The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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Though the assailants had lost all the advantage which belongs to
a surprise, they came on manfully. In the front of the battle
were the British commanded by Count Solmes. The division which
was to lead the way was Mackay's. He was to have been supported,
according to William's plan, by a strong body of foot and horse.
Though most of Mackay's men had never before been under fire,
their behaviour gave promise of Blenheim and Ramilies. They first
encountered the Swiss, who held a distinguished place in the
French army. The fight was so close and desperate that the
muzzles of the muskets crossed. The Swiss were driven back with
fearful slaughter. More than eighteen hundred of them appear from
the French returns to have been killed or wounded. Luxemburg
afterwards said that he had never in his life seen so furious a
struggle. He collected in haste the opinion of the generals who
surrounded him. All thought that the emergency was one which
could be met by no common means. The King's household must charge
the English. The Marshal gave the word; and the household, headed
by the princes of the blood, came on, flinging their muskets back
on their shoulders. "Sword in hand," was the cry through all the
ranks of that terrible brigade: "sword in hand. No firing. Do it
with the cold steel." After a long and desperate resistance the
English were borne down. They never ceased to repeat that, if
Solmes had done his duty by them, they would have beaten even the
household. But Solmes gave them no effective support. He pushed
forward some cavalry which, from the nature of the ground, could
do little or nothing. His infantry he would not suffer to stir.
They could do no good, he said, and he would not send them to be
slaughtered. Ormond was eager to hasten to the assistance of his
countrymen, but was not permitted. Mackay sent a pressing message
to represent that he and his men were left to certain
destruction; but all was vain. "God's will be done," said the
brave veteran. He died as he had lived, like a good Christian and
a good soldier. With him fell Douglas and Lanier, two generals
distinguished among the conquerors of Ireland. Mountjoy too was
among the slain. After languishing three years in the Bastile, he
had just been exchanged for Richard Hamilton, and, having been
converted to Whiggism by wrongs more powerful than all the
arguments of Locke and Sidney, had instantly hastened to join
William's camp as a volunteer.311 Five fine regiments were
entirely cut to pieces. No part of this devoted band would have
escaped but for the courage and conduct of Auverquerque, who came
to the rescue in the moment of extremity with two fresh
battalions. The gallant manner in which he brought off the
remains of Mackay's division was long remembered with grateful
admiration by the British camp fires. The ground where the
conflict had raged was piled with corpses; and those who buried
the slain remarked that almost all the wounds had been given in
close fighting by the sword or the bayonet.

It was said that William so far forgot his wonted stoicism as to
utter a passionate exclamation at the way in which the English
regiments had been sacrificed. Soon, however, he recovered his
equanimity, and determined to fall back. It was high time; for
the French army was every moment becoming stronger, as the
regiments commanded by Boufflers came up in rapid succession. The
allied army returned to Lambeque unpursued and in unbroken
order.312

The French owned that they had about seven thousand men killed
and wounded. The loss of the allies had been little, if at all,
greater. The relative strength of the armies was what it had been
on the preceding day; and they continued to occupy their old
positions. But the moral effect of the battle was great. The
splendour of William's fame grew pale. Even his admirers were
forced to own that, in the field, he was not a match for
Luxemburg. In France the news was received with transports of joy
and pride. The Court, the Capital, even the peasantry of the
remotest provinces, gloried in the impetuous valour which had
been displayed by so many youths, the heirs of illustrious names.
It was exultingly and fondly repeated all over the kingdom that
the young Duke of Chartres could not by any remonstrances be kept
out of danger, that a ball had passed through his coat that he
had been wounded in the shoulder. The people lined the roads to
see the princes and nobles who returned from Steinkirk. The
jewellers devised Steinkirk buckles; the perfumers sold Steinkirk
powder. But the name of the field of battle was peculiarly given
to a new species of collar. Lace neckcloths were then worn by men
of fashion; and it had been usual to arrange them with great
care. But at the terrible moment when the brigade of Bourbonnais
was flying before the onset of the allies, there was no time for
foppery; and the finest gentlemen of the Court came spurring to
the front of the line of battle with their rich cravats in
disorder. It therefore became a fashion among the beauties of
Paris to wear round their necks kerchiefs of the finest lace
studiously disarranged; and these kerchiefs were called
Steinkirks.313

