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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While the Declaration was the subject of general conversation in
England, military operations recommenced on the Continent. The
preparations of France had been such as amazed even those who
estimated most highly her resources and the abilities of her
rulers. Both her agriculture and her commerce were suffering. The
vineyards of Burgundy, the interminable cornfields of the Beauce,
had failed to yield their increase; the looms of Lyons were
silent; and the merchant ships were rotting in the harbour of
Marseilles. Yet the monarchy presented to its numerous enemies a
front more haughty and more menacing than ever. Lewis had
determined not to make any advance towards a reconciliation with
the new government of England till the whole strength of his
realm had been put forth in one more effort. A mighty effort in
truth it was, but too exhausting to be repeated. He made an
immense display of force at once on the Pyrenees and on the Alps,
on the Rhine and on the Meuse, in the Atlantic and in the
Mediterranean. That nothing might be wanting which could excite
the martial ardour of a nation eminently highspirited, he
instituted, a few days before he left his palace for the camp, a
new military order of knighthood, and placed it under the
protection of his own sainted ancestor and patron. The new cross
of Saint Lewis shone on the breasts of the gentlemen who had been
conspicuous in the trenches before Mons and Namur, and on the
fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk; and the sight raised a generous
emulation among those who had still to win an honourable fame in
arms.438

In the week in which this celebrated order began to exist
Middleton visited Versailles. A letter in which he gave his
friends in England an account of his visit has come down to
us.439 He was presented to Lewis, was most kindly received, and
was overpowered by gratitude and admiration. Of all the wonders
of the Court,--so Middleton wrote,--its master was the greatest.
The splendour of the great King's personal merit threw even the
splendour of his fortunes into the shade. The language which His
Most Christian Majesty held about English politics was, on the
whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing this accomplished
prince and his able and experienced ministers were strangely
mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion that the
Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared to
undeceive them; but they were under an incurable delusion. They
saw through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech
appeared to them a leviathan. It ought to have occurred to
Middleton that possibly the delusion might be in his own vision
and not in theirs. Lewis and the counsellors who surrounded him
were far indeed from loving William. But they did not hate him
with that mad hatred which raged in the breasts of his English
enemies. Middleton was one of the wisest and most moderate of the
Jacobites. Yet even Middleton's judgment was so much darkened by
malice that, on this subject, he talked nonsense unworthy of his
capacity. He, like the rest of his party, could see in the
usurper nothing but what was odious and contemptible, the heart
of a fiend, the understanding and manners of a stupid, brutal,
Dutch boor, who generally observed a sulky silence, and, when
forced to speak, gave short testy answers in bad English. The
French statesmen, on the other hand, judged of William's
faculties from an intimate knowledge of the way in which he had,
during twenty years, conducted affairs of the greatest moment and
of the greatest difficulty. He had, ever since 1673, been playing
against themselves a most complicated game of mixed chance and
skill for an immense stake; they were proud, and with reason, of
their own dexterity at that game; yet they were conscious that in
him they had found more than their match. At the commencement of
the long contest every advantage had been on their side. They had
at their absolute command all the resources of the greatest
kingdom in Europe; and he was merely the servant of a
commonwealth, of which the whole territory was inferior in extent
to Normandy or Guienne. A succession of generals and diplomatists
of eminent ability had been opposed to him. A powerful faction in
his native country had pertinaciously crossed his designs. He had
undergone defeats in the field and defeats in the senate; but his
wisdom and firmness had turned defeats into victories.
Notwithstanding all that could be done to keep him down, his
influence and fame had been almost constantly rising and
spreading. The most important and arduous enterprise in the
history of modern Europe had been planned and conducted to a
prosperous termination by him alone. The most extensive coalition
that the world had seen for ages had been formed by him, and
would be instantly dissolved if his superintending care were
withdrawn. He had gained two kingdoms by statecraft, and a third
by conquest; and he was still maintaining himself in the
possession of all three in spite of both foreign and domestic
foes. That these things had been effected by a poor creature, a
man of the most ordinary capacity, was an assertion which might
easily find credence among the nonjuring parsons who congregated
at Sam's Coffee-house, but which moved the laughter of the
veteran politicians of Versailles.

