The defeat at Aughrim left Limerick alone in its revolt, and in October

Sarsfield bowed to the necessity of surrender. Two treaties were drawn

up between the Irish and English generals. By the first it was

stipulated that the Catholics of Ireland should enjoy such privileges in

the exercise of their religion as were consistent with law, or as they

had enjoyed in the reign of Charles the Second. The Crown pledged itself

also to summon a Parliament as soon as possible, and to endeavour to

procure to the good Roman Catholics such further security in that

particular as "may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account

of the said religion." By the military treaty those of Sarsfield's

soldiers who would were suffered to follow him to France; and ten

thousand men, the whole of his force, chose exile rather than life in a

land where all hope of national freedom was lost. When the wild cry of

the women who stood watching their departure was hushed the silence of

death settled down upon Ireland. For a hundred years the country

remained at peace. But the peace was a peace of despair. No Englishman

who loves what is noble in the English temper can tell without sorrow

and shame the story of that time of guilt. The work of oppression, it is

true, was done not directly by England but by the English settlers in

Ireland; and the cruelty of their rule sprang in great measure from the

sense of danger and the atmosphere of panic in which the Protestants

lived. But if thoughts such as these relieve the guilt of those who

oppressed they leave the fact of oppression as dark as before. The most

terrible legal tyranny under which a nation has ever groaned avenged the

rising under Tyrconnell. The conquered people, in Swift's bitter words

of contempt, became "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to their

conquerors. Such as the work was, however, it was thoroughly done.

Though local risings of these serfs perpetually spread terror among the

English settlers in Ireland, all dream of a national revolt passed away.

Till the very eve of the French Revolution Ireland ceased to be a source

of political danger and anxiety to England.

[Sidenote: French Descent on England.]

Short as the struggle of Ireland had been it had served Lewis well, for

while William was busy at the Boyne a series of brilliant successes was

restoring the fortunes of France. In Flanders the Duke of Luxembourg won

the victory of Fleurus. In Italy Marshal Catinat defeated the Duke of

Savoy. A success of even greater moment, the last victory which France

was fated to win at sea, placed for an instant the very throne of

William in peril. William never showed a cooler courage than in quitting

England to fight James in Ireland at a moment when the Jacobites were

only looking for the appearance of a French fleet on the coast to rise

in revolt. The French minister in fact hurried the fleet to sea in the

hope of detaining William in England by a danger at home; and he had

hardly set out for Ireland when Tourville, the French admiral, appeared

in the Channel with strict orders to fight. Orders as strict had been

sent to the allied fleets to engage even at the risk of defeat; and when

Tourville was met on the 30th of June 1690 by the English and Dutch

fleet at Beachy Head the Dutch division at once engaged. Though utterly

outnumbered it fought stubbornly in hope of Herbert's aid; but Herbert,

whether from cowardice or treason, looked idly on while his allies were

crushed, and withdrew with the English ships at nightfall to seek

shelter in the Thames. The danger was as great as the shame, for

Tourville's victory left him master of the Channel and his presence off

the coast of Devon invited the Jacobites to revolt. But whatever the

discontent of Tories and Nonjurors against William might be all signs of

it vanished with the landing of the French. The burning of Teignmouth by

Tourville's sailors called the whole coast to arms; and the news of the

Boyne put an end to all dreams of a rising in favour of James.

[Sidenote: Intrigues in England.]

The natural reaction against a cause which looked for foreign aid gave a

new strength for the moment to William in England; but ill luck still

hung around the Grand Alliance. So urgent was the need for his presence

abroad that William left as we have seen his work in Ireland undone, and

crossed in the spring of 1691 to Flanders. It was the first time since

the days of Henry the Eighth that an English king had appeared on the

Continent at the head of an English army. But the slowness of the allies

again baffled William's hopes. He was forced to look on with a small

army while a hundred thousand Frenchmen closed suddenly around Mons, the

strongest fortress of the Netherlands, and made themselves masters of it

in the presence of Lewis. The humiliation was great, and for the moment

all trust in William's fortune faded away. In England the blow was felt

more heavily than elsewhere. The Jacobite hopes which had been crushed

by the indignation at Tourville's descent woke up to a fresh life.

Leading Tories, such as Lord Clarendon and Lord Dartmouth, opened

communications with James; and some of the leading Whigs with the Earl

of Shrewsbury at their head, angered at what they regarded as William's

ingratitude, followed them in their course. In Lord Marlborough's mind

the state of affairs raised hopes of a double treason. His design was to

bring about a revolt which would drive William from the throne without

replacing James on it, a revolt which would in fact give the crown to

his daughter Anne whose affection for Marlborough's wife would place the

real government of England in Churchill's hands. A yet greater danger

lay in the treason of Admiral Russell who had succeeded Torrington in

command of the fleet.

[Sidenote: Battle of La Hogue.]

Russell's defection would have removed the one obstacle to a new attempt

which James was resolved to make for the recovery of his throne and

which Lewis had been brought to support. James had never wavered from

his design of returning to England at the head of a foreign force. He

abandoned Ireland as soon as his hopes of finding such a force there

vanished at the Boyne; and from that moment he had sought a base of

invasion in France. Lewis was the more willing to make the trial that

the pressure of the war had left few troops in England. So certain was

he of success that the future ambassador to the court of James was

already nominated, and a treaty of commerce sketched between France and

England. In the beginning of 1692 an army of thirty thousand troops was

quartered in Normandy in readiness for a descent on the English coast.

Nearly a half of this force was composed of the Irish regiments who had

followed Sarsfield into exile after the surrender of Limerick.

Transports were provided for their passage, and Tourville was ordered to

cover it with the French fleet at Brest. Though Russell had twice as

many ships as his opponent the belief in his purpose of betraying

William's cause was so strong that Lewis ordered Tourville to engage the

allied fleets at any disadvantage. But whatever Russell's intrigues may

have meant he was no Herbert. All he would promise was to keep his fleet

out of the way of hindering a landing. But should Tourville engage, he

would promise nothing. "Do not think I will let the French triumph over

us in our own seas," he warned his Jacobite correspondents. "If I meet

them I will fight them, even though King James were on board." When the

allied fleet, which had been ordered to the Norman coast, met the French

off the heights of Barfleur his fierce attack proved Russell true to his

word. Tourville's fifty vessels were no match for the ninety ships of

the allies, and after five hours of a brave struggle the French were

forced to fly along the rocky coast of the Cotentin. Twenty-two of their

vessels reached St. Malo; thirteen anchored with Tourville in the bays

of Cherbourg and La Hogue; but their pursuers were soon upon them, and

in a bold attack the English boats burned ship after ship under the eyes

of the French army.

[Sidenote: The turn of the War.]

All dread of the invasion was at once at an end; and the throne of

William was secured by the detection and suppression of the Jacobite

conspiracy at home which the invasion was intended to support. The

battle of La Hogue was a death-blow to the project of a Stuart

restoration by help of foreign arms. Henceforth English Jacobitism would

have to battle unaided against the throne of the Revolution. But the

overthrow of the Jacobite hopes was the least result of the victory.

France ceased from that moment to exist as a great naval power; for

though her fleet was soon recruited to its former strength the

confidence of her sailors was lost, and not even Tourville ventured

again to tempt in battle the fortune of the seas. A new hope too dawned

on the Grand Alliance. The spell of French triumph was broken. On land

indeed the French still held their old mastery. Namur, one of the

strongest fortresses in Europe, surrendered to Lewis a few days after

the battle of La Hogue. An inroad into Dauphine failed to rouse the

Huguenots to revolt, and the Duke of Luxembourg maintained the glory of

the French arms by a victory over William at Steinkirk. But the battle

was a useless butchery in which the conquerors lost as many men as the

conquered. From that moment France felt herself disheartened and

exhausted by the vastness of her efforts. The public misery was extreme.

"The country," Fenelon wrote frankly to Lewis, "is a vast hospital." The

tide too of the war began to turn. In 1693 the campaign of Lewis in the

Netherlands proved a fruitless one, and Luxembourg was hardly able to

beat off the fierce attack of William at Neerwinden. For the first time

in his long career of prosperity therefore Lewis bent his pride to seek

peace at the sacrifice of his conquests, and though the effort was a

vain one it told that the daring hopes of French ambition were at an end

and that the work of the Grand Alliance was practically done.

[Sidenote: The Sovereignty of the Commons.]

Its final triumph however was in great measure brought about by a change

which now passed over the face of English politics. In outer seeming the

Revolution of 1688 had only transferred the sovereignty over England

from James to William and Mary. In actual fact it had given a powerful

and decisive impulse to the great constitutional progress which was

transferring the sovereignty from the king to the House of Commons. From

the moment when its sole right to tax the nation was established by the

Bill of Rights, and when its own resolve settled the practice of

granting none but annual supplies to the Crown, the House of Commons

became the supreme power in the State. It was impossible permanently to

suspend its sittings or in the long run to oppose its will when either

course must end in leaving the Government penniless, in breaking up the

army and navy, and in suspending the public service. But though the

constitutional change was complete the machinery of government was far

from having adapted itself to the new conditions of political life which

such a change brought about. However powerful the will of the House of

Commons might be it had no means of bringing its will directly to bear

upon the conduct of public affairs. The Ministers who had charge of them

were not its servants, but the servants of the Crown; it was from the

king that they looked for direction, and to the king that they held

themselves responsible. By impeachment or more indirect means the

Commons could force a king to remove a Minister who contradicted their

will; but they had no constitutional power to replace the fallen

statesman by a Minister who would carry out their will.

[Sidenote: Lord Sunderland.]

The result was the growth of a temper in the Lower House which drove

William and his Ministers to despair. It became as corrupt, as jealous

of power, as fickle in its resolves and factious in spirit as bodies

always become whose consciousness of the possession of power is

untempered by a corresponding consciousness of the practical

difficulties or the moral responsibilities of the power which they

possess. It grumbled at the ill-success of the war, at the suffering of

the merchants, at the discontent of the Churchmen; and it blamed the

Crown and its Ministers for all at which it grumbled. But it was hard to

find out what policy or measures it would have preferred. Its mood

changed, as William bitterly complained, with every hour. His own hold

over it grew less day by day. It was only through great pressure that he

succeeded in defeating by a majority of two a Place Bill which would

have rendered all his servants and Ministers incapable of sitting in the

Commons. He was obliged to use his veto to defeat a Triennial Bill

which, as he believed, would have destroyed what little stability of

purpose there was in the present Parliament. The Houses were in fact

without the guidance of recognized leaders, without adequate

information, and destitute of that organization out of which alone a

definite policy can come. Nothing better proves the inborn political

capacity of the English mind than that it should at once have found a

simple and effective solution of such a difficulty as this. The credit

of the solution belongs to a man whose political character was of the

lowest type. Robert, Earl of Sunderland, had been a Minister in the

later days of Charles the Second; and he had remained Minister through

almost all the reign of James. He had held office at last only by

compliance with the worst tyranny of his master and by a feigned

conversion to the Roman Catholic faith; but the ruin of James was no

sooner certain than he had secured pardon and protection from William by

the betrayal of the master to whom he had sacrificed his conscience and

his honour. Since the Revolution Sunderland had striven only to escape

public observation in a country retirement, but at this crisis he came

secretly forward to bring his unequalled sagacity to the aid of the

king. His counsel was to recognize practically the new power of the

Commons by choosing the Ministers of the Crown exclusively from among

the members of the party which was strongest in the Lower House.

