376 MARLBOROUGH'S LAST CAMPAIGN. [1711. attention by its recapture, whilst he carried forward his ultimate design; by inducing Villars to fancy that the Allies were about to give him battle, and then suddenly marching away at nightfall; this wonderful strategy produced a result as great as if Marlborough had added one more to his roll of victories. On the 6th of August he wrote to secretary St. John that the whole army had passed the lines on the previous day, and were drawn up in order of battle. The reply of St. John offers the highest tribute to the strategy of the general: "My lord Stair had indeed opened to us the several steps which your grace intended to take in order to pass the enemy's lines in one part or other; it was, however, hard to imagine, and too much to hope, that a plan which consisted of so many parts, wherein so many different corps were to co-operate punctually together, should entirely succeed, and no one article fail of what your grace had projected. I most heartily congratulate with your grace on this great event, of which no more needs, I think, be said than that you have obtained, without losing a man, such an advantage as we should have bought with the expense of several thousand lives, and have reckoned ourselves gainers." * On the 24th of August Marlborough writes to St. John, to apprise him of his proceedings in the siege of Bouchain. The answer of the secretary is again a tribute to the genius of Marlborough: "I shall be very glad to have the plan of the situation of both armies, which your grace has promised to send me. I expect indeed that it should be very extraordinary, since I believe there is hardly one instance of an inferior army posting themselves so as to be able to form a siege and keep the communication open with their own country, in sight of an enemy so much superior." + On the 14th of September, the successful general announces to the sceptical secretary that the difficulties had been overcome--that Bouchain had surrendered: "Thus you see a place, which is of such consequence to either party, has, by the blessing of God, been reduced even in the sight of a superior army, that has left nothing unattempted towards relieving it, and who, being apprehensive of our success, have for some days past been burning and destroying all the forage about Quesnoy and Valenciennes to hinder our further progress, by endeavouring to make it impossible for us to subsist." I On the 8th of October Charles of Austria was elected emperor of Germany. He had previously left Spain; where, although troops were sent by the British government, nothing was done to retrieve the disasters of the previous year. In England, the conduct of the campaign by Marlborough was systematically disparaged. He was assailed for not having taken occasion to hazard battle with Villars; his passage of the French lines was termed crossing the kennel; and the capture of Bouchain was called the taking of a dove-cot, with the loss of sixteen thousand men. Marlborough was writhing under these attacks, and had the weakness to write to Harley, now lord Oxford, complaining that he "should be reviled in such a manner." Oxford replied that he was himself'every day the subject of some libel or other; and says, "I would willingly compound that all the ill-natured scribblers should have license to write ten times more against me, on condition that they would . Marlborough Dispatches, vol. v. p. 429. + Ibid. p. 462. Ibid. p. 490. 1711.] PARLIAMENT-PROSPECT OF PEACE. 377 write against nobody else." St. John informs the queen in a note that Marlborough's chaplain, Dr. Hare, had "published libels against your majesty's government; and is particularly angry against a sermon preached before the duke, and afterwards printed. He calls it "seditious." It merely deprecated the conclusion of a precipitate and dishonourable peace. This was the sore point. Oxford and St. John had for some time been carrying on their secret negotiation with France for a peace, as if England were the. sole party; and had been writing to Marlborough as if there could only be one policy-that of vigorously conducting the war till a general peace could be accomplished, in concert with the Allies. They knew that the notion which Marlborough and the Allies had of a general peace was, that it should contain a provision that no Bourbon prince should ever wear the crown of Spain. The ministry had signed a preliminary treaty with France, in which it was agreed that the crowns of France and Spain should not be worn by the same prince. It would be easier to destroy Marlborough than to convert him; and the ministers vigorously set about his destruction. The army went into winter-quarters, and Marlborough came home, landing at Greenwich, on the 17th of November. He heard that London was in some confusion. The usual procession on the birth-day of queen Elizabeth, when it was customary to burn the effigies of the pope, the devil, and other illustrious personages, was conceived by the ministry to be as dangerous to the public peace as the similar procession in the time of Titus Oates. † A quantity of puppets was seized in a house in Drury-lane, on the night of the 16th; one of which, representing the lord treasurer, was a fearful libel. "I am assured," says Swift, "that the figure of the devil is made as like lord treasurer as they could." It was a capital occasion to get up a squib against the Whigs; and the reverend counsellor of the Tories says, "I have put an understrapper upon writing a twopenny pamphlet, to give an account of the whole design." The "understrapper" was the great ally of the lord treasurer and the secretary; and one object of the twopenny pamphlet is clear enough from this passage: "The duke of Marlborough was to make his entry through Aldgate, where he was to be met with the