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nisters thought that it would be highly | candour, tells us, what we believe was impolitic to intrust the conduct of the not known before, that his ancestor's Spanish war to so volatile and ro- most distinguished exploit, the conmantic a person. They therefore gave quest of Minorca, was suggested by the command to Lord Galway, an ex- Marlborough. Staremberg, a methodperienced veteran, a man who was in ical tactician of the German school, war what Molière's doctors were in was sent by the emperor to command medicine, who thought it much more in Spain. Two languid campaigns honourable to fail according to rule, followed, during which neither of the than to succeed by innovation, and who hostile armies did any thing memorwould have been very much ashamed able, but during which both were nearly of himself if he had taken Monjuich by starved. At length, in 1710, the chiefs of the means so strange as those which Peterborough employed. This great com- Allied forces resolved to venture on mander conducted the campaign of bolder measures. They began the cam1707 in the most scientific manner. paign with a daring move, pushed into On the plain of Almanza he encoun- Arragon, defeated the troops of Philip tered the army of the Bourbons. He at Almenara, defeated them again at drew up his troops according to the Saragossa, and advanced to Madrid. methods prescribed by the best writers, The King was again a fugitive. The and in a few hours lost eighteen Castilians sprang to arms with the thousand men, a hundred and twenty same enthusiasm which they had disstandards, all his baggage and all his ar- played in 1706. The conquerors found tillery. Valencia and Arragon were the capital a desert. The people shut instantly conquered by the French, and, themselves up in their houses, and reat the close of the year, the mountainous fused to pay any mark of respect to province of Catalonia was the only part the Austrian prince. It was necessary of Spain which still adhered to Charles. to hire a few children to shout before "Do you remember, child," says the him in the streets. Meanwhile, the court foolish woman in the Spectator to her of Philip at Valladolid was thronged husband, "that the pigeon-house fell by nobles and prelates. Thirty thouthe very afternoon that our careless sand people followed their King from wench spilt the salt upon the table?" Madrid to his new residence. Women 'Yes, my dear," replies the gentleman, of rank, rather than remain behind, "and the next post brought us an performed the journey on foot. The account of the battle of Almanza." peasants enlisted by thousands. Money, The approach of disaster in Spain had arms, and provisions, were supplied in been for some time indicated by omens abundance by the zeal of the people. much clearer than the mishap of the The country round Madrid was infested saltcellar; an ungrateful prince, an by small parties of irregular horse. undisciplined army, a divided council, The Allies could not send off a deenvy triumphant over merit, a man of spatch to Arragon, or introduce a supgenius recalled, a pedant and a slug-ply of provisions into the capital. It gard intrusted with supreme command. The battle of Almanza decided the fate of Spain. The loss was such as Marlborough or Eugene could scarcely have retrieved, and was certainly not to be retrieved by Stanhope and Staremberg.

Stanhope, who took the command of the English army in Catalonia, was a man of respectable abilities, both in military and civil affairs, but fitter, we conceive, for a second than for a first place. Lord Mahon, with his usual

was unsafe for the Archduke to hunt in the immediate vicinity of the palace which he occupied.

The wish of Stanhope was to winter in Castile. But he stood alone in the council of war; and, indeed, it is not easy to understand how the Allies could have maintained themselves, through so unpropitious a season, in the midst of so hostile a population. Charles, whose personal safety was the first object of the generals, was sent with an escort of cavalry to Catalonia

