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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It should seem that, at first, a natural feeling restrained the
conspirators from calling their design by the proper name. Even
in their private consultations they did not as yet talk of
killing the Prince of Orange. They would try to seize him and to
carry him alive into France. If there were any resistance they
might be forced to use their swords and pistols, and nobody could
be answerable for what a thrust or a shot might do. In the spring
of 1695, the scheme of assassination, thus thinly veiled, was
communicated to James, and his sanction was earnestly requested.
But week followed week; and no answer arrived from him. He
doubtless remained silent in the hope that his adherents would,
after a short delay, venture to act on their own responsibility,
and that he might thus have the advantage without the scandal of
their crime. They seem indeed to have so understood him. He had
not, they said, authorised the attempt; but he had not prohibited
it; and, apprised as he was of their plan, the absence of
prohibition was a sufficient warrant. They therefore determined
to strike; but before they could make the necessary arrangements
William set out for Flanders; and the plot against his life was
necessarily suspended till his return.

It was on the twelfth of May that the King left Kensington for
Gravesend, where he proposed to embark for the Continent. Three
days before his departure the Parliament of Scotland had, after a
recess of about two years, met again at Edinburgh. Hamilton, who
had, in the preceding session, sate on the throne and held the
sceptre, was dead; and it was necessary to find a new Lord High
Commissioner. The person selected was John Hay, Marquess of
Tweedale, Chancellor of the Realm, a man grown old in business,
well informed, prudent, humane, blameless in private life, and,
on the whole, as respectable as any Scottish lord who had been
long and deeply concerned in the politics of those troubled
times.

His task was not without difficulty. It was indeed well known
that the Estates were generally inclined to support the
government. But it was also well known that there was one subject
which would require the most dexterous and delicate management.
The cry of the blood shed more than three years before in Glencoe
had at length made itself heard. Towards the close of the year
1693, the reports, which had at first been contemptuously derided
as factious calumnies, began to be generally thought deserving of
serious attention. Many people little disposed to place
confidence in any thing that came forth from the secret presses
of the Jacobites owned that, for the honour of the government,
some inquiry ought to be instituted. The amiable Mary had been
much shocked by what she heard. William had, at her request,
empowered the Duke of Hamilton and several other Scotchmen of
note to investigate the whole matter. But the Duke died; his
colleagues were slack in the performance of their duty; and the
King, who knew little and cared little about Scotland, forgot to
urge them.594

It now appeared that the government would have done wisely as
well as rightly by anticipating the wishes of the country. The
horrible story repeated by the nonjurors pertinaciously,
confidently, and with so many circumstances as almost enforced
belief, had at length roused all Scotland. The sensibility of a
people eminently patriotic was galled by the taunts of southern
pamphleteers, who asked whether there was on the north of the
Tweed, no law, no justice, no humanity, no spirit to demand
redress even for the foulest wrongs. Each of the two extreme
parties, which were diametrically opposed to each other in
general politics, was impelled by a peculiar feeling to call for
inquiry. The Jacobites were delighted by the prospect of being
able to make out a case which would bring discredit on the
usurper, and which might be set off against the many offences
imputed by the Whigs to Claverhouse and Mackenzie. The zealous
Presbyterians were not less delighted at the prospect of being
able to ruin the Master of Stair. They had never forgotten or
forgiven the service which he had rendered to the House of Stuart
in the time of the persecution. They knew that, though he had
cordially concurred in the political revolution which had freed
them from the hated dynasty, he had seen with displeasure that
ecclesiastical revolution which was, in their view, even more
important. They knew that church government was with him merely
an affair of State, and that, looking at it as an affair of
State, he preferred the episcopal to the synodical model. They
could not without uneasiness see so adroit and eloquent an enemy
of pure religion constantly attending the royal steps and
constantly breathing counsel in the royal ear. They were
therefore impatient for an investigation, which, if one half of
what was rumoured were true, must produce revelations fatal to
the power and fame of the minister whom they distrusted. Nor
could that minister rely on the cordial support of all who held
office under the Crown. His genius and influence had excited the
jealousy of many less successful courtiers, and especially of his
fellow secretary, Johnstone.

