strength of his emotions was not suspected by the world. From the
multitude his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment, were
hidden by a phlegmatic serenity which made him pass for the most
coldblooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news could seldom
detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in
vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and
punished, with the stern tranquillity of a Mohawk chief; but those who
knew him well and saw him near were aware that under all this ice a
fierce fire was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived
him of power over himself; but when he was really enraged the first
outbreak of his passion was terrible. It was, indeed, scarcely safe to
approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained
his self-command he made such ample reparation to those whom he had
wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His
affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with
the whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him from what
he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and
his life. To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity
and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a different man from the
reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute
of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and
jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share in
festive conversation.
To him England was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance, and
quitted with delight. Even when he rendered to her those services of
which to this day we feel the happy effects, her welfare was not his
chief object. Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. There
was the stately tomb where slept the great politician whose blood, whose
name, whose temperament, and whose genius he had inherited. There the
very sound of his title was a spell which had, through three
generations, called forth the affectionate enthusiasm of boors and
artisans. The Dutch language was the language of his nursery. Among the
Dutch gentry he had chosen his early friends. The amusements, the
architecture, the landscape of his native country had taken hold on his
heart. To her he turned with constant fondness from a prouder and fairer
rival. In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in
the Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the
magnificence of Windsor for his far humbler seat at Loo.
During his splendid banishment it was his consolation to create around
him, by building, planting, and digging, a scene which might remind him
of the formal piles of red brick, of the long canals, and of the
symmetrical flower-beds among which his early life had been passed. Yet
even his affection for the land of his birth was subordinate to another
feeling which early became supreme in his soul, which mixed itself with
all his passions, which impelled him to marvelous enterprises, which
supported him when sinking under mortification, pain, sickness, and
sorrow, which, toward the close of his career, seemed during a short
time to languish, but which soon broke forth again fiercer than ever,
and continued to animate him even while the prayer for the departing was
read at his bedside. That feeling was enmity to France, and to the
magnificent king who, in more than one sense, represented France, and
who to virtues and accomplishments eminently French joined in large
measure that unquiet, unscrupulous, and vainglorious ambition which has
repeatedly drawn on France the resentment of Europe.
It is not difficult to trace the progress of the sentiment which
gradually possessed itself of William’s whole soul. When he was little
more than a boy his country had been attacked by Lewis in ostentatious
defiance of justice and public law, had been overrun, had been
desolated, had been given up to every excess of rapacity,
licentiousness, and cruelty. The Dutch had in dismay humbled themselves
before the conqueror, and had implored mercy. They had been told in
reply that, if they desired peace, they must resign their independence,
and do annual homage to the House of Bourbon. The injured nation,
driven to despair, had opened its dykes, and had called in the sea as an
ally against the French tyranny. It was in the agony of that conflict,
when peasants were flying in terror before the invaders, when hundreds
of fair gardens and pleasure-houses were buried beneath the waves, when
the deliberations of the States were interrupted by the fainting and the
loud weeping of ancient senators who could not bear the thought of
surviving the freedom and glory of their native land, that William had
been called to the head of affairs.
The French monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal,
what the Ottoman power was to Scanderbeg, what the Southron domination
was to Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and
unquenchable animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed
that the same power which had set apart Samson from the womb to be the
scourge of the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the
threshing-floor to smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange
to be the champion of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was
this notion without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which
the heroic fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause
is to be partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a
great work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore
it was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he
recovered from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins
conspired in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he
trusted himself on a starless night, amid raging waves, and near a
treacherous shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields
of battle, the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardor
and perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have
scarcely any parallel in history.
[Illustration: PETER THE GREAT.]
PETER THE GREAT, CZAR OF RUSSIA.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
[Creator of the modern Russian empire, born 1672; died 1725.