[Sidenote: The New Ministerial System.]

As yet no Ministry in the modern sense of the term had existed. Each

great officer of State, Treasurer or Secretary or Lord Privy Seal, had

in theory been independent of his fellow-officers; each was the "King's

servant" and responsible for the discharge of his special duties to the

king alone. From time to time one Minister, like Clarendon, might tower

above the rest and give a general direction to the whole course of

government, but the predominance was merely personal and never

permanent; and even in such a case there were colleagues who were ready

to oppose or even impeach the statesman who overshadowed them. It was

common for a king to choose or dismiss a single Minister without any

communication with the rest; and so far was even William from aiming at

ministerial unity that he had striven to reproduce in the Cabinet itself

the balance of parties which prevailed outside it. Sunderland's plan

aimed at replacing these independent Ministers by a homogeneous

Ministry, chosen from the same party, representing the same sentiments,

and bound together for common action by a sense of responsibility and

loyalty to the party to which it belonged. Not only was such a plan

likely to secure a unity of administration which had been unknown till

then, but it gave an organization to the House of Commons which it had

never had before. The Ministers who were representatives of the majority

of its members became the natural leaders of the House. Small factions

were drawn together into the two great parties which supported or

opposed the Ministry of the Crown. Above all it brought about in the

simplest possible way the solution of the problem which had so long

vexed both Kings and Commons. The new Ministers ceased in all but name

to be the king's servants. They became simply an Executive Committee

representing the will of the majority of the House of Commons, and

capable of being easily set aside by it and replaced by a similar

Committee whenever the balance of power shifted from one side of the

House to the other.

[Sidenote: The Junto.]

Such was the origin of that system of representative government which

has gone on from Sunderland's day to our own. But though William showed

his own political genius in understanding and adopting Sunderland's

plan, it was only slowly and tentatively that he ventured to carry it

out in practice. In spite of the temporary reaction Sunderland believed

that the balance of political power was really on the side of the Whigs.

Not only were they the natural representatives of the principles of the

Revolution, and the supporters of the war, but they stood far above

their opponents in parliamentary and administrative talent. At their

head stood a group of statesmen whose close union in thought and action

gained them the name of the Junto. Russell, as yet the most prominent of

these, was the victor of La Hogue; John Somers was an advocate who had

sprung into fame by his defence of the Seven Bishops; Lord Wharton was

known as the most dexterous and unscrupulous of party managers; and

Montague was fast making a reputation as the ablest of English

financiers. In spite of such considerations however it is doubtful

whether William would have thrown himself into the hands of a purely

Whig Ministry but for the attitude which the Tories took towards the

war. Exhausted as France was the war still languished and the allies

still failed to win a single victory. Meanwhile English trade was all

but ruined by the French privateers and the nation stood aghast at the

growth of taxation. The Tories, always cold in their support of the

Grand Alliance, now became eager for peace. The Whigs on the other hand

remained resolute in their support of the war.

[Sidenote: Bank of England.]

William, in whose mind the contest with France was the first object, was

thus driven slowly to follow Sunderland's advice. Already in 1694 indeed

Montague established his political position and weakened that of the

Tory Ministers by his success in a great financial measure which at once

relieved the pressure of taxation and added strength to the new

monarchy. The war could be kept up only by loans: and loans were still

raised in England by personal appeal to a few London goldsmiths in whose

hands men placed money for investment. But the bankruptcies which

followed the closing of the Exchequer by the Cabal had shaken public

confidence in the goldsmiths, while the dread of a restoration of James

made these capitalists appear shy of the Ministers' appeals for aid.

Money therefore could only be raised in scanty quantities and at a heavy

loss. In this emergency Montague came forward with a plan which had been

previously suggested by a Scotchman, William Paterson, for the creation

of a National Bank such as already existed in Holland and in Genoa.

While serving as an ordinary bank for the supply of capital to

commercial enterprises the Bank of England, as the new institution was

called, was in reality an instrument for procuring loans from the

people at large by the formal pledge of the State to repay the money

advanced on the demand of the lender. For this purpose a loan of

L1,200,000 was thrown open to public subscription; and the subscribers

to it were formed into a chartered company in whose hands the

negotiation of all after loans was placed. The plan turned out a perfect

success. In ten days the list of subscribers was full. A new source of

power revealed itself in this discovery of the resources afforded by the

national credit and the national wealth; and the rapid growth of the

National Debt, as the mass of these loans to the State came to be

called, gave a new security against the return of the Stuarts whose

first work would have been the repudiation of the claims of the lenders

or as they were termed the "fundholders."

[Sidenote: The Whig Ministry.]

The evidence of the public credit gave strength to William abroad as at

home. In 1694 indeed the army of 90,000 men which he commanded in the

Netherlands did no more than hold the French successfully at bay; but

the English fleet rode triumphant in the Channel, ravaged and alarmed

the coast of France, and foiled by its pressure the attack of a French

army on Barcelona. The brighter aspect of affairs abroad coincided with

a new unity of action at home. The change which Sunderland counselled

was quietly carried out. One by one the Tory Ministers had been replaced

by members of the Junto. Russell went to the Admiralty; Somers was

named Lord Keeper; Shrewsbury, Secretary of State; Montague, Chancellor

of the Exchequer. Even before this change was completed its effect was

felt. The House of Commons took a new tone. The Whig majority of its

members, united and disciplined, moved quietly under the direction of

their natural leaders, the Whig Ministers of the Crown. It was this

which enabled William to face the shock which was given to his position

by the death of Queen Mary at the end of 1694. It had been provided

indeed that on the death of either sovereign the survivor should retain

the throne; but the renewed attacks of the Tories under Nottingham and

Halifax on the war and the Bank showed what fresh hopes had been raised

by William's lonely position. The Parliament however, whom the king had

just conciliated by assenting at last to the Triennial Bill, went

steadily with the Ministry; and its fidelity was rewarded by triumph

abroad. In September 1695 the Alliance succeeded for the first time in

winning a great triumph over France in the capture of Namur. The king

skilfully took advantage of his victory to call a new Parliament, and

its members at once showed their temper by a vigorous support of the

measures necessary for the prosecution of the war. The Houses indeed

were no mere tools in William's hands. They forced him to resume the

prodigal grants of lands which he had made to his Dutch favourites, and

to remove his Ministers in Scotland who had aided in a wild project for

a Scotch colony on the Isthmus of Darien. They claimed a right to name

members of the new Board of Trade which was established in 1696 for the

regulation of commercial matters. They rejected a proposal, never

henceforth to be revived, for a censorship of the Press. But there was

no factious opposition. So strong was the Ministry that Montague was

enabled to face the general distress which was caused for the moment by

a reform of the currency, which had been reduced by clipping to far less

than its nominal value, and although the financial embarrassments

created by the currency reform hindered any vigorous measures abroad

William was able to hold the French at bay.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Succession.]

But the war was fast drawing to a close. The Catholic powers in the

Grand Alliance were already in revolt against William's supremacy as

they had been in revolt against that of Lewis. In 1696 the Pope

succeeded in detaching Savoy from the league and Lewis was enabled to

transfer his Italian army to the Low Countries. But France was now

simply fighting to secure more favourable terms, and William, though he

held that "the only way of treating with France is with our swords in

our hands," was almost as eager as Lewis for a peace. The defection of

Savoy made it impossible to carry out the original aim of the Alliance,

that of forcing France back to its position at the Treaty of Westphalia,

and a new question was drawing every day nearer, the question of the

succession to the Spanish throne. The death of the King of Spain,

Charles the Second, was now known to be at hand. With him ended the male

line of the Austrian princes who for two hundred years had occupied the

Spanish throne. How strangely Spain had fallen from its high estate in

Europe the wars of Lewis had abundantly shown, but so vast was the

extent of its empire, so enormous the resources which still remained to

it, that under a vigorous ruler men believed its old power would at once

return. Its sovereign was still master of some of the noblest provinces

of the Old World and the New, of Spain itself, of the Milanese, of

Naples and Sicily, of the Netherlands, of Southern America, of the noble

islands of the Spanish Main. To add such a dominion as this to the

dominion either of Lewis or of the Emperor would be to undo at a blow

the work of European independence which William had wrought; and it was

with a view to prevent either of these results that William resolved to

free his hands by a conclusion of the war.

[Sidenote: Peace of Ryswick.]

In May negotiations were opened at Ryswick; the obstacles thrown in the

way of an accommodation by Spain and the Empire were set aside in a

private negotiation between William and Lewis; and peace was finally

signed in October 1697. In spite of failure and defeat in the field

William's policy had won. The victories of France remained barren in the

face of a united Europe; and her exhaustion forced her for the first

time since Richelieu's day to consent to a disadvantageous peace. On the

side of the Empire France withdrew from every annexation save that of

Strassburg which she had made since the Treaty of Nimeguen, and

Strassburg would have been restored but for the unhappy delays of the

German negotiators. To Spain Lewis restored Luxemburg and all the

conquests he had made during the war in the Netherlands. The Duke of

Lorraine was replaced in his dominions. A far more important provision

of the peace pledged Lewis to an abandonment of the Stuart cause and a

recognition of William as King of England. For Europe in general the

peace of Ryswick was little more than a truce. But for England it was

the close of a long and obstinate struggle and the opening of a new aera

of political history. It was the final and decisive defeat of the

conspiracy which had gone on between Lewis and the Stuarts ever since

the Treaty of Dover, the conspiracy to turn England into a Roman

Catholic country and into a dependency of France. But it was even more

than this. It was the definite establishment of England as the centre of

European resistance against all attempts to overthrow the balance of

power.

[Sidenote: William's aims.]