While Middleton was in vain trying to convince the French that
William was a greatly overrated man, William, who did full
justice to Middleton's merit, felt much uneasiness at learning
that the Court of Saint Germains had called in the help of so
able a counsellor.440 But this was only one of a thousand causes
of anxiety which during that spring pressed on the King's mind.
He was preparing for the opening of the campaign, imploring his
allies to be early in the field, rousing the sluggish, haggling
with the greedy, making up quarrels, adjusting points of
precedence. He had to prevail on the Cabinet of Vienna to send
timely succours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on
those Northern potentates who were trying to form a third party
in Europe. He had to act as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in
the Netherlands. He had to provide for the defence of Liege, a
matter which the authorities of Liege coolly declared to be not
at all their business, but the business of England and Holland.
He had to prevent the House of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel from going
to blows with the House of Brunswick Lunenburg; he had to
accommodate a dispute between the Prince of Baden and the Elector
of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army on
the Rhine; and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who
omitted to furnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to command
the contingents furnished by other princes.441

And now the time for action had arrived. On the eighteenth of May
Lewis left Versailles; early in June he was under the walls of
Namur. The Princesses, who had accompanied him, held their court
within the fortress. He took under his immediate command the army
of Boufflers, which was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a
mile off lay the army of Luxemburg. The force collected in that
neighbourhood under the French lilies did not amount to less than
a hundred and twenty thousand men. Lewis had flattered himself
that he should be able to repeat in 1693 the stratagem by which
Mons had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; and he had
determined that either Liege or Brussels should be his prey. But
William had this year been able to assemble in good time a force,
inferior indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still
formidable. With this force he took his post near Louvain, on the
road between the two threatened cities, and watched every
movement of the enemy.

Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be possible
for him to gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in the
two preceding years, to sit down before a great town, to enter
the gates in triumph, and to receive the keys, without exposing
himself to any risk greater than that of a staghunt at
Fontainebleau. Before he could lay siege either to Liege or to
Brussels he must fight and win a battle. The chances were indeed
greatly in his favour; for his army was more numerous, better
officered and better disciplined than that of the allies.
Luxemburg strongly advised him to march against William. The
aristocracy of France anticipated with intrepid gaiety a bloody
but a glorious day, followed by a large distribution of the
crosses of the new order. William himself was perfectly aware of
his danger, and prepared to meet it with calm but mournful
fortitude.442 Just at this conjuncture Lewis announced his
intention to return instantly to Versailles, and to send the
Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the army which was assembled
near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who commanded in the
Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated boldly
and earnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity thrown
away. If His Majesty would march against the Prince of Orange,
victory was almost certain. Could any advantage which it was
possible to obtain on the Rhine be set against the advantage of a
victory gained in the heart of Brabant over the principal army
and the principal captain of the coalition? The Marshal reasoned;
he implored; he went on his knees; but in vain; and he quitted
the royal presence in the deepest dejection. Lewis left the camp
a week after he had joined it, and never afterwards made war in
person.

