ble yourself, and he will be every thing which I can desire." On the same day he was restored to his rank as a privy counselor, and took the oaths and his seat accordingly.

14.

ed to the su

mand in the Netherlands.

So fully had he now regained the confidence of William, that he was three times named one of the nine And appoint lords justiciars to whom the administration of afpreme com- fairs in Great Britain was subsequently intrusted during the temporary absence of William in Holland; and the War of the Succession having become certain in the year 1700, that monarch, who was preparing to take an active part in it, appointed Marlborough, on the 1st of June, 1701, his embassador extraordinary at the Hague, and commander-in-chief of the allied forces in Flanders. This double appointment in effect invested Marlborough with the entire direction of affairs, civil and military, so far as England was concerned, on the Continent. William, who was highly indignant at the recognition of the Chevalier St. George as King of England on the death of his father, James II., in September, 1701, was preparing to prosecute the war with the vigor and perseverance which so eminently distinguished his character, when he was carried off by the effects of a fall from his horse, on the 19th of March, 1702. But that event made no alteration in the part which England took in the war which was commencing, and it augmented rather than diminished the influence which Marlborough had in its direction. The Princess Anne, with whom, both individually and through Lady Marlborough, he was so intimately connected, mounted the throne without opposition; and by one of her first acts the queen bestowed on Marlborough the order of the Garter, confirmed him in his former offices, and appointed him, in addition, her plenipotentiary to the Hague. War was declared on the 15th of May, 1702, and Marlborough immediately went over to the Netherlands to take the command of the allied army, sixty thousand strong, then lying before Nimeguen, which was threatened by a superior force on the part of the French.

At which pe

heim Papers

It is at this period-June, 1702—that the great and memorable, and, withal, blameless period of Marlbor- 15. ough's life commenced. The next ten years were riod the Blenone unbroken series of efforts, victories, and glory. commenced. He arrived in the camp at Nimeguen on the evening of the 2d of July, having been a few weeks before at the Hague, and immediately assumed the command. Lord Athlone, who had previously enjoyed that situation, at first laid claim to an equal authority with him; but this ruinous division, which never is safe save with men so great as he and Eugene, and would unquestionably have proved ruinous to the common cause had Athlone been his partner in command, was prevented by the States General, who insisted upon the undivided direction being conferred on Marlborough. Most fortunately, it is precisely at this period that the Dispatches commence, which present an unbroken series of his letters to persons of every description, down to his dismissal from office in May, 1712. They thus embrace the early successes in Flanders, the cross march into Bavaria and battle of Blenheim, the expulsion of the French from Germany, the battle of Ramillies, and taking of Brussels and Antwerp, the mission to the King of Sweden at Dresden, the battle of Almanza in Spain, those of Oudenarde, Malplaquet, and all the sieges in Flanders, and all the important events of the war down to its close. More weighty and momentous materials for history never were presented to the public; and their importance will not be properly appreciated if the previous condition of Europe, and imminent hazard to the independence of all the adjoining states, from the unmeasured ambition and vast power of Louis XIV., are not taken into consideration.

Great power

bons at this

Accustomed as we are to regard the Bourbons as a fallen and unfortunate race, the objects rather of com- 16. miseration than apprehension, and Napoleon as of the Bourthe only sovereign who has really threatened our period, and independence, and all but effected the subjugation general alarm of the Continent, we can scarcely conceive the ter- cited.

which it ex

The

ror with which, a century and a half ago, the monarch of that race, with reason, inspired all Europe, or the narrow escape which the continental states, at least, then made from being reduced to the condition of provinces of France. forces of that monarchy, at all times formidable to its neighbors, from the warlike spirit of its inhabitants, and their rapacious disposition, conspicuous alike in the earliest and the latest times;* its central situation, forming, as it were, the salient angle of a bastion projecting into the center of Germany, and its numerous population, were then, in a peculiar manner, to be dreaded, from the concentration of the elements of power thus afforded in the hands of an able and ambitious monarch, who had succeeded for the first time, for two hundred years, in healing the divisions and stilling the feuds of its nobles, and turning their buoyant energy into the channel of foreign conquest. Immense was the force which, in consequence of this able policy, was found to exist in France, and terrible the danger to which it at once exposed the neighboring states.