In leaving England face to face with France the Treaty of Ryswick gave a

new turn to the policy of William. Hitherto he had aimed at saving the

balance of European power by the joint action of England and the rest of

the European states against France. He now saw a means of securing what

that action had saved by the co-operation of France and the two great

naval powers. In his new course we see the first indication of that

triple alliance of France, England, and Holland, which formed the base

of Walpole's foreign policy, as well as of that common action of England

and France which since the fall of Holland has so constantly recurred to

the dreams of English statesmen. Peace therefore was no sooner signed

than William by stately embassies and a series of secret negotiations

drew nearer to France. It was in direct negotiation and co-operation

with Lewis that he aimed at bringing about a peaceful settlement of the

question which threatened Europe with war. At this moment the claimants

of the Spanish succession were three: the French Dauphin, a son of the

Spanish king's elder sister; the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, a grandson

of his younger sister; and the Emperor, who was a son of Charles's aunt.

In strict law--if there had been any law really applicable to the

matter--the claim of the last was the strongest of the three; for the

claim of the Dauphin was barred by an express renunciation of all right

to the succession at his mother's marriage with Lewis XIV., a

renunciation which had been ratified at the Treaty of the Pyrenees; and

a similar renunciation barred the claim of the Bavarian candidate. The

claim of the Emperor was more remote in blood, but it was barred by no

renunciation at all. William however was as resolute in the interests of

Europe to repulse the claim of the Emperor as to repulse that of Lewis;

and it was the consciousness that the Austrian succession was inevitable

if the war continued and Spain remained a member of the Grand Alliance,

in arms against France and leagued with the Emperor, which made him

suddenly conclude the Peace of Ryswick.

[Sidenote: The first Partition Treaty.]

Had England and Holland shared William's temper he would have insisted

on the succession of the Electoral Prince to the whole Spanish

dominions. But both were weary of war, and of the financial distress

which war had brought with it. In England the peace of Ryswick was at

once followed by the reduction of the army at the demand of the House of

Commons to ten thousand men; and a clamour had already begun for the

disbanding even of these. It was necessary therefore to bribe the two

rival claimants to a waiver of their claims; and Lewis after some

hesitation yielded to the counsels of his Ministers, and consented to

waive his son's claims for such a bribe. The secret treaty between the

three powers, which was concluded in the summer of 1698, thus became

necessarily a Partition Treaty. The succession of the Electoral Prince

of Bavaria was recognized on condition of the cession by Spain of its

Italian possessions to his two rivals. The Milanese was to pass to the

Emperor; the Two Sicilies, with the border province of Guipuzcoa, to

France. But the arrangement was hardly concluded when the death of the

Bavarian prince in February 1699 made the Treaty waste paper. Austria

and France were left face to face; and a terrible struggle, in which the

success of either would be equally fatal to the independence of Europe,

seemed unavoidable. The peril was the greater that the temper of both

England and Holland left William without the means of backing his policy

by arms. The suffering which the war had caused to the merchant class

and the pressure of the debt and taxation it entailed were waking every

day a more bitter resentment in the people of both countries. While the

struggle lasted the value of English exports had fallen from four

millions a year to less than three, and the losses of ships and goods at

sea had been enormous. Nor had the stress been less felt within the

realm. The revenue from the post-office, a fair index to the general

wealth of the country, had fallen from seventy-six thousand to

fifty-eight. With the restoration of peace indeed the energies of the

country had quickly recovered from the shock. In the five years after

the Peace of Ryswick the exports doubled themselves; the

merchant-shipping was quadrupled; and the revenue of the post-office

rose to eighty-two thousand pounds. But such a recovery only produced a

greater disinclination to face again the sufferings of a renewed state

of war.

[Sidenote: The second Partition Treaty.]

The general discontent at the course of the war, the general anxiety to

preserve the new gains of the peace, told alike on William and on the

party which had backed his policy. In England almost every one was set

on two objects, the reduction of taxes and the disbanding of the

standing army. The war had raised the taxes from two millions a year to

four. It had bequeathed twenty millions of debt and a fresh six millions

of deficit. The standing army was still held to be the enemy of liberty,

as it had been held under the Stuarts; and hardly any one realized the

new conditions of political life which had robbed its existence of

danger to the State. The king however resisted desperately the proposals

for its disbanding; for the maintenance of the army was all-important

for the success of the negotiations he was carrying on. But his stubborn

opposition only told against himself. Personally indeed the king still

remained an object of national gratitude; but his natural partiality to

his Dutch favourites, the confidence he gave to Sunderland, his cold and

sullen demeanour, above all his endeavours to maintain the standing

army, robbed him of popularity and of the strength which comes from

popularity. The negotiations too which he was carrying on were a secret

he could not reveal; and his prayers failed to turn the Parliament from

its purpose. The army and navy were ruthlessly cut down. How much

William's hands were weakened by this reduction of forces and by the

peace-temper of England was shown by the Second Partition Treaty which

was concluded in 1700 between the two maritime powers and France. The

demand of Lewis that the Netherlands should be given to the Elector of

Bavaria, whose political position would always leave him a puppet in the

French king's hands, was indeed successfully resisted. Spain, the

Netherlands, and the Indies were assigned to the second son of the

Emperor, the Archduke Charles of Austria. But the whole of the Spanish

territories in Italy were now granted to France; and it was provided

that Milan should be exchanged for Lorraine, whose Duke was to be

summarily transferred to the new Duchy. If the Emperor persisted in his

refusal to come into the Treaty the share of his son was to pass to

another unnamed prince, who was probably the Duke of Savoy.

[Sidenote: Fall of the Junto.]

The Emperor, indifferent to the Archduke's personal interest, and

anxious only to gain a new dominion in Italy for the House of Austria,

stubbornly protested against this arrangement; but his protest was of

little moment so long as Lewis and the two maritime powers held firmly

together. The new Western Alliance indeed showed how wide its power was

from the first. The mediation of England and Holland, no longer

counteracted by France, secured peace between the Emperor and the Turks

in the Treaty of Carlowitz. The common action of the three powers

stifled a strife between Holstein and Denmark which would have set North

Germany on fire. William's European position indeed was more commanding

than ever. But his difficulties at home were increasing every day. In

spite of the defection of their supporters on the question of a standing

army the Whig Ministry for some time retained fairly its hold on the

Houses. But the elections for a new Parliament at the close of 1698

showed the growth of a new temper in the nation. A Tory majority,

pledged to peace as to a reduction of taxation and indifferent to

foreign affairs, was returned to the House of Commons. The fourteen

thousand men still retained in the army were at once cut down to seven.

It was voted that William's Dutch guards should return to Holland. It

was in vain that William begged for their retention as a personal

favour, that he threatened to leave England with them, and that the ill

effect of this strife on his negotiations threw him into a fever. Even

before the elections he had warned the Dutch Pensionary that in any

fresh struggle England could be relied on only for naval aid. He was

forced to give way; and, as he expected, this open display of the

peace-temper of England told fatally on the resistance he had attempted

to the pretensions of France. He strove indeed to appease the Parliament

by calling for the resignation of Russell and Montague, the two

ministers most hated by the Tories. But all seemed in vain. The Houses

no sooner met in 1699 than the Tory majority attacked the Crown, passed

a Bill for resuming estates granted to the Dutch favourites, and

condemned the Ministers as responsible for these grants. Again

Sunderland had to intervene, and to press William to carry out the

policy which had produced the Whig Ministry by its entire dismissal.

Somers and his friends withdrew, and a new administration composed of

moderate Tories, with Lords Rochester and Godolphin as its leading

members, took their place.

[Sidenote: Accession of the Duke of Anjou.]

The moment indeed was one in which the king needed at any price the

co-operation of the Parliament. Spain had been stirred to bitter

resentment as news of the Partition Treaty crept abroad. The Spaniards

cared little whether a French or an Austrian prince sat on the throne of

Charles the Second, but their pride revolted against the dismemberment

of the monarchy by the loss of its Italian dependencies. The nobles too

dreaded the loss of their vast estates in Italy and of the lucrative

posts they held as governors of these dependencies. Even the dying king

shared the anger of his subjects. He hesitated only whether to leave his

dominions to the House of Austria or the House of Bourbon; but in

either case he was resolved to leave the whole. A will wrested from him

by the factions which wrangled over his deathbed bequeathed at last the

whole monarchy of Spain to a grandson of Lewis, the Duke of Anjou, the

second son of the Dauphin. It was doubtful indeed whether Lewis would

suffer his grandson to receive the crown. He was still a member of that

Triple Alliance on which for the last three years the peace of Europe

had depended. The Treaty of Partition was so recent and the risk of

accepting this bequest so great that Lewis would have hardly resolved on

it but for his belief that the temper of England must necessarily render

William's opposition a fruitless one. Never in fact had England been so

averse from war. So strong was the antipathy to William's policy that

men openly approved the French king's course. Hardly any one in England

dreaded the succession of a boy who, French as he was, would as they

believed soon be turned into a Spaniard by the natural course of events.

The succession of the Duke of Anjou was generally looked upon as far

better than the increase of power which France would have derived from

the cessions of the last treaty of Partition. The cession of the

Sicilies would have turned the Mediterranean, it was said, into a French

lake, and have ruined the English trade with the Levant, while the

cession of Guipuzcoa and the annexation of the west coast of Spain,

which was looked on as certain to follow, would have imperilled the

American trade and again raised France into a formidable power at sea.

Backing all these considerations was the dread of losing by a contest

with Spain and its new king the lucrative trade with the Spanish

colonies. "It grieves me to the heart," William wrote bitterly, "that

almost every one rejoices that France has preferred the Will to the

Treaty." Astonished and angered as he was at his rival's breach of

faith, he had no means of punishing it. In the opening of 1701 the Duke

of Anjou entered Madrid, and Lewis proudly boasted that henceforth there

were no Pyrenees.

[Sidenote: Seizure of the Dutch Barrier.]

The life-work of William seemed undone. He knew himself to be dying. His

cough was incessant, his eyes sunk and dead, his frame so weak that he

could hardly get into his coach. But never had he shown himself so

great. His courage rose with every difficulty. His temper, which had

been heated by the personal affronts lavished on him through English

faction, was hushed by a supreme effort of his will. His large and

clear-sighted intellect looked through the temporary embarrassments of

French diplomacy and English party strife to the great interests which

he knew must in the end determine the course of European politics.

Abroad and at home all seemed to go against him. For the moment he had

no ally save Holland, for Spain was now united with Lewis, while the

attitude of Bavaria divided Germany and held the House of Austria in

check. The Bavarian Elector indeed, who had charge of the Spanish

Netherlands and on whom William had counted, openly joined the French

side from the first and proclaimed the Duke of Anjou as king in

Brussels. In England a new Parliament, which had been called by way of

testing public opinion, was crowded with Tories who were resolute

against war. The Tory Ministry pressed him to acknowledge the new king

of Spain; and as even Holland did this, William was forced to submit. He

could only count on the greed of Lewis to help him, and he did not count

in vain. The general approval of the French king's action had sprung

from a belief that he intended honestly to leave Spain to the Spaniards

under their new boy-king. Bitter too as the strife of Whig and Tory

might be in England, there were two things on which Whig and Tory were

agreed. Neither would suffer France to occupy the Spanish Netherlands.