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in November; and in December the He concluded a capitulation; and his army commenced its retreat towards gallant little army became prisoners of Arragon. war on honourable terms. But the Allies had to do with a Scarcely had Vendome signed the master-spirit. The King of France capitulation, when he learned that had lately sent the Duke of Vendome | Staremberg was marching to the relief to command in Spain. This man was of Stanhope. Preparations were indistinguished by the filthiness of his stantly made for a general action. On person, by the brutality of his demean- the day following that on which the our, by the gross buffoonery of his English had delivered up their arms, conversation, and by the impudence was fought the obstinate and bloody with which he abandoned himself to the fight of Villa-Viciosa. Staremberg remost nauseous of all vices. His slug-mained master of the field. Vendome gishness was almost incredible. Even reaped all the fruits of the battle. The when engaged in a campaign, he often Allies spiked their cannon, and retired passed whole days in his bed. His towards Arragon. But even in Arrastrange torpidity had been the cause of gon they found no place to rest. Vensome of the most serious disasters which dome was behind them. The guerilla the armies of the House of Bourbon parties were around them. They fled had sustained. But when he was roused to Catalonia; but Catalonia was inby any great emergency, his resources, vaded by a French army from Roussilhis energy, and his presence of mind, lon. At length the Austrian general, were such as had been found in no with six thousand harassed and disFrench general since the death of pirited men, the remains of a great and Luxembourg. victorious army, took refuge in BarAt this crisis, Vendome was all him-celona, almost the only place in Spain self. He set out from Talavera with which still recognised the authority of his troops, and pursued the retreating Charles. army of the Allies with a speed perhaps never equalled, in such a season, and in such a country. He marched night and day. He swam, at the head of his cavalry, the flooded stream of Henares, and, in a few days, overtook Stanhope, who was at Brihuega with the left wing of the Allied army. "Nobody with me," says the English general," imagined that they had any foot within some days' march of us; and our misfortune is owing to the incredible diligence which their army made." Stanhope had but just time to send off a messenger to the centre of the army, which was some leagues from Brihuega, before Vendome was upon him. The town was invested on every side. The The English administration which walls were battered with cannon. A had commenced the war against the mine was sprung under one of the House of Bourbon was an administragates. The English kept up a terrible tion composed of Tories. But the war fire till their powder was spent. They was a Whig war. It was the favourite then fought desperately with the bayo- scheme of William, the Whig King. net against overwhelming odds. They Lewis had provoked it by recognising, burned the houses which the assailants as sovereign of England, a prince pehad taken. But all was to no purpose. culiarly hateful to the Whigs. It had The British general saw that resistance placed England in a position of marked could produce only a useless carnage. | hostility to that power from which alone

Philip was now much safer at Madrid than his grandfather at Paris. All hope of conquering Spain in Spain was at an end. But in other quarters the House of Bourbon was reduced to the last extremity. The French armies had undergone a series of defeats in Germany, in Italy, and in the Netherlands. An immense force, flushed with victory, and commanded by the greatest generals of the age, was on the borders of France. Lewis had been forced to humble himself before the conquerors. He had even offered to abandon the cause of his grandson; and his offer had been rejected. But a great turn in affairs was approaching.

the Pretender could expect efficient | secuted clergyman. The country gensuccour. It had joined England in tlemen came to the rescue of the the closest union to a Protestant and clergy. A display of Tory feelings, republican state, to a state which had assisted in bringing about the Revolution, and which was willing to guarantee the execution of the Act of Settlement. Marlborough and Godolphin found that they were more zealously supported by their old opponents than by their old associates. Those ministers who were zealous for the war were gradually converted to Whiggism. The rest dropped off, and were succeeded by Whigs. Cowper became Chancellor. Sunderland, in spite of the very just antipathy of Anne, was made Secretary of State. On the death of the Prince of Denmark a more extensive change took place. Wharton became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Somers President of the Council. At length the administration was wholly in the hands of the Low Church party.

such as England had not witnessed since the closing years of Charles the Second's reign, appalled the Ministers and gave boldness to the Queen. She turned out the Whigs, called Harley and St. John to power, and dissolved the Parliament. The elections went strongly against the late government. Stanhope, who had in his absence been put in nomination for Westminster, was defeated by a Tory candidate. The new Ministers, finding themselves masters of the new Parliament, were induced by the strongest motives to conclude a peace with France. The whole system of alliance in which the country was engaged was a Whig system. The general by whom the English armies had constantly been led to victory, and for whom it was impossible to find a substitute, was now, whatever he might formerly have been, a Whig general. If Marlborough were discarded it was probable that some great disaster would follow. Yet if he were to retain his command, every great action which he might perform would raise the credit of the party in opposition.

