Mr. Esmond rode up to London then, where, if the dowager had been angry at
the abrupt leave of absence he took, she was mightily pleased at his
speedy return.
He went immediately and paid his court to his new general, General Lumley,
who received him graciously, having known his father, and also, he was
pleased to say, having had the very best accounts of Mr. Esmond from the
officer whose aide de camp he had been at Vigo. During this winter Mr.
Esmond was gazetted to a lieutenancy in Brigadier Webb’s regiment of
Fusiliers, then with their colonel in Flanders; but being now attached to
the suite of Mr. Lumley, Esmond did not join his own regiment until more
than a year afterwards, and after his return from the campaign of
Blenheim, which was fought the next year. The campaign began very early,
our troops marching out of their quarters before the winter was almost
over, and investing the city of Bonn, on the Rhine, under the duke’s
command. His grace joined the army in deep grief of mind, with crape on
his sleeve, and his household in mourning; and the very same packet which
brought the commander-in-chief over, brought letters to the forces which
preceded him, and one from his dear mistress to Esmond, which interested
him not a little.
The young Marquis of Blandford, his grace’s son, who had been entered in
King’s College in Cambridge (whither my lord viscount had also gone, to
Trinity, with Mr. Tusher as his governor), had been seized with small-pox,
and was dead at sixteen years of age, and so poor Frank’s schemes for his
sister’s advancement were over, and that innocent childish passion nipped
in the birth.
Esmond’s mistress would have had him return, at least her letters hinted
as much; but in the presence of the enemy this was impossible, and our
young man took his humble share in the siege, which need not be described
here, and had the good luck to escape without a wound of any sort, and to
drink his general’s health after the surrender. He was in constant
military duty this year, and did not think of asking for a leave of
absence, as one or two of his less fortunate friends did, who were cast
away in that tremendous storm which happened towards the close of
November, that “which of late o’er pale Britannia past” (as Mr. Addison
sang of it), and in which scores of our greatest ships and 15,000 of our
seamen went down.
They said that our duke was quite heartbroken by the calamity which had
befallen his family; but his enemies found that he could subdue them, as
well as master his grief. Successful as had been this great general’s
operations in the past year, they were far enhanced by the splendour of
his victory in the ensuing campaign. His grace the captain-general went to
England after Bonn, and our army fell back into Holland, where, in April,
1704, his grace again found the troops embarking from Harwich and landing
at Maesland Sluys: thence his grace came immediately to the Hague, where
he received the foreign ministers, general officers, and other people of
quality. The greatest honours were paid to his grace everywhere—at the
Hague, Utrecht, Ruremonde, and Maestricht; the civic authorities coming to
meet his coaches: salvos of cannon saluting him, canopies of state being
erected for him where he stopped, and feasts prepared for the numerous
gentlemen following in his suite. His grace reviewed the troops of the
States-General between Liége and Maestricht, and afterwards the English
forces, under the command of General Churchill, near Bois-le-Duc. Every
preparation was made for a long march; and the army heard, with no small
elation, that it was the commander-in-chief’s intention to carry the war
out of the Low Countries, and to march on the Mozelle. Before leaving our
camp at Maestricht, we heard that the French, under the Marshal Villeroy,
were also bound towards the Mozelle.
Towards the end of May, the army reached Coblentz; and next day, his
grace, and the generals accompanying him, went to visit the Elector of
Treves at his Castle of Ehrenbreitstein, the horse and dragoons passing
the Rhine whilst the duke was entertained at a grand feast by the Elector.
All as yet was novelty, festivity, and splendour—a brilliant march of a
great and glorious army through a friendly country, and sure through some
of the most beautiful scenes of nature which I ever witnessed.
The foot and artillery, following after the horse as quick as possible,
crossed the Rhine under Ehrenbreitstein, and so to Castel, over against
Mayntz, in which city his grace, his generals, and his retinue were
received at the landing-place by the Elector’s coaches, carried to his
highness’s palace amidst the thunder of cannon, and then once more
magnificently entertained. Gidlingen, in Bavaria, was appointed as the
general rendezvous of the army, and thither, by different routes, the
whole forces of English, Dutch, Danes, and German auxiliaries took their
way. The foot and artillery under General Churchill passed the Neckar, at
Heidelberg; and Esmond had an opportunity of seeing that city and palace,
once so famous and beautiful (though shattered and battered by the French,
under Turenne, in the late war), where his grandsire had served the
beautiful and unfortunate Electress-Palatine, the first King Charles’s
sister.