Neither would endure a French attack on the Protestant succession which

the Revolution of 1688 had established. But the arrogance of Lewis

blinded him to the need of moderation in his hour of good-luck. The

wretched defence made by the strong places of the Netherlands in the

former war had brought about an agreement between Spain and Holland at

its close, by which seven fortresses, including Luxemburg, Mons, and

Charleroi, were garrisoned with Dutch in the place of Spanish troops.

The seven were named the Dutch barrier, and the first anxiety both of

Holland and of William was to maintain this arrangement under the new

state of things. William laid down the maintenance of the barrier in his

negotiations at Madrid as a matter of peace or war. But Lewis was too

eager to wait even for the refusal of William's demand which the pride

of the Spanish Court prompted. In February 1701 his troops appeared at

the gates of the seven fortresses; and a secret convention with the

Elector, who remained in charge of the Netherlands, delivered them into

his hands to hold in trust for his grandson. Other French garrisons took

possession at the same time of Ostend and the coast towns of Flanders.

[Sidenote: The Act of Settlement.]

The Parliament of 1701, a Parliament mainly of Tories, and in which the

leader of the moderate Tories, Robert Harley, came for the first time to

the front, met amidst the general panic and suspension of trade which

followed this seizure of the barrier fortresses. Peace-Parliament as it

was and bitterly as it condemned the Partition Treaties, it at once

supported William in his demand for a withdrawal of the French troops,

and authorized him to conclude a defensive alliance with Holland, which

would give that State courage to join in the demand. The disclosure of a

new Jacobite plot strengthened William's position. The hopes of the

Jacobites had been raised in the preceding year by the death of the

young Duke of Gloucester, the only living child of the Princess Anne,

and who as William was childless ranked, after his mother, as

heir-presumptive of the throne. William was dying, the health of Anne

herself was known to be precarious; and to the partisans of James it

seemed as if the succession of his son, the boy who was known in later

life as the Old Pretender, was all but secure. But Tory as the

Parliament was, it had no mind to undo the work of the Revolution. When

a new Act of Succession was laid before the Houses in 1701 not a voice

was raised for James or his son. By the ordinary rules of heritage the

descendants of the daughter of Charles the First, Henrietta of Orleans,

whose only child had married the Duke of Savoy, would come next as

claimants; but the house of Savoy was Catholic and its pretensions were

passed over in the same silence. No other descendants of Charles the

First remained, and the Parliament fell back on his father's line.

Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First, had married the Elector

Palatine; but of her twelve children all had died save one. This was

Sophia, the wife of the late and the mother of the present Elector of

Hanover. It was in Sophia and the heirs of her body, being Protestants,

that the Act of Settlement vested the Crown. But the jealousy of a

foreign ruler accompanied this settlement with remarkable provisions.

It was enacted that every English sovereign must be in communion with

the Church of England as by law established. All future kings were

forbidden to leave England without consent of Parliament, and foreigners

were excluded from all public posts, military or civil. The independence

of justice, which had been inadequately secured by the Bill of Rights,

was now established by a clause which provided that no judge should be

removed from office save on an address from Parliament to the Crown. The

two principles that the king acts only through his ministers and that

these ministers are responsible to Parliament were asserted by a

requirement that all public business should be formally done in the

Privy Council and all its decisions signed by its members. These two

last provisions went far to complete the parliamentary Constitution

which had been drawn by the Bill of Rights.

[Sidenote: The Country and the War.]

But, firm as it was in its loyalty to the Revolution, and in its resolve

to maintain the independence of the Netherlands, the Parliament had

still no purpose of war. It assented indeed to the alliance with Holland

in the belief that the pressure of the two powers would bring Lewis to a

peaceful settlement of the question. Its aim was still to avoid a

standing army and to reduce taxation; and its bitterness against the

Partition Treaties sprang from a belief that William had entailed on

England by their means a contest which must bring back again the army

and the debt. The king was bitterly blamed, while the late ministers,

Somers, Russell, and Montague (now become peers), were impeached for

their share in the treaties; and the Commons prayed the king to exclude

the three from his counsels for ever. But a counter-prayer from the

Lords gave the first sign of a reaction of opinion. Outside the House of

Commons indeed the tide of national feeling rose as the designs of Lewis

grew clearer. He refused to allow the Dutch barrier to be

re-established; and a great French fleet gathered in the Channel to

support, it was believed, a fresh Jacobite descent which was proposed by

the ministers of James in a letter intercepted and laid before

Parliament. Even the House of Commons took fire at this, and the fleet

was raised to thirty thousand men, the army to ten thousand. But the

country moved faster than the Parliament. Kent sent up a remonstrance

against the factious measures by which the Tories still struggled

against the king's policy, with a prayer "that addresses might be turned

into Bills of Supply"; and William was encouraged by these signs of a

change of temper to despatch an English force to Holland, and to

conclude a secret treaty with the United Provinces for the recovery of

the Netherlands from Lewis and for their transfer with the Milanese to

the house of Austria as a means of counterbalancing the new power added

to France.

[Sidenote: The Grand Alliance.]

England however still clung desperately to a hope of peace; and even in

the Treaty with the Emperor, which followed on the French refusal to

negotiate on a basis of compensation, William was far from disputing the

right of Philip of Anjou to the Spanish throne. Hostilities had indeed

already broken out in Italy between the French and Austrian armies; but

the king had not abandoned the dream of a peaceful settlement when

France by a sudden act forced him into war. Lewis had acknowledged

William as king in the Peace of Ryswick and pledged himself to oppose

all attacks on his throne; but in September 1701 he entered the

bedchamber at St. Germain where James the Second was breathing his last,

and promised to acknowledge his son at his death as king of England,

Scotland, and Ireland. The promise which was thus made was in fact a

declaration of war, and in a moment all England was at one in accepting

the challenge. The issue Lewis had raised was no longer a matter of

European politics, but a question whether the work of the Revolution

should be undone, and whether Catholicism and despotism should be

replaced on the throne of England by the arms of France. On such a

question as this there was no difference between Tory and Whig. Every

Englishman backed William in his open resentment of the insult and in

the recall of his ambassador. The national union showed itself in the

warm welcome given to the king on his return from the Hague, where the

conclusion of a new Grand Alliance in September between the Empire,

Holland, and the United Provinces had rewarded William's patience and

skill. The Alliance was soon joined by Denmark, Sweden, the Palatinate,

and the bulk of the German States. William seized the moment of

enthusiasm to dissolve the Houses whose action had hitherto embarrassed

him; and though the new Parliament which met in 1702 was still Tory in

the main, its Tory members were now as much for war as the Whigs, and

the House of Commons replied to the king's stirring appeal by voting

forty thousand soldiers and as many sailors for the coming struggle. As

a telling reply to the recognition of the young James by Lewis, a Bill

of Attainder was passed against the new Pretender, and correspondence

with him or maintenance of his title was made treason. At the same time

all members of either House and all public officials were sworn to

uphold the succession of the House of Hanover as established by law.

[Sidenote: Marlborough.]

The king's weakness was already too great to allow of his taking the

field; and he was forced to entrust the war in the Netherlands to the

one Englishman who had shown himself capable of a great command. John

Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, was born in 1650, the son of a

Devonshire Cavalier, whose daughter became at the Restoration mistress

of the Duke of York. The shame of Arabella did more perhaps than her

father's loyalty to win for her brother a commission in the royal

Guards; and after five years' service abroad under Turenne the young

captain became colonel of an English regiment which was retained in the

service of France. He had already shown some of the qualities of a great

soldier, an unruffled courage, a temper naturally bold and venturesome

but held in check by a cool and serene judgement, a vigilance and

capacity for enduring fatigue which never forsook him. In later years he

was known to spend a whole day in reconnoitring, and at Blenheim he

remained on horseback for fifteen hours. But courage and skill in arms

did less for Churchill on his return to the English court than his

personal beauty. In the French camp he had been known as "the handsome

Englishman"; and his manners were as winning as his person. Even in age

his address was almost irresistible; "he engrossed the graces," says

Chesterfield; and his air never lost the careless sweetness which won

the favour of Lady Castlemaine. A present of L5000 from the king's

mistress laid the foundation of a fortune which grew rapidly to

greatness, as the prudent forethought of the handsome young soldier

hardened into the avarice of age.

[Sidenote: Churchill and James.]

But it was to the Duke of York that Churchill looked mainly for

advancement, and he earned it by the fidelity with which as a member of

his household he clung to the Duke's fortunes during the dark days of

the Popish Plot. He followed James to Edinburgh and the Hague, and on

his master's return he was rewarded with a peerage and the colonelcy of

the Life Guards. The service he rendered James after his accession by

saving the royal army from a surprise at Sedgemoor would have been yet

more splendidly acknowledged but for the king's bigotry. In spite of his

master's personal solicitations Churchill remained true to

Protestantism. But he knew James too well to count on further favour

after a formal refusal to abandon his faith. Luckily for him he had now

found a new groundwork for his fortunes in the growing influence of his

wife over the king's second daughter, Anne; and at the crisis of the

Revolution the adhesion of Anne to the cause of Protestantism was of the

highest value. No sentiment of gratitude to his older patron hindered

Churchill from corresponding with the Prince of Orange, from promising

Anne's sympathy to William's effort, or from deserting the ranks of the

king's army when it faced William in the field. His desertion proved

fatal to the royal cause; but great as this service was it was eclipsed

by a second. It was by his wife's persuasion that Anne was induced to

forsake her father and take refuge in Danby's camp. Unscrupulous as his

conduct had been, the services which Churchill thus rendered to William

were too great to miss their reward. On the new king's accession he

became Earl of Marlborough; he was put at the head of a force during the

Irish war where his rapid successes at once won William's regard; and he

was given high command in the army of Flanders.

[Sidenote: Churchill and William.]

But the sense of his power over Anne soon turned Marlborough from

plotting treason against James to plot treason against William. Great as

was his greed of gold, he had married Sarah Jennings, a penniless beauty

of Charles's court, in whom a violent and malignant temper was strangely

combined with a power of winning and retaining love. Churchill's

affection for her ran like a thread of gold through the dark web of his

career. In the midst of his marches and from the very battle-field he

writes to his wife with the same passionate tenderness. The composure

which no danger or hatred could ruffle broke down into almost womanish

depression at the thought of her coldness or at any burst of her violent

humour. To the last he never left her without a pang. "I did for a great

while with a perspective glass look upon the cliffs," he once wrote to

her after setting out on a campaign, "in hopes that I might have had one

sight of you." It was no wonder that the woman who inspired Marlborough

with a love like this bound to her the weak and feeble nature of the

Princess Anne. The two friends threw off the restraints of state, and

addressed each other as "Mrs. Freeman" and "Mrs. Morley." It was on his

wife's influence over her friend that the Earl's ambition counted in its

designs against William. His subtle policy aimed at availing itself both

of William's unpopularity and of the dread of a Jacobite restoration.

