qualities which marked his public career.

His character

He had 18. not the chivalrous ardor which bespoke the nobles in private. of France, nor the stately magnificence of their haughty sovereign. His manners and habits were such as arose from, and suited, the austere and laborious people among whom his life was passed. Without being insensible to the softer passions, he never permitted them to influence his conduct or encroach upon his time. He was patient, laborious, and indefatigable. To courtiers accustomed to the polished elegance of Paris, or the profligate gallantry of St. James's, his manners appeared cold and unbending. It was easy to see he had not been bred in the saloons of Versailles or the soirées of Charles II. But he was steady and unwavering in his resolutions; his desires were set on great objects; and his external demeanor was correct, and often dignified. He was reproached by the English, not without reason, with being unduly partial, after his accession to the British throne, to his Dutch subjects; and he was influenced through life by a love of money, which, though at first arising from a bitter sense of its necessity in his long and arduous conflicts, degenerated in his older years into an avaricious turn. The national debt of England has been improperly ascribed to his policy. It arose unavoidably from the Revolution, and is the price which every nation pays for a lasting change, how necessary soever, in its ruling dynasty. When the sovereign can no longer depend on the unbought loyalty of his subjects, he has no resource but in their interested attachment. The selfish desires of the holders of stock must come in place of the disinterested attachment of nations. Louis Philippe's government has done the same, under the influence of the same necessity. Yet William was not a perfect character. More than one dark transaction has left a stain on his memory; his accession to the treaties with France for the partition of Spain proved that his ambition could at times render him insensible to all the dictates of public morality; and the massacre of Glencoe, if it did not equal the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the wide-spread misery with

which it was attended, rivaled it in the perfidy in which it was conceived, and the cruelty with which it was executed. Less distinguished than either of his great regal cotempo

Character of

19. raries by genius or success, JAMES II. of England James II. of was yet a sovereign of no ordinary character, and England. the important events of his reign have impressed his name in an indelible manner on the records of history. In his person a dynasty was overturned, a form of government changed, a race of sovereigns sent into exile, and a new impulse communicated to the Reformed religion. He consummated the Waterloo of the royal dynasty of the Stuarts; he established, without intending it, the Protestant faith in the British empire on an imperishable foundation. Such deeds for good or for evil necessarily give immortality to their authors; for they lift them from the common herd of men, the effect of whose actions perish with themselves, to the rank of those who have made durable and indelible changes in human affairs. James did this, like Charles X. in after times, from the force of his will, and the absence of corresponding strength of understanding; from the sincerity of his conscientious opinions, and the want of that intermixture of worldly prudence which was necessary to give his measures lasting success. less honest man would never have thought of hazarding the name of royalty for that of religion-a more able one would probably have succeeded in rendering his religion victorious. It is the mixture of zeal with rashness, sincerity with unprudence, courage with incapacity, which has generally induced royal martyrdom.

20. His good and heroic qualities.

A

Yet James II. was not destitute of abilities, and he was actuated by that sincerity of intention and earnestness of which is so important an element purpose in every elevated character.. He had none of the levity or insouciance of his brother Charles. That lighthearted monarch was his superior in penetration, and greatly his superior in prudence, but had less of the hero, and incomparably less of the martyr in his composition. Charles was

at heart a Catholic, but he would never have sacrificed three crowns for a mass. In the arms of the Duchess of Portsmouth he forgot alike the cares and the duties of royalty. James was not without his personal frailties as well as Charles, but they did not form a ruling part of his character. Cast in a ruder mold, moved by more serious feelings, he was actuated in every period of life by lofty and respectable, because generous and disinterested, passions. Patriotism at first was his ruling motive: England had not a more gallant admiral; and in his combats with De Ruyter and Van Tromp, he exhibited a degree of nautical skill rarely witnessed in those who have been bred in palaces. Nelson or Collingwood did not more gallantly steer into the midst of the enemy's fleet, or engage with more dogged resolution, yard-arm to yard-arm, with a powerful and redoubtable foe. When he ascended the throne, this daring and obstinate disposition was entirely directed toward religion. A sincere, even a bigoted Catholic, he deemed his duty to his faith far superior to all worldly considerations. From the moment of his accession, he labored assiduously to effect, if not the re-establishment of Romish supremacy, at least such an equal partition of power with the Church. of England as was probably, in the case of so ambitious a body as the Romish ecclesiastics, the same thing.

means

21.

The rashness and imprudence which cost him his

throne.

In the prosecution of this object he was rash, vehement, and inconsiderate; deterred by no consideration of prudence, influenced by no calculation of his to his end, he permitted, if he did not actually sanction, atrocious cruelty and oppression toward his unhappy Protestant subjects; and drove on his own objects without the slightest regard to the means of effecting them which he possessed, or the chances of success which they presented. He uniformly maintained, to the last hour of his life, that it was perfect liberty of conscience, and not any exclusive supremacy, which he intended to establish for his Roