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HISTORIC BUBBLES
BY
FREDERIC LEAKE.
[Illustration: colophon]
_The earth has bubbles as the water has,
And these are of them._--BANQUO.
_Mais les ouvrages les plus courts
Sont toujours les meilleurs._--LA FONTAINE.
ALBANY, N. Y.:
RIGGS PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO.,
1896.
COPYRIGHT, 1896
BY
RIGGS PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY
CONTENTS
PAGE
Duke of Berwick, 7
Captivity of Babylon, 45
The Second House of Burgundy, 75
Two Jaquelines, 115
Hoche, 152
An Interesting Ancestor of Queen Victoria, 185
John Wiclif, 201
PREFACE
Once upon a time I was a member of that arch-erudite body, the Faculty
of Williams College, and I took my turn in putting forth lectures
tending or pretending to edification. I was not to the manner born,
and had indulged even to indigestion, in the reading of history. These
ebullitions are what came of that intemperance.
The manuscripts were lying harmless in a bureau drawer, under gynæcian
strata, when, last summer, a near and rummaging relative, a printer,
unearthed them, read them, and asked leave to publish them. I refused;
but after conventional hesitation, I--still vowing I would ne’er
consent--consented.
With this diagnosis, I abandon them to the printer and the public.
Those who read them will form opinions of them, and some who read them
not, will do the same thing in accordance with a tempting canon of
criticism.
F. L.
WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS., 1896.
The Duke of Berwick
In the north-east corner of the map of England, or, if you are a
Scotchman, in the south-east corner of the map of Scotland, you will
find the town of Berwick.
That town was held first to belong to Scotland, and then to England.
Then the lawyers tried their hand at it, and made out that it belonged
to neither--that a writ issued either in England or Scotland, would
not run in Berwick-on-Tweed. So an act of Parliament was passed in the
reign of George II., to extend the authority of the British realm to
that evasive municipality.
The name is pronounced _Berrick_. It is a rule in England to spell
proper names one way and pronounce them another: thus Edinburgh is
Edinboro, Derby is Darby, Brougham is Broom, Cholmondeley is Chumly and
so on. This rule is sometimes inconvenient. An American tourist wished
to visit the home of Charlotte Brontë. He asked the way to Haworth.
_Ha-worth!_ Nobody had ever heard of such a place. No such place
in that part of England. At last somebody guessed that this stray
foreigner wanted to go to Hawth. Haworth is Hawth.
But that act of Parliament did not decree that folks should say Berrick
and not Berwick; and even if it had, it would not be of force in this
country; so the reader may pronounce it just as he pleases.
From that town was derived the ducal title of my subject.
In November, 1873, I sailed for England. Among my shipmates was Lord
Alfred Churchill an uncle of the present duke of Marlborough, and a
descendent of John Churchill duke of Marlborough the famous general
of Queen Anne. Walking the deck one day with Lord Alfred, I asked him
about his family--not about his wife and children--that would not have
been good manners; but about the historic line from which he sprang.
I asked how it was that he was a Churchill, when he was descended
not from a son but from a daughter of the great duke. He explained
that an act of parliament had authorised Charles Spencer, earl of
Sunderland, son-in-law of the duke, not only to take the title of duke
of Marlborough, but to change his name from Spencer to Churchill.
There can be no better evidence of the overshadowing glory of the
great captain than that the house of Sunderland should so nearly
suppress the old, aristocratic name of Spencer, in favor of the new,
the parvenu Churchill. The Spencers came in with the Conqueror, and we
meet them often in history. We well remember the two Spencers, father
and son, who were executed in the reign of Edward II. on a charge of
high-treason; and that bizarre historian A’Becket says that the sad
tale of those Spencers led afterwards to the introduction of spencers
without any tail at all.
I asked his lordship what had become of the Berwick branch of the
Churchills. He answered drily that he did not know--so drily in fact
that I inferred he had forgotten there had ever been such a branch.
In order to introduce that branch I must ask you to go back with me to
the middle of the seventeenth century.
Charles Stuart, Charles II. sits on the throne of England, or rather
perambulates about it, for he is a great walker: he and his dogs are
always in motion; and his favorite breed of those animals is still
known as the King Charles spaniel.
Charles was a witty and a disreputable monarch: one current view of him
is that he never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one.
Charles had married Catharine of Braganza a daughter of that John
of Braganza who had rescued Portugal from the yoke of the Spanish
Hapsburgs, and founded the present dynasty. Catharine bore no children,
and the next heir to the crown, was James duke of York brother of
Charles. The two brothers were unlike in everything but general
worthlessness: Charles was an idler and a scoffer; James a busybody
and a devoted--not exactly devout--Roman Catholic. Both were fond of
women; but mark the difference! Charles gathered to him handsome ones
only; and they were truly handsome, as their portraits still testify.
James fell in love so perseveringly with homely ones, that Charles said
in his ribald way, that it was the priests who imposed those girls on
James as a penance.