Thus, on the eve of the meeting of the Scottish Parliament,
Glencoe was in the mouths of all Scotchmen of all factions and of
all sects. William, who was just about to start for the
Continent, learned that, on this subject, the Estates must have
their way, and that the best thing that he could do would be to
put himself at the head of a movement which it was impossible for
him to resist. A Commission authorising Tweedale and several
other privy councillors to examine fully into the matter about
which the public mind was so strongly excited was signed by the
King at Kensington, was sent down to Edinburgh, and was there
sealed with the Great Seal of the realm. This was accomplished
just in time.595 The Parliament had scarcely entered on business
when a member rose to move for an inquiry into the circumstances
of the slaughter of Glencoe. Tweedale was able to inform the
Estates that His Majesty's goodness had prevented their desires,
that a Commission of Precognition had, a few hours before, passed
in all the forms, and that the lords and gentlemen named in that
instrument would hold their first meeting before night.596 The
Parliament unanimously voted thanks to the King for this instance
of his paternal care; but some of those who joined in the vote of
thanks expressed a very natural apprehension that the second
investigation might end as unsatisfactorily as the first
investigation had ended. The honour of the country, they said,
was at stake; and the Commissioners were bound to proceed with
such diligence that the result of the inquest might be known
before the end of the session. Tweedale gave assurances which,
for a time, silenced the murmurers.597 But, when three weeks had
passed away, many members became mutinous and suspicious. On the
fourteenth of June it was moved that the Commissioners should be
ordered to report. The motion was not carried; but it was renewed
day after day. In three successive sittings Tweedale was able to
restrain the eagerness of the assembly. But, when he at length
announced that the report had been completed; and added that it
would not be laid before the Estates till it had been submitted
to the King, there was a violent outcry. The public curiosity was
intense; for the examination had been conducted with closed
doors; and both Commissioners and clerks had been sworn to
secrecy. The King was in the Netherlands. Weeks must elapse
before his pleasure could he taken; and the session could not
last much longer. In a fourth debate there were signs which
convinced the Lord High Commissioner that it was expedient to
yield; and the report was produced.598

It is a paper highly creditable to those who framed it, an
excellent digest of evidence, clear, passionless, and austerely
just. No source from which valuable information was likely to be
derived had been neglected. Glengarry and Keppoch, though
notoriously disaffected to the government, had been permitted to
conduct the case on behalf of their unhappy kinsmen. Several of
the Macdonalds who had escaped from the havoc of that night had
been examined, and among them the reigning Mac Ian, the eldest
son of the murdered Chief. The correspondence of the Master of
Stair with the military men who commanded in the Highlands had
been subjected to a strict but not unfair scrutiny. The
conclusion to which the Commissioners came, and in which every
intelligent and candid inquirer will concur, was that the
slaughter of Glencoe was a barbarous murder, and that of this
barbarous murder the letters of the Master of Stair were the sole
warrant and cause.

That Breadalbane was an accomplice in the crime was not proved;
but he did not come off quite clear. In the course of the
investigation it was incidentally discovered that he had, while
distributing the money of William among the Highland Chiefs,
professed to them the warmest zeal for the interest of James, and
advised them to take what they could get from the usurper, but to
be constantly on the watch for a favourable opportunity of
bringing back the rightful King. Breadalbane's defence was that
he was a greater villain than his accusers imagined, and that he
had pretended to be a Jacobite only in order to get at the bottom
of the Jacobite plans. In truth the depths of this man's knavery
were unfathomable. It was impossible to say which of his treasons
were, to borrow the Italian classification, single treasons, and
which double treasons. On this occasion the Parliament supposed
him to have been guilty only of a single treason, and sent him to
the Castle of Edinburgh. The government, on full consideration,
gave credit to his assertion that he had been guilty of a double
treason, and let him out again.599

