And now, having seen a great military march through a friendly
country, the pomps and festivities of more than one German court, the
severe struggle of a hotly contested battle, and the triumph of
victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another part of military duty; our troops
entering the enemy's territory and putting all around them to fire and
sword; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons
and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst
of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History,
that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of
conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, and degrading, that yet
form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You gentlemen of
England, who live at home at ease and compliment yourselves in the
songs of triumph with which our chieftains are bepraised; you pretty
maidens that come tumbling down the stairs when the fife and drum call
you, and huzza for the British Grenadiers,--do you take account that
these items go to make up the amount of triumph you admire, and form
part of the duties of the heroes you fondle?
[Footnote 20: From "The History of Henry Esmond."]
Our chief, whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen,
worshipt almost, had this of the god-like in him: that he was
impassible before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the
greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred
thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door
of his burning hovel; before a carouse of drunken German lords, or a
monarch's court, or a cottage table where his plans were laid, or an
enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death and strewing corpses round
about him,--he was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He
performed a treason or a court bow, he told a falsehood as black as
Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He
took a mistress and left her, he betrayed his benefactor and supported
him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always and
having no more remorse than Clotno when she weaves the thread, on
Lachesis when she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the
Prince of Savoy's officers say the prince became possest with a sort
of warlike fury, his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither,
raging; shrieked curses and encouragement, yelling and harking his
bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at the first of the hunt. Our
duke was as calm at the mouth of a cannon as at the door of a
drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been the great man he was had
he had a heart either for love or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret
or remorse. He achieved the highest deed or daring, or deepest
calculation of thought, as he performed the very meanest action of
which a man is capable; told a lie or cheated a fond woman or robbed a
poor beggar of a halfpenny, with a like awful serenity, and equal
capacity of the highest and lowest acts of our nature.
His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there were
parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but
there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain
of the world, and such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius
and fortune, that the very men whom he notoriously cheated of their
pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured--for he used all men, great
and small, that came near him, as his instruments alike, and took
something of theirs, either some quality or some property: the blood
of a soldier, it might be, or a jeweled hat or a hundred thousand
crowns from the king, or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three
farthings; or when he was young, a kiss from a woman, and the gold
chain off her neck, taking all he could from woman or man, and having,
as I said, this of the god-like in him, that he could see a hero
perish or a sparrow fall with the same amount of sympathy for either.
Not that he had no tears, he could always order up this reserve at the
proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, and
whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to a
shoeblack, and he would flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty,
be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you
whenever he saw occasion--but yet those of the army who knew him best
and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all; and as he
rode along the lines to battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to
a battalion reeling from the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men
and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his
face, and felt that his will made them irresistible.
After the great victory of Blenheim, the enthusiasm of the army for
the duke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted to a
sort of rage: nay, the very officers who cursed him in their hearts
were among the most frantic to cheer him. Who could refuse his meed of
admiration to such a victory and such a victor? Not he who writes: a
man may profess to be ever so much a philosopher, but he who fought on
that day must feel a thrill of pride as he recalls it.