Among the damsels who won James’ heart, was Anne daughter of Sir
Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon. Now Miss Anne Hyde though
respectable, was certainly no match for the blood-royal, for the heir
apparent; and James after having gained her affections, sought to
jilt her. What led him to think better of it is not clear: stories
differ: it is even said that her father himself opposed the marriage
out of prudence and politics, just as Cardinal Mazarin prevented Louis
XIV. from marrying his niece Olympia with whom the young king was
desperately in love. Another legend is that Sir Edward came and knelt
before the king and pleaded the cause of his daughter; and Charles
told James he must marry that girl. At all events, he did marry her.
Little homely Anne Hyde was now great duchess of York, wife of the
heir apparent, prospective queen of England. Among her maids of honor
was Arabella daughter of Sir Winston Churchill a country gentlemen
of credit and renown. Arabella had a homely face--there is augury
in that--but her form was symmetrical. She was a bold horseman--or
horsewoman if you insist. James was equally equestrian, so he and
Arabella were often companions. One day Miss Churchill had mounted
the most unruly animal in the duke’s stables. Her horse reared and
kicked and plunged so violently that in spite of her horsemanship, (not
horsewomanship,) she was thrown to the ground. James sprang to her aid.
He passed his arm around that shapely bodice and looked into that plain
face as he raised her up; and his susceptible heart was transfixed once
more.
On the 21. August 1670, there was born James Fitzjames, James the son
of James and of Arabella Churchill. It was a lusty scion, Churchill
through and through; very little of the Stuart perceptible. Leaving
the brat to kick and yell and thrive--but don’t forget him--we will
consider some other of his relatives--respectable folks all, and
moving in the best society, or I should not venture to introduce them
to my readers.
Arabella had a brother named John who, you see, was uncle to the little
Fitzjames. But for this unclehood and this brotherhood, we probably
would never have heard of John. There might have been no Blenheim, no
Ramilies, no Oudenard, no Malplaquet, in fine, no duke of Marlborough.
James seeing that his morganatic brother-in-law was resolved to be a
soldier, sent him to France to serve under Turenne; and John did not
waste his time.
Another of the boy’s relations was William of Orange who was his first
cousin and married his half sister Mary daughter of James. William is
the hero, not of this story which is authentic, but of that fascinating
romance Macaulay’s History of England. William was endowed with all
the talents and perhaps with one or two of the many virtues attributed
to him in that romance. He was as licentious as his uncles Charles
and James, and was still keeping his odalisques at the very hour when
Macaulay pictures him to us, wringing his hands over his dying wife.
He was cruel and even blood-thirsty: the massacre of Glencoe has left
a stain on his memory which no romance can wash out. As we shall see
presently, he would have put to death this very boy, had he not been
held back by a hand which the fate of battle had made stronger than
his. He was the last able king of England; but he broke down the power
of the crown by impoverishing it. (Blackstone, Book 1. Chapter 8.) He
squandered the crown lands not only upon the Dutch adventurers who
had followed him from Holland, the Bentincks, the Zulesteins, the
Auverquerques, the Keppels who thus fattened and battened upon the
English people, but upon more questionable favorites, upon the partners
of his private vices, to such an extent that at his death parliament
took back what he had given to the women, but the men being politicians
found means to keep their share.
In 1685, Charles II. died. He was but 55. He had been temperate in
eating and drinking and had taken plenty of exercise, and in the
ordinary course of nature, was good for twenty years yet. But he had
caught cold and had a touch of vertigo. The doctors came and bled him.
It did him no good, because a bleeding never did anybody any good. The
next day they came and bled him a second time, and that did him no
good, because a second bleeding never did anybody any good. So they
came the third day and bled him a third time and that settled him. A
Roman Catholic priest was smuggled up the back stairs; the scoffer was
shrived and was gathered to his fathers--the Stuarts, the Tudors, the
Plantagenets, the Bourbons, the Valois; and his brother James reigned
in his stead.
Two years after his accession, James conferred the title of Duke of
Berwick on the boy Fitzjames who was now seventeen. It was a barren
title no estates annexed; but it was his father’s gift, and with filial
piety he cleaved to it his whole life, in preference to other and
better endowed patents of nobility which his sword won for him.
He too must be a soldier: the Churchill half of him would have scorned
any peaceful course of life; so his father sent him to France to study
the art of war in the same school where his uncle John had graduated.
When he was nineteen, western Europe being at peace, he got leave of
his father to offer his services to the emperor who was fighting the
Turks, and was sore pressed by those misbelievers. James gave him a
letter to an Irishman in the imperial service, named Taft who had
held the rank of colonel, and had just been made a general. Taft had
influence enough with the commander-in-chief, the duke of Lorraine, to
give to Berwick the regiment he had left.
The Turks lay encamped on the spot where a hundred years before, they
had won the first battle of Mohacs, and what still added to their
self-confidence, was that the duke of Lorraine, in obedience to the
emperor’s orders, had attacked their position and been repulsed; and
now scorning to act longer on the defensive, they marched upon the
Christians. A bloody struggle followed in which victory was wrested
from the hand of the Moslem. Berwick in his memoirs says that the
Imperialists lost only ten thousand men--only ten thousand men! How
many Turks fell in that dreadful day, he does not report. Perhaps
like a good Catholic he thought that misbelievers, especially dead
misbelievers were not worth the counting. He says next to nothing about
his own share in the battle; but from the fact that he was immediately
promoted, it may be inferred that the boy did not belie the blood of
Churchill in all that carnage.