The Report of the Commission was taken into immediate
consideration by the Estates. They resolved, without one
dissentient voice, that the order signed by William did not
authorise the slaughter of Glencoe. They next resolved, but, it
should seem, not unanimously, that the slaughter was a murder.600
They proceeded to pass several votes, the sense of which was
finally summed up in an address to the King. How that part of the
address which related to the Master of Stair should be
framed was a question about which there was much debate. Several
of his letters were called for and read; and several amendments
were put to the vote. It should seem that the Jacobites and the
extreme Presbyterians were, with but too good cause, on the side
of severity. The majority, under the skilful management of the
Lord High Commissioner, acquiesced in words which made it
impossible for the guilty minister to retain his office, but
which did not impute to him such criminality as would have
affected his life or his estate. They censured him, but censured
him in terms far too soft. They blamed his immoderate zeal
against the unfortunate clan, and his warm directions about
performing the execution by surprise. His excess in his letters
they pronounced to have been the original cause of the massacre;
but, instead of demanding that he should be brought to trial as a
murderer, they declared that, in consideration of his absence and
of his great place, they left it to the royal wisdom to deal with
him in such a manner as might vindicate the honour of the
government.

The indulgence which was shown to the principal offender was not
extended to his subordinates. Hamilton, who had fled and had been
vainly cited by proclamation at the City Cross to appear before
the Estates, was pronounced not to be clear of the blood of the
Glencoe men. Glenlyon, Captain Drummond, Lieutenant Lindsey,
Ensign Lundie, and Serjeant Barbour, were still more distinctly
designated as murderers; and the King was requested to command
the Lord Advocate to prosecute them.

The Parliament of Scotland was undoubtedly, on this occasion,
severe in the wrong place and lenient in the wrong place. The
cruelty and baseness of Glenlyon and his comrades excite, even
after the lapse of a hundred and sixty years, emotions which make
it difficult to reason calmly. Yet whoever can bring himself to
look at the conduct of these men with judicial impartiality will
probably be of opinion that they could not, without great
detriment to the commonwealth, have been treated as assassins.
They had slain nobody whom they had not been positively directed
by their commanding officer to slay. That subordination without
which an army is the worst of all rabbles would be at an end, if
every soldier were to be held answerable for the justice of every
order in obedience to which he pulls his trigger. The case of
Glencoe was, doubtless, an extreme case; but it cannot easily be
distinguished in principle from cases which, in war, are of
ordinary occurrence. Very terrible military executions are
sometimes indispensable. Humanity itself may require them. Who
then is to decide whether there be an emergency such as makes
severity the truest mercy? Who is to determine whether it be or
be not necessary to lay a thriving town in ashes, to decimate a
large body of mutineers, to shoot a whole gang of banditti? Is
the responsibility with the commanding officer, or with the rank
and file whom he orders to make ready, present and fire? And if
the general rule be that the responsibility is with the
commanding officer, and not with those who obey him, is it
possible to find any reason for pronouncing the case of Glencoe
an exception to that rule? It is remarkable that no member of the
Scottish Parliament proposed that any of the private men of
Argyle's regiment should be prosecuted for murder. Absolute
impunity was granted to everybody below the rank of Serjeant. Yet
on what principle? Surely, if military obedience was not a valid
plea, every man who shot a Macdonald on that horrible night was a
murderer. And, if military obedience was a valid plea for the
musketeer who acted by order of Serjeant Barbour, why not for
Barbour who acted by order of Glenlyon? And why not for Glenlyon
who acted by order of Hamilton? It can scarcely be maintained
that more deference is due from a private to a noncommissioned
officer than from a noncommissioned officer to his captain, or
from a captain to his colonel.

It may be said that the orders given to Glenlyon were of so
peculiar a nature that, if he had been a man of virtue, he would
have thrown up his commission, would have braved the displeasure
of colonel, general, and Secretary of State, would have incurred
the heaviest penalty which a Court Martial could inflict, rather
than have performed the part assigned to him; and this is
perfectly true; but the question is not whether he acted like a
virtuous man, but whether he did that for which he could, without
infringing a rule essential to the discipline of camps and to the
security of nations, be hanged as a murderer. In this case,
disobedience was assuredly a moral duty; but it does not follow
that obedience was a legal crime.

It seems therefore that the guilt of Glenlyon and his fellows was
not within the scope of the penal law. The only punishment which
could properly be inflicted on them was that which made Cain cry
out that it was greater than he could bear; to be vagabonds on
the face of the earth, and to carry wherever they went a mark
from which even bad men should turn away sick with horror.