His plan was to drive the king from the throne by backing the Tories in

their opposition to the war, as well as by stirring to frenzy the

English hatred of foreigners, and then to use the Whig dread of James's

return to seat Anne in William's place. The discovery of these designs

roused the king to a burst of unusual resentment. "Were I and my Lord

Marlborough private persons," William exclaimed, "the sword would have

to settle between us." As it was, he could only strip the Earl of his

offices and command and drive his wife from St. James's. Anne followed

her favourite, and the court of the Princess became the centre of the

Tory opposition: while Marlborough opened a correspondence with James.

So notorious was his treason that on the eve of the French invasion

which was foiled by the victory of La Hogue the Earl was one of the

first among the suspected persons who were sent to the Tower.

[Sidenote: Death of William.]

The death of Mary however forced William to recall the Princess, who

became by this event his successor; and with Anne the Marlboroughs

returned to court. Now indeed that Anne's succession was brought near by

the rapid decay of William's health their loyalty to the throne might

be counted on; and though William could not bend himself to trust the

Earl again, he saw in him as death drew near the one man whose splendid

talents fitted him in spite of the perfidy and treason of his life to

rule England and direct the Grand Alliance in his stead. He employed

Marlborough therefore to negotiate the treaty of alliance with the

Emperor, and put him at the head of the army in Flanders. But the Earl

had only just taken the command when a fall from his horse on the

twenty-first of February 1702 proved fatal to the broken frame of

William of Orange. "There was a time when I should have been glad to

have been delivered out of my troubles," the dying man whispered to

Portland, "but I own I see another scene, and could wish to live a

little longer." He knew however that the wish was vain; and he died on

the morning of the 8th of March, commending Marlborough to Anne as the

fittest person to lead her armies and guide her counsels. Anne's zeal in

her friend's cause needed no quickening. Three days after her accession

the Earl was named Captain-General of the English forces at home and

abroad, and entrusted with the entire direction of the war. His

supremacy over home affairs was secured by the expulsion of the few

remaining Whigs among the ministers, and the construction of a purely

Tory administration with Lord Godolphin, a close friend of

Marlborough's, as Lord Treasurer at its head. The Queen's affection for

his wife ensured him the support of the Crown at a moment when Anne's

personal popularity gave the Crown a new weight with the nation. In

England indeed party feeling for the moment died away. The Parliament

called on the new accession was strongly Tory; but all save the extreme

Tories were won over to the war now that it was waged on behalf of a

Tory queen by a Tory general, while the most extreme of the Whigs were

ready to back even a Tory general in waging a Whig war.

[Sidenote: Marlborough and the Allies.]

Abroad however William's death shook the Alliance to its base; and even

Holland wavered in dread of being deserted by England in the coming

struggle. But the decision of Marlborough soon did away with this

distrust. Anne was made to declare from the throne her resolve to pursue

with energy the policy of her predecessor. The Parliament was brought to

sanction vigorous measures for the prosecution of the war. The new

general hastened to the Hague, received the command of the Dutch as well

as of the English forces, and drew the German powers into the

Confederacy with a skill and adroitness which even William might have

envied. Never indeed was greatness more quickly recognised than in the

case of Marlborough. In a few months he was regarded by all as the

guiding spirit of the Alliance, and princes whose jealousy had worn out

the patience of the king yielded without a struggle to the counsels of

his successor. His temper fitted him in an especial way to be the head

of a great confederacy. Like William, he owed little of his power to any

early training. The trace of his neglected education was seen to the

last in his reluctance to write. "Of all things," he said to his wife,

"I do not love writing." To pen a despatch indeed was a far greater

trouble to Marlborough than to plan a campaign. But nature had given him

qualities which in other men spring specially from culture. His capacity

for business was immense. During the next ten years he assumed the

general direction of the war in Flanders and in Spain. He managed every

negotiation with the courts of the allies. He watched over the shifting

phases of English politics. He crossed the Channel to win over Anne to a

change in the cabinet, or hurried to Berlin to secure the due contingent

of Electoral troops from Brandenburg. At one and the same moment men saw

him reconciling the Emperor with the Protestants of Hungary, stirring

the Calvinists of the Cevennes into revolt, arranging the affairs of

Portugal, and providing for the protection of the Duke of Savoy.

[Sidenote: His temper.]

But his air showed no trace of fatigue or haste or vexation. He retained

to the last the indolent grace of his youth. His natural dignity was

never ruffled by an outbreak of temper. Amidst the storm of battle his

soldiers saw their leader "without fear of danger or in the least hurry

giving his orders with all the calmness imaginable." In the cabinet he

was as cool as on the battle-field. He met with the same equable

serenity the pettiness of the German princes, the phlegm of the Dutch,

the ignorant opposition of his officers, the libels of his political

opponents. There was a touch of irony in the simple expedients by which

he sometimes solved problems which had baffled cabinets. The touchy

pride of the king of Prussia in his new royal dignity, when he rose from

being a simple Elector of Brandenburg to a throne, made him one of the

most vexatious among the allies; but all difficulty with him ceased when

Marlborough rose at a state banquet and glutted his vanity by handing

him a napkin. Churchill's composure rested partly on a pride which could

not stoop to bare the real self within to the eyes of meaner men. In the

bitter moments before his fall he bade Godolphin burn some querulous

letters which the persecution of his opponents had wrung from him; "My

desire," he wrote, "is that the world may continue in their error of

thinking me a happy man, for I think it better to be envied than

pitied." But in great measure it sprang from the purely intellectual

temper of his mind. His passion for his wife was the one sentiment which

tinged the colourless light in which his understanding moved. In all

else he was without affection or resentment, he knew neither doubt nor

regret. In private life he was a humane and compassionate man; but if

his position required it he could betray Englishmen to death or lead his

army to a butchery such as that of Malplaquet. Of honour or the finer

sentiments of mankind he knew nothing; and he turned without a shock

from guiding Europe and winning great victories to heap up a matchless

fortune by peculation and greed. He is perhaps the only instance of a

man of real greatness who loved money for money's sake. No life indeed,

no temper ever stood more aloof from the common life and temper of

mankind. The passions which stirred the men around him, whether noble or

ignoble, were to Marlborough simply elements in an intellectual problem

which had to be solved by patience. "Patience will overcome all things,"

he writes again and again. "As I think most things are governed by

destiny, having done all things we should submit with patience."

[Sidenote: Opening of the War.]

As a statesman the high qualities of Marlborough were owned by his

bitterest foes. "Over the Confederacy," says Lord Bolingbroke, "he, a

new, a private man, acquired by merit and management a more decided

influence than high birth, confirmed authority, and even the crown of

Great Britain had given to King William." But great as he was in the

council, he was even greater in the field. He stands alone amongst the

masters of the art of war as a captain whose victories began at an age

when the work of most men is done. Though he served as a young officer

under Turenne, and for a few months in Ireland and the Netherlands,

Marlborough had held no great command till he took the field in Flanders

at the age of fifty-two. He stands alone too in his unbroken good

fortune. Voltaire notes that he never besieged a fortress which he did

not take, or fought a battle which he did not win. His difficulties

indeed came not so much from the enemy as from the ignorance and

timidity of his own allies. He was never defeated in the field, but

victory after victory was snatched from him by the incapacity of his

officers or the stubbornness of the Dutch. What startled the cautious

strategists of his day was the vigour and audacity of his plans. Old as

he was, Marlborough's designs had from the first all the dash and

boldness of youth. On taking the field in 1702 he at once resolved to

force a battle in the heart of Brabant. The plan was foiled by the

timidity and resistance of the Dutch deputies. But his resolute advance

across the Meuse drew the French forces from that river and enabled him

to reduce fortress after fortress in a series of sieges, till the

surrender of Liege closed a campaign which cut off the French from the

Lower Rhine and freed Holland from all danger of invasion.

[Sidenote: The French in Germany.]

The successes of Marlborough had been brought into bolder relief by the

fortunes of the war in other quarters. Though the Imperialist general,

Prince Eugene of Savoy, showed his powers by a surprise of the French

army at Cremona, no real successes had been won in Italy. An English

descent on the Spanish coast ended in failure. In Germany, where the

Bavarians joined the French, their united armies defeated the army of

the Empire and opened the line of the Danube to a French advance. It was

in this quarter that Lewis resolved to push his fortunes in the coming

year. In the spring of 1703 a French army under Marshal Villars again

relieved the Bavarian Elector from the pressure of the Austrian forces,

and only a strife which arose between the two commanders hindered their

joint armies from marching on Vienna. Meanwhile the timidity of the

Dutch deputies served Lewis well in the Low Countries. The hopes of

Marlborough, who had been raised to a dukedom for his services in the

previous year, were again foiled by the deputies of the States-General.

Serene as his temper was, it broke down before their refusal to

co-operate in an attack on Antwerp and French Flanders; and the prayers

of Godolphin and of the Pensionary Heinsius alone induced him to

withdraw his offer of resignation. In spite of his victories on the

Danube, indeed, of the blunders of his adversaries on the Rhine, and the

sudden aid of an insurrection against the Court of Vienna which broke

out in Hungary, the difficulties of Lewis were hourly increasing. The

accession of Savoy to the Grand Alliance threatened his armies in Italy

with destruction. That of Portugal gave the allies a base of operations

against Spain. The French king's energy however rose with the pressure;

and while the Duke of Berwick, a natural son of James the Second, was

despatched against Portugal, and three small armies closed round Savoy,

the flower of the French troops joined the army of Bavaria on the

Danube, for the bold plan of Lewis was to decide the fortunes of the war

by a victory which would wrest peace from the Empire under the walls of

Vienna.

[Sidenote: Marlborough in Germany.]