He did not remain long in the Emperor’s service. His father now needed
the aid of every one of the few friends that were left him; and
Berwick returned to England. We all know that James lost his crown by
undertaking to reëstablish the Roman Catholic religion in England; but
he was by no means the natural fool for thinking of such a thing that
Macaulay represents him to be.
In the whole history of national religions there is no other instance
of such inconstancy as had been shown by the English in that and the
preceding century. At the beck of Henry VIII., they renounced the pope
and all his works. But Henry told them that he himself was now pope
in England, so they still cleaved to popery: they bowed the knee to a
Cockney pope instead of to an Italian pope. In the reign of Henry’s son
Edward VI., they went over body and soul to protestantism, priests and
all. Then under his sister Mary, Bloody Mary, they all hurried back
to the Mass and the Breviary. I know there were some exceptions, John
Rogers and all that, but they were too few to invalidate the rule.
In the next reign, that of Elizabeth, they changed their creed the
fourth time. The Venitian ambassador at the court of Elizabeth, wrote
home that the English would turn Turks or Jews to save their persons
or their pockets. Nor did this pliability of faith end there. James
himself remembered the day when, at the preaching of a few saints in
jack-boots and spurs, half of England stopped going decorously to
church, and repeating devoutly the liturgy, and fell to singing psalms
through the nose. Let me say in parenthesis, that it was then that a
certain nasal drawl came to be considered the mark of vital piety, and
it was then that these northern States were colonised. As we Americans
have remained more pious than the English, we have retained more of
that peculiar accent.
Cromwell died; jack-boots and spurs ceased to be evangelists; nasal
psalmody went out of fashion; and the Church of England was restored.
Was it strange that James should persuade himself that he could make
the English people turn one more somerset? But he was not the man to do
it, and his friends told him so. Louis XIV. warned him to be careful.
The archbishop of Rheims suggested that a mass might not be worth three
kingdoms. In the meantime the pope, Innocent the eleventh, was working
in a curious subterranean way against him. Louis had insulted Innocent
and imprisoned his nuncio; and the pope was ready to league himself
even with protestants to put on the English throne a dynasty hostile to
the French king.
England had but recently escaped from under the iron heel of the
saints; and she dreaded their return to power as much as the pope’s.
Consequently the Church of England which James’ grandfather (James I.)
said was the only church for a gentleman, was once more the strongest
ecclesiastical body in the land. If James had been a little tolerant
and let the bishops alone he might at least have reëstablished Roman
Catholicism as the religion of the Court; but he was a fanatic and
must have the whole or nothing; and he got the latter.
The English, split up into different sects which hated each other with
theological hatred, lost confidence in themselves. A foreign prince
and a foreign army were called in as in the days of James’ worthless
ancestor King John. William of Holland with an army of Dutchmen landed
at Torbay the fifth of November 1688; and England once more suffered
the humiliation of an invasion. It was at this juncture that Berwick
arrived in England, and took command of the king’s household troops
which his uncle Marlborough had abandoned. Nobody contributed more to
the overthrow of James than John Churchill who owed him everything. He
and his shrew of a wife Sarah had influence enough with Anne, James’
youngest daughter, and with her husband George of Denmark, to lead them
too to desert their father and to go over to William and Mary.
Anne was a stupid girl and made a stupid queen; but her stupidity was
but a mild form of that lesion in comparison with that which afflicted
her husband. We have King Charles’ own testimony on that point. Supping
one day with James, he said to him:--Brother James I have tried our
nephew George drunk and I have tried him sober, and drunk or sober
there is nothing in him. George had a stolid way of exclaiming _Est-il
possible_! When James was told that his daughter and son-in-law had
abandoned him: What, cried he, has Est-il possible gone too?
James was now reminded of the day when they cut his father’s head
off,[1] and he thought it time to quit. He fled and William and Mary
mounted the throne. They were not the next heirs: one little life stood
between and one only--that of the infant son of James and of his second
wife Mary Beatrice of Esté. But though, as Macaulay himself admits, no
birth was ever better attested, all England was made to believe that
the child was spurious. Even Mary and Anne gave countenance to that
infamous story. That child was afterwards known as the Pretender or
James III.
The revolution of 1688, which drove out James and put upon the throne
William and Mary, was a long step forward in the history of English
liberty; but the personal share in it of the daughters and sons-in-law
of James, was not commendable. King Lear’s daughters were less
unfilial than Mary and Anne. Goneril and Regan did not drive their old
father out into the storm: it was his own high temper that did that:
he was furious that they would not entertain his hundred knights.
They, the daughters, wanted him to sit by the fireside and let the
housemaid bring him his slippers. He insisted on traipsing through the
house at the head of a hundred stalking fellows, tracking the mud over
everything; and I leave it to any good housewife if the girls were not
right.
But Mary and Anne and William drove the poor old king from his throne,
from his home and from his country, and he died in exile.