A peace was therefore concluded between England and the Princes of the House of Bourbon. Of that peace Lord Mahon speaks in terms of the severest reprehension. He is, indeed, an excellent Whig of the time of the first Lord Stanhope. "I cannot but pause for a moment," says he, "to observe how much the course of a cen tury has inverted the meaning of our party nicknames, how much a modern Tory resembles a Whig of Queen Anne's reign, and a Tory of Queen Anne's reign a modern Whig."

In the year 1710 a violent change took place. The Queen had always been a Tory at heart. Her religious feelings were all on the side of the Established Church. Her family feelings pleaded in favour of her exiled brother. Her selfish feelings disposed her to favour the zealots of prerogative. The affection which she felt for the Duchess of Marlborough was the great security of the Whigs. That affection had at length turned to deadly aversion. While the great party which had long swayed the destinies of Europe was undermined by bedchamber women at St. James's, a violent storm gathered in the country. A foolish parson had preached a foolish sermon against the principles of the Revolution. The wisest members of the government were for letting the man alone. But Godolphin, inflamed with We grant one half of Lord Mahon's all the zeal of a new-made Whig, and proposition: from the other half we exasperated by a nickname which was altogether dissent. We allow that a applied to him in this unfortunate dis- modern Tory resembles, in many course, insisted that the preacher should things, a Whig of Queen Anne's reign. be impeached. The exhortations of It is natural that such should be the the mild and sagacious Somers were case. The worst things of one age disregarded. The impeachment was often resemble the best things of anbrought; the doctor was convicted; other. A modern shopkeeper's house and the accusers were ruined. The is as well furnished as the house of a clergy came to the rescue of the per- considerable merchant in Anne's reign.

Very plain people now wear finer | really come up with the Whigs. The cloth than Beau Fielding or Beau absolute position of the parties has Edgeworth could have procured in been altered; the relative position reQueen Anne's reign. We would rather mains unchanged. Through the whole trust to the apothecary of a modern of that great movement, which began village than to the physician of a large before these party-names existed, and town in Anne's reign. A modern which will continue after they have beboardingschool miss could tell the most come obsolete, through the whole of learned professor of Anne's reign some that great movement of which the things in geography, astronomy, and Charter of John, the institution of the chemistry, which would surprise him. House of Commons, the extinction of The science of government is an ex- Villanage, the separation from the see perimental science; and therefore it is, of Rome, the expulsion of the Stuarts, like all other experimental sciences, a the reform of the Representative Sysprogressive science. Lord Mahon tem, are successive stages, there have would have been a very good Whig in been, under some name or other, two the days of Harley. But Harley, whom sets of men, those who were before Lord Mahon censures so severely, was their age, and those who were behind very Whiggish when compared even it, those who were the wisest among with Clarendon; and Clarendon was their contemporaries, and those who quite a democrat when compared with gloried in being no wiser than their Lord Burleigh. If Lord Mahon lives, as great grandfathers. It is delightful to we hope he will, fifty years longer, we think, that, in due time, the last of have no doubt that, as he now boasts of those who straggle in the rear of the the resemblance which the Tories of great march will occupy the place now our time bear to the Whigs of the Re- occupied by the advanced guard. The volution, he will then boast of the re- Tory Parliament of 1710 would have semblance borne by the Tories of 1882 passed for a most liberal Parliament in to those immortal patriots, the Whigs the days of Elizabeth; and there are at of the Reform Bill present few members of the ConserSociety, we believe, is constantly ad-vative Club who would not have been vancing in knowledge. The tail is fully qualified to sit with Halifax and now where the head was some genera- Somers at the Kit-cat. tions ago. But the head and the tail still keep their distance. A nurse of this century is as wise as a justice of the quorum and cust-alorum in Shallow's time. The wooden spoon of this year would puzzle a senior wrangler of the reign of George the Second. A boy from the National School reads and spells better than half the knights of the shire in the October Club. But there is still as wide a difference as ever between justices and nurses, senior wranglers and wooden spoons, members of Parliament and children at charity schools. In the same way, though a Tory may now be very like what a Whig was a hundred and twenty years ago, the Whig is as much in advance of the Tory as ever. The stag, in the Treatise on the Bathos, who "feared his hind feet would o'ertake the fore," was not more mistaken than Lord Mahon, if he thinks that he has