Shortly after assuming the throne of a nation of barbarians, and
vigorously repressing internal disturbances, he began that series
of reforms by which he hoped to civilize his people. He spent
seventeen months traveling and studying the arts and sciences,
which had made other nations great. On returning to Russia he
enforced many revolutionary changes with the strictness of a
despot, and introduced institutions before unknown to Russia. He
built St. Petersburg in the marshes at the mouth of the Neva, and
displayed extraordinary energy in recasting the whole military and
civil polity of the nation. He displayed marked ability as a
soldier in his wars with his neighbors, but his genius shone most
brightly in civil administration, though he never ceased to be a
barbarian and the sternest of despots.]
Our ancestors were not a little surprised to learn that a young
barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the autocrat of
the immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those of
China, and whose education had been inferior to that of an English
farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic improvements, had learned enough
of some languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with
civilized men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from
various parts of the world, had sent many of his young subjects to study
languages, arts, and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had
determined to travel as a private man, and to discover, by personal
observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by
some communities whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth
part of his dominions.
It might have been expected that France would have been the first object
of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French Court, the
splendor of the French Court, the discipline of the French armies, and
the genius and learning of the French writers, were then renowned all
over the world. But the Czar’s mind had early taken a strange ply which
it retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least capable
of being made a great naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his
states and the Baltic. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles lay between his
states and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in a
latitude in which navigation is, during a great part of every year,
perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port,
Archangel; and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did
not exist a Russian vessel larger than a fishing boat. Yet, from some
cause which can not now be traced, he had a taste for maritime pursuits
which amounted to a passion, indeed almost to a monomania. His
imagination was full of sails, yardarms, and rudders. That large mind,
equal to the highest duties of the general and the statesman, contracted
itself to the most minute details of naval architecture and naval
discipline.
The chief ambition of the great conqueror and legislator was to be a
good boatswain and a good ship’s carpenter. Holland and England
therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the galleries
and terraces of Versailles. He repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in
the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on the list
of workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and the mallet,
fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes. Ambassadors who came to pay
their respects to him were forced, much against their will, to clamber
up the rigging of a man-of-war, and found him enthroned on the
cross-trees.
Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to behold.
His stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing black eye, his
Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown black with all the
stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange
nervous convulsion which sometimes transformed his countenance, during
a few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to look without
terror, the immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints of
brandy which he swallowed, and which, it was said, he had carefully
distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet, the
monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks,
popular topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public gaze
with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but
as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes, and gallery were staring, not
at the stage, but at him, he retired to a back bench where he was
screened from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a
sitting of the House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen,
he was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small
window. He heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill
for raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land-tax, and learned
with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half than the whole
revenue which he could wring from the population of the immense empire
of which he was absolute master, was but a small part of what the
Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to their
constitutional king.
William judiciously humored the whims of his illustrious guest, and
stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the neighborhood
recognized his Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the
modest-looking coach at the czar’s lodgings. The czar returned the visit
with the same precautions, and was admitted into Kensington House by a
back door. It was afterward known that he took no notice of the fine
pictures with which the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of the
royal sitting-room was a plate which, by an ingenious machinery,
indicated the direction of the wind, and with this plate he was in
raptures.
He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too far
from the objects of his curiosity, and too near to the crowds to which
he was himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly removed to
Deptford, and was there lodged in the house of John Evelyn, a house
which had long been a favorite resort of men of letters, men of taste,
and men of science. Here Peter gave himself up to his favorite pursuits.
He navigated a yacht every day up and down the river. His apartment was
crowded with models of three-deckers and two-deckers, frigates, sloops,
and fire-ships. The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed
to take much pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for
the sea bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very competent to
give an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern.
Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favorite that he prevailed on the
czar to consent to the admission of a limited quantity of tobacco into
Russia. There was reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy would cry
out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would strenuously
maintain that the practice of smoking was condemned by that text which
declares that man is defiled, not by those things which enter in at the
mouth, but by those things which proceed out of it. This apprehension
was expressed by a deputation of merchants who were admitted to an
audience of the czar; but they were reassured by the air with which he
told them that he knew how to keep priests in order.