The master-stroke of Lewis roused Marlborough at the opening of 1704 to

a master-stroke in return; but the secrecy and boldness of the Duke's

plans deceived both his enemies and his allies. The French army in

Flanders saw in his march from the Netherlands upon Maintz only a design

to transfer the war into Elsass. The Dutch on the other hand were lured

into suffering their troops to be drawn as far from Flanders as Coblentz

by the Duke's proposals for an imaginary campaign on the Moselle. It was

only when Marlborough crossed the Neckar and struck through the centre

of Germany for the Danube that the true aim of his operations was

revealed to both. After struggling through the hill country of

Wurtemberg he joined the Imperial army under the Prince of Baden,

stormed the heights of Donauwerth, crossed the Danube and the Lech, and

penetrated into the heart of Bavaria. The crisis drew two other armies

which were facing one another on the Upper Rhine to the scene. The

arrival of Marshal Tallard with thirty thousand French troops saved the

Elector of Bavaria for the moment from the need of submission; but the

junction of his opponent, Prince Eugene, with Marlborough raised the

contending forces again to an equality. After a few marches the armies

met on the north bank of the Danube near the small town of Hochstaedt and

the village of Blindheim or Blenheim, which have given their names to

one of the most memorable battles in the history of the world.

[Sidenote: Battle of Blenheim.]

In one respect the struggle which followed stands almost unrivalled, for

the whole of the Teutonic race was represented in the strange medley of

Englishmen, Dutchmen, Hanoverians, Danes, Wurtembergers and Austrians

who followed Marlborough and Eugene. The French and Bavarians, who

numbered like their opponents some fifty thousand men, lay behind a

little stream which ran through swampy ground to the Danube. Their

position was a strong one, for its front was covered by the swamp, its

right by the Danube, its left by the hill-country in which the stream

rose; and Tallard had not only entrenched himself but was far superior

to his rival in artillery. But for once Marlborough's hands were free.

"I have great reason," he wrote calmly home, "to hope that everything

will go well, for I have the pleasure to find all the officers willing

to obey without knowing any other reason than that it is my desire,

which is very different from what it was in Flanders, where I was

obliged to have the consent of a council of war for everything I

undertook." So formidable were the obstacles, however, that though the

allies were in motion at sunrise on the 13th of August it was not till

midday that Eugene, who commanded on the right, succeeded in crossing

the stream. The English foot at once forded it on the left, and attacked

the village of Blindheim in which the bulk of the French infantry were

entrenched; but after a furious struggle the attack was repulsed, while

as gallant a resistance at the other end of the line held Eugene in

check. It was the centre however, where the French believed themselves

to be unassailable, and which this belief had led them to weaken by

drawing troops to their wings, that had been chosen by Marlborough from

the first for the chief point of attack. By making an artificial road

across the morass which covered it, he was at last enabled to throw his

eight thousand horsemen on the mass of the French cavalry, which

occupied this position; and two desperate charges which the Duke headed

in person decided the day. The French centre was flung back on the

Danube and forced to surrender. Their left fell back in confusion on

Hochstaedt: while their right, cooped up in Blindheim and cut off from

retreat, became prisoners of war. Of the defeated army only twenty

thousand men escaped. Twelve thousand were slain, fourteen thousand were

captured. Vienna was saved, Germany finally freed from the French, and

Marlborough, who followed the wreck of the French host in its flight to

Elsass, soon made himself master of the Lower Moselle.

[Sidenote: Occasional conformity.]

But the loss of France could not be measured by men or fortresses. A

hundred victories since Rocroi had taught the world to regard the armies

of Lewis as all but invincible, when Blenheim and the surrender of the

flower of the French soldiery broke the spell. From that moment the

terror of victory passed to the side of the allies, and "Malbrook"

became a name of fear to every child in France. In England itself the

victory of Blenheim aided to bring about a great change in the political

aspect of affairs. The Tories were already pressing hard on the defeated

Whigs. If they were willing to support the war abroad, they were

resolved to use the accession of a Stuart to the throne to secure their

own power at home. They resolved therefore to make a fresh attempt to

create a permanent Tory majority in the Commons by excluding

Nonconformists from the municipal corporations, which returned the bulk

of the borough members, and whose political tendencies were for the

most part Whig. The test of receiving the sacrament according to the

ritual of the Church of England, effective as it was against Catholics,

was useless against Protestant Dissenters. While adhering to their

separate congregations, in which they were now protected by the

Toleration Act, they "qualified for office," as it was called, by the

"occasional conformity" of receiving the sacrament at church once in the

year. It was against "occasional conformity" that the Tories introduced

a test which by excluding the Nonconformists would have given them the

command of the boroughs; and this test at first received Marlborough's

support. But it was rejected by the Lords as often as it was sent up to

them, and it was soon guessed that the resistance of the Lords was

secretly backed by both Marlborough and Godolphin. Tory as he was, in

fact, Marlborough had no mind for an unchecked Tory rule, or for a

measure which would be fatal to the war by again reviving religious

strife. But it was in vain that he strove to propitiate his party by

inducing the Queen to set aside the tenths and first-fruits hitherto

paid by the clergy to the Crown as a fund for the augmentation of small

benefices, a fund which still bears the name of Queen Anne's Bounty. The

Commons showed their resentment against Marlborough by refusing to add a

grant of money to the grant of a dukedom after his first campaign; and

the higher Tories, with Lord Nottingham at their head, began to throw

every obstacle they could in the way of the continuance of the war.

[Sidenote: The Coalition Ministry.]

Nottingham and his followers at last quitted office in 1704, and

Marlborough replaced them by Tories of a more moderate stamp who were

still in favour of the war; by Robert Harley, who became Secretary of

State, and by Henry St. John, a young man of splendid talents, who was

named Secretary at War. Small as the change seemed, its significance was

clear to both parties; and the Duke's march into Germany gave his

enemies an opportunity of embittering the political strife. The original

aim of the Tories had been to limit English efforts to what seemed

purely English objects, the defence of the Netherlands and of English

commerce; and the bulk of them shrank even now from any further

entanglement in the struggle. But the Duke's march seemed at once to

pledge England to a strife in the very heart of the Continent, and above

all to a strife on behalf of the House of Austria, whose designs upon

Spain were regarded with almost as much suspicion as those of Lewis. It

was an act indeed of even greater political than military daring. The

High Tories and Jacobites threatened if Marlborough failed to bring his

head to the block; and only the victory of Blenheim saved him from

political ruin. Slowly and against his will the Duke drifted from his

own party to the party which really backed his policy. He availed

himself of the national triumph over Blenheim to dissolve Parliament;

and when the election of 1705, as he hoped, returned a majority in

favour of the war, his efforts brought about a coalition between the

moderate Tories who still clung to him and the Whig Junto, whose support

was purchased by making a Whig, William Cowper, Lord Keeper, and by

sending Lord Sunderland as envoy to Vienna.

[Sidenote: Ramillies.]

The bitter attacks of the peace party were entirely foiled by this

union, and Marlborough at last felt secure at home. But he had to bear

disappointment abroad. His plan of attack along the line of the Moselle

was defeated by the refusal of the Imperial army to join him. When he

transferred the war again to the Netherlands and entered the French

lines across the Dyle, the Dutch generals withdrew their troops; and his

proposal to attack the Duke of Villeroy in the field of Waterloo was

rejected in full council of war by the deputies of the States with cries

of "murder" and "massacre." Even Marlborough's composure broke into

bitterness at this last blow. "Had I the same power I had last year," he

wrote home, "I could have won a greater victory than that of Blenheim."

On his complaint indeed the States recalled their commissaries, but the

year was lost; nor had greater results been brought about in Italy or on

the Rhine. The spirits of the allies were only sustained by the

romantic exploits of Lord Peterborough in Spain. Profligate,

unprincipled, flighty as he was, Peterborough had a genius for war, and

his seizure of Barcelona with a handful of men, a step followed by his

recognition of the old liberties of Aragon, roused that province to

support the cause of the second son of the Emperor, who had been

acknowledged as King of Spain by the allies under the title of Charles

the Third. Catalonia and Valencia soon joined Aragon in declaring for

Charles: while Marlborough spent the winter of 1705 in negotiations at

Vienna, Berlin, Hanover, and the Hague, and in preparations for the

coming campaign. Eager for freedom of action and sick of the Imperial

generals as of the Dutch, he planned a march over the Alps and a

campaign in Italy; and though these designs were defeated by the

opposition of the allies, he found himself unfettered when he again

appeared in Flanders in 1706. Marshal Villeroy, the new French general,

was as eager as Marlborough for an engagement; and the two armies met on

the 23rd of May at the village of Ramillies on an undulating plain which

forms the highest ground in Brabant. The French were drawn up in a wide

curve with morasses covering their front. After a feint on their left,

Marlborough flung himself on their right wing at Ramillies, crushed it

in a brilliant charge that he led in person, and swept along their whole

line till it broke in a rout which only ended beneath the walls of

Louvain. In an hour and a half the French had lost fifteen thousand men,

their baggage, and their guns; and the line of the Scheldt, Brussels,

Antwerp and Bruges became the prize of the victors. It only needed four

successful sieges which followed the battle of Ramillies to complete the

deliverance of Flanders.

[Sidenote: The Union with Scotland.]

The year which witnessed the victory of Ramillies remains yet more

memorable as the year which witnessed the final Union of England with

Scotland. As the undoing of the earlier union had been the first work of

the Government of the Restoration, its revival was one of the first aims

of the Government which followed the Revolution. But the project was

long held in check by religious and commercial jealousies. Scotland

refused to bear any part of the English debt. England would not yield

any share in her monopoly of trade with the colonies. The English

Churchmen longed for a restoration of Episcopacy north of the Border,

while the Scotch Presbyterians would not hear even of the legal

toleration of Episcopalians. In 1703 however an Act of Settlement which

passed through the Scotch Parliament at last brought home to English

statesmen the dangers of further delay. In dealing with this measure the

Scotch Whigs, who cared only for the independence of their country,

joined hand in hand with the Scotch Jacobites, who looked only to the

interests of the Pretender. The Jacobites excluded from the Act the

name of the Princess Sophia; the Whigs introduced a provision that no

sovereign of England should be recognized as sovereign of Scotland save

upon security given to the religion, freedom, and trade of the Scottish

people. The danger arising from such a measure was undoubtedly great,

for it pointed to a recognition of the Pretender in Scotland on the

Queen's death, and such a recognition meant war between Scotland and

England. The need of a union became at once apparent to every statesman,

but it was only after three years' delay that the wisdom and resolution

of Lord Somers brought the question to an issue. The Scotch proposals of

a federative rather than a legislative union were set aside by his

firmness; the commercial jealousies of the English traders were put by;

and the Act of Union as it was completed in 1706, though not finally

passed till the following year, provided that the two kingdoms should be

united into one under the name of Great Britain, and that the succession

to the crown of this United Kingdom should be ruled by the provisions of

the English Act of Settlement. The Scotch Church and the Scotch law were

left untouched: but all rights of trade were thrown open to both

nations, a common system of taxation was established, and a uniform

system of coinage adopted. A single Parliament was henceforth to

represent the United Kingdom; and for this purpose forty-five Scotch

members, a number taken to represent the proportion of Scotch property

and population relatively to England, were added to the five hundred and

thirteen English members of the House of Commons, and sixteen

representative peers to the one hundred and eight who formed the English

House of Lords.

