has inflicted greater wounds upon France by military success than any other power, and that in almost all the pitched battles which the two nations have fought during five centuries, the English have proved victorious? That England's military force is absorbed in the defense of a colonial empire which encircles the earth, is indeed certain; and, in every age, the impatience of taxation in her people has starved down her military establishment, during peace, to so low a point, as rendered the occurrence of disaster, in the first years subsequent to the breaking out of war, a matter of certainty. On the other hand, the military spirit of her neighbors has almost constantly kept theirs at the level which insures early success. Yet with all these disadvantages, and with a population which, down to the close of the last war, was little more than half that of France, she has inflicted far greater land disasters on her redoubtable neighbor than all the military monarchies of Europe put together.

En

65.

Long series of land disasters sustained by France from

English armies, for a hundred and twenty years, ravaged France; but England has not seen the fires of a French camp since the battle of Hastings. glish troops have twice taken the French capital; an English king was crowned at Paris; a French England. king rode captive through London; a French emperor died in English captivity, and his remains were surrendered by English generosity. Twice the English horse marched from Calais to the Pyrenees; once from the Pyrenees to Calais; the monuments of Napoleon in the French capital at this moment owe their preservation from German revenge to an English general. All the great disasters and days of mourning for France, since the battle of Hastings-Tenchebray, Cressy, Poitiers, Azincour, Verneuil, Crevont, Blenheim, Oudenarde, Ramillies, Malplaquet, Minden, Dettingen, Quebec, Egypt, Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, Orthes, the Pyrenees, Waterloo-were gained by English generals, and won, for the most part, by English soldiers. Even at Fontenoy, the greatest victory over England of which France can boast since Has

tings, every regiment in the French army was, on their own admission, routed by the terrible English column, and victory was snatched from its grasp solely by want of support on the part of the Dutch and Austrians. No coalition against France has ever been successful, in which England did not take a prominent part; none, in the end, has failed of gaining its objects, in which she stood foremost in the fight. This fact is so apparent on the most superficial survey of history, that it is admitted by the ablest French historians, though they profess themselves unable to explain it.

66. What have

been the causes of this?

Is it that there is a degree of hardihood and courage in the Anglo-Saxon race, which renders them, without the benefit of previous experience in war, adequate to the conquest, on land, even of the most warlike Continental military nations? Is it that the quality of dogged resolution, determination not to be conquered-bottom, in the familiar English phrase-is of such value in war, that it compensates almost any degree of inferiority in the practical acquaintance with war? Is it that the North brings forth a bolder race of men than the South, and that, other things being equal, the people nursed under a more rigorous climate will vanquish those of a more genial? Is it that the free spirit which, in every age, has distinguished the English people, has communicated a degree of vigor and resolution to their warlike operations, which has rendered them so often victorious in land-fights, albeit nautical and commercial in their ideas, over their military neighbors? Or is it that this courage in war, and this vigor in peace, and this passion for freedom at all times, arise from, and are but symptoms of, an ardent and aspiring disposition, imprinted by Nature on the race to whom the dominion of half the globe has been destined? Experience has not yet determined to which of these causes this most extraordinary fact has been owing; but it is one upon which our military neighbors, and especially the French, would do well to ponder, now that the population of the Brit-. ish isles will, on the next census, be thirty millions. If En

gland has done such things in Continental warfare, with an army which never brought fifty thousand native British sabers and bayonets into the field, what would be the result if national distress or necessities, or a change in the objects of general desire, wore to send two hundred thousand?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PEACE OF UTRECHT.

Moral charac

of Marlbor

THE wars in which the Duke of Marlborough was engaged were not contests produced merely by the ambi- 1. tions of kings or the rivalry of ministers; they ter of the Duke were not waged for the acquisition of a province ough's wars. or the capture of a fortress; they were not incurred, like those of Frederic, for the gain of Silesia, or impelled to, like those of Charles XII., by the thirst for glory. Great moral principles were involved in the contest. The League of Augsburg, which terminated in the peace of Ryswick, and first put a bridle on the ambition of France, was the direct and immediate consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the exile of the persecuted Protestants by Louis XIV. The War of the Succession arose unavoidably from this selfish ambition, and desire to appropriate the whole magnificent spoils of the Spanish monarchy, which he had won by diplomatic astuteness, for the aggrandizement of the house of Bourbon. The great interests of religious freedom and national independence were at stake in the struggle,

2.