Mary is Macaulay’s heroine, yet to make a point he cannot help
relating her untimely glee, running from room to room in the palace of
Whitehall, delighted to find herself the mistress of so fine a house
from which she had just expelled her own father.
James fled to France, and Berwick went with him. Among other devoted
friends who left their country and joined their fortunes to those of
the banished king, was an Irish gentleman named MacMahon. From him was
descended Marie Edmée Patrice Maurice MacMahon whilom president of the
Republic of France.
A few years later Berwick accompanied his father in his expedition to
Ireland which had remained faithful to him. That expedition came to
grief, as you know, at the battle of the Boyne, in which Berwick took
part. In another action during that campaign, he had two horses killed
under him, and was himself wounded. He says in his memoirs, that that
was the only wound he ever received; but he did receive one besides,
and we shall see by and by why he never mentions it.
On his return to France, Berwick became a French subject, and entered
the French army for the rest of his life. Under the last two kings,
Charles and James, England had been the ally of France. Louis XIV.
was their first cousin, all three being grand-children of Henry
IV. William’s mother a sister of Charles and James, was equally of
course cousin to Louis; but there was nobody on earth that William
hated as he did the French king. Nor was this hatred without a cause:
Louis had invaded and desolated William’s native country, Holland,
chiefly because a Dutch envoy who had not been brought up in refined
society, had told a French envoy to go to--well, it is not polite to
say where--and William succeeded in dragging England into a war with
France. England had nothing to gain in that war, and gained nothing but
defeat.
William himself took the command. In person William III. was thin,
pale, dyspeptic and unwholesome, which accounts for his bad temper.
He was brave and obstinate, and no series of defeats could take the
conceit out of him. A good statesman, he was a bad general: it has even
been said of him that he lost more battles than any other commander in
history. He was now opposed in the field by a genius of high order,
François de Montmorenci, Duke of Luxembourg, Marshal of France.
Luxembourg like Marlborough had learnt the art of war under Condé and
Turenne and would have equalled those leaders, if he had had their
bodily vigor; but he was a ricketty hunchback.
The first encounter at which Berwick was present, between those two
valetudinary warriors who ought both have been at home with their feet
in warm water, was at Steinkerk where William came near scrambling a
victory by a stratagem. He had seized one of Luxembourg’s spies and had
forced him to write false intelligence to him. Luxembourg was deceived,
and before he knew it the English were upon him; but so promptly did he
throw his troops into order of battle that after an engagement which
was surpassed in bloody obstinacy only by the one that followed, the
victory remained to him.
The next year these two generals met at Landen or Neerwinden. The
battle takes both names from two towns held by the English at the
beginning of it. Landen, says Macaulay, was the most terrible battle
of the seventeenth century. Berwick says he himself was chosen by
Luxembourg to open the ball. At the head of four battalions he marched
upon Neerwinden. He forced the English lines and drove them back into
the town. But they rallied; Berwick’s four battalions were broken up,
and he was left almost alone. He tore the trappings off his uniform,
and by speaking English hoped to pass for an English officer till he
could escape. But he was recognized, and gave up his sword to one of
his Churchill uncles a brother of Marlborough.
The awful carnage of this awful battle then centered around Neerwinden.
The French were repulsed time and again. At last the household troops
of King Louis were brought up to the attack. At their head was the
king’s nephew Philip duke of Chartres, afterwards duke of Orleans,
afterwards Regent of France. These soldiers had turned the tide at
Steinkerk, and now once more they maintained their high reputation: The
English were driven out.
Macaulay says:--“At Landen two poor, sickly beings were the soul of
two great armies. It is probable that among the hundred and twenty
thousand soldiers marshalled around Neerwinden, the two feeblist in
body were the hunchback dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset of
France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of
England.”
Quite picturesque, that! but the truth is William covered no retreat
slow or fast: he covered nothing but his horse and to him he applied
both spurs: it was the best he could do.
Before he fled William had summoned his cousin Berwick before
him. He told him he should send him to England to be tried for
high-treason--He, a born Englishman in arms against his native country!
This purpose was quite worthy of the signer of the warrant for the
massacre of Glencoe; but it was frustrated as follows:
In the list of prisoners to be exchanged on both sides, Luxembourg
observed that the name of Berwick was wanting. He learned for what fate
he was reserved; he seized the duke of Ormond one of his own prisoners,
and sent William word that whatever measure was meted out to Berwick,
should be measured again to Ormond. Ormond was a favorite of William,
and Berwick was exchanged for him.[2]
In all this dreadful fighting the best soldier in Europe remains nearly
inactive; not that he was sulky like our old friend Achilles; but his
sovereign feared and hated him, and was reluctant to employ him. It is
true that William had sent Marlborough into Ireland to quell the Irish
who were fighting the Saxon whenever there was Saxon there to fight,
and when there was none, were fighting each other for the mere love of
the sport. It was a task that had already baffled William and his Dutch
generals, and which perhaps he hoped would baffle Marlborough; but John
Churchill was not born to be baffled. He knocked the heads together so
smartly of Pat and Mike that those gentlemen made up their minds to be
_aisy_; and he finished his errand so promptly that William himself
felt bound to say that considering my lord Marlborough had seen so
little of war, he had done very well.
In 1702, William was returning one day from a ride which he was taking
for his dyspepsia, when his horse slipped and fell. The jolt shook
out of him what little of life he had left; and Anne succeeded to the
throne. Mary had died some years before. The day of Marlborough was
now come. The theatre of his glory and chiefly that of Berwick’s, was
the war of the Spanish succession.
Charles II. of Spain was the fifth of the Spanish Hapsburgs; he was
also the fifth in descent from the great emperor Charles V. who was
Charles I. of Spain. Charles II. having no children, the next heir was
the dauphin of France, son of Louis XIV. and of Maria Teresa the oldest
sister of Charles; but in order to prevent the two crowns from falling
upon one head, the dauphin assigned his right to his second son Philip.
The other claimants were the archduke Charles afterwards Emperor, and
a young prince of the house of Bavaria, both grand-children of younger
sisters of Maria. The Bourbon claim was therefore the best.
English historians lay great stress upon the fact that Louis and Maria
at their marriage, formally renounced all claim to the crown of Spain
both for themselves and their posterity; but those historians take care
not to tell the whole story. The renunciation in question was not a
compact with England or with the Empire: it was a compact with Spain
alone; and if Spain chose to waive it, it was nobody else’s business.
To avoid war however Louis and the Emperor agreed to withdraw their
claim, and leave it to the little Bavarian; but just then that prince
in an untimely manner died. Soon after his demise, the king of Spain
died after having, at the request of his nobles and by the advice of
the pope, made a will bequeathing the crown to the legitimate heir, the
house of Bourbon. It is noteworthy that the dying king was a Hapsburg,
and had expressed his preference for a Hapsburg successor; but the
pope who was also moribund warned him not to die with the sin upon his
conscience of having diverted the succession from the lawful channel.
Where did the renunciation stand in the opinion of these two potentates?
Philip of Bourbon now king of Spain entered Madrid accompanied by his
wife and a singular personage whom Louis had sent with them. This was
the Princess of Orsini of the house of La Trémoille in France, and
widow of the duke of Bracciano, prince of Orsini in Italy. She ruled
Philip, ruled his wife, ruled Spain, and was an indispensable agent
there of Louis XIV.
The Spaniards received Philip with open arms; but war was none the less
declared by the Empire, England and Holland for the purpose of driving
Philip out and putting the archduke in his place, which would have been
nearly to reëstablish the empire of Charles-the-Fifth. But the English
thought of nothing but of fighting the French, and of taking revenge
for Steinkerk and Landen.
Marlborough took command of the English and Dutch. The Emperor’s
troops were led by another great soldier, the Prince Eugene. I have
already alluded to a pretty Italian girl, Olympia Mancini niece of
Cardinal Mazarin, who won the heart of Louis XIV. in his youth, and
was prevented by her uncle from marrying him. She got over that
disappointment by which she missed being queen of France, and married
the Count of Soissons of the house of Savoy, and gave birth at Paris to
the Prince Eugene. He was educated for the Church; but he resolved to
be a soldier and applied to the king for a commission. Louis told him
to go back to his beads and his breviary; so he offered his services to
the Emperor, and spent his life fighting alternately against the Turks
and against his own countrymen. It was he who two years after the close
of the war, commanded the imperial forces at Petervaradin, and struck
the first irreparable blow to the Ottoman power.
I cannot follow the brilliant career of those two captains. Brilliant
as it was however, it came to nought, and chiefly by the soldiership
which the duke of Berwick displayed in Spain itself. The English had
landed an army there to which was added a contingent of Portuguese.
Louis sent Berwick to oppose them with what few troops he could
spare. It was now that Berwick showed himself to be a past master of
defensive warfare--a true Fabius. The English, superior in numbers,
could advance nowhere against this adroit and sleepless adversary. He
relates that on one occasion the enemy who had long tried to cross
a river, posted themselves at last on a tongue of land formed by a
sharp bend in the stream, so they could attempt the passage either at
the right or the left. This reduced him to the dangerous necessity of
dividing his forces so as to defend both fords. An accident of the
ground saved him. The bank on his side, was an interrupted series
of bluffs which half the time hid his men from the enemy. He kept
transferring them from one ford to the other, making them form ranks
and march slowly when visible, and run helter skelter when out of
sight. The English who kept counting the same men twice, did not risk
the crossing.
While thus disputing the passage of the river, Berwick received an
order from King Philip to return to Madrid in order to defend that
capital. He replied that the true place to defend Madrid, was on the
banks of that stream, and he refused to quit. Afterwards when the
English had retired, he learnt that Philip and his queen had sent such
a remonstrance to their grandfather that he had recalled him, and
sent the Marshal de Tessin to take his place. Tessin was a friend of
Berwick, and he asked Philip and his wife how they could make up their
minds to spare so able a soldier. They were silent; there was a pause;
at last the queen broke out with:--What can we do with a great, lank
devil of an Englishman who will have his own way?
Berwick reported himself at Versailles. Louis asked him why Philip had
demanded his recall. Has he made any charges against me, inquired the
duke. None whatever replied the king. Then said Berwick I have nothing
to say.