The astonishment was great throughout his army. All the awe which
he inspired could not prevent his old generals from grumbling and
looking sullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen,
sometimes in curses and sometimes in sarcasms, and even his
common soldiers from holding irreverent language round their
watchfires. His enemies rejoiced with vindictive and insulting
joy. Was it not strange, they asked, that this great prince
should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and then in a
week have gone in the same state back again? Was it necessary
that all that vast retinue, princesses, dames of honour and
tirewomen, equerries and gentlemen of the bedchamber, cooks,
confectioners and musicians, long trains of waggons, droves of
led horses and sumpter mules, piles of plate, bales of tapestry,
should travel four hundred miles merely in order that the Most
Christian King might look at his soldiers and then return? The
ignominious truth was too evident to be concealed. He had gone to
the Netherlands in the hope that he might again be able to snatch
some military glory without any hazard to his person, and had
hastened back rather than expose himself to the chances of a
pitched field.443 This was not the first time that His Most
Christian Majesty had shown the same kind of prudence. Seventeen
years before he had been opposed under the wails of Bouchain to
the same antagonist. William, with the ardour of a very young
commander, had most imprudently offered battle. The opinion of
the ablest generals was that, if Lewis had seized the
opportunity, the war might have been ended in a day. The French
army had eagerly asked to be led to the onset. The King had
called his lieutenants round him and had collected their
opinions. Some courtly officers to whom a hint of his wishes had
been dexterously conveyed had, blushing and stammering with
shame, voted against fighting. It was to no purpose that bold and
honest men, who prized his honour more than his life, had proved
to him that, on all principles of the military art, he ought to
accept the challenge rashly given by the enemy. His Majesty had
gravely expressed his sorrow that he could not, consistently with
his public duty, obey the impetuous movement of his blood, had
turned his rein, and had galloped back to his quarters.444 Was it
not frightful to think what rivers of the best blood of France,
of Spain, of Germany and of England, had flowed, and were
destined still to flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted
the vulgar courage which was found in the meanest of the hundreds
of thousands whom he had sacrificed to his vainglorious ambition?

Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by
the departure of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and
Boufflers, and though the allied army was daily strengthened by
the arrival of fresh troops, Luxemburg still had a superiority of
force; and that superiority he increased by an adroit stratagem.
He marched towards Liege, and made as if he were about to form
the siege of that city. William was uneasy, and the more uneasy
because he knew that there was a French party among the
inhabitants. He quitted his position near Louvain, advanced to
Nether Hespen, and encamped there with the river Gette in his
rear. On his march he learned that Huy had opened its gates to
the French. The news increased his anxiety about Liege, and
determined him to send thither a force sufficient to overawe
malecontents within the city, and to repel any attack from
without.445 This was exactly what Luxemburg had expected and
desired. His feint had served its purpose. He turned his back on
the fortress which had hitherto seemed to be his object, and
hastened towards the Gette. William, who had detached more than
twenty thousand men, and who had but fifty thousand left in his
camp, was alarmed by learning from his scouts, on the eighteenth
of July, that the French General, with near eighty thousand, was
close at hand.

It was still in the King's power, by a hasty retreat, to put the
narrow, but deep, waters of the Gette, which had lately been
swollen by rains, between his army and the enemy. But the site
which he occupied was strong; and it could easily be made still
stronger. He set all his troops to work. Ditches were dug, mounds
thrown up, palisades fixed in the earth. In a few hours the
ground wore a new aspect; and the King trusted that he should be
able to repel the attack even of a force greatly outnumbering his
own. Nor was it without much appearance of reason that he felt
this confidence. When the morning of the nineteenth of July
broke, the bravest men of Lewis's army looked gravely and
anxiously on the fortress which had suddenly sprung up to arrest
their progress. The allies were protected by a breastwork. Here
and there along the entrenchments were formed little redoubts and
half moons. A hundred pieces of cannon were disposed along the
ramparts. On the left flank, the village of Romsdorff rose close
to the little stream of Landen, from which the English have named
the disastrous day. On the right was the village of Neerwinden.
Both villages were, after the fashion of the Low Countries,
surrounded by moats and fences; and, within these enclosures, the
little plots of ground occupied by different families were
separated by mud walls five feet in height and a foot in
thickness. All these barricades William had repaired and
strengthened. Saint Simon, who, after the battle, surveyed the
ground, could hardly, he tells us, believe that defences so
extensive and so formidable could have been created with such
rapidity.