At Mindelsheim, the famous Prince of Savoy came to visit our commander,
all of us crowding eagerly to get a sight of that brilliant and intrepid
warrior; and our troops were drawn up in battalia before the prince, who
was pleased to express his admiration of this noble English army. At
length we came in sight of the enemy between Dillingen and Lawingen, the
Brentz lying between the two armies. The Elector, judging that Donauwort
would be the point of his grace’s attack, sent a strong detachment of his
best troops to Count Darcos, who was posted at Schellenberg, near that
place, where great entrenchments were thrown up, and thousands of pioneers
employed to strengthen the position.
On the 2nd of July, his grace stormed the post, with what success on our
part need scarce be told. His grace advanced with six thousand foot,
English and Dutch, thirty squadrons and three regiments of Imperial
cuirassiers, the duke crossing the river at the head of the cavalry.
Although our troops made the attack with unparalleled courage and
fury—rushing up to the very guns of the enemy, and being slaughtered
before their works—we were driven back many times, and should not have
carried them, but that the Imperialists came up under the Prince of Baden,
when the enemy could make no head against us: we pursued him into the
trenches, making a terrible slaughter there, and into the very Danube,
where a great part of his troops, following the example of their generals,
Count Darcos and the Elector himself, tried to save themselves by
swimming. Our army entered Donauwort, which the Bavarians evacuated; and
where ’twas said the Elector purposed to have given us a warm reception,
by burning us in our beds; the cellars of the houses, when we took
possession of them, being found stuffed with straw. But though the links
were there, the link-boys had run away. The townsmen saved their houses,
and our general took possession of the enemy’s ammunition in the arsenals,
his stores, and magazines. Five days afterwards a great _Te Deum_ was sung
in Prince Lewis’s army, and a solemn day of thanksgiving held in our own;
the Prince of Savoy’s compliments coming to his grace the captain-general
during the day’s religious ceremony, and concluding, as it were, with an
amen.
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 valour of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes,
so brutal, mean, 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 huzzah for the British Grenadiers—do you
take account that these items go to make up the amount of the triumph you
admire, and form part of the duties of the heroes you fondle? Our chief,
whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshipped almost,
had this of the godlike 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 Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis when
she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the Prince of Savoy’s
officers say, the prince became possessed with a sort of warlike fury; his
eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither, raging; he 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 the
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 of
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 jewelled hat,
or a hundred thousand crowns from a 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 have said, this of the godlike 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, as 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 before 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.
The French right was posted near to the village of Blenheim, on the
Danube, where the Marshal Tallard’s quarters were; their line extending
through, it may be a league and a half, before Lutzingen and up to a woody
hill, round the base of which, and acting against the Prince of Savoy,
were forty of his squadrons. Here was a village that the Frenchmen had
burned, the wood being, in fact, a better shelter and easier of guard than
any village.
Before these two villages and the French lines ran a little stream, not
more than two foot broad, through a marsh (that was mostly dried up from
the heats of the weather), and this stream was the only separation between
the two armies—ours coming up and ranging themselves in line of battle
before the French, at six o’clock in the morning; so that our line was
quite visible to theirs; and the whole of this great plain was black and
swarming with troops for hours before the cannonading began.
On one side and the other this cannonading lasted many hours. The French
guns being in position in front of their line, and doing severe damage
among our horse especially, and on our right wing of Imperialists under
the Prince of Savoy, who could neither advance his artillery nor his
lines, the ground before him being cut up by ditches, morasses, and very
difficult of passage for the guns.
It was past midday when the attack began on our left, where Lord Cutts
commanded, the bravest and most beloved officer in the English army. And
now, as if to make his experience in war complete, our young aide de camp
having seen two great armies facing each other in line of battle, and had
the honour of riding with orders from one end to other of the line, came
in for a not uncommon accompaniment of military glory, and was knocked on
the head, along with many hundred of brave fellows, almost at the very
commencement of this famous day of Blenheim. A little after noon, the
disposition for attack being completed with much delay and difficulty, and
under a severe fire from the enemy’s guns, that were better posted and
more numerous than ours, a body of English and Hessians, with
Major-General Wilkes commanding at the extreme left of our line, marched
upon Blenheim, advancing with great gallantry, the major-general on foot,
with his officers, at the head of the column, and marching, with his hat
off, intrepidly in the face of the enemy, who was pouring in a tremendous
fire from his guns and musketry, to which our people were instructed not
to reply, except with pike and bayonet when they reached the French
palisades. To these Wilkes walked intrepidly, and struck the woodwork with
his sword before our people charged it. He was shot down at the instant,
with his colonel, major, and several officers; and our troops cheering and
huzzaing, and coming on, as they did, with immense resolution and
gallantry, were nevertheless stopped by the murderous fire from behind the
enemy’s defences, and then attacked in flank by a furious charge of French
horse which swept out of Blenheim, and cut down our men in great numbers.