It was not so with the Master of Stair. He had been solemnly
pronounced, both by the Commission of Precognition and by the
Estates of the Realm in full Parliament, to be the original
author of the massacre. That it was not advisable to make
examples of his tools was the strongest reason for making an
example of him. Every argument which can be urged against
punishing the soldier who executes the unjust and inhuman orders
of his superior is an argument for punishing with the utmost
rigour of the law the superior who gives unjust and inhuman
orders. Where there can be no responsibility below, there should
be double responsibility above. What the Parliament of Scotland
ought with one voice to have demanded was, not that a poor
illiterate serjeant, who was hardly more accountable than his own
halbert for the bloody work which he had done, should be hanged
in the Grassmarket, but that the real murderer, the most politic,
the most eloquent, the most powerful, of Scottish statesmen,
should be brought to a public trial, and should, if found guilty,
die the death of a felon. Nothing less than such a sacrifice
could expiate such a crime. Unhappily the Estates, by extenuating
the guilt of the chief offender, and, at the same time,
demanding that his humble agents should be treated with a
severity beyond the law, made the stain which the massacre had
left on the honour of the nation broader and deeper than before.

Nor is it possible to acquit the King of a great breach of duty.
It is, indeed, highly probable that, till he received the report
of his Commissioners, he had been very imperfectly informed as to
the circumstances of the slaughter. We can hardly suppose that he
was much in the habit of reading Jacobite pamphlets; and, if he
did read them, he would have found in them such a quantity of
absurd and rancorous invective against himself that he would have
been very little inclined to credit any imputation which they
might throw on his servants. He would have seen himself accused,
in one tract, of being a concealed Papist, in another of having
poisoned Jeffreys in the Tower, in a third of having contrived to
have Talmash taken off at Brest. He would have seen it asserted
that, in Ireland, he once ordered fifty of his wounded English
soldiers to be burned alive. He would have seen that the
unalterable affection which he felt from his boyhood to his death
for three or four of the bravest and most trusty friends that
ever prince had the happiness to possess was made a ground for
imputing to him abominations as foul as those which are buried
under the waters of the Dead Sea. He might therefore naturally be
slow to believe frightful imputations thrown by writers whom he
knew to be habitual liars on a statesman whose abilities he
valued highly, and to whose exertions he had, on some great
occasions, owed much. But he could not, after he had read the
documents transmitted to him from Edinburgh by Tweedale,
entertain the slightest doubt of the guilt of the Master of
Stair. To visit that guilt with exemplary punishment was the
sacred duty of a Sovereign who had sworn, with his hand lifted up
towards heaven, that he would, in his kingdom of Scotland,
repress, in all estates and degrees, all oppression, and would do
justice, without acceptance of persons, as he hoped for mercy
from the Father of all mercies. William contented himself with
dismissing the Master from office. For this great fault, a fault
amounting to a crime, Burnet tried to frame, not a defence, but
an excuse. He would have us believe that the King, alarmed by
finding how many persons had borne a part in the slaughter of
Glencoe, thought it better to grant a general amnesty than to
punish one massacre by another. But this representation is the
very reverse of the truth. Numerous instruments had doubtless
been employed in the work of death; but they had all received
their impulse, directly or indirectly, from a single mind. High
above the crowd of offenders towered one offender, preeminent in
parts, knowledge, rank and power. In return for many victims
immolated by treachery, only one victim was demanded by justice;
and it must ever be considered as a blemish on the fame of
William that the demand was refused.

On the seventeenth of July the session of the Parliament of
Scotland closed. The Estates had liberally voted such a supply as
the poor country which they represented could afford. They had
indeed been put into high good humour by the notion that they had
found out a way of speedily making that poor country rich. Their
attention had been divided between the inquiry into the slaughter
of Glencoe and some specious commercial projects of which the
nature will be explained and the fate related in a future
chapter.

