made by a princess, his sister-in-law, upon those territories, although the case had already been decided against her in the imperial courts. As this army could not continue to hold the country which it had seized, it received deliberate orders to ravage the whole of it, to burn the towns, and to destroy the trees, crops, and vines. The order was as ruthlessly obeyed as it had been barbarously conceived. A thrill of horror passed through Europe. The Grand A league of opposition had been forming against Lewis, known under the name of the 'League of Augsburg,' which, now that William had been successful and the English Revolution had been consummated without hindrance from France, received the accession of England and Holland, and was called The Grand Alliance. Augsburg. Third War. The war that followed, the fourth act in the drama of Lewis' ambition, may be divided into two parts: the one -the attempts of Lewis to restore the exiled James, the campaign in Ireland, of which the battle of the Boyne was the centre, and the sea-fights in the Channel; the other-the Continental War. In the former the English may be said to have been wholly successful; for though the French won the battle of Beachy Head, that victory had no permanent results, and was soon and fully retrieved. In the Continental War the results were nearly balanced, for though the French won most of the pitched battles, the peculiar genius of William asserted itself, the qualities which made him more formidable after a defeat than others after victory. Three years before the century closed, this war against the Grand Alliance was brought to an end by the Peace of Ryswick. The nations were tired of war, and welcomed peace; but the ambition of Lewis made it rather a cessation of hostilities than Peace of a real peace. Once more it was necessary to form the Grand Alliance: once more to resist his encroachments. CHAPTER III. THE NEW DRAMATIS PERSONE. IN accordance with the provision of the Bill of Rights, confirmed by the Act of Settlement, William was succeeded on the throne by his sister-in-law, Anne, daughter of James II. and Anne Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon. Succession of Queen Anne. In character, and in fitness for the position of sovereign, Anne was very different from William. Character. She had not his discernment, nor his statesmanship, nor his resolution. On the contrary, she was without strength of character. She could not be expected to establish a new policy, nor, through good report and evil report, to adhere to one already established. She had always been, and, after her accession she still remained, under the influence of some stronger mind. Such influence was essential to her.. There is no feature in her character which is so important to recollect as this, for it explains a good deal of her reign, especially two of its salient events—her adoption and her abandonment of the Grand Alliance. Anne, however, though no great ruler of men, possessed personal qualities which would have made her highly esteemed in private life, and which endeared her to her subjects. Her private character was irreproachable. She was kind, affectionate, and good; a warm friend, and with a humane heart. But above all she was sincerely religious, like both her grandfathers, and, unlike her father, she was warmly attached to the doctrines and rites of the Church of England. She often shared the unreasonable fears of the High Church party, and was easily shaken by the cry-'The Church is in danger!' She was very popular with the English people, and mainly for this reason, that she was peculiarly an English queen, having, as she said in her first speech from the throne, an ‘entirely English' heart. Coming between a Dutch king, whom many Englishmen had accepted as a necessity, but never loved, and a German prince, who could not even speak their language, the English have always looked back with affection to her reign, and have enshrined her in their hearts as 'Good Queen Anne.' Anne had married Prince George of Denmark, a man of dull understanding and of coarse habits. I have tried him drunk, and I have tried him sober,' said 6 Husband. Children. Charles II., of him, and there is nothing in him.' Had he been a man of more capacity, it is not unlikely that he would have been placed upon the throne as William had been; but with him it was impossible. To this husband Queen Anne was tenderly attached. By him she had a large family, but all of their children had died in infancy, with the exception of Prince William, who, in the last reign, had been created Duke of Gloucester. In him the hopes of the English people were centred. King William appointed Marlborough as his governor, Bishop Burnet as his preceptor. 'My Lord,' he who seldom paid compliments had said to Marlborough, on entrusting him with his office, 'make him but what you are, and my nephew will be all I wish to see.' But in the last year of the seventeenth century, the same year which proved fatal to the wretched King Charles of Spain, the young prince died. Upon his death the Act of Settlement was made law, by which it was decided to whom the crown should pass upon the death of Anne, for when Anne came to the throne, aged thirty-seven, she was childless. She now appointed Prince George to the office of Lord High Admiral, an office for which he was manifestly unfit. It has been said that the queen was entirely under the influence of favourites. At her accession, and for Lady Marl- many years before, during the whole of borough. William's reign, and even earlier, she had been under the influence of Sarah Jennings, wife of the Duke of Marlborough, a woman of commanding mind, of great ambition, and with a very imperious temper. Her intimacy with the queen was very close. They were in the habit of corresponding with each other under assumed names. The Queen was Mrs. Morley; the Duchess, Mrs. Freeman; their husbands, Prince George and the Duke, were Mr. Morley and Mr. Freeman respectively. The name Freeman was, perhaps, adopted by the favourite as a symbol of the liberties which its bearer thought herself entitled to take with her friend. It would not be too much to say that she governed the queen. Some, her husband amongst the number, have had the faculty of charming whilst they ruled, so that the ruling was concealed: she had not. The real hero of this reign, the successor of King William in his policy of consistent opposition to France, Marlwas John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. borough. In this man were united the noblest and the meanest qualities, and it is therefore difficult to form a just estimate of him. For our purpose it will be sufficient to pass very quickly over his earlier life, and to give a short sketch of his character. Fortunately for us, at this point in his career, ' that great man is already shaking off the slough of his baser life.' His life. Marlborough, as a young man, was attached to the household of James, Duke of York, through the disgraceful fact that his sister was the prince's mistress. At the age of twenty-three he served in a campaign against the Dutch under the great Turenne, whose favourable notice he attracted. He rose quickly through the different military grades, and shortly after James's accession to the throne he commanded the English troops sent against the Pretender, Monmouth, whom he defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor. James wished him to become a Roman Catholic; but from this step he shrank, and when afterwards the Revolution took place, this proposal was the reason that he gave for his desertion. James, placing implicit trust in him, sent Churchill forward with troops against William's invading army. Instead of fighting William, he joined him. During William's reign he is, at the beginning, in positions of trust, but he himself does not seem certain as to his future, or genuine in his sympathy with the Revolution; for, though he held high office under William, he yet intrigued with the exiled James, probably wishing to be safe whichever side triumphed. William discovered his secret correspondence with the Jacobites, and dismissed him from all his employments. Marlborough boasted of having betrayed to James, and so to the French, the secret of an enterprise that the English were about to make against Brest; which betrayal led to the failure of the attempt, and the loss of the commander with 800 men. Yet before William's death Marlborough was reconciled to him, and as we have seen was entrusted by him with the important office of governor to the young Duke of Gloucester. It is also said that William, when contemplating the War of the Spanish Succession, designed that Marlborough should command the armies of the Grand Alliance. |