Luxemburg, however, was determined to try whether even this
position could be maintained against the superior numbers and the
impetuous valour of his soldiers. Soon after sunrise the roar of
cannon began to be heard. William's batteries did much execution
before the French artillery could be so placed as to return the
fire. It was eight o'clock before the close fighting began. The
village of Neerwinden was regarded by both commanders as the
point on which every thing depended. There an attack was made by
the French left wing commanded by Montchevreuil, a veteran
officer of high reputation, and by Berwick, who, though young,
was fast rising to a high place among the captains of his time.
Berwick led the onset, and forced his way into the village, but
was soon driven out again with a terrible carnage. His followers
fled or perished; he, while trying to rally them, and cursing
them for not doing their duty better, was surrounded by foes. He
concealed his white cockade, and hoped to be able, by the help of
his native tongue, to pass himself off as an officer of the
English army. But his face was recognised by one of his mother's
brothers, George Churchill, who held on that day the command of a
brigade. A hurried embrace was exchanged between the kinsmen; and
the uncle conducted the nephew to William, who, as long as every
thing seemed to be going well, remained in the rear. The meeting
of the King and the captive, united by such close domestic ties,
and divided by such inexpiable injuries, was a strange sight.
Both behaved as became them. William uncovered, and addressed to
his prisoner a few words of courteous greeting. Berwick's only
reply was a solemn bow. The King put on his hat; the Duke put on
his hat; and the cousins parted for ever.

By this time the French, who had been driven in confusion out of
Neerwinden, had been reinforced by a division under the command
of the Duke of Bourbon, and came gallantly back to the attack.
William, well aware of the importance of this post, gave orders
that troops should move thither from other parts of his line.
This second conflict was long and bloody. The assailants again
forced an entrance into the village. They were again driven out
with immense slaughter, and showed little inclination to return
to the charge.

Meanwhile the battle had been raging all along the entrenchments
of the allied army. Again and again Luxemburg brought up his
troops within pistolshot of the breastwork; but he could bring
them no nearer. Again and again they recoiled from the heavy fire
which was poured on their front and on their flanks. It seemed
that all was over. Luxemburg retired to a spot which was out of
gunshot, and summoned a few of his chief officers to a
consultation. They talked together during some time; and their
animated gestures were observed with deep interest by all who
were within sight.

At length Luxemburg formed his decision. A last attempt must be
made to carry Neerwinden; and the invincible household troops,
the conquerors of Steinkirk, must lead the way.

The household troops carne on in a manner worthy of their long
and terrible renown. A third time Neerwinden was taken. A third
time William tried to retake it. At the head of some English
regiments he charged the guards of Lewis with such fury that, for
the first time in the memory of the oldest warrior, that far
famed band gave way.446 It was only by the strenuous exertions of
Luxemburg, of the Duke of Chartres, and of the Duke of Bourbon,
that the broken ranks were rallied. But by this time the centre
and left of the allied army had been so much thinned for the
purpose of supporting the conflict at Neerwinden that the
entrenchments could no longer be defended on other points. A
little after four in the afternoon the whole line gave way. All
was havoc and confusion. Solmes had received a mortal wound, and
fell, still alive, into the hands of the enemy. The English
soldiers, to whom his name was hateful, accused him of having in
his sufferings shown pusillanimity unworthy of a soldier. The
Duke of Ormond was struck down in the press; and in another
moment he would have been a corpse, had not a rich diamond on his
finger caught the eye of one of the French guards, who justly
thought that the owner of such a jewel would be a valuable
prisoner. The Duke's life was saved; and he was speedily
exchanged for Berwick. Ruvigny, animated by the true refugee
hatred of the country which had cast him out, was taken fighting
in the thickest of the battle. Those into whose hands he had
fallen knew him well, and knew that, if they carried him to their
camp, his head would pay for that treason to which persecution
had driven him. With admirable generosity they pretended not to
recognise him, and suffered him to make his escape in the tumult.

