to unravel, for the remainder of this reign. There is only one clue to this labyrinth, which must be steadily kept in view if we would wish to escape from its mazes. Queen Anne was secretly hostile, with all the zeal of which her cold nature was capable, to the settlement of the Crown upon the electress Sophia of Hanover and her descendants. She is believed to have cherished a natural, although dangerous, wish that her brother should be her successor, in spite of solemn Acts of Parliament. Whoever would adroitly foster this humour would have her real favour; and Harley was precisely the man to carry his Jacobitism to the point where it might be safe and profitable. The duplicity of too many of the statesmen of England and Scotland was of the same character; and with those of more ambition than honesty, it was merely a matter of calculation whether the elector of Hanover should come to the throne upon Revolution principles, or the chevalier St. George, by divine right; when that queen, who was something like a compromise of the two principles, should be no more-an event not generally regarded as very distant.

The temper of the queen, during the summer and autumn of 1708, nearly drove Marlborough to a resolution which certainly must have been the most ungenial to his nature, whether we regard his love of power or his avarice. He resolves, about six weeks after his victory of Oudenarde, to "take the first occasion that can be practicable to retire from business."

840

SURRENDER OF LILLE.

(1708. Yes: his homely phrase is "to retire from business." He writes to the duchess in much the same way as a junior partner in a commercial house would write to his wife, complaining of the obstinacy of the head of the firm : "I can't with patience think of continuing much longer in business, having it not in my power to persuade that to be done which I think is right."* It was worth while to pause before the dissolution of partnership was announced-for to him, at least, the business was a very profitable one. Exclusive of Blenheim, the duke's fixed yearly income, from offices and emoluments, was very nearly fifty-five thousand pounds; and the income of the duchess, from her offices at court, was nine thousand five hundred pounds. The vast income of the duke principally depended upon the continuance of the war. The income of the duchess depended upon her possession of the favour of the queen. We shall have to note how, in a very short period, the eminent services of the victor at Blenheim and Ramilies were forgotten, and the people became persuaded,-to use the somewhat prejudiced language of Johnson, in noticing the most successful of the bitter pamphlets of Swift," that the war was unnecessarily protracted to fill the pockets of Marlborough; and that it would have been continued without end if he could have continued his annual plunder." ‡

The siege of Lille was one of the most sanguinary operations of the war in the Netherlands. It was an enterprise of great difficulty, not only from the extreme strength of the place, which had been fortified with all the skill of Vauban, but from the difficulty of the allied armies in obtaining supplies of provisions and military stores. Prince Eugene directed, and Marlborough covered, the siege. The defence was intrusted to marshal Boufflers. The covering forces of the besiegers had to contend with the constant determination of the French to intercept their supplies. One of the most gallant actions of the campaign was that of general Webb. He was conducting a large convoy from Ostend, with a detachment of six thousand men, when he was attacked at Wynendale, by a French force of more than twenty thousand. For two hours Webb fought with admirable skill and resolution; compelled the French to retreat, with immense loss; and brought his convoy in safety to the camp before Lille. The Speaker of the Commons, in conveying the thanks of the House to the general, said, "We are all sensible how much the reducing the fortress of Lille is owing to your courage and conduct." This must have been painful enough to Marlborough, who, with almost incredible meanness, had attributed Webb's victory to general Cadogan, who had a very small share of the responsibility of the action. Webb left the army in just indignation; published an account of the matter; and received the thanks of the Commons in his place in the House. Lille finally capitulated on the 29th of December. Its loss to France was considered almost irreparable. A real desire for peace was now manifest in the court of Versailles. During the protracted siege of nearly five months, the allies lost at least twelve thousand men. The sufferings of the troops were very great. The veteran Auverquerque closed the last of

* Coxe, vol. iv. p. 200.

The details are given in Lord Stanhope's "History of England from the Peace of Utrecht," vol. i. p. 27.

+ "Lives of the Poets," Cunningham's edit., vol. iii. p. 170.

1708.]

MEETING OF PARIAMENT.

341

fifty campaigns in the camp before Lille, worn out by age and sickness. In the besieged citadel, the brave Boufflers and his garrison were, at the last extremity, subsisting upon horse-flesh.

The first Session of the second Parliament of Great Britain was opened by Commission on the 16th of November. The Whig interest preponderated; and Sir Richard Onslow was chosen Speaker. The Session was continued till the 24th of April, 1709. In the proceedings of this Session there was one public Act passed, which is still of effect. The ambassador of the czar of Russia having been arrested for a debt to a London tradesman, the czar resented the offence against the privileges of the representatives of sovereignty; and the Statute was passed by which all process against an ambassador, or any of his domestic servants, is declared null and void.* Another Statute presents a curious illustration of the habits of the people. The "Act to prevent the laying of Wagers relating to the Public," declares that "all wagers to be laid upon any contingency relating to the present war, and all policies of assurance, &c., payable upon any such contingency, shall be utterly void; " and that all persons making such wagers, &c., or their notaries or agents, shall forfeit double the sum for which the wager is laid.† Whether for the issue of a battle or a horse-race, we have been ever a betting people, since we passed out of barbarism into the civilization of which gambling is a feature.

The practice of laying wagers about matters of war and government, according to the preamble of the Act, "hath been found inconvenient to the public." This allegation is not very precise. When the frequenters of Will's Coffee-house, or White's Chocolate-house, were staking their guineas or their crowns upon the doubtful fortunes of Godolphin or Harley, of the elector of Hanover or the king over the water, their brawlings might have disturbed the wits and courtiers, but they could very slightly affect the general convenience of the public. Nevertheless, the betting was a form in which the opinions of Englishmen displayed themselves; and the odds given might indicate sentiments not very agreeable to the official mind. The war

342

PROPOSALS OF FRANCE FOR PEACE.