Though, therefore, we admit that a modern Tory bears some resemblance to a Whig of Queen Anne's reign, we can by no means admit that a Tory of Anne's reign resembled a modern Whig. Have the modern Whigs passed laws for the purpose of closing the entrance of the House of Commons against the new interests created by trade? Do the modern Whigs hold the doctrine of divine right? Have the modern Whigs laboured to exclude all Dissenters from office and power? The modern Whigs are, indeed, at the present moment, like the Tories of 1712, desirous of peace, and of close union with France. But is there no difference between the France of 1712 and the France of 1832 ? Is France now the stronghold of the "Popish tyranny" and the "arbitrary power against which our ancestors fought and prayed? Lord Mahon will find we

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during the last four years of Anne's
reign, the Tories were in the right, and
the Whigs in the wrong. That question
was, whether England ought to con-
clude peace without exacting from Phi-

think, that his parallel is, in all essential
circumstances, as incorrect as that
which Fluellen drew between Macedon
and Monmouth, or as that which an
ingenious Tory lately discovered be-
tween Archbishop Williams and Arch-lip a resignation of the Spanish crown?
bishop Vernon.

No Parliamentary struggle, from the We agree with Lord Mahon in time of the Exclusion Bill to the time thinking highly of the Whigs of Queen of the Reform Bill, has been so violent Anne's reign. But that part of their as that which took place between the conduct which he selects for especial authors of the Treaty of Utrecht and praise is precisely the part which we the War Party. The Commons were think most objectionable. We revere for peace; the Lords were for vigorous them as the great champions of political hostilities. The Queen was compelled and of intellectual liberty. It is true to choose which of her two highest prethat, when raised to power, they were rogatives she would exercise, whether not exempt from the faults which power she would create Peers, or dissolve the naturally engenders. It is true that Parliament. The ties of party superthey were men born in the seventeenth seded the ties of neighbourhood and of century, and that they were therefore blood. The members of the hostile ignorant of many truths which are factions would scarcely speak to each familiar to the men of the nineteenth other, or bow to each other. The women century. But they were, what the re-appeared at the theatres bearing the formers of the Church were before them, and what the reformers of the House of Commons have been since, the leaders of their species in a right direction. It is true that they did not allow to political discussion that latitude which to us appears reasonable and safe; but to them we owe the removal of the Censorship. It is true that they did not carry the principle of religious liberty to its full extent; but to them we owe the Toleration Act.

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The badges of their political sect. schism extended to the most remote counties of England. Talents, such as had seldom before been displayed in political controversy, were enlisted in the service of the hostile parties. On one side was Steele, gay, lively, drunk with animal spirits and with factious animosity, and Addison, with his polished satire, his inexhaustible fertility of fancy, and his graceful simplicity of style. In the front of the opposite Though, however, we think that the ranks appeared a darker and fiercer spirit, the apostate politician, the ribald Whigs of Anne's reign were, as body, far superior in wisdom and pub-priest, the perjured lover, a heart burnlic virtue to their contemporaries the ing with hatred against the whole huTories, we by no means hold ourselves man race, a mind richly stored with bound to defend all the measures of images from the dunghill and the lazarA life of action, house. The ministers triumphed, and our favourite party. if it is to be useful, must be a life of the peace was concluded. Then came compromise. But speculation admits the reaction. A new sovereign asof no compromise. A public man is cended the throne. The Whigs enjoyed often under the necessity of consenting the confidence of the King and of the to measures which he dislikes, lest he Parliament. The unjust severity with should endanger the success of mea- which the Tories had treated Marlsures which he thinks of vital impor-borough and Walpole was more than tance. But the historian lies under no such necessity. On the contrary, it is one of his most sacred duties to point out clearly the errors of those whose general conduct he admires.

It seems to us, then, that, on the great question which divided England

retaliated. Harley and Prior were
thrown into prison; Bolingbroke and
Ormond were compelled to take refuge
in a foreign land. The wounds in-
flicted in this desperate conflict con-
tinued to rankle for many years.
was long before the members of either

It

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