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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 gynaecian 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.

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.

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 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.

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, 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. 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.

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 re?stablish 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.

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 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 re?stablished 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.

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 Edm?e 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.

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.

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.

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?

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 re?stablish 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.

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.

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.

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