France was rendered the more formidable in the time of Louis XIV. from the remarkable talents which he

17.

Vast ability

government

of France was

by which the himself possessed, and the unbounded ambition by which he was actuated, the extraordinary concendirected. tration of talent which his discernment or good fortune had collected round his throne, and the consummate abilities, civil and military, with which affairs were directed. Turenne, Boufflers, and Condé were his generals; Vauban was his engineer; Louvois and Torcy were his statesmen. The luster of the exploits of these illustrious men, in itself great, was much enhanced by the still greater blaze of fame which encircled his throne, from the genius of the literary men who have given such immortal celebrity to his reign. Corneille and Racine were his tragedians; Molière wrote his comedies; Bossuet, Fénélon, and Bourdaloue were his theo

*

'Galli turpe esse ducunt frumentum manu quærere; itaque armati alienos agros demetunt."-CÆSAR.

logians; Massillon his preacher; Boileau his critic; Le Notre laid out his gardens; Le Brun painted his halls. Greatness had come upon France, as, in truth, it does to most other states, in all departments at the same time; and the adjoining nations, alike intimidated by a power which they could not resist, and dazzled by a glory which they could not emulate, had come almost to despair of maintaining their independence, and were sinking into that state of apathy which is at once the consequence and the cause of extraordinary re

verses.

18. Extraordi

nary success

which had tended Louis

hitherto at

in all his en

The influence of these causes had distinctly appeared in the extraordinary good fortune which had attended the enterprises of Louis, and the numerous conquests he had made since he had lanched into the career of foreign aggrandizement. Nothing had been able to resist his victorious arms. At the terprises. head of an army of a hundred thousand men, directed by Turenne, he had speedily overrun Flanders. Its fortified cities yielded to the science of Vauban, or the terrors of his name. The boasted barrier of the Netherlands was passed in a few weeks; hardly any of its far-famed fortresses made any resistance. The passage of the Rhine was achieved under the eyes of the monarch with little loss, and with melo-dramatic effect. One half of Holland was soon subdued, and the presence of the French army at the gates of Amsterdam seemed to presage immediate destruction to the United Provinces ; and, but for the firmness of their leaders, and a fortunate combination of circumstances, unquestionably would have done so. The alliance with England in the early part of his reign, and the junction of the fleets of Britain and France to ruin their fleets and blockade their harbors, seemed to deprive these states of their last resource, derived from their energetic industry. Nor were substantial fruits wanting from these conquests. Alsace and Franche Comté were overrun, and, with Lorraine, permanently annexed to the French monarchy; and although, by the treaties of Aix-la

Chapelle and Nimeguen, part of the acquisitions of Louis in Flanders were abandoned, enough was retained by the devouring monarchy to deprive the Dutch of the barrier they had so ardently desired, and render their situation to the last degree precarious in the neighborhood of so formidable a

power.

19.

Hopes and

Catholic party throughout Europe at this time. Their ultimate failure.

It was the ambition and detestable cruelty of the Church of Rome which first produced, and probably alone schemes of the could have produced, a reaction against these dangers. Intoxicated with the success which had in many quarters attended its efforts, and in an especial manner in France, for the extirpation of heresy, its leaders thought nothing could resist their power. The long triumphs and well-known orthodoxy of Louis XIV. gave them the greatest hopes that he would employ his vast power and great capacity in effecting that unity in the Church which he had so long labored to produce in the temporal administration of his monarchy; while the secret inclination of James II., revealed to his spiritual guides, made the leaders of the Romish Church aware that he was resolutely bent on re-establishing the Catholic faith in his dominions, or, at least, in restoring it to such a degree of power and consideration, as with so aspiring a body would have amounted, in effect, to the same thing. His character-bold, sincere, and enterprising, but withal rash, bigoted, and inconsiderate-appeared to promise the fairest chance of success to such a design. The moment seemed beyond all hope favorable for a general aggression on the Protestant faith; for in France was an able and powerful monarch, who considered, and perhaps with reason, unity in religion as indispensable to his great object of centralization in temporal power; and in England a devout and daring Catholic was on the throne, whose efforts, supported by a considerable party in Great Britain and a very large one in Ireland, promised ere long to render the British empire, hitherto the strong hold of the Reformed, the chief outwork of the ancient faith. The two rival powers, whose