During his absence everything went wrong. Madrid was taken by the
Imperialists, and the archduke crowned with the title of Charles III.
and Spain enjoyed the advantage of two kings at a time: a Hapsburg at
one end of the land, and a Bourbon at the other.
In this confused state of things Louis sent Berwick back, having first
conferred upon him the rank of Marshal of France so that Philip might
treat him with more respect. Inferior in force he was obliged to resort
to the same defensive tactics which had succeeded before. At the same
time he implored Louis to send him more troops, pleading that any
unforeseen accident might be the loss of Spain. The king, hard pressed
as he was by Marlborough and Eugene, contrived to send him a few more
regiments, and now for the first time he found himself equal to the
enemy.
The decisive encounter took place at Almanza. This battle is unique
among battles in that a Frenchman commanded the English, and an
Englishman the French. The general of the English was the ex-count of
Ruvigny a Huguenot who had been driven from France by the revocation of
the edict of Nantes. He had been created Earl of Galway in Ireland. He
was a good soldier and was now fighting with bitter animosity against
the king who had persecuted him.
But to the battle. Berwick led his own right wing. He threw into some
disorder the English left; then instead of following up his advantage
in that direction, he wheeled suddenly to the left, fell upon the
enemy’s centre and crushed it. The victory was complete. An English
account says that out of the thirty thousand men which Galway led into
the field, seventeen thousand either fell or were taken prisoner; and
that they lost all their artillery and baggage.
Philip was restored to his throne. He now sought to make amends to
the devil of an Englishman who would have his own way, by creating
him duke of Liria and Xerica with ample estates. Berwick refused them
for himself, but accepted them for his son who thus became a Spanish
grandee. Philip also offered, if Berwick would leave the service of his
grandfather and enter his, to make him generalissimo of all Spain. He
answered that Louis XIV. was his best friend, and that he would never
serve any other monarch.
Berwick returned to France and joined the army of the duke of Vendôme
who was another of his cousins. Vendôme was grandson and Berwick
great-grandson of Henry IV. They were unlike however: Berwick was
without vices; Vendôme was drunken and debauched. He was a good
general nevertheless, and the year before had kept at bay Marlborough
and Eugene during a whole campaign. Now he listened to a council of
officers, and, Berwick dissenting, risked Oudenarde and was beaten. The
next year Louis sent Berwick to the frontier of Savoy, to practise his
old game of making one battalion appear two to the enemy; and to keep
in check an army which threatened to invade France.
The English landed another army in Spain under General Stanhope, and
the Emperor one under Count Staremberg. Philip called loudly for
Berwick, but Louis could not spare him: he was holding the wolf by the
ears and it would not do to call him off.
Macaulay says the fate of Spain was decided at Almanza: that that was
a disaster Marlborough and Eugene could hardly have repaired, much
less Stanhope and Staremberg. To oppose those two captains, Louis sent
Vendôme. Vendôme had contracted the habit of getting sober whenever
great issues were at stake, and he was in that abnormal state on the
present occasion. By a dexterous movement he caught Stanhope napping
at Brihuaga, and simply bagged him and his army. He then turned upon
Staremberg. The encounter took place at Villa-Viciosa where the
Imperialists after a stout resistance, withdrew leaving the victory to
the French. This battle rid Philip of foreign enemies, and the crown
sat steady on his head; and it still sits on the head of his descendant.
Villa-Viciosa was Vendôme’s last fight: the sober fit proved fatal;
he died in Spain soon after the battle. Philip who was his cousin one
degree further removed than Berwick, caused his remains to be laid in
the royal sepulchre of the Escurial, and they repose there still.
A change of ministry at this time in England, led to one of those acts
that have purchased for her the name of Perfidious Albion. Legend says
a glass of water did it. Sarah duchess of Marlborough was mistress of
the household of Queen Anne. The two ladies were so affectionate that
they gave each other pet names: Anne was Mrs. Morley, Sarah was Mrs.
Freeman, and the more affectionate they grew the more they quarrelled.
One day during a skirmish, Mrs. Morley asked Mrs. Freeman to bring her
a glass of water. She obeyed, but instead of presenting it with proper
grace, she pushed the salver into the queen’s face and upset the glass
in her lap. The queen ordered her to quit her presence, and directly
sent and demanded of her the gold key which was her emblem of office.
Now this is all true except perhaps the glass of water. It is true that
a quarrel with the duchess did determine Anne to abandon Marlborough
and the Whigs and go over to Bolingbroke and the Tories. Marlborough
was recalled from his command, and the allies left to shift for
themselves, with the aid however of the English and Dutch contingents
which remained to them under the Duke of Albemarle who, in the absence
of Eugene, was in chief command. Albemarle was an Englishman that
William had made out of a Dutchman named Yost Van Keppel. William
himself had taught him the art of war and he was a bad general; Villars
who commanded the French, was a good one, and the battle of Denain
ended in accordance with those conditions.
It was the last of the war. The peace of Utrecht was signed to which
England acceded, abandoning all she had fought for.
