CHAP. X. 1714. 1 Biog. Univ. iv. 384, (Berwick.) ter. 51. was driven from the throne, he joined him, and was with him in his expedition into Ireland, and at the battle of the Boyne, where he received the only wound he met with in his long career. In 1692 he beheld from the coast of Normandy the destruction of all the hopes of his house at the battle of La Hogue, and served under Luxembourg in Flanders till the conclusion of the war by the Treaty of Ryswick. In 1704 he was intrusted with the command of the army in Spain: "All parties," says Montesquieu, were anxious to gain him: he thought only of the monarchy, saved Spain, and was recalled." Affairs having again become desperate in the Peninsula, he was sent out a second time as marshal and commander-in-chief: he gained the battle of Almanza in 1706, and again saved Spain to the house of Bourbon. His skilful defence of Languedoc in the subsequent years has always been regarded by military men as a model of defensive warfare." 1 Berwick was one of the greatest generals and noblest His charac- characters of that age of glory. Lord Bolingbroke said, "he was the best great man that ever existed." His character, both as a general and in private, was irreproachable. He had not the daring in counsel of Marlborough or Eugene, but he equalled either of these commanders in methodical warfare; and when the moment of action arrived, none exposed their life with more intrepidity. But he preferred combination to hazard, and never committed to chance what he could gain by perseHe was the perfection of the Turenne school of warfare. It is a most extraordinary fact, that while Marlborough all but overturned the monarchy of France by his victories in Flanders, and unquestionably would have done so but for faction at home, his nephew, Ber verance. X. 1714. wick, by his single arm, preserved that of Spain for the CHAP. house of Bourbon. His private character was unblemished: bred up in a licentious court, himself the fruit of irregular amours, he avoided all its seductions, and "shunned," in Montesquieu's words, "the snares of virtue itself." His humanity after victory was as admirable as his arrangements before, which secured it. England has equal cause to be proud of her victories and her defeats in that warfare, for they both were owing to the military genius of the same family—and that one of her own. She may well claim Berwick among her great men; for not only was he born in England, but he was descended, by the father's side, from the mingled line of the Plantagenets and the Stuarts, and by the mother's from an ancestor of Sir Francis Drake; and he bore in his veins the same blood as the Duke of Marlborough. Univ. iv. There are few men who can boast a more illustrious tesquieuancestry and connection, and still fewer who have done Berwick. so much to ennoble it.1 1 Biog. 385. Mon Eloge de of Louis It was just permitted to the monarch whose guilty 52. ambition had lighted this terrible conflagration to wit- Last years ness its extinction. Louis XIV. expired on the 1st XIV. September 1715, at the very time when the Jacobite insurrection in Scotland was apparently opening the way for the restoration of the Stuarts, whom he had so nobly sheltered in their misfortune, to the throne. His advanced age for he was seventy-seven-rendered a prolonged life neither probable nor desirable; but his latter years had been clouded by misfortunes, both national and domestic, which formed a mournful contrast to the brilliancy of his earlier career. Independent of the public calamities which had signalised the latter years of the war, he had been severely stricken by misfortune in private life. CHAP. X. In 1711, his son, the Duke of Burgundy, his daughterin-law, the Duchess, and their son, the heir of the mon1714. archy, were carried off by the small-pox within a few days of each other. A single funeral service, at which the aged monarch assisted, was performed for the father, mother, and son. Though Louis bore this grievous calamity with his wonted firmness, the bereavement sunk deep into his heart, and all the efforts of the courtiers were unable to divert his settled melancholy. In vain the splendid halls of Versailles were arrayed, after the peace, with more than their wonted splendour; in vain forty of the most charming women in France, elegantly dressed, every day adorned his repasts; in vain magnificent balls assembled every week all the nobility and beauty of the metropolis in his saloons: nothing could distract his gloom, nothing restore the joyousness of 1 Capefigue, his youth. His strength was daily and visibly declinLouis XIV. ing; his limbs were swollen, his