In the camp of the allies all was disunion and discontent.
National jealousies and animosities raged without restraint or
disguise. The resentment of the English was loudly expressed.
Solmes, though he was said by those who knew him well to have
some valuable qualities, was not a man likely to conciliate
soldiers who were prejudiced against him as a foreigner. His
demeanour was arrogant, his temper ungovernable. Even before the
unfortunate day of Steinkirk the English officers did not
willingly communicate with him, and the private men murmured at
his harshness. But after the battle the outcry against him became
furious. He was accused, perhaps unjustly, of having said with
unfeeling levity, while the English regiments were contending
desperately against great odds, that he was curious to see how
the bulldogs would come off. Would any body, it was asked, now
pretend that it was on account of his superior skill and
experience that he had been put over the heads of so many English
officers? It was the fashion to say that those officers had never
seen war on a large scale. But surely the merest novice was
competent to do all that Solmes had done, to misunderstand
orders, to send cavalry on duty which none but infantry could
perform, and to look on at safe distance while brave men were cut
to pieces. It was too much to be at once insulted and sacrificed,
excluded from the honours of war, yet pushed on all its extreme
dangers, sneered at as raw recruits, and then left to cope
unsupported with the finest body of veterans in the world. Such
were the complains of the English army; and they were echoed by
the English nation.

Fortunately about this time a discovery was made which furnished
both the camp at Lambeque and the coffeehouses of London with a
subject of conversation much less agreeable to the Jacobites than
the disaster of Steinkirk.

A plot against the life of William had been, during some months,
maturing in the French War Office. It should seem that Louvois
had originally sketched the design, and had bequeathed it, still
rude, to his son and successor Barbesieux. By Barbesieux the plan
was perfected. The execution was entrusted to an officer named
Grandval. Grandval was undoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for
his country and his religion. He was indeed flighty and half
witted, but not on that account the less dangerous. Indeed a
flighty and half witted man is the very instrument generally
preferred by cunning politicians when very hazardous work is to
be done. No shrewd calculator would, for any bribe, however
enormous, have exposed himself to the fate of Chatel, of
Ravaillac, or of Gerarts.314

Grandval secured, as he conceived, the assistance of two
adventurers, Dumont, a Walloon, and Leefdale, a Dutchman. In
April, soon after William had arrived in the Low Countries, the
murderers were directed to repair to their post. Dumont was then
in Westphalia. Grandval and Leefdale were at Paris. Uden in North
Brabant was fixed as the place where the three were to meet and
whence they were to proceed together to the headquarters of the
allies. Before Grandval left Paris he paid a visit to Saint
Germains, and was presented to James and to Mary of Modena. "I
have been informed," said James, "of the business. If you and
your companions do me this service, you shall never want."

After this audience Grandval set out on his journey. He had not
the faintest suspicion that he had been betrayed both by the
accomplice who accompanied him and by the accomplice whom he was
going to meet. Dumont and Leefdale were not enthusiasts. They
cared nothing for the restoration of James, the grandeur of
Lewis, or the ascendency of the Church of Rome. It was plain to
every man of common sense that, whether the design succeeded or
failed, the reward of the assassins would probably be to be
disowned, with affected abhorrence, by the Courts of Versailles
and Saint Germains, and to be torn with redhot pincers, smeared
with melted lead, and dismembered by four horses. To vulgar
natures the prospect of such a martyrdom was not alluring. Both
these men, therefore, had, almost at the same time, though, as
far as appears, without any concert, conveyed to William, through
different channels, warnings that his life was in danger. Dumont
had acknowledged every thing to the Duke of Zell, one of the
confederate princes. Leefdale had transmitted full intelligence
through his relations who resided in Holland. Meanwhile Morel, a
Swiss Protestant of great learning who was then in France, wrote
to inform Burnet that the weak and hotheaded Grandval had been
heard to talk boastfully of the event which would soon astonish
the world, and had confidently predicted that the Prince of
Orange would not live to the end of the next month.

These cautions were not neglected. From the moment at which
Grandval entered the Netherlands, his steps were among snares.
His movements were watched; his words were noted; he was
arrested, examined, confronted with his accomplices, and sent to
the camp of the allies. About a week after the battle of
Steinkirk he was brought before a Court Martial. Ginkell, who had
been rewarded for his great services in Ireland with the title of
Earl of Athlone, presided; and Talmash was among the judges.
Mackay and Lanier had been named members of the board; but they
were no more; and their places were filled by younger officers.