Meanwhile all Europe was looking anxiously towards the Low
Countries. The great warrior who had been victorious at Fleurus,
at Steinkirk and at Landen had not left his equal behind him. But
France still possessed Marshals well qualified for high command.
Already Catinat and Boufflers had given proofs of skill, of
resolution, and of zeal for the interests of the state. Either of
those distinguished officers would have been a successor worthy
of Luxemburg and an antagonist worthy of William; but their
master, unfortunately for himself, preferred to both the Duke of
Villeroy. The new general had been Lewis's playmate when they
were both children, had then become a favourite, and had never
ceased to be so. In those superficial graces for which the French
aristocracy was then renowned throughout Europe, Villeroy was
preeminent among the French aristocracy. His stature was tall,
his countenance handsome, his manners nobly and somewhat
haughtily polite, his dress, his furniture, his equipages, his
table, magnificent. No man told a story with more vivacity; no
man sate his horse better in a hunting party; no man made love
with more success; no man staked and lost heaps of gold with more
agreeable unconcern; no man was more intimately acquainted with
the adventures, the attachments, the enmities of the lords and
ladies who daily filled the halls of Versailles. There were two
characters especially which this fine gentleman had studied
during many years, and of which he knew all the plaits and
windings, the character of the King, and the character of her who
was Queen in every thing but name. But there ended Villeroy's
acquirements. He was profoundly ignorant both of books and of
business. At the Council Board he never opened his mouth without
exposing himself. For war he had not a single qualification
except that personal courage which was common to him with the
whole class of which he was a member. At every great crisis of
his political and of his military life he was alternately drunk
with arrogance and sunk in dejection. Just before he took a
momentous step his selfconfidence was boundless; he would listen
to no suggestion; he would not admit into his mind the thought
that failure was possible. On the first check he gave up every
thing for lost, became incapable of directing, and ran up and
down in helpless despair. Lewis however loved him; and he, to do
him justice, loved Lewis. The kindness of the master was proof
against all the disasters which were brought on his kingdom by
the rashness and weakness of the servant; and the gratitude of
the servant was honourably, though not judiciously, manifested on
more than one occasion after the death of the master.601

Such was the general to whom the direction of the campaign in the
Netherlands was confided. The Duke of Maine was sent to learn the
art of war under this preceptor. Maine, the natural son of Lewis
by the Duchess of Montespan, had been brought up from childhood
by Madame de Maintenon, and was loved by Lewis with the love of a
father, by Madame de Maintenon with the not less tender love of a
foster mother.

Grave men were scandalized by the ostentatious manner in which
the King, while making a high profession of piety, exhibited his
partiality for this offspring of a double adultery. Kindness,
they said, was doubtless due from a parent to a child; but
decency was also due from a Sovereign to his people. In spite of
these murmurs the youth had been publicly acknowledged, loaded
with wealth and dignities, created a Duke and Peer, placed, by an
extraordinary act of royal power, above Dukes and Peers of older
creation, married to a Princess of the blood royal, and appointed
Grand Master of the Artillery of the Realm. With abilities and
courage he might have played a great part in the world. But his
intellect was small; his nerves were weak; and the women and
priests who had educated him had effectually assisted nature. He
was orthodox in belief, correct in morals, insinuating in
address, a hypocrite, a mischiefmaker and a coward.

It was expected at Versailles that Flanders would, during this
year, be the chief theatre of war. Here, therefore, a great army
was collected. Strong lines were formed from the Lys to the
Scheld, and Villeroy fixed his headquarters near Tournay.
Boufflers, with about twelve thousand men, guarded the banks of
the Sambre.

On the other side the British and Dutch troops, who were under `-
William's immediate command, mustered in the neighbourhood of
Ghent. The Elector of Bavaria, at the head of a great force, lay
near Brussels. A smaller army, consisting chiefly of
Brandenburghers was encamped not far from Huy.

Early in June military operations commenced. The first movements
of William were mere feints intended to prevent the French
generals from suspecting his real purpose. He had set his heart
on retaking Namur. The loss of Namur had been the most mortifying
of all the disasters of a disastrous war. The importance of Namur
in a military point of view had always been great, and had become
greater than ever during the three years which had elapsed since
the last siege. New works, the masterpieces of Vauban, had been
added to the old defences which had been constructed with the
utmost skill of Cohorn. So ably had the two illustrious engineers
vied with each other and cooperated with nature that the fortress
was esteemed the strongest in Europe. Over one gate had been
placed a vaunting inscription which defied the allies to wrench
the prize from the grasp of France.