The war which was about to commence, and which Rupert Holliday
sailed for the Hague to take part in, was one of the grandest and
most extensive struggles that ever devastated Europe, embracing as
it did the whole of the central and western nations of the
continent. In fact, with the exception of Russia, still in the
depths of barbarism, and Italy, which was then a battlefield rather
than a nation, all the states of Europe were ranged on one side or
the other.
As Charles the Second of Spain approached his end, the liveliest
interest was felt as to his succession. He had no children, and the
hopes and fears of all the continental nations were excited by the
question of the disposal of the then vast dominions of Spain. The
principal powers of Europe, dreading the consequences of this great
empire being added to the power of any one monarch, entered into a
secret treaty, which was signed at the Hague in 1698, by which it
was agreed that Spain itself should be ceded to the Electoral
Prince of Bavaria, with Flanders and the Low countries; Naples,
Sicily, Tuscany, and Guipuscoa were to fall to France; and the
Duchy of Milan to the archduke, son of the Emperor of Germany.
Holland was to gain a considerable accession of territory. England,
one of the signatories to the treaty, was to gain nothing by the
division.
The contents of this treaty leaked out, and the king of Spain,
after a consultation with Austria, who was also indignant at the
secret treaty, made a will bequeathing all his dominions to the
Elector of Bavaria. Had that prince lived, all the complications
which ensued would probably have been avoided; but he died, the 9th
February, 1699, and the whole question was thereby again opened.
Another secret treaty was made, between England, France, and
Holland, and signed on the 13th March, 1700, at the Hague. By this
treaty it was agreed that France was to receive Naples, Sicily,
Guipuscoa, and Lorraine; the Archduke Charles Spain, the Low
Countries, and the Indies; and the Spanish colonies were to be
divided between Holland and England. As both England and Holland
were at the time in alliance with Spain, it must be admitted that
their secret arrangement for the partition of her territories was
of a very infamous character.
Louis of France, while apparently acting with the other powers,
secretly communicated the contents of the treaty to Charles II. The
Spanish king was naturally dismayed at the great conspiracy to
divide his kingdom at his death, and he convened his council of
state and submitted the matter to them. It was apparent that
France, by far the most powerful of the other continental states,
could alone avert the division, and the states general therefore
determined to unite the interests of France and Spain by appointing
the Duc d'Anjou, grandson of the King of France, sole heir to the
vast empire of Spain.
The news that Spain and France were henceforth to be united caused
the greatest consternation to the rest of the States, and all
Europe began to arm. Very shortly after signing the bequest, the
old King of Spain died, and the Duc d'Anjou ascended the throne.
The Spanish Netherlands, governed by the young Elector of Bavaria,
as Lieutenant General of Spain, at once gave in their adhesion to
the new monarch. The distant colonies all accepted his rule, as did
the great Spanish possessions in Italy; while the principal
European nations acknowledged him as successor of Charles the
Second.
The new empire seemed indeed of preponderating strength. Bavaria
united herself in a firm alliance with France and Spain; and these
three countries, with Italy and Flanders, appeared capable of
giving the law to the world. England, less affected than the
continental powers by the dominance of this powerful coalition,
might have remained quiet, had not the French King thrown down the
gauntlet of defiance. On the 16th September, 1701, James the
Second, the exiled King of England, died, and Louis at once
acknowledged his son as King of Great Britain and Ireland. This act
was nothing short of a public declaration of war, not only against
the reigning monarch of England, but against the established
religion of our country. The exiled prince was Roman Catholic.
Louis was the author of the most terrible persecution of the
Protestants that ever occurred in Europe. Thus the action of the
French king rallied round William the Second all the Protestant
feeling of the nation. Both Houses of Parliament voted loyal
addresses, and the nation prepared for the great struggle before
it. The king laboured to establish alliances and a plan for common
action, and all was in readiness, when his sudden death left the
guidance of affairs in other hands.
These hands were, happily for England, those of the Earl of
Marlborough, the finest diplomatist, as well as the greatest
soldier, of his time.
The struggle which was approaching was a gigantic one. On one side
were France and Spain, open to attack on one side only, and holding
moreover Flanders, and almost the whole of Italy, with the rich
treasures of the Indies upon which to draw for supplies. The
alliance of Bavaria, with a valiant population, extended the
offensive power of the coalition into the heart of Austria.