The duty of the Court Martial was very simple; for the prisoner
attempted no defence. His conscience had, it should seem, been
suddenly awakened. He admitted, with expressions of remorse, the
truth of all the charges, made a minute, and apparently an
ingenuous, confession, and owned that he had deserved death. He
was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and underwent
his punishment with great fortitude and with a show of piety. He
left behind him a few lines, in which he declared that he was
about to lose his life for having too faithfully obeyed the
injunctions of Barbesieux.

His confession was immediately published in several languages,
and was read with very various and very strong emotions. That it
was genuine could not be doubted; for it was warranted by the
signatures of some of the most distinguished military men living.
That it was prompted by the hope of pardon could hardly be
supposed; for William had taken pains to discourage that hope.
Still less could it be supposed that the prisoner had uttered
untruths in order to avoid the torture. For, though it was the
universal practice in the Netherlands to put convicted assassins
to the rack in order to wring out from them the names of their
employers and associates, William had given orders that, on this
occasion, the rack should not be used or even named. It should be
added, that the Court did not interrogate the prisoner closely,
but suffered him to tell his story in his own way. It is
therefore reasonable to believe that his narrative is
substantially true; and no part of it has a stronger air of truth
than his account of the audience with which James had honoured
him at Saint Germains.

In our island the sensation produced by the news was great. The
Whigs loudly called both James and Lewis assassins. How, it was
asked, was it possible, without outraging common sense, to put an
innocent meaning on the words which Grandval declared that he had
heard from the lips of the banished King of England? And who that
knew the Court of Versailles would believe that Barbesieux, a
youth, a mere novice in politics, and rather a clerk than a
minister, would have dared to do what he had done without taking
his master's pleasure? Very charitable and very ignorant persons
might perhaps indulge a hope that Lewis had not been an accessory
before the fact. But that he was an accessory after the fact no
human being could doubt. He must have seen the proceedings of the
Court Martial, the evidence, the confession. If he really
abhorred assassination as honest men abhor it, would not
Barbesieux have been driven with ignominy from the royal
presence, and flung into the Bastile? Yet Barbesieux was still at
the War Office; and it was not pretended that he had been
punished even by a word or a frown. It was plain, then, that both
Kings were partakers in the guilt of Grandval. And if it were
asked how two princes who made a high profession of religion
could have fallen into such wickedness, the answer was that they
had learned their religion from the Jesuits. In reply to these
reproaches the English Jacobites said very little; and the French
government said nothing at all.315

The campaign in the Netherlands ended without any other event
deserving to be recorded. On the eighteenth of October William
arrived in England. Late in the evening of the twentieth he
reached Kensington, having traversed the whole length of the
capital. His reception was cordial. The crowd was great; the
acclamations were loud; and all the windows along his route, from
Aldgate to Piccadilly, were lighted up.316

But, notwithstanding these favourable symptoms, the nation was
disappointed and discontented. The war had been unsuccessful by
land. By sea a great advantage had been gained, but had not been
improved. The general expectation had been that the victory of
May would be followed by a descent on the coast of France, that
Saint Maloes would he bombarded, that the last remains of
Tourville's squadron would be destroyed, and that the arsenals of
Brest and Rochefort would be laid in ruins. This expectation was,
no doubt, unreasonable. It did not follow, because Rooke and his
seamen had silenced the batteries hastily thrown up by
Bellefonds, that it would be safe to expose ships to the fire of
regular fortresses. The government, however, was not less
sanguine than the nation. Great preparations were made. The
allied fleet, having been speedily refitted at Portsmouth, stood
out again to sea. Rooke was sent to examine the soundings and the
currents along the shore of Brittany.317 Transports were
collected at Saint Helens. Fourteen thousand troops were
assembled on Portsdown under the command of Meinhart Schomberg,
who had been rewarded for his father's services and his own with
the highest rank in the Irish peerage, and was now Duke of
Leinster. Under him were Ruvigny, who, for his good service at
Aghrim, had been created Earl of Galway, La Melloniere and Cambon
with their gallant bands of refugees, and Argyle with the
regiment which bore his name, and which, as it began to be
rumoured, had last winter done something strange and horrible in
a wild country of rocks and snow, never yet explored by any
Englishman.