The queen of Spain died, and as there was no fighting for Berwick
to do, Louis sent him with a message of condolence for Philip. But
peaceful embassies were not for the like of him: he never reached
Madrid. An envoy from Philip stopped him on the way and informed him
that Barcelona had revolted, and that it was for him to go there and
restore order. He flew thither and laid siege to the town. Discovering
that the citizens were receiving aid from Majorca he ordered the
Spanish fleet to blockade the port, and having made a breach with his
cannon he led his men to the assault. They had fought their way to the
middle of the town when the garrison offered to surrender. The point
then was to save the town from pillage and from those awful scenes
which occur when a city is taken by storm. He directed the commander
of the garrison not to let his surrender be known, and still to man
the barricades. He then ordered a retreat, on the pretence that it was
night-fall, and that they must prepare for a more vigorous attack on
the morrow. The next morning Barcelona was peacefully theirs. He says
it was the first town taken by assault that ever escaped pillage, and
in his pious way he attributes it to the grace of God, and says that
human skill alone could not have compassed it.
During the siege Philip to lose no time, had wooed and won another
bride, Elizabeth Farnese daughter of the duke of Parma; and Berwick
received one day an order from the king to send the fleet to Genoa
to fetch the new queen. He replied that the blockade of the port was
essential to the capture of the place, and that not a ship could be
spared. The great, lank devil of an Englishman had not improved, and
Philip and Elizabeth had to wait.
The name Farnese brings up another family which stands out in relief
in the tableau of history. You have all been to Rome. You remember in
the church of Saint Peter, near the chair in which Peter himself sat
when he was pope, a sepulchral monument the finest in the church. It
is that of Alexander Farnese, Paul III. Near the banks of the Tiber
you remember that vast edifice the Palace Farnese, and on the other
side of the river the Farnesina, or little Farnese. You remember the
Farnese gardens where they have dug out the foundations of the palace
of the Caesars. All these demesnes, except the monument, belonged till
recently to the kings of Naples descendants of Philip and Elizabeth.
It was the princess of Orsini herself who had chosen a scion of that
famous race for Philip’s second wife; and the princess did not fail
to repent of it. She had been deceived by one of the greatest scamps
in Europe, the Cardinal Alberoni who had assured her that Elizabeth
Farnese was a placid little maiden who would show her all the deference
the late queen had shown.
Kings, you know, don’t get married like common folks: they don’t do
their own courting nor even their own marrying: they _send_. A deputy
woos the maiden by power of attorney. He puts the ring on her finger;
the priest pronounces them man and wife; and then she is the spouse not
of that man but of another one whom she has never seen. Etiquette then
requires not that the bridegroom go forth to meet the bride, but that
she come to him. But mark the often result:--Henry VIII. married Anne
of Cleves on the faith of a portrait by Holbein which flattered her.
She was brought to England. When Henry came to lay eyes on her he swore
they had sent him a big Flanders mare. George IV. while Regent married
Caroline of Brunswick. He sent Harris Earl of Malmsbury to stand in
his place at the altar, and to bring her to England. Malmsbury in his
memoirs, says he foresaw trouble from the beginning. The princess was
good looking and good tempered, but her want of personal neatness was
beyond belief. When he presented her to the Regent she kneeled. He
raised her up and kissed her; and then turning to Malmsbury, whispered:
Harris for God’s sake get me some brandy!
Barcelona taken, Berwick sent the fleet to Genoa, and Elizabeth was
brought to Spain. As she approached Madrid, Philip and the Princess
of Orsini went out together to meet her. She greeted her husband with
marks of affection, but looked askance at his companion. Not long
after, the Princess was suddenly seized, thrown into a carriage, and
conveyed to the French frontier and dismissed with the injunction never
again to set foot in Spain. Louis XIV. was incensed at this treatment
of his faithful agent; but that Farnese girl was no subject of his, and
she snapped her fingers at him.
Philip and Elizabeth managed to live together; but whenever he desired
to say his soul was his own, he took care to say it privately to his
confessor. Alberoni was rewarded by being made prime minister of Spain.
In 1715 Louis XIV. died after the longest reign in history. He was
king at five and died at seventy-seven. He outlived his oldest son and
his oldest grandson and was succeeded by his great-grandson Louis XV.
another boy of five.
Louis had made a will leaving in effect the regency during the
minority, to the Duke du Maine his son by Madame de Montespan and the
best beloved of his children; but Du Maine was immediately confronted
by a spirit more potent than his own, in the person of Philip of
Orleans, Louis’ nephew, a prince whom Louis had feared more than he
had loved. It was this Philip who had led the household troops at
Neerwinden. He had married Du Maine’s sister, but he pushed him aside
and seized the regency as his birthright. Though his private morals
were deplorable he governed France with vigor and ability till the
majority of Louis XV.
This change of rulers worked no prejudice to Berwick. The Regent
Philip offered him the government of Guienne one of the finest of the
provinces; and he accepted it. When the patent was made out, he was
surprised to find it made to Du Maine under whom he was to act as
lieutenant. He refused to do so. The Regent sent for him and explained
to him how necessary he found it to flatter and conciliate his brother
Du Maine. My Lord Duke, said Berwick, nobody knows better than I the
difference between a genuine prince of the blood like you, and a
spurious one like myself and like Du Maine; and I will not take civil
service under one of the latter sort. Philip knew what an obstinate
fellow he was dealing with, and he yielded. The patent was made out
direct to Berwick.
