lose no time in withdrawing from the Alliance and concluding a separate treaty with France. The event has proved that these apprehensions were too well founded; that, in doing so, they would consent to the crown of Spain remaining on the head of a Bourbon prince, and, for the sake of present popularity, abandon the whole objects of the war, and seriously endanger the independence of Great Britain in future times. There appeared no way of avoiding so dangerous and disheartening a result but by insisting upon the removal from the palace of the secret counsellors, to whose influence the danger was mainly owing. Great public interests were thus indissolubly wound up with this contest for household appointments. Not less than at Blenheim or Malplaquet the fate of Europe was involved in the issue of the strife; and if Marlborough had yielded the contest without a struggle, he would have deserted his duty, and endangered the civil and religious liberties of his country and of Europe, not less than if he had abandoned his post on any of these momentous fields. CHAP. VII. 1710. 77. nary change lic mind regarding the war and its It appears still more surprising how a party could be found in Great Britain, especially at that period, so soon Extraordiafter the Revolution, which should found their principles in the pubon such a basis, and rest their claim to the favour of the nation on the entire abandonment of all the objects for hero. which it had so long and strenuously contended. For eighty years the desire of civil and religious freedom had been the prevailing national passion, and had more than once led them into the most dreadful excesses; but now the apostle of passive obedience and non-resistance had become the idol of popular adoration. For the preservation of the balance of power, they had contended for a quarter of a century with the most heroic perseverance, VOL. II. F 1710. 78. this remark CHAP. and, in the pursuit of that object, consented to the greatest sacrifices; but now they gave their support to a party which was prepared to abandon all these objects, leave the ancient enemy of England in possession of all but universal power, and conclude a glorious and triumphant war by a perilous and disgraceful peace. The general who led their armies had been beyond all precedent successful: his career had been one continued triumph; he had never yet suffered a reverse; and not only were they prepared to forego the whole fruit of his victories, but he himself had become, without reason, the object of unmeasured obloquy and vituperation. But the marvel ceases when the ruling selfishness of Cause of the vast majority of men is taken into consideration, able change. and the unvarying effect of transcendent greatness to produce envy of magnitude of obligations to breed ingratitude. The deeds of the great seldom awaken in little minds any other feeling but that of jealousy; gratitude for favours is felt as a pleasurable sensation only by the generous, and to them it is perhaps the highest. It was the very greatness of Marlborough, the magnitude and inappreciable nature of his services, which proved his ruin, for they at once roused the envy of the malignant, and oppressed the selfish with a painful feeling of irrequitable obligation. More particularly, it was the combination of military greatness with civil power and influence which proved fatal to him, as it has done to almost every illustrious man in ancient or modern times in whose hands it has even for a brief period been invested. To see one who was once their equal at the same time triumphing over their enemies and ruling themselves, is in general felt as insupportable by mankind. It is in a sovereign only, to whom it descends by birthright, that it can be tolerated. In any other, it produces such a mortification of self-love to others as ere long ends in a storm, by which the obnoxious benefactor of his country is overthrown. CHAP. 1710. 79. examples times. Miltiades and Themistocles in Greece, Scipio and Cæsar in Rome, fell successive sacrifices to this feeling: Parallel Cromwell escaped the ruin with which it is fraught only in former by a fortunate death; Napoleon, by turning the selfish passions of the people loose upon foreign countries. The moment he ceased to feed the public desires by continued triumphs was the commencement of his fall; he has told us so himself a hundred times. Wellington escaped it only by being clear of political power when he had the command of the army: his unpopularity in 1831, and narrow escape from death in the streets of London on June 18, 1832, may show us how speedily his power would have been shattered, if, like Marlborough, he had attempted to combine the functions of prime-minister and commander-in-chief; if he had united the influence of Mr Pitt to the glory of the Peninsular triumphs. Men can bear, though generally with some degree of impatience, a long career of military greatness in their generals, for it is gained over their enemies; but they never can tolerate for any length of time, in any but a crowned head, civil power in their rulers, for it is exercised over themselves. A combination of the two is speedily felt as insupportable. CHAPTER VIII. CHAP. 1709. 1. analogy be War of the and that of lution. INVASION OF RUSSIA BY CHARLES XII.-HIS DEFEAT AT PULTOWA BY As the War of the Succession, and that which a century after desolated Europe in consequence of the French Revolution, were substantially waged for the same obStriking ject, and divided the powers of Northern and Southern tween the Europe much in the same manner, so there was a most Succession extraordinary coincidence in the chief seats of war, and the Revo- even in the principal battles, on the two occasions. The real object in both was to rescue Europe from the thraldom of French domination: the ambition of Napoleon only came in place of that of Louis XIV. Germany and the Peninsula in both were long the seat of war. The Bourbon succession in Spain was as much the object of dread in the beginning of the eighteenth century, as that of Napoleon was in the opening of the nineteenth. But in both, the decisive blows were struck in Flanders; and the victorious march of Blucher and Wellington from Brussels to Paris in 1815, not less than the narrow escape which Louis XIV. made from a similar invasion in 1711, proves the wisdom with which Marlborough and Eugene acted in assailing France in that quarter, and fixing the principal seat of war in the Flemish plains. CHAP. VIII. 1709. 2. coincidence battles in periods. As these two great wars were thus identical in their objects, and the theatres where their principal operations Remarkable were carried on, so there was a most extraordinary coin- of particular cidence in many of the principal battles by which they both were both illustrated. The battle of Marengo, which in 1800 conquered Italy for France, and placed Napoleon on the consular throne, had its exact counterpart in that of Turin, which a century before had consigned it to the Austrian rule. The battle of Salamanca, which in 1812 rescued three-fourths of Spain from French oppression, was but a repetition of that of Almanza, in which the genius of Berwick, a hundred years before, had secured it for the house of Bourbon. The battle of Jena, which in 1806 at once crushed the Prussian monarchy, and surrendered the whole of the north of Germany to Napoleon, was not more decisive than that of Blenheim, which in 1704 at one blow prostrated Bavaria, delivered all southern Germany, and hurled the French forces with disgrace behind the Rhine. The victory of Ramilies has its counterpart in that of Austerlitz; that of Oudenarde in Waterloo. Scarce a parallel to the terrible struggle of Malplaquet, followed by the fall of Mons, is to be found in European history, till we come down to the carnage of Borodino, followed by the abandonment of Moscow. The siege of Lille alone stands forth in solitary and unapproachable grandeur in European warfare. No similar achievement was effected either by the energy of Frederick or the genius of Napoleon. The expedition to Russia, which forms so prominent and sublime a part of the wars of the Revolution, was |