It was only on such occasions as this that the whole greatness of
William's character appeared. Amidst the rout and uproar, while
arms and standards were flung away, while multitudes of fugitives
were choking up the bridges and fords of the Gette or perishing
in its waters, the King, having directed Talmash to superintend
the retreat, put himself at the head of a few brave regiments,
and by desperate efforts arrested the progress of the enemy. His
risk was greater than that which others ran. For he could not be
persuaded either to encumber his feeble frame with a cuirass, or
to hide the ensigns of the garter. He thought his star a good
rallying point for his own troops, and only smiled when he was
told that it was a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his
right hand and on his left. Two led horses, which in the field
always closely followed his person, were struck dead by cannon
shots. One musket ball passed through the curls of his wig,
another through his coat; a third bruised his side and tore his
blue riband to tatters. Many years later greyhaired old
pensioners who crept about the arcades and alleys of Chelsea
Hospital used to relate how he charged at the head of Galway's
horse, how he dismounted four times to put heart into the
infantry, how he rallied one corps which seemed to be shrinking;
"That is not the way to fight, gentlemen. You must stand close up
to them. Thus, gentlemen, thus." "You might have seen him," an
eyewitness wrote, only four days after the battle, "with his
sword in his hand, throwing himself upon the enemy. It is certain
that one time, among the rest, he was seen at the head of two
English regiments, and that he fought seven with these two in
sight of the whole army, driving them before him above a quarter
of an hour. Thanks be to God that preserved him." The enemy
pressed on him so close that it was with difficulty that he at
length made his way over the Gette. A small body of brave men,
who shared his peril to the last, could hardly keep off the
pursuers as he crossed the bridge.447

Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress of civilisation
has produced in the art of war more strikingly illustrated than
on that day. Ajax beating down the Trojan leader with a rock
which two ordinary men could scarcely lift, Horatius defending
the bridge against an army, Richard the Lionhearted spurring
along the whole Saracen line without finding an enemy to stand
his assault, Robert Bruce crushing with one blow the helmet and
head of Sir Henry Bohun in sight of the whole array of England
and Scotland, such are the heroes of a dark age. In such an age
bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a
warrior. At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state
of society, would have been regarded as too puny to bear any part
in combats, were the souls of two great armies. In some heathen
countries they would have been exposed while infants. In
Christendom they would, six hundred years earlier, have been sent
to some quiet cloister. But their lot had fallen on a time when
men had discovered that the strength of the muscles is far
inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable
that, among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who were
marshalled round Neerwinden under all the standards of Western
Europe, the two feeblest in body were the hunchbacked dwarf who
urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic
skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England.

The French were victorious; but they had bought their victory
dear. More than ten thousand of the best troops of Lewis had
fallen. Neerwinden was a spectacle at which the oldest soldiers
stood aghast. The streets were piled breast high with corpses.
Among the slain were some great lords and some renowned warriors.
Montchevreuil was there, and the mutilated trunk of the Duke of
Uzes, first in order of precedence among the whole aristocracy of
France. Thence too Sarsfield was borne desperately wounded to a
pallet from which he never rose again. The Court of Saint
Germains had conferred on him the empty title of Earl of Lucan;
but history knows him by the name which is still dear to the most
unfortunate of nations. The region, renowned in history as the
battle field, during many ages, of the most warlike nations of
Europe, has seen only two more terrible days, the day of
Malplaquet and the day of Waterloo. During many months the ground
was strewn with skulls and bones of men and horses, and with
fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and holsters. The next
summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand corpses, broke
forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on the road
from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet
spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying
that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was
literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood,
and refusing to cover the slain.448

There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the heaven
when William crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so much
exhausted by marching and fighting that they could scarcely move;
and the horses were in even worse condition than the men. Their
general thought it necessary to allow some time for rest and
refreshment. The French nobles unloaded their sumpter horses,
supped gaily, and pledged one another in champagne amidst the
heaps of dead; and, when night fell, whole brigades gladly lay
down to sleep in their ranks on the field of battle. The
inactivity of Luxemburg did not escape censure. None could deny
that he had in the action shown great skill and energy. But some
complained that he wanted patience and perseverance. Others
whispered that he had no wish to bring to an end a war which made
him necessary to a Court where he had never, in time of peace,
found favour or even justice.449 Lewis, who on this occasion was
perhaps not altogether free from some emotions of jealousy,
contrived, it was reported, to mingle with the praise which he
bestowed on his lieutenant blame which, though delicately
expressed, was perfectly intelligible. "In the battle," he said,
"the Duke of Luxemburg behaved like Conde; and since the battle
the Prince of Orange has behaved like Turenne."