One would think that Philip V. owing his crown to his French relations,
would have kept at peace with them; and he would have done so but for
that Farnese creature. He and the Regent fell into a dispute and then
into a quarrel and then into hostile array; and Berwick took the field.
In the Spanish army was his son the duke of Liria, and it might happen
that father and son should meet face to face in battle. Berwick wrote
to his son to sink all filial regard for him, and to serve his king as
if he were a born Spaniard. The two Philips however became reconciled
before much mischief was done.
In 1716 Marlborough died. The British idea seems to be that his career
of victory did not end at that sad event. In the Tower of London some
years ago, I was shown a cannon which the warden who spoke by the
authority of the three kingdoms, declared was taken by Marlborough at
the battle of Dettingen. When I let fall a timid doubt, he repeated
the statement with an indignant emphasis which silenced cavil. History
does indeed record one other case of the sort. You remember at Rome,
near the Cloaca Maxima, a spring where women were washing. It is there
that Castor and Pollux watered their horses after the battle of Lake
Regillus. Those two warriors had already been dead many years, and
placed in the firmament where we still behold them.
Eugene had retired from active life, and Berwick now shared with
Villars the reputation of being the foremost of living generals. The
war of the Polish succession came in the following manner:--Early in
the eighteenth century Charles XII. of Sweden--that name at which
Doctor Johnson said the world grew pale--burst into central Europe and
turned everything upside down. He drove Augustus-the-strong from the
throne of Poland, and put in his place Stanislas Leczinski; not that
he thought Stanislas a better man than Augustus, it was merely his
propensity to upset things. But he tried to upset one man who was too
square-built for him; and that was Peter Romanoff, Peter-the-great.
Peter beat him at Pultowa, and put things back in their places.
Stanislas, driven from the throne upon which he had been so suddenly
set, fled to Wissenbourg in Alsace, and was living there with his wife
and daughter Maria on a small pension granted by the French court. They
were poor but pious, and morning and evening they knelt and thanked God
that although they no longer had a throne to sit upon, they still had a
roof over their heads.
One day there was a knock at the door; a stately official entered
and bowing to the floor, gave Stanislas a letter. It was a portentous
missive, a foot square and sealed with half a pound of wax. What was
it? Were they troublesome at Wissenbourg? Was it a mandate to quit?
Where should they go? Mother and daughter gathered at the side of the
father as he opened it. It was a despatch from the duke of Bourbon
prime minister of France, asking the hand of Maria for the young king.
Louis XV. and Maria Leczinska were soon married; and a few years later
Louis undertook to restore his father-in-law to the Polish throne.
Villars and Berwick took command of the French armies; but the crown of
Poland was not recovered. The Emperor and Louis compromised the matter
by the former giving to Stanislas the duchy of Lorraine a fief of the
Empire; and that is the way Lorraine became French.
Peace was not the normal state of things between France and the Empire;
and Villars and Berwick were not long permitted to be idle. In 1734
as Berwick was reconnoitring the enemy’s position at Philipsbourg,
he was struck by a cannon ball and instantly killed. This was that
second wound which he does not mention in his autobiography. His death
was similar to that of Turenne who had fallen sixty years before at
Salsbach.
Berwick was in his sixty-fifth year. Villars who was eighty-two, only
lived long enough to learn the death of his brother in arms. Berwick
said he, has always been lucky; and now he has died as a soldier would
wish to die.
Bolingbroke who was associated with Berwick in furthering the
pretentions of his half brother James III., says that the duke of
Berwick was the best great man he ever knew.
He was twice married. Both of his wives were Irish: the first was
the daughter of the earl of Clanricarde; the second the daughter of
a gentleman who had married one of the maids of honor of Queen Mary
Beatrice. In his memoirs Berwick despatches his two wives in just ten
lines, five to each. He does not even tell us their christian names. He
was too busy fighting to think of the women.
He had an own brother, the offspring like himself, of James II. and
Arabella Churchill, and bearing like him the surname of Fitzjames. This
brother also rose to distinction: he took to the church and became
bishop of Soissons. It was he who stood at the bedside of Louis XV.
when the king was supposed to be dying, and refused him absolution
and extreme unction till he would dismiss his favorite, Madame de
Chateauroux. The king yielded; the favorite was sent away, and he was
absolved and anointed for Heaven; but
The devil fell sick; the devil a saint would be.
The devil got well, the devil a saint was he.
The king recovered and recalled Madame de Chateauroux.
* * * * *
Some time after my return from Europe in 1874, I read in the New York
World a notice of the marriage in Paris of a Spanish nobleman with
a Miss Stuart who the account said was a descendant of the duke of
Berwick and of James II. It was added that the bride’s family were once
known as the Fitzjameses, but that they had subsequently taken the name
of Stuart as more indicative of their royal extraction.
So it seems the Berwick branch of the Churchills was extant twenty
years ago, and we hope is extant still, though its existence may not be
known to Lord Alfred.
The Captivity of Babylon