visage haggard, and, Biographie instead of dancing with the youngest and fairest at his 197, 198. court, he was drawn painfully in a little carriage through the splendid halls and marbled parterres of Versailles.1 Hist. de vi. 419-424. Univ. xxv. 53. Sept. 1, 1715. At length the closing hour arrived; and the monarch His death, whose insatiable ambition had sent so many innocent souls prematurely out of the world was himself called to his dread account. He met the approach of death with calmness and equanimity; but he was much disquieted by remorse of conscience, particularly for the share he had had in the most flagrant iniquity of his reign-the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Apprehensive of the extinction of the male line of the Bourbons, he, by an edict of 15th May 1715, called his natural sons, now legitimised, the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse, to the throne, failing his grandson Louis XV. When CHAP. X. 1714. death was visibly approaching, the aged monarch ordered his infant heir, afterwards Louis XV., to be brought to his bedside, and, placing his lean and withered hands on his head, said, with a firm voice, "My child, you are about to become a great king; but your happiness will depend on your submission to God, and on the care which you take of your subjects. To attain that, you must avoid as much as you can engaging in wars, which are the ruin of the people; do not follow, in that respect, the bad example which I have given you. I have often engaged in wars from levity, and continued in them from vanity; do not imitate me, but become a pacific prince ; profit by the good education which Madame de Ventadour is giving you, and obey and follow the good sentiments which she inspires." He then tenderly thanked that accomplished lady for her kindness to her youthful charge, and prepared himself for death. Madame de Maintenon was indefatigable, night and day, at his bedside. "What consoles me," said the dying monarch, "is, that we shall soon be reunited." He breathed his last at five in the morning, on the 1st September. "The king is dead, gentlemen!" cried the chamberlain, when the feather no longer moved before his lips; the sump- vi.456-460. tuous doors of the apartment were thrown open, and xxv. 198, an infant of five years old, adorned by the cordon bleu, mondi, thrown over a violet velvet dress, advanced into the Français, chamber of death, amidst cries of "Vive le Roi Louis 217. XV., nôtre seigneur et maître !" 1 1 Capefigue, Biog. Univ. 199. Sis Hist. des xxvii. 215 lingbroke at Bolingbroke did not long profit by his double treachery 54. to his sovereign and his country; he soon found that, Fall of Bothough kings sometimes approve of treason, they seldom the court of like the traitor. He had been made Secretary of State der. for Foreign Affairs to the exiled monarch, immediately the Preten X. 1714. CHAP. after he fled from England, in 1714; but he only held the office for one year, being suddenly dismissed in November 1715. He fell a victim to the same intrigues and jealousy by which he himself had effected the downfall of Marlborough at the court of London. He immediately renounced all connection with the Jacobite party, and made overtures to Lord Stair, the English ambassador at Paris, which led to his ultimate restoration to the country which his genius had illustrated and his ambition endangered. Of the infatuation which led the Stuart family thus to deprive themselves of the counsels of the only man who was capable of directing them, at the most momentous crisis of their affairs, there cannot be better proof imagined than is furnished by the impartial testimony of the Duke of Berwick, the only man of capacity in the family. "One must have lost his reason," says he, "not to see the enormous mistake committed by King James in dismissing the only Englishman he had capable of managing his affairs; for, whatever may be said by some persons of more passion than judgment, it is admitted by all England that there have been few greater ministers than Bolingbroke. He was born with splendid talents, which had raised him, at an early age, to the very highest employments; he exerted great influence over the Tory party, and was, in fact, its soul. Could there, then, be a more lamentable weakness than to dismiss such a man, at the very time when he was most wanted, and when it was most essential not to make new enemies? I was in part a witness how Mem. 261, Bolingbroke acted for King James while he managed his affairs; and I owe him the justice to say, that he left nothing undone that he could do;1 he moved heaven 1 Berwick's 262-edit. Petitot. |