Freedom of thought, emancipation from Romish tyranny, liberty in the choice of worship, the preaching of the Gospel to the poor, were borne aloft on Marl- Opposite interborough's banners; national independence, death for which the

ests and causes

parties con

to the Bourbons, hatred to France, were inscribed tended.

on those of Eugene. The Church of Rome, indeed, had few more faithful subjects than the house of Hapsburg; but dread

of the ambition of Louis XIV., and the glittering prospect of the Spanish succession, had brought her Catholic sovereigns into a close-union with the Protestants of the north; and the admirable temper and judgment of the English and Austrian chiefs kept their troops in a state of concord and amity, rarely witnessed in the best-cemented alliances. Feudal honor, chivalrous loyalty, the unity of the Church, were the principles which had roused the armies and directed the councils of Louis XIV. The exaltation of France, the glory of their sovereign, the spoils of Spain, awakened the ambition of its government, and animated the spirit of its people. The influence of these opposite principles was felt not only in the council, but in the field; not only in the minister's cabinet, but in the soldier's Divine service, after the Protestant form, was regularly performed, morning and evening, in every regiment of Marlborough's army; they prepared for battle by taking the sacrament; they terminated their victories by thanksgiving. The armies of Louis, in a gay and gallant spirit, set out for the conflict. If any ecclesiastic appeared to bless their arms, it was the gorgeous priests of the ancient faith; they struck rather for the honor of their country, or the glory of their sovereign, than the unity in Church and State on which he was so strongly bent; and went to battle dreaming more of the splendor of Versailles or the smiles of beauty, than the dogmas of religion or the crusade of the Church of Rome.

tent.

Magnitude of

the danger

proved successful.

As the principles and passions which animated the contend3. ing parties were thus opposite, proportionately great was the peril alike to the cause of religious freedom ened Europe, and European independence, if the coalition had not if France had proved successful. That no danger was to be apprehended from its triumph has been decisively proved by the event; the allies were victorious, and both have been preserved. But very different would have been the results if a power, animated by the ambition, guided by the fanaticism, and directed by the ability of that of Louis XIV., had gained the ascendency in Europe. Beyond all question, a universal

despotic dominion would have been established over the bodies, a cruel spiritual thraldom over the minds of men. France and Spain united under Bourbon princes, and in a close family alliance—the empire of Charlemagne with that of Charles V. -the which revoked the Edict of Nantes, and perpepower trated the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with that which banished the Moriscoes, and established the Inquisition, would have proved irresistible, and beyond example destructive to the best interests of mankind.

The Protestants might have been driven, like the Pagan heathens of old by the son of Pepin, beyond the Elbe; the Stuart race, and with them Romish

4. Results which

might have fol

lowed the tri

ascendency, might have been re-established in umph of France. England; the fire lighted by Latimer and Ridley might have been extinguished in blood; and the energy breathed by religious freedom into the Anglo-Saxon race might have expired. The destinies of the world would have been changed. Europe, instead of a variety of independent states, whose mutual hostility kept alive courage, while their national rivalry stimulated talent, would have sunk into the slumber attendant on universal dominion. The colonial empire of England would have withered away and perished, as that of Spain has done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo-Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it. The centralized despotism of the Roman empire would have been renewed on Continental Europe; the chains of Romish tyranny, and with them the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have extinguished or perverted thought in the British Islands. There, too, the event has proved the justice of these anticipations. France, during the eighteenth century, has taught us in what state our minds would have been had Marlborough been overthrown; the infidelity of Voltaire, to what a state of anarchy our religious opinions would have been reduced; the despotism of Napoleon at its close, to what tyranny our persons would have been subjected.