Upon the other hand were the troops of Austria, England, Holland,
Hanover, Hesse Cassel, and the lesser states of Germany, with a
contingent of troops, from Prussia and Denmark. In point of numbers
the nations ranged on either side were about equal; but while
France, Spain, and Bavaria formed a compact body under the guidance
of Louis, the allies were divided by separate, and often opposing
interests and necessities, while Austria was almost neutralized by
a dangerous Hungarian insurrection that was going on, and by the
danger of a Turkish invasion which the activity of French diplomacy
kept continually hanging over it. The coalition was weakened in the
field by the jealousies of the commanders of the various
nationalities, and still more by the ignorance and timidity of the
Dutch deputies, which Holland insisted on keeping at headquarters,
with the right of veto on all proceedings.
On the side of the allies the following were the arrangements for
the opening of the campaign. A German army under Louis, Margrave of
Baden, was to be collected on the upper Rhine to threaten France on
the side of Alsace. A second corps, 25,000 strong, composed of
Prussian troops and Dutch, under the Prince of Saarbruck, were to
undertake the siege of Kaiserwerth, a small but very important
fortress on the right bank of the Rhine, two leagues below
Dusseldorf. The main army, 35,000 strong, under the Earl of
Athlone, was destined to cover the frontier of Holland, from the
Rhine to the Vecun, and also to cover the siege of Kaiserwerth;
while a fourth body, of 10,000 men, under General Cohorn, were
collected near the mouth of the Scheldt, and threatened the
district of Bruges.
Upon the other side the French had been equally active. On the
Lower Rhine a force was stationed to keep that of Cohorn in check.
Marshal Tallard, with 15,000 men, came down from the Upper Rhine to
interrupt the siege of Kaiserwerth, while the main army, 45,000
strong, under the Duke of Burgundy and Marshal Boufflers, was
posted in the Bishopric of Liege, resting on the tremendous chain
of fortresses of Flanders, all of which were in French possession,
and strongly garrisoned by French and Spanish soldiers.
At the time, however, when the vessel containing Rupert Holliday
and Hugh Parsons sailed up the Scheldt, early in the month of May,
these arrangements were not completed, but both armies were waiting
for the conflict.
The lads had little time for the examination of the Hague, now the
dullest and most quiet of European capitals, but then a bustling
city, full of life and energy; for, with the troops who had arrived
with them, they received orders to march at once to join the camp
formed at Breda. Accustomed to a quiet English country life, the
activity and bustle of camp life were at once astonishing and
delightful. The journey from the Hague had been a pleasant one.
Rupert rode one of the two horses with which the Earl of
Marlborough had presented him, Hugh the other; and as a portion of
the soldiers with them were infantry, the marches were short and
easy; while the stoppages at quaint Dutch villages, the solemn ways
of whose inhabitants, their huge breeches, and disgust at the
disturbance of their usual habits when the troops were quartered
upon them, were a source of great amusement to them.
Upon reaching the camp they soon found their way to their regiment.
Here Rupert presented to Colonel Forbes the letter of recommendation
with which the Earl of Marlborough had provided him, and was at once
introduced by him to his brother officers, most of them young men, but
all some years older than himself. His frank, pleasant, boyish manner
at once won for him a cordial acceptance, and the little cornet, as he
was called in the regiment, soon became a general favourite.
Hugh, who had formally enlisted in the regiment before leaving
England, was on arrival handed over to a sergeant; and the two lads
were, with other recruits, incessantly drilled from morning till
night, to render them efficient soldiers before the day of trial
arrived.
Rupert shared a tent with the other two officers of his troop,
Captain Lauriston, a quiet Scotchman, and Lieutenant Dillon, a
young Irishman, full of fun and life.
There were in camp three regiments of British cavalry and six of
infantry, and as they were far from the seat of war, there was for
the present nothing to do but to drill, and prepare for the coming
campaign. Rupert was delighted with the life, for although the work
for the recruits was hard, the weather was splendid, supplies
abundant--for the Dutch farm wives and their daughters brought
ducks, and geese, and eggs into the camp--and all were in high
spirits at the thought of the approaching campaign. Every night
there were gatherings round the fire, when songs were sung and
stories told. Most of the officers had before campaigned in
Holland, under King William, and many had fought in Ireland, and
had stirring tales of the Boyne, of the siege of Athlone, and of
fierce encounters with the brave but undisciplined Irish.