cry of 'Victory! Bouchain! the lines, the lines!?" Marlborough had as little to promise himself from mob-favour as from court-favour. The lines and Bouchain were worthless to his immediate fame, and did not save him from ungenerous reproach in the highest place. The parliament was opened by the queen on the 7th of December; and the application of the opening words of her speech could not be mistaken: "I have called you together as soon as the public affairs would permit; and I am glad that I can now tell you, that, notwithstanding the arts of those who delight in war, both place and time are appointed for opening the treaty of a general peace." In the debate which ensued, Marlborough spoke with an animation and solemnity which rarely marked his course in parliamentary proceedings. The queen was in the House: "He could declare with a safe conscience, in the presence of her majesty, of that illustrious assembly, and of that Supreme Being, who is infinitely above all the powers upon earth, and before whom, according to the ordinary course of nature, he must soon appear, to give an account of his * Coxe, vol. vi. p. 123. + Ante, vol. iv. p. 335. Journal to Stella. 878 THE MINISTRY DEFEATED IN THE LORDS. [1711. actions, that he ever was desirous of a safe, honourable, and lasting peace; and that he was always very far from any design of prolonging the war for his own private advantage, as his enemies had most falsely insinuated. That his advanced age, and the many fatigues he had undergone, made him earnestly wish for retirement and repose, to think of eternity the remainder of his days; the rather, because he had not the least motive to desire the continuance of the war, having been so generously rewarded, and had honours and riches heaped upon him, far beyond his desert and expectation, both by her majesty and her parliaments. That he thought himself bound to this public acknowledgment to her majesty and his country, that he should always be ready to serve them, if he could but crawl along, to obtain an honourable and lasting peace: but that, at the same time, he must take the liberty to declare, that he could, by no means, give into the measures that had lately been taken to enter into a negotiation of peace with France, upon the foot of the seven preliminary articles; for, he was of the same opinion with the rest of the Allies, that the safety and liberties of Europe would be in imminent danger, if Spain and the West Indies were left to the House of Bourbon; which, with all humility, and as he thought himself in duty bound, he had declared to her majesty, whom he had the honour to wait on after his return from Holland; and, therefore, he was for inserting in the Address the Clause offered by the earl of Nottingham." The amendment of Nottingham was to the effect "that no peace could be safe or honourable to Great Britain, or Europe, if Spain and the West Indies were allotted to the House of Bourbon." The amendment was carried by a majority of sixty-two against fifty-four. A similar amendment in the Commons was rejected by a majority of two hundred and thirty-two against a hundred and six. In the Address of the lower House to the queen, the feeling against Marlborough was kept up by an especial reference to "the arts and devices of those who, for private views, may delight in war." The ministers of queen Anne put a falsehood into her mouth in her answer to the Address of the Lords: "I should be sorry any one could think I would not do my utmost to recover Spain and the West Indies from the House of Bourbon." The ministerial duplicity was a result of the terror which they felt at their probable ejection from power, and at the prospect of Whig revenge upon the discovery of their clandestine dealings with France. Swift has related that the most bitter of their opponents, the earl of Wharton, was observed in the House to smile, and put his hands to his neck when any of the ministry was speaking, by which he would have it understood that some heads were in danger."+ Swift begged St. John to send him abroad "before a change." He says, "I took him aside after dinner, told him how I had served them, and had asked no reward, but thought I might ask security." We doubt if he was altogether in a jocular mood, when he thus manifested his fears to Oxford: "I told lord-treasurer I should have the advantage of him; for he would lose his head, and I should only be hanged, and so carry my body entire to the grave." § Party-hatreds were becoming so intense, that heading and hanging were not altogether out of the question. "Parliamentary History," vol. vi. col. 1038. +"Four Last Years of Queen Anne." § Ibid., Dec. 8. 1711.] MARLBOROUGH DISMISSED FROM ALL HIS OFFICES. 379 But lord-treasurer and secretary kept their places, and with their majority in the Commons, and their better management of the queen-who had been somewhat impatient of their attempts to govern her-they turned their thoughts to the mode in which they could best damage and destroy their adversaries. Marlborough was the first victim. The "falcon " Churchill, was "hawk'd at and killed" by "the mousing owl," Harley. On the 31st of December, the following entry was made in the minutes of the Cabinet Council: "Being informed that an information against the duke of Marlborough was laid before the House of Commons, by the Commissioners of the public accounts, her majesty thought fit to dismiss him from all his employments, that the matter might undergo an impartial investigation." The prelude to "an impartial investigation" was to load the object of it with disgrace. On the 1st of January, Swift enters in his Journal," Marlborough is turned out of all . . . . . If the ministry be not sure of a peace, I shall wonder at this step, and do not approve it at best. The queen and lordtreasurer mortally