On the twenty-sixth of July the troops were all on board. The
transports sailed, and in a few hours joined the naval armament
in the neighbourhood of Portland. On the twenty-eighth a general
council of war was held. All the naval commanders, with Russell
at their head, declared that it would be madness to carry their
ships within the range of the guns of Saint Maloes, and that the
town must be reduced to straits by land before the men of war in
the harbour could, with any chance of success, be attacked from
the sea. The military men declared with equal unanimity that the
land forces could effect nothing against the town without the
cooperation of the fleet. It was then considered whether it would
be advisable to make an attempt on Brest or Rochefort. Russell
and the other flag officers, among whom were Rooke, Shovel,
Almonde and Evertsen, pronounced that the summer was too far
spent for either enterprise.318 We must suppose that an opinion
in which so many distinguished admirals, both English and Dutch,
concurred, however strange it may seem to us, was in conformity
with what were then the established principles of the art of
maritime war. But why all these questions could not have been
fully discussed a week earlier, why fourteen thousand troops
should have been shipped and sent to sea, before it had been
considered what they were to do, or whether it would be possible
for them to do any thing, we may reasonably wonder. The armament
returned to Saint Helens, to the astonishment and disgust of the
whole nation.319 The ministers blamed the commanders; the
commanders blamed the ministers. The recriminations exchanged
between Nottingham and Russell were loud and angry. Nottingham,
honest, industrious, versed in civil business, and eloquent in
parliamentary debate, was deficient in the qualities of a war
minister, and was not at all aware of his deficiencies. Between
him and the whole body of professional sailors there was a feud
of long standing. He had, some time before the Revolution, been a
Lord of the Admiralty; and his own opinion was that he had then
acquired a profound knowledge of maritime affairs. This opinion
however he had very much to himself. Men who had passed half
their lives on the waves, and who had been in battles, storms and
shipwrecks, were impatient of his somewhat pompous lectures and
reprimands, and pronounced him a mere pedant, who, with all his
book learning, was ignorant of what every cabin boy knew. Russell
had always been froward, arrogant and mutinous; and now
prosperity and glory brought out his vices in full strength. With
the government which he had saved he took all the liberties of an
insolent servant who believes himself to be necessary, treated
the orders of his superiors with contemptuous levity, resented
reproof, however gentle, as an outrage, furnished no plan of his
own, and showed a sullen determination to execute no plan
furnished by any body else. To Nottingham he had a strong and a
very natural antipathy. They were indeed an ill matched pair.
Nottingham was a Tory; Russell was a Whig. Nottingham was a
speculative seaman, confident in his theories. Russell was a
practical seaman, proud of his achievements. The strength of
Nottingham lay in speech; the strength of Russell lay in action.
Nottingham's demeanour was decorous even to formality; Russell
was passionate and rude. Lastly Nottingham was an honest man; and
Russell was a villain. They now became mortal enemies. The
Admiral sneered at the Secretary's ignorance of naval affairs;
the Secretary accused the Admiral of sacrificing the public
interests to mere wayward humour; and both were in the right.320

While they were wrangling, the merchants of all the ports in the
kingdom raised a cry against the naval administration. The
victory of which the nation was so proud was, in the City,
pronounced to have been a positive disaster. During some months
before the battle all the maritime strength of the enemy had
been collected in two great masses, one in the Mediterranean and
one in the Atlantic. There had consequently been little
privateering; and the voyage to New England or Jamaica had been
almost as safe as in time of peace. Since the battle, the remains
of the force which had lately been collected under Tourville were
dispersed over the ocean. Even the passage from England to
Ireland was insecure. Every week it was announced that twenty,
thirty, fifty vessels belonging to London or Bristol had been
taken by the French. More than a hundred prices were carried
during that autumn into Saint Maloes alone. It would have been
far better, in the opinion of the shipowners and of the
underwriters, that the Royal Sun had still been afloat with her
thousand fighting men on board than that she should be lying a
heap of ashes on the beach at Cherburg, while her crew,
distributed among twenty brigantines, prowled for booty over the
sea between Cape Finisterre and Cape Clear.321