He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in
which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped at
different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his
brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and love
of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honored with several
audiences. The czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at St.
Paul’s, but he was induced to visit Lambeth Palace. There he saw the
ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed warm approbation of the
Anglican ritual. Nothing in England astonished him so much as the
archiepiscopal library. It was the first good collection of books that
he had seen; and he declared that he had never imagined that there were
so many printed volumes in the world.
The impression which he made on Burnet was not favorable. The good
bishop could not understand that a mind which seemed to be chiefly
occupied with questions about the best place for a capstan and the best
way of rigging a jury-mast might be capable, not merely of ruling an
empire, but of creating a nation. He claimed that he had gone to see a
great prince, and had found only an industrious shipwright. Nor does
Evelyn seem to have formed a much more favorable opinion of his august
tenant. It was, indeed, not in the character of tenant that the czar was
likely to gain the good word of civilized men. With all the high
qualities which were peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits
which were then common among his countrymen. To the end of his life,
while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing codes, organizing
tribunals, building cities in deserts, joining distant seas by
artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a hog in a sty; and, when
he was entertained by other sovereigns, never failed to leave on their
tapestried walls and velvet state beds unequivocal proof that a savage
had been there. Evelyn’s house was left in such a state that the
Treasury quieted his complaints with a considerable sum of money.
Toward the close of March the czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham
sea-fight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending fleets
with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the
hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for
his amusement and instruction. After passing more than three months in
England, he departed in high good-humor.
DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH.
BY WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY.
[John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, born 1650, died 1722. All his
early fortunes were due to the favor of James II, but he deserted
his patron, and his intrigues carried over a large following of the
English nobility to the cause of the Prince of Orange. For this he
was rewarded with the dukedom of Marlborough. Politically
Marlborough was a traitor to nearly every cause he served, and was
continually plotting to undermine William as he had done in the
case of James. To Anne, under whom he reaped his great military
glory, though he had distinguished himself at an earlier period, he
was probably loyal. The victories which established his place among
the leading soldiers of modern times were Blenheim, in 1704;
Ramillies, in 1706; Oudenarde, in 1708; Malplaquet, in 1709; and
the capture of Bouchain, in 1711. He achieved eminence as a
statesman and administrator as well as a soldier, but it is in the
latter capacity that he ranks among the great men of the world.]
Beyond comparison the greatest of English generals, Marlborough raised
his country to a height of military glory such as it had never attained
since the days of Poitiers and of Agincourt, and his victories appeared
all the more dazzling after the ignominious reigns of the last two
Stuarts, and after the many failures that checkered the enterprises of
William. His military genius, though once bitterly decried by party
malignity, will now be universally acknowledged, and it was sufficient
to place him among the greatest captains who have ever lived. Hardly any
other modern general combined to an equal degree the three great
attributes of daring, caution, and sagacity, or conducted military
enterprises of equal magnitude and duration without losing a single
battle or failing in a single siege. He was one of the very few
commanders who appear to have shown equal skill in directing a campaign,
in winning a battle, and in improving a victory. It can not, indeed, be
said of him, as it may be said of Frederick the Great, that he was at
the head of a small power, with almost all Europe in arms against it,
and that nearly every victory he won was snatched from an army
enormously outnumbering his own. At Blenheim and Oudenarde the French
exceeded by a few thousands the armies of the allies. At Ramillies the
army of Marlborough was slightly superior. At Malplaquet the opposing
forces were almost equal. Nor did the circumstances of Marlborough admit
of a military career of the same brilliancy, variety, and magnitude of
enterprise as that of Napoleon.