hate the duke of Marlborough, and to that he owes his fall, more than to his other faults . . . . . Opinion is a mighty matter in war, and I doubt the French think it impossible to conquer an army that he leads, and our soldiers think the same; and how far even this step may encourage the French to play tricks with us, no one knows." The one-sided pamphleteer could think impartially in the private record of his feelings and opinions. The information against the duke of Marlborough would, in another generation, have properly consigned a great public servant to the lowest depth of ignominy, and have called for exemplary punishment. He was an avaricious man; he clutched at all the gold he could safely touch, and he kept it tightly buttoned up, to his own undisguised satisfaction. Peterborough measured his character pretty accurately, when, being mistaken by a truculent mob for Marlborough in the wane of his popularity, he exclaimed, "I am not the duke, and I will prove it. I have only five guineas in my pocket, and you shall have them." But Marlborough was too cautious to seize upon perquisites and appropriate funds for which he had not strict precedent. The charges against him were under two heads, and were declared established by large majorities in the House of Commons: 1. "That the taking several sums of money, annually, by the duke of Marlborough from the contractors for furnishing the bread and bread waggons in the Low Countries, was unwarrantable and illegal." This charge against him came to the knowledge of the duke before he returned to England in November, and he at once wrote to the Commissioners of public accounts, not denying the information which sir Solomon de Medina had given them, that he had made such payments, but saying, "this is no more but what has been allowed as a perquisite to the general, or commander-in-chief, of the army in the Low Countries, even before the Revolution, and since." He added his assurance that whatever had been so received had been "constantly employed for the service of the public, in keeping secret correspondence, and getting intelligence of the enemy's motions and designs." "# The second resolution of the Commons was, "that the deduction of 2 per cent. from the pay of the foreign troops in her majesty's service, is Coxe, vol. vi. p. 124. 380 NEW PEERS CREATED. [1712. public money, and ought to be accounted for." Marlborough, in his letter to the Commissioners, had anticipated this second charge, by informing them that, as the plenipotentiary of William III., he had negotiated with the foreign states, that 2 per cent. should be deducted from the pay of their troops, to cover all charges for secret service; and that when he succeeded to the command, the queen, by warrant, authorized his receipt of the same per-centage, which he had strictly applied "for procuring timely and good advices." The question of Marlborough's criminality may long remain an open one. But we cannot have a stronger proof of the growth of good government, than the certainty that no such temptation to dishonesty could now be presented to any high public servant; and that no one who has now the conduct of civil or military affairs would incur the fearful responsibility of disbursing large sums of money without being accountable for them. Marlborough's defence was certainly very incomplete, as judged by the opinions of our own times; but it seems to have satisfied all but the furious partizans of the ministry to whom his high influence, especially in foreign courts, was a serious obstacle to their policy. When the queen dismissed him by an insulting letter, he boldly replied he would not "join in the counsel of a man who, in my opinion, puts your majesty upon all manner of extremities. And it is not my opinion only, but the opinion of all mankind, that the friendship of France must needs be destructive to your majesty, there being in that court a root of enmity, irreconcileable to your majesty's government, and the religion of these kingdoms." * The discomfiture of the ministry in the House of Lords was stopped from going farther, by a bold but dangerous manoeuvre. They created twelve new peers. Lord Dartmouth has given an interesting account of what came to his knowledge with regard to this measure:-"I was never so much surprised as when the queen drew a list of twelve lords out of her pocket, and ordered me to bring warrants for them; there not having been the least intimation before it was to be put in execution. I asked her, if she designed to have them all made at once. She asked me, if I had any exceptions to the legality of it. I said, no; but doubted very much of the expediency, for I feared it would have a very ill effect in the House of Lords, and no good one in the kingdom. She said, she had made fewer lords than any of her predecessors, and I saw the duke of Marlborough and the Whigs were resolved to distress her as much as they could, and she must do what she could to help herself. I told her, I wished it proved a remedy to what she so justly complained of, but I thought it my duty to tell her my apprehensions, as well as execute her commands. She thanked me, and said, she liked it as little as I did, but did not find that anybody could propose a better expedient. I asked lord Oxford afterwards, what was the real inducement for taking so odious a course, when there were less shocking means to have acquired the same end. He said, the Scotch lords were grown so extravagant in their demands, that it was high time to let them see they were not so much wanted as they imagined; for they were now come to expect a reward for every vote they gave." There was no decided notice taken of this proceeding in the House of Lords. Lord Wharton took occasion to say one of * Coxe, vol. vi. p. 154. + Note on Burnet, vol. vi. p. 87. |