[Sidenote: Its results.]

In Scotland the opposition to this measure was bitter and almost

universal. The terror of the Presbyterians indeed was met by an Act of

Security which became part of the Treaty of Union, and which required an

oath to support the Presbyterian Church from every sovereign on his

accession. But no securities could satisfy the enthusiastic patriots or

the fanatical Cameronians. The Jacobites sought troops from France and

plotted a Stuart restoration. The nationalists talked of seceding from

the Houses which voted for the Union and of establishing a rival

Parliament. In the end however good sense and the loyalty of the trading

classes to the cause of the Protestant succession won their way. The

measure was adopted by the Scotch Parliament, and the Treaty of Union

became a legislative Act to which Anne in 1707 gave her assent in noble

words. "I desire," said the Queen, "and expect from my subjects of both

nations that from henceforth they act with all possible respect and

kindness to one another, that so it may appear to all the world they

have hearts disposed to become one people." Time has more than answered

these hopes. The two nations whom the Union brought together have ever

since remained one. England gained in the removal of a constant danger

of treason and war. To Scotland the Union opened up new avenues of

wealth which the energy of its people turned to wonderful account. The

farms of Lothian have become models of agricultural skill. A fishing

town on the Clyde has grown into the rich and populous Glasgow. Peace

and culture have changed the wild clansmen of the Highlands into

herdsmen and farmers. Nor was the change followed by any loss of

national spirit. The world has hardly seen a mightier and more rapid

developement of national energy than that of Scotland after the Union.

All that passed away was the jealousy which had parted since the days of

Edward the First two peoples whom a common blood and common speech

proclaimed to be one. The Union between Scotland and England has been

real and stable simply because it was the legislative acknowledgement

and enforcement of a national fact.

[Sidenote: Marlborough's difficulties.]

With the defeat of Ramillies and the conclusion of the Union the

greatness of Marlborough reached its height. In five years he had

rescued Holland, saved Germany, and thrown France back on a purely

defensive position. He exercised an undisputed supremacy over an

alliance which embraced the greatest European powers. At home he was

practically first minister, commander-in-chief, and absolute master

through his wife of the Queen herself. He was looked upon as the most

powerful as he was the wealthiest subject in the world. And while

Marlborough's fortunes mounted to their height those of France sank to

their lowest ebb. Eugene in his greatest victory broke the siege of

Turin, and Lewis saw the loss of Flanders followed by the loss of Italy.

Not only did Peterborough hold his ground in Spain, but Charles the

Third, with an army of English and Portuguese, entered Madrid. But it

was in fact only these triumphs abroad that enabled Marlborough to face

the difficulties which were opening on him at home. His command of the

Parliament rested now on a coalition of the Whigs with the moderate

Tories who still adhered to him after his break with the more violent

members of his old party. Ramillies gave him strength enough to force

Anne in spite of her hatred of the Whigs to fulfil the compact with them

from which this coalition had sprung, by admitting Lord Sunderland, the

bitterest leader of their party, to office as Secretary of State at the

close of 1706. But with the entry of Sunderland into office the system

of political balance which the Duke had maintained till now began at

once to break down. Constitutionally, Marlborough's was the last attempt

to govern England on other terms than those of party government, and the

union of parties to which he had clung ever since his severance from

the extreme Tories became every day more impossible as the growing

opposition of the Tories to the war threw the Duke more and more on the

support of the Whigs.

[Sidenote: Triumph of the Whigs.]

The Whigs sold their support dearly. Sunderland's violent and imperious

temper differed widely from the supple and unscrupulous nature which had

carried his father, the Lord Sunderland of the Restoration, unhurt

through the violent changes of his day. But he had inherited his

father's conceptions of party government. He was resolved to restore a

strict party administration on a purely Whig basis, and to drive the

moderate Tories from office in spite of Marlborough's desire to retain

them. The Duke wrote hotly home at the news of the pressure which the

Whigs were putting on him. "England," he said, "will not be ruined

because a few men are not pleased." Nor was Marlborough alone in his

resentment. Harley foresaw the danger of his expulsion from office, and

even as early as 1706 began to intrigue at court, through Mrs. Masham, a

bedchamber woman of the Queen, who was supplanting the Duchess in Anne's

favour, against the Whigs and against Marlborough, whom he looked upon

as in the hands of the Whigs. St. John, though bound by ties of

gratitude to the Duke, to whose favour he owed his early promotion to

office, was driven by the same fear to share Harley's schemes.

Marlborough strove to win both of them back, but the growing opposition

of the Tories to the war left him helpless in the hands of the only

party that steadily supported it. A factious union of the Whigs with

their opponents, though it roused the Duke to a burst of unusual passion

in Parliament, effected its end by convincing him of the impossibility

of further resistance. The resistance of the Queen indeed was stubborn

and bitter. Anne was at heart a Tory, and her old trust in Marlborough

died with his submission to the Whig demands. It was only by the threat

of resignation that he had forced her to admit Sunderland to office; and

the violent outbreak of temper with which the Duchess enforced her

husband's will changed the Queen's friendship for her into a bitter

resentment. Marlborough was forced to increase this resentment by fresh

compliances with the conditions which the Whigs imposed on him, by

removing Peterborough from his command as a Tory general, and by

wresting from Anne her consent in 1708 to the dismissal from office of

Harley and St. John with the whole of the moderate Tories whom they

headed. Their removal was followed by the complete triumph of the Whigs

in the admission of Lords Somers and Wharton into the ministry. Somers

became President of the Council, Wharton Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland,

while lower posts were occupied by younger men of the same party, who

were destined to play a great part in our later history, such as the

young Duke of Newcastle and Robert Walpole.

[Sidenote: Oudenarde.]

Meanwhile, the great struggle abroad went steadily against France,

though its progress was varied with striking alternations of success.

France rose indeed with singular rapidity from the crushing blow of

Ramillies. Spain was recovered for Philip in 1707 by a victory of

Marshal Berwick at Almanza. Marshal Villars won fresh triumphs on the

Rhine; while Eugene, who had penetrated into Provence, was driven back

into Italy. In Flanders Marlborough's designs for taking advantage of

his great victory were foiled by the strategy of the Duke of Vendome and

by the reluctance of the Dutch, who were now wavering towards peace. In

the campaign of 1708 however Vendome, in spite of his superiority in

force, was attacked and defeated at Oudenarde; and though Marlborough

was hindered from striking at the heart of France by the timidity of the

English and Dutch statesmen, he reduced Lille, the strongest of its

frontier fortresses, in the face of an army of relief which numbered a

hundred thousand men. The blow proved an effective one. The pride of

Lewis was at last broken by defeat and by the terrible sufferings of

France. He offered terms of peace which yielded all that the allies had

fought for. He consented to withdraw his aid from Philip of Spain, to

give up ten Flemish fortresses as a barrier for the Dutch, and to

surrender to the Empire all that France had gained since the Treaty of

Westphalia. He offered to acknowledge Anne, to banish the Pretender from

his dominions, and to demolish the fortifications of Dunkirk, a port

hateful to England as the home of the French privateers.

[Sidenote: Peace rejected.]

To Marlborough these terms seemed sufficient, and for the moment he

regarded peace as secure. Peace was indeed now the general wish of the

nation, and the longing for it was nowhere stronger than with the Queen.

Dull and sluggish as was Anne's temper, she had the pride and

stubbornness of her race, and both revolted against the submission to

which she was forced. If she bowed to the spirit of the Revolution by

yielding implicitly to the decision of her Parliament, she held firmly

to the ceremonial traditions of the monarchy of her ancestors. She dined

in royal state, she touched for the evil in her progresses, she presided

at every meeting of council or cabinet, she insisted on every measure

proposed by her ministers being previously laid before her. She shrank

from party government as an enslavement of the Crown; and claimed the

right to call on men from either side to aid in the administration of

the State. But if England was to be governed by a party, she was

resolved that it should be her own party. She had been bred a Tory. Her

youth had fallen among the storms of the Exclusion Bill, and she looked

on Whigs as disguised republicans. Above all her pride was outraged by

the concessions which were forced from her. She had prayed Godolphin to

help her in excluding Sunderland as a thing on which the peace of her

life depended. She trembled every day before the violent temper of the

Duchess of Marlborough, and before the threat of resignation by which

the Duke himself crushed her first faint efforts at revolt. She longed

for a peace which would free her from both Marlborough and the Whigs, as

the Whigs on the other hand were resolute for a war which kept them in

power. It was on this ground that they set aside the Duke's counsels and

answered the French proposals of peace by terms which made peace

impossible. They insisted on the transfer of the whole Spanish monarchy

to the Austrian prince. When even this seemed likely to be conceded they

demanded that Lewis should with his own troops compel his grandson to

give up the crown of Spain.

[Sidenote: Sacheverell.]

"If I must wage war," replied the French king, "I had rather wage it

with my enemies than with my children." In a bitter despair he appealed

to France; and, exhausted as the country was by the struggle, the

campaign of 1709 proved how nobly France answered his appeal. The

terrible slaughter which bears the name of the battle of Malplaquet

showed a new temper in the French soldiers. Starving as they were, they

flung away their rations in their eagerness for the fight, and fell

back at its close in serried masses that no efforts of Marlborough could

break. They had lost twelve thousand men, but the forcing their lines of

entrenchment had cost the allies a loss of double that number. Horror at

such a "deluge of blood" increased the general distaste for the war; and

the rejection of fresh French offers in 1710, a rejection unjustly

attributed to Marlborough's desire for the lengthening out of a contest

which brought him profit and power, fired at last the smouldering

discontent into flame. A storm of popular passion burst suddenly on the

Whigs. Its occasion was a dull and silly sermon in which a High Church

divine, Dr. Sacheverell, maintained the doctrine of non-resistance at

St. Paul's. His boldness challenged prosecution; but in spite of the

warning of Marlborough and of Somers the Whig Ministers resolved on his

impeachment before the Lords, and the trial at once widened into a great

party struggle. An outburst of popular enthusiasm in Sacheverell's

favour showed what a storm of hatred had gathered against the Whigs and

the war. The most eminent of the Tory Churchmen stood by his side at the

bar, crowds escorted him to the court and back again, while the streets

rang with cries of "The Church and Dr. Sacheverell." A small majority of

the peers found the preacher guilty, but the light sentence they

inflicted was in effect an acquittal, and bonfires and illuminations

over the whole country welcomed it as a Tory triumph.

[Sidenote: Dismissal of the Whigs.]