But both Frederick and Napoleon experienced crushing disasters, and both
of them had some advantages which Marlborough did not possess. Frederick
was the absolute ruler of a state which had for many years been governed
exclusively on the military principle, in which the first and almost the
sole object of the government had been to train and discipline the
largest and most perfect army the nation could support. Napoleon was the
absolute ruler of the foremost military power on the Continent at a time
when the enthusiasm of a great revolution had given it an unparalleled
energy, when the destruction of the whole hierarchy of rank and the
opening of all posts to talent had brought an extraordinary amount of
ability to the forefront, and when the military administrations of
surrounding nations were singularly decrepit and corrupt. Marlborough,
on the other hand, commanded armies consisting in a great degree of
confederates and mercenaries of many different nationalities, and under
many different rulers. He was thwarted at every step by political
obstacles, and by the much graver obstacles arising from divided command
and personal or national jealousies; he contended against the first
military nation of the Continent, at a time when its military
organization had attained the highest perfection, and when a long
succession of brilliant wars had given it a school of officers of
consummate skill.
But great as were his military gifts, they would have been insufficient
had they not been allied with other qualities well fitted to win the
admiration of men. Adam Smith has said, with scarcely an exaggeration,
that “it is a characteristic almost peculiar to the great Duke of
Marlborough, that ten years of such uninterrupted and such splendid
successes as scarce any other general could boast of, never betrayed him
into a single rash action, scarcely into a single rash word or
expression.” Nothing in his career is more admirable than the unwearied
patience, the inimitable skill, the courtesy, the tact, the self-command
with which he employed himself during many years in reconciling the
incessant differences, overcoming the incessant opposition, and soothing
the incessant jealousies of those with whom he was compelled to
co-operate. His private correspondence abundantly shows how gross was
the provocation he endured, how keenly he felt it, how nobly he bore it.
As a negotiator he ranks with the most skillful diplomatists of his age,
and it was no doubt his great tact in managing men that induced his old
rival Bolingbroke, in one of his latest writings, to describe him as not
only the greatest general, but also “the greatest minister our country
or any other has produced.” Chesterfield, while absurdly depreciating
his intellect, admitted that “his manner was irresistible,” and he added
that, of all men he had ever known, Marlborough “possessed the graces in
the highest degree.” Nor was his character without its softer side.
Though he can not, I think, be acquitted of a desire to prolong war in
the interests of his personal or political ambition, it is at least true
that no general ever studied more, by admirable discipline and by
uniform humanity, to mitigate its horrors. Very few friendships among
great political or military leaders have been as constant or as
unclouded by any shade of jealousy as the friendship between Marlborough
and Godolphin, and between Marlborough and Eugene.
His conjugal fidelity, in a time of great laxity and under temptations
and provocations of no common order, was beyond reproach. His attachment
to the Church of England was at one time the great obstacle to his
advancement. It appears never to have wavered through all the
vicissitudes of his life; and no one who reads his most private letters
with candor can fail to perceive that a certain vein of genuine piety
ran through his nature, however inconsistent it may appear with some
portions of his career.
Yet it may be questioned whether, even in the zenith of his fame, he was
really popular. He had grave vices, and they were precisely of that kind
which is most fatal to public men. His extreme rapacity in acquiring and
his extreme avarice in hoarding money contrasted forcibly with the
lavish generosity of Ormond, and alone gave weight to the charges of
peculation that were brought against him. It is true that this, like all
his passions, was under control. Torcy soon found that it was useless to
attempt to bribe him, and he declined, as we have seen, with little
hesitation, the enormously lucrative post of governor of the Austrian
Netherlands when he found that the appointment aroused the strong and
dangerous hostility of the Dutch. In these cases his keen and far-seeing
judgment perceived clearly his true interest, and he had sufficient
resolution to follow it. Yet still, like many men who have risen from
great poverty to great wealth, avarice was the passion of his life, and
the rapacity both of himself and of his wife was insatiable. Besides
immense grants from Blenheim and marriage portions given by the queen to
their daughters, they at one time received between them an annual income
of public money of more than sixty-four thousand pounds.