Three fierce and desperate assaults of our foot were made and repulsed by
the enemy; so that our columns of foot were quite shattered, and fell
back, scrambling over the little rivulet, which we had crossed so
resolutely an hour before, and pursued by the French cavalry, slaughtering
us and cutting us down.
And now the conquerors were met by a furious charge of English horse under
Esmond’s general, General Lumley, behind whose squadrons the flying foot
found refuge, and formed again, whilst Lumley drove back the French horse,
charging up to the village of Blenheim and the palisades where Wilkes, and
many hundred more gallant Englishmen, lay in slaughtered heaps. Beyond
this moment, and of this famous victory, Mr. Esmond knows nothing; for a
shot brought down his horse and our young gentleman on it, who fell
crushed and stunned under the animal; and came to his senses he knows not
how long after, only to lose them again from pain and loss of blood. A dim
sense, as of people groaning round about him, a wild incoherent thought or
two for her who occupied so much of his heart now, and that here his
career, and his hopes, and misfortunes were ended, he remembers in the
course of these hours. When he woke up it was with a pang of extreme pain,
his breast-plate was taken off, his servant was holding his head up, the
good and faithful lad of Hampshire(9) was blubbering over his master, whom
he found and had thought dead, and a surgeon was probing a wound in the
shoulder, which he must have got at the same moment when his horse was
shot and fell over him. The battle was over at this end of the field, by
this time: the village was in possession of the English, its brave
defenders prisoners, or fled, or drowned, many of them, in the
neighbouring waters of the Donau. But for honest Lockwood’s faithful
search after his master, there had no doubt been an end of Esmond here,
and of this his story. The marauders were out rifling the bodies as they
lay on the field, and Jack had brained one of these gentry with the
club-end of his musket, who had eased Esmond of his hat and periwig, his
purse, and fine silver-mounted pistols which the dowager gave him, and was
fumbling in his pockets for further treasure, when Jack Lockwood came up
and put an end to the scoundrel’s triumph.
Hospitals for our wounded were established at Blenheim, and here for
several weeks Esmond lay in very great danger of his life; the wound was
not very great from which he suffered, and the ball extracted by the
surgeon on the spot where our young gentleman received it; but a fever set
in next day, as he was lying in hospital, and that almost carried him
away. Jack Lockwood said he talked in the wildest manner during his
delirium; that he called himself the Marquis of Esmond, and seizing one of
the surgeon’s assistants who came to dress his wounds, swore that he was
Madam Beatrix, and that he would make her a duchess if she would but say
yes. He was passing the days in these crazy fancies, and _vana somnia_,
whilst the army was singing _Te Deum_ for the victory, and those famous
festivities were taking place at which our duke, now made a Prince of the
Empire, was entertained by the King of the Romans and his nobility. His
grace went home by Berlin and Hanover, and Esmond lost the festivities
which took place at those cities, and which his general shared in company
of the other general officers who travelled with our great captain. When
he could move it was by the Duke of Wirtemburg’s city of Stuttgard that he
made his way homewards, revisiting Heidelberg again, whence he went to
Manheim, and hence had a tedious but easy water journey down the river of
Rhine, which he had thought a delightful and beautiful voyage indeed, but
that his heart was longing for home, and something far more beautiful and
delightful.
As bright and welcome as the eyes almost of his mistress shone the lights
of Harwich, as the packet came in from Holland. It was not many hours ere
he, Esmond, was in London, of that you may be sure, and received with open
arms by the old dowager of Chelsea, who vowed, in her jargon of French and
English, that he had the _air noble_, that his pallor embellished him,
that he was an Amadis and deserved a Gloriana; and, O flames and darts!
what was his joy at hearing that his mistress was come into waiting, and
was now with her Majesty at Kensington! Although Mr. Esmond had told Jack
Lockwood to get horses and they would ride for Winchester that night; when
he heard this news he countermanded the horses at once; his business lay
no longer in Hants; all his hope and desire lay within a couple of miles
of him in Kensington Park wall. Poor Harry had never looked in the glass
before so eagerly to see whether he had the _bel air_, and his paleness
really did become him; he never took such pains about the curl of his
periwig, and the taste of his embroidery and point-lace, as now, before
Mr. Amadis presented himself to Madam Gloriana. Was the fire of the French
lines half so murderous as the killing glances from her ladyship’s eyes? O
darts and raptures, how beautiful were they!
And as, before the blazing sun of morning, the moon fades away in the sky
almost invisible; Esmond thought, with a blush perhaps, of another sweet
pale face, sad and faint, and fading out of sight, with its sweet fond
gaze of affection; such a last look it seemed to cast as Eurydice might
have given, yearning after her lover, when Fate and Pluto summoned her,
and she passed away into the shades.