At the end of a month's hard work, Rupert began to understand his
duties, for in those days the amount of drill deemed necessary for
a trooper was small indeed in proportion to that which he has now
to master. Rupert was already a good rider, and soon learnt where
was his proper place as cornet in each evolution, and the orders
that it behoved him to give. The foot drill was longer and more
difficult, for in those days dragoons fought far more on foot than
is now the case, although at this epoch they had already ceased to
be considered as mounted infantry, and had taken their true place
as cavalry. Rupert's broadsword drill lasted but a very short time;
upon the drill sergeant asking him if he knew anything of that
weapon, he said that he could play at singlestick, but had never
practised with the broadsword. His instructor, however, found that
a very few lessons were sufficient to enable him to perform the
required cuts and guard with sufficient proficiency, and very
speedily claimed the crown which Rupert promised him on his
dismissal from the class.
Week after week passed in inactivity, and the troops chafed
mightily thereat, the more so that stirring events were proceeding
elsewhere. The siege of Kaiserwerth, by a body of 15,000 German
troops, had begun on the 18th of April, and the attack and defence
were alike obstinate and bloody. The Earl of Athlone with his
covering forces lay at Cleves, and a sharp cavalry fight between
1000 of the allied cavalry and 700 French horse took place on the
27th of April. The French were defeated, with the loss of 400 men;
but as the victors lost 300, it is clear that both sides fought
with extreme determination and bravery, such a loss--700 men out of
1700 combatants--being extraordinarily large. The spirit shown by
both sides in this the first fight of the war, was a portent of the
obstinate manner in which all the battles of this great war were
contested. For two months Kaiserwerth nobly defended itself.
Seventy-eight guns and mortars thundered against it night and day.
On the 9th of June the besiegers made a desperate assault and
gained possession of a covered way, but at a cost of 2000 killed
and wounded. A week later the place capitulated after a siege which
had cost the allies 5000 men.
General Boufflers, with his army of 37,000 men, finding himself
unable to raise the siege, determined to make a dash against
Nimeguen, an important frontier fortress of Holland, but which the
supineness of the Dutch Government had allowed to fall into
disrepair. Not only was there no garrison there, but not a gun was
mounted on its walls. The expedition seemed certain of success, and
on the evening of the 9th of June Boufflers moved out from Xanten,
and marched all night. Next day Athlone obtained news of the
movement and started in the evening, his march being parallel with
the French, the hostile armies moving abreast, and at no great
distance from each other.
The cavalry covered the British march, and these were in the
morning attacked by the French horse under the Duke of Burgundy.
The British were outnumbered, but fought with great obstinacy, and
before they fell back, with a loss of 720 men and a convoy of 300
waggons, the infantry had pushed forward, and when the French army
reached Nimeguen its ramparts bristled with British bayonets.
Boufflers, disappointed in his aim, fell back upon the rich
district of Cleves, now open to him, and plundered and ravaged that
fertile country.
Although Kaiserwerth had been taken and Nimeguen saved, the danger
which they had run, and the backward movement of the allied army,
filled the Dutch with consternation.
The time, however, had come when Marlborough himself was to assume
the command, and by his genius, dash, and strategy to alter the
whole complexion of things, and to roll back the tide of war from
the borders of Holland. He had crossed from England early in May, a
few days only after Rupert had sailed; but hitherto he had been
engaged in smoothing obstacles, appeasing jealousies, healing
differences, and getting the whole arrangement of the campaign into
something like working order. At last, everything being fairly in
trim, he set out on the 2nd of July from the Hague, with full power
as commander-in-chief of the allied armies, for Nimeguen. There he
ordered the British troops from Breda, 8000 Germans from
Kaiserwerth, and the contingents of Hesse and Luneburg, 6000
strong, under the Prince of Zell, to join him.
As these reinforcements brought his army up to a strength superior
to that of the French, although Marshal Boufflers had hastily drawn
to him some of the garrisons of the fortresses, the Earl of
Marlborough prepared to strike a great blow. The Dutch deputies who
accompanied the army--and whose timidity and obstinacy a score of
times during the course of the war thwarted all Marlborough's
best-laid plans, and saved the enemy from destruction--interfered
to forbid an attack upon two occasions when an engagement would, as
admitted by French historians, have been fatal to their whole army.
Marlborough therefore was obliged to content himself by outflanking
the French, compelling them to abandon Cleves, to cross the Meuse,
and to fall back into Flanders, with some loss, and great haste and
disorder.
In vain the French marshal endeavoured to take post so as to save
the Meuse fortresses, which stood at the gates of Flanders, and by
their command of the river prevented the allies from using the
chain of water communications to bring up supplies. Marlborough
crossed the line by which his siege train was coming up, and then
pounced upon Venloo, a very strong fortress standing across the
Meuse--that is to say, the town was on one side, the fort of Saint
Michael on the other.
After this chapter, devoted to the necessary task of explaining the
cause and commencement of the great War of Succession, we can
return to the individual fortunes of our hero.