[1709.

was beginning to be unpopular; the French were making advances for peace. A treaty, or another campaign, was a question of chance rather than of calculation at the beginning of 1709; for if France was suffering and exhausted, Marlborough was flourishing. Let us turn from the betting politicians of London, to the suffering population of Paris. Let us, while we behold at home public credit so high, that the Bank of England obtained subscriptions in four hours of more than two millions for the purpose of doubling their stock and of circulating two millions and a half of exchequerbills for the aid of the government-let us look upon a picture of misery in France, and learn the price which a people has to pay for the mistaken ambition of its rulers; and for that absolute authority upon which some Englishmen looked with envy and admiration.

66

The winter of 1709 was unusually severe in France. There was an intense frost of long duration; then a sudden thaw; and then again a frost. By this second frost the grain in the earth, the vines and olive-trees, were destroyed. The price of bread rose enormously. But the natural price of corn was further raised by the interference of the government. Royal commissioners bought up the corn, and the official monopolists sold it at a great advance. The sums which this scheme produced, says Saint Simon, were innumerable, and innumerable were the people who died literally of hunger." The depopulation of Paris in this terrible year offers sufficient evidence of the condition of the kingdom. The average annual number of deaths in the capital was sixteen thousand; in 1709 they were above twentynine thousand. The number of marriages decreased one fourth.* Dividends upon public loans were unpaid; taxes were exacted with extreme rigour; the coin was depreciated; everything rose in price. "The king," says Saint Simon, "had no resources, except in terror, and in his unlimited power, which, boundless as it was, failed also for want of having something to take and to exercise itself upon." In this state, when the realm was nearly exhausted, envoys were sent into Holland to negotiate for peace.

If the rulers of nations were ordinarily moved with pity for suffering humanity, the ministers of the Allied powers might have held out the hand of friendship to France, without any compromise of their just pretensions. If Marlborough had taken a generous and lofty view of public affairs, instead of urging upon Godolphin the necessity for another campaign, a far better peace might have been accomplished than their political enemies at last effected. "Marlborough," says his biographer, " was apprehensive that the king of France was not yet sufficiently humbled to agree to the terms which the Allies were entitled to demand; and consequently represented the expediency of obtaining such an augmentation of force as might enable him to dictate the conditions of peace." The advice of Marlborough resulted in the most sanguinary and most useless of his battles; with the conditions of peace less under his dictation than before he had lost eighteen thousand killed and wounded in the slaughter of Malplaquet. And yet so complicated were the interests of the States General, of the Emperor, of the duke of Savoy, of Great Britain,-in some cases those interests were so conflicting,

*Buffon. Quoted in Somerville's "History of the Reign of Anne," p. 339.

+ Coxe, vol. iv. p. 370.

1709.]

CAMPAIGN-SURRENDER OF TOURNAY.

343

that it would be unjust to represent Marlborough as the adviser of the harsh and humiliating terms which the Allies thought it politic to demand from France. It is difficult, however, to believe that if he had counselled the ministry at home to treat with Louis in a magnanimous spirit, they would have stood out against the advice of their own negotiator. Marlborough had the grace to refuse enormous bribes from France; but he had also the want of decency to sanction the demand, that if Louis gave up Spain and the Indies to the House of Austria, which he stipulated to do, he should join the Allies in dethroning his own grandson, if Philip should be obstinate in holding a throne in the possession of which he was supported by the Spanish people. The pride of the magnificent despot was roused by this demand. He condescended to recollect that he had subjects, who were interested in the national honour. He appealed to their patriotism, in a circular letter addressed to all local authorities. It was no longer a war for courtly interests. The country was threatened with dismemberment; and the king and the people roused their drooping courage, even in the midst of their domestic miseries, and a harder campaign had to be fought, with loftier resolution on the side of France, than had ever been called forth by the proud delusions of the world-grasping Bourbon. Voluntary contributions for the support of the war had been freely bestowed upon the court. Louis sent his silver plate to the mint to be coined. The rich, whether nobles or traders, followed his example. There was specie to pay the forces; and recruits flocked to the army, glad to obtain that subsistence which the visitation of Providence had denied to their peaceful labours.

On the 21st of June, a hundred thousand men, under the command of Marlborough and Eugene, were encamped in the plain before Lille. Marshal Villars had thrown up intrenchments between Douay and the Lys, which probably interrupted a design of penetrating into France. The Allies then commenced the siege of Tournay. The city surrendered in three weeks. The citadel held out during July and August. During this siege, four thousand of the Allies were killed and wounded. Immense slaughter was occasioned by the system of mining and countermining,-a mode of warfare which was then rarely practised to the same extent as in this siege. Service in the trenches was always faced by the English soldier with alacrity; but to burrow like a mole, whilst the sound of the enemy's pickaxe was close to his ear to believe he was treading upon firm earth, and then in a moment to be blown into the air-these were strange dangers which required an unaccustomed exercise of courage and fortitude.

The Allied army, after the fall of Tournay, was proceeding to the siege of Mons, when Marshal Villars followed them, and took up a strong position at Malplaquet. His wings were protected by two thick woods. His centre was placed on rising ground between the woods, with intrenchments thrown. up in front of the camp. The Allies had about eighty thousand men; the French ten thousand less. Marlborough was encamped in the plain, fronting the opening between the woods. His determination to attack the enemy in so commanding a position has been considered rash; but he had only the alternative of a battle or the abandonment of the siege of Mons. At eight o'clock on the morning of the 11th of September that attack was made. The right of the French was covered by a morass; but this obstacle was