The turn of popular feeling at once roused to new life the party whom

the Whigs had striven to crush. The expulsion of Harley and St. John

from the Ministry had given the Tories leaders of a more subtle and

vigorous stamp than the High Churchmen who had quitted office in the

first years of the war; and St. John brought into play a new engine of

political attack whose powers soon made themselves felt. In the

_Examiner_, and in a crowd of pamphlets and periodicals which followed

in its train, the humour of the poet Prior, the bitter irony of Swift,

an Irish writer who was now forcing his way into fame, as well as St.

John's own brilliant sophistry, spent themselves on the abuse of the war

and of its general. "Six millions of supplies and almost fifty millions

of debt!" Swift wrote bitterly; "the High Allies have been the ruin of

us!" Marlborough was ridiculed and reviled, even his courage was called

in question; he was charged with insolence, with cruelty and ambition,

with corruption and greed. The virulence of the abuse would have

defeated its aim had not the general sense of the people condemned the

maintenance of the war, and encouraged Anne to free herself from the

yoke beneath which she had bent so long. At the close of Sacheverell's

trial she broke with the Duchess. Marlborough looked for support to the

Whigs; but the subtle intrigue of Harley was as busy in undermining the

Ministry as St. John was in openly attacking it. The Whigs, who knew

that the Duke's league with them had simply been forced on him by the

war, and who had already foiled an attempt he had made to secure himself

by the demand of a grant for life of his office of Commander-in-Chief,

were easily persuaded that the Queen's sole object was his personal

humiliation. They looked coolly therefore on at the dismissal of

Sunderland, who had now become his son-in-law, and of Godolphin, who was

his closest friend. The same means were adopted to bring about the ruin

of the Whigs themselves: and Marlborough, lured easily by hopes of

reconciliation with his old party, looked on as coolly while Anne

dismissed her Whig counsellors and named a Tory Ministry, with Harley

and St. John at its head, in their place.

[Sidenote: Fall of Marlborough.]

The time was now come for a final and decisive blow; but how great a

dread Marlborough still inspired in his enemies was shown by the

shameful treachery with which they still thought it needful to bring

about his fall. The intrigues of Harley paled before the subtler treason

of Henry St. John. Young as he was, for he had hardly reached his

thirty-second year, St. John had already shown his ability as Secretary

of War under Marlborough himself, his brilliant rhetoric gave him a hold

over the House of Commons which even the sense of his restlessness and

recklessness failed to shake, while the vigour and eloquence of his

writings infused a new colour and force into political literature. He

was resolute for peace; but he pressed on the work of peace with an

utter indifference to all but party ends. As Marlborough was his great

obstacle, his aim was to drive him from his command; and earnestly as he

admired the Duke's greatness, he hounded on a tribe of libellers who

assailed even his personal courage. Meanwhile St. John was feeding

Marlborough's hopes of reconciliation with the Tories, till he led him

to acquiesce in his wife's dismissal, and to pledge himself to a

co-operation with the Tory policy. It was the Duke's belief that a

reconciliation with the Tories was effected that led him to sanction the

despatch of troops which should have strengthened his army in Flanders

on a fruitless expedition against Canada, though this left him too weak

to carry out a masterly plan which he had formed for a march into the

heart of France in the opening of 1711. He was unable even to risk a

battle or to do more than to pick up a few seaboard towns, and St. John

at once turned the small results of the campaign into an argument for

the conclusion of peace. Peace was indeed all but concluded. In defiance

of an article of the Grand Alliance which pledged its members not to

carry on separate negotiations with France, St. John, who now became

Lord Bolingbroke, pushed forward through the summer of 1711 a secret

accommodation between England and France. It was for this negotiation

that he had crippled Marlborough's campaign; and it was the discovery of

his perfidy which revealed to the Duke how utterly he had been betrayed,

and forced him at last to break with the Tory Minister.

[Sidenote: Treaty of Utrecht.]

He returned to England; and his efforts induced the House of Lords to

denounce the contemplated peace; but the support of the Commons and the

Queen, and the general hatred of the war among the people, enabled

Harley to ride down all resistance. At the opening of 1712 the Whig

majority in the House of Lords was swamped by the creation of twelve

Tory peers. Marlborough was dismissed from his command, charged with

peculation, and condemned as guilty by a vote of the House of Commons.

The Duke at once withdrew from England, and with his withdrawal all

opposition to the peace was at an end. His flight was in fact followed

by the conclusion of a Treaty at Utrecht between France, England, and

the Dutch; and the desertion of his allies forced even the Emperor at

last to make peace at Rastadt. By these treaties the original aim of the

war, that of preventing the possession of France and Spain at once by

the House of Bourbon, was silently abandoned. No precaution was in fact

taken against the dangers it involved to the balance of power, save by a

provision that the two crowns should never be united on a single head,

and by Philip's renunciation of all right of succession to the throne

of France. The principle on which the Treaties were based was in fact

that of the earlier Treaties of Partition. Spain was stripped of even

more than William had proposed to take from her. Philip retained Spain

and the Indies: but he ceded his possessions in Italy and the

Netherlands with the island of Sardinia to Charles of Austria, who had

now become Emperor, in satisfaction of his claims; while he handed over

Sicily to the Duke of Savoy. To England he gave up not only Minorca but

Gibraltar, two positions which secured her the command of the

Mediterranean. France purchased peace by less costly concessions. She

had to consent to the re-establishment of the Dutch barrier on a greater

scale than before; to pacify the English resentment against the French

privateers by the dismantling of Dunkirk; and not only to recognize the

right of Anne to the crown, and the Protestant succession in the House

of Hanover, but to consent to the expulsion of the Pretender from her

soil.

[Sidenote: Harley and Bolingbroke.]

The failure of the Queen's health made the succession the real question

of the day, and it was a question which turned all politics into faction

and intrigue. The Whigs, who were still formidable in the Commons, and

who showed the strength of their party in the Lords by defeating a

Treaty of Commerce in which Bolingbroke anticipated the greatest

financial triumph of William Pitt and secured freedom of trade between

England and France, were zealous for the succession of the House of

Hanover in the well-founded belief that the Elector George hated the

Tories; nor did the Tories, though the Jacobite sympathies of a portion

of their party forced both Harley and Bolingbroke to keep up a delusive

correspondence with the Pretender, who had withdrawn to Lorraine, really

contemplate any other succession than that of the Elector. But on the

means of providing for his succession Harley and Bolingbroke differed

widely. Harley, still influenced by the Presbyterian leanings of his

early life, and more jealous of Lord Rochester and the high Tories he

headed than of the Whigs themselves, inclined to an alliance between the

moderate Tories and their opponents, as in the earlier days of

Marlborough's power. The policy of Bolingbroke on the other hand was so

to strengthen the Tories by the utter overthrow of their opponents that

whatever might be the Elector's sympathies they could force their policy

on him as king; and in the advances which Harley made to the Whigs he

saw the means of ruining his rival in the confidence of his party, and

of taking his place at their head. It was with this purpose that he

introduced a Schism Bill, which would have hindered any Nonconformist

from acting as a schoolmaster or a tutor. The success of this measure

broke Harley's plans by creating a bitterer division between Tory and

Whig than ever, while it humiliated him by the failure of his opposition

to it. But its effects went far beyond Bolingbroke's intentions. The

Whigs regarded the Bill as the first step in a Jacobite restoration, and

warned the Electress Sophia that she must look for a struggle against

her accession to the throne. Sophia was herself alarmed, and the more so

that Anne's health was visibly breaking. In April 1714 therefore the

Hanoverian ambassador demanded for the son of the Elector, the future

George the Second, who had been created Duke of Cambridge, a writ of

summons as peer to the coming Parliament. The aim of the demand was

simply that a Hanoverian prince might be present on the spot to maintain

the right of his House in case of the Queen's death. But to Anne it

seemed to furnish at once a head to the Whig opposition which would

render a Tory government impossible; and her anger, fanned by

Bolingbroke, broke out in a letter to the aged Electress which warned

her that "such conduct may imperil the succession itself."

[Sidenote: Death of Anne.]

To Sophia the letter was a sentence of death; two days after she read

it, as she was walking in the garden at Herrenhausen, she fell in a

dying swoon to the ground. The correspondence was at once published, and

necessarily quickened the alarm not only of the Whigs, but of the more

moderate section of the Tories themselves. But Bolingbroke used the

breach which now declared itself between himself and his rival with

unscrupulous skill. Though Anne had shown her confidence in Harley by

conferring on him the earldom of Oxford, her resentment at the conduct

of the Hanoverian Court was so skilfully played upon that she was

brought in July to dismiss the Earl, as a partisan of the House of

Hanover, and to construct a strong and united Tory Ministry which would

back the Queen in her resistance to the Elector's demand. As the crisis

grew nearer, both parties prepared for civil war. In the beginning of

1714 the Whigs had made ready for a rising on the Queen's death; and

invited Marlborough from Flanders to head them, in the hope that his

name would rally the army to their cause. Bolingbroke, on the other

hand, made the Duke of Ormond, whose sympathies were known to be in

favour of the Pretender's succession, Warden of the Cinque Ports, the

district in which either claimant of the crown must land, while he gave

Scotland in charge to the Jacobite Earl of Mar. The appointments were

probably only to secure Jacobite support, for Bolingbroke had in fact no

immediate apprehensions of the Queen's death, and his aim was to trim

between the Court of Hanover and the Court of James while building up a

strong Tory party which would enable him to meet the accession of either

with a certainty of retaining power both for himself and the principles

he represented. With this view he was preparing to attack both the Bank

and the East India Company, the two great strongholds of the Whigs, as

well as to tax the bondholders at higher rates than the rest of the

community by way of conciliating the country gentry, who hated the

moneyed interest which was rising into greatness beside them. But events

moved faster than his plans. On the 30th of July, three days after

Harley's dismissal, Anne was suddenly struck with apoplexy. The Privy

Council at once assembled, and at the news the Whig Dukes of Argyle and

Somerset entered the Council Chamber without summons and took their

places at the board. The step had been taken in secret concert with the

Duke of Shrewsbury, who was President of the Council in the Tory

Ministry, but a rival of Bolingbroke and an adherent of the Hanoverian

succession. The act was a decisive one. The right of the House of

Hanover was at once acknowledged, Shrewsbury was nominated as Lord

Treasurer by the Council, and the nomination was accepted by the dying

Queen. Bolingbroke, though he remained Secretary of State, suddenly

found himself powerless and neglected while the Council took steps to

provide for the emergency. Four regiments were summoned to the capital

in the expectation of a civil war. But the Jacobites were hopeless and

unprepared; and on the death of Anne on the evening of the 10th of

August, the Elector George of Hanover, who had become heir to the throne

by his mother's death, was proclaimed as king of England without a show

of opposition.