Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ of desperation, and he, with his whole kingdom, lay at the mercy of Marlborough. Louis had announced his resolve to lead the last army he could muster in person, and conquer or die; but the measures of the ministry averted the alternative, and saved his throne at the instant of its having become defenceless. The perfidious desertion of England from the Grand Alliance paralysed it. England consummated her treachery and dishonour by the peace of Utrecht, which Mr Pitt justly stigmatised as "the indelible reproach of the age," and which has entailed on her long-continuing disaster. As for Marlborough, almost every conceivable kind of insult and provocation was heaped upon him; scurrilous mercenaries haunted him with libel and ridicule; and to complete the climax of national meanness, the Treasury payments for the works at Blenheim were discontinued, and the contractors and workmen stimulated to sue the Duke for the arrears due to them, to the extent of £30,000; while a peer, in his place in Parliament, actually charged the veteran hero – John Duke of Marlborough – in his presence, with "having led his troops to certain destruction, in order to profit by the sale of the officers' commissions!"41 The Duke deigned no reply, but on leaving the house sent his slanderer a challenge, which the terrified peer communicated to the proper quarter, and the Queen's interference saved him from standing at twelve paces distance from John Duke of Marlborough. To escape the torturing indignities and outrages to which he was exposed, Marlborough obtained passports and went abroad.

      The Duke of Marlborough was received on the Continent with almost the honours due to a crowned head. At Antwerp his arrival and departure were signalised by triple discharges of artillery; the governor received him outside the walls with obsequious respect; deafening acclamations resounded from the multitude as he passed through the streets, every one struggling to catch a glimpse of dishonoured greatness. "All," says Mr Alison, "were struck with his noble air and demeanour, softened, though not weakened, by the approach of age. They declared that his appearance was not less overpowering than his sword. Many burst into tears when they recollected what he had been, and what he was, and how unaccountably the great nation to which he belonged had fallen from the height of glory to such degradation." What pangs must have wrung the heart of the illustrious veteran at such a moment! "Yet was his manner so courteous, and yet animated, his conversation so simple, and yet cheerful, that it was commonly said at the time, 'that the only things he had forgotten were his own deeds, and the only things he remembered were the misfortunes of others!'"

      During his absence, his shameless traducers redoubled their efforts to secure his ruin. The terror of his name, the shadow of his distant greatness, must, however, frequently have made themselves felt, if only with the effect of blinding them to the folly of their own machinations. Their calumnious charges were annihilated by him from abroad the moment they reached him; and those who had prepared such charges, ignominiously silenced by his clear and decisive representations. But Blenheim was within the power of a magnanimous people, and they caused the erection of it at the public cost to be suspended! The principal creditors sued the Duke personally for what was due to them; and ultimately Blenheim, "this noble pile, this proud monument of a nation's gratitude," would have remained a ruin to this day, but for the Duke's own private contribution of no less a sum than £60,000! One's cheek tingles with shame at the recital; but there is the humiliating fact —

      "Pudet hæc opprobria nobis,

      Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse repelli."

      The Duke of Marlborough spent nearly two years on the Continent. Having quitted England on the 30th October 1712, he returned on the 4th August 1714; but under what circumstances? In the full splendour of the romance of history. In contact with Marlborough, every event seems to swell into great porportions, as if owning the presence and power of greatness.

      While abroad, his commanding intellect engaged itself in the noblest of causes – upholding the interests of civil and religious liberty, which were bound up indissolubly with the Hanoverian succession. He might have retired for ever from the world, in stern disgust at the treatment which he had experienced; but his magnanimity would not suffer him. He knew that civil despotism, and the triumph of the Romish faith, were identified with the success of the Louis of his day, as they appear to be with a Louis of our day – the Louis, at this moment, of France. The restoration of the Stuart line was the symbol of the triumph of Popery; and Marlborough continued anxiously to watch the progress of public events, with reference to that "consummation" so "devoutly" to be deprecated. The two years referred to were those of an immeasurably momentous crisis, big with the ultimate destinies of this country. Marlborough was, throughout that crisis, as clear-sighted, resolute, energetic, and skilful in securing the Protestant succession, as he had ever been in the conduct of his wars, every one of which had direct reference to that high and glorious object. He continued the very life and soul of the good cause, which he advanced by incessant watchfulness and discreet and energetic action, carrying on a constant correspondence with his friends both at home and abroad. At length Bolingbroke reached the summit of advancement, and became virtually prime minister. Bent upon the restoration of the Stuarts, in two days' time he had organised a thoroughly Jacobite cabinet, which would unquestionably have proceeded to seat the Stuarts on the throne. But the awful hand of God appeared suddenly in the ordering of events: "The angel of death," to use Mr Alison's words, "defeated the whole objects for which the ministers were labouring so anxiously, and for which they had sacrificed the security and glory of their country." Civil war was almost in the act of breaking out, when the Queen died; having at the last moment taken a step, in nominating the Duke of Shrewsbury to be Lord-Treasurer, which annihilated the guilty hopes of Bolingbroke and his party. This was the last act of her life; and on her death the Protestant party took prompt and vigorous measures. George I. was instantly proclaimed king, and in three days' time the great Marlborough reappeared on the scene, the very guardian angel of the newly-proclaimed king. His enemies were struck with consternation. "We are all frightened out of our wits upon the Duke of Marlborough's going to England,"42 wrote one of them to Bolingbroke. The illustrious personage was welcomed with enthusiasm similar to that with which he had been formerly familiar; an immense concourse of citizens attended him into the city, shouting – "Long live George I.! Long live the Duke of Marlborough!" He was at once sworn in of the Privy Council, and visited by the foreign ministers and all the nobility and gentry within reach, and in the evening appeared in the House of Lords, and took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, his old companions in arms, the Grenadier Guards, firing a feu-de-joie on the auspicious occasion. "That day effaced the traces of years of injustice. The death of a single individual" – the weak, ungrateful, vacillating Anne – "had restored the patriotic hero to the position in which he stood after the battle of Blenheim!" Though he had resolved to take part no more in the conduct of affairs, he was prevailed upon to resume his post of commander-in-chief, in which great capacity his new sovereign received him with extraordinary demonstrations of satisfaction, "proud to do honour to the chief under whom he himself had gained his first honours on the field of Oudenarde!"43 The discomfited Jacobites, Bolingbroke, Ormond, and Oxford, were impeached for high treason, for their conduct in seeking to overturn the Act of Settlement, and restore the Stuarts. The former two fled to France, but Oxford remained, and was prosecuted, but acquitted. Here again the character of Marlborough has been malefied, by the charge of having done all in his power to thwart the prosecution, for fear of Lord Oxford's revealing the correspondence of the Duke in early life, after the Revolution. This slander, however, is decisively refuted by two facts – that the Duke voted in every stage of the prosecution! and by the still more decisive fact, that he was found to have been specially exempted from the proffered amnesty published by the Pretender when he landed in Scotland.44 This last event – the Rebellion in Scotland – must have been indeed, as Mr Alison remarks, a sore trial to Marlborough – "more severe than any he had experienced since James II. had been precipitated from the throne; for here was the son of his early patron and benefactor asserting, in arms, his right to the throne of his fathers!" But the Duke was here true as steel to his principles; and his energy and sagacity extinguished the formidable insurrection, and with it the hopes of the Stuarts. The Pretender returned humbled and ruined to the Continent, in time to witness the death СКАЧАТЬ