The privateers of Dunkirk had long been celebrated; and among
them, John Bart, humbly born, and scarcely able to sign his name,
but eminently brave and active, had attained an undisputed
preeminence. In the country of Anson and Hawke, of Howe and
Rodney, of Duncan, Saint Vincent and Nelson, the name of the most
daring and skilful corsair would have little chance of being
remembered. But France, among whose many unquestioned titles to
glory very few are derived from naval war, still ranks Bart among
her great men. In the autumn of 1692 this enterprising freebooter
was the terror of all the English and Dutch merchants who traded
with the Baltic. He took and destroyed vessels close to the
eastern coast of our island. He even ventured to land in
Northumberland, and burned many houses before the trainbands
could be collected to oppose him. The prizes which he carried
back into his native port were estimated at about a hundred
thousand pounds sterling.322 About the same time a younger
adventurer, destined to equal or surpass Bart, Du Guay Trouin,
was entrusted with the command of a small armed vessel. The
intrepid boy,--for he was not yet twenty years old,--entered the
estuary of the Shannon, sacked a mansion in the county of Clare,
and did not reimbark till a detachment from the garrison of
Limerick marched against him.323

While our trade was interrupted and our shores menaced by these
rovers, some calamities which no human prudence could have
averted increased the public ill humour. An earthquake of
terrible violence laid waste in less than three minutes the
flourishing colony of Jamaica. Whole plantations changed their
place. Whole villages were swallowed up. Port Royal, the fairest
and wealthiest city which the English had yet built in the New
World, renowned for its quays, for its warehouses, and for its
stately streets, which were said to rival Cheapside, was turned
into a mass of ruins. Fifteen hundred of the inhabitants were
buried under their own dwellings. The effect of this disaster was
severely felt by many of the great mercantile houses of London
and Bristol.324

A still heavier calamity was the failure of the harvest. The
summer had been wet all over Western Europe. Those heavy rains
which had impeded the exertions of the French pioneers in the
trenches of Namur had been fatal to the crops. Old men remembered
no such year since 1648. No fruit ripened. The price of the
quarter of wheat doubled. The evil was aggravated by the state of
the silver coin, which had been clipped to such an extent that
the words pound and shilling had ceased to have a fixed meaning.
Compared with France indeed England might well be esteemed
prosperous. Here the public burdens were heavy; there they were
crushing. Here the labouring man was forced to husband his coarse
barley loaf; but there it not seldom happened that the wretched
peasant was found dead on the earth with halfchewed grass in his
mouth. Our ancestors found some consolation in thinking that they
were gradually wearing out the strength of their formidable
enemy, and that his resources were likely to be drained sooner
than theirs. Still there was much suffering and much repining. In
some counties mobs attacked the granaries. The necessity of
retrenchment was felt by families of every rank. An idle man of
wit and pleasure, who little thought that his buffoonery would
ever be cited to illustrate the history of his times, complained
that, in this year, wine ceased to be put on many hospitable
tables where he had been accustomed to see it, and that its place
was supplied by punch.325

A symptom of public distress much more alarming than the
substitution of brandy and lemons for claret was the increase of
crime. During the autumn of 1692 and the following winter, the
capital was kept in constant terror by housebreakers. One gang,
thirteen strong, entered the mansion of the Duke of Ormond in
Saint James's Square, and all but succeeded in carrying off his
magnificent plate and jewels. Another gang made an attempt on
Lambeth Palace.326 When stately abodes, guarded by numerous
servants, were in such danger, it may easily be believed that no
shopkeeper's till or stock could be safe. From Bow to Hyde Park,
from Thames Street to Bloomsbury, there was no parish in which
some quiet dwelling had not been sacked by burglars.327 Meanwhile
the great roads were made almost impassable by freebooters who
formed themselves into troops larger than had before been known.
There was a sworn fraternity of twenty footpads which met at an
alehouse in Southwark.328 But the most formidable band of
plunderers consisted of two and twenty horsemen.329 It should
seem that, at this time, a journey of
fifty miles through the wealthiest and most populous shires of
England was as dangerous as a pilgrimage across the deserts of
Arabia. The Oxford stage coach was pillaged in broad day after a
bloody fight.330 A waggon laden with fifteen thousand pounds of
public money was stopped and ransacked. As this operation took
some time, all the travellers who came to the spot while the
thieves were busy were seized and guarded. When the booty had
been secured the prisoners were suffered to depart on foot; but
their horses, sixteen or eighteen in number, were shot or
hamstringed, to prevent pursuit.331 The Portsmouth mail was
robbed twice in one week by men well armed and mounted.332 Some
jovial Essex squires, while riding after a hare, were themselves
chased and run down by nine hunters of a different sort, and were
heartily glad to find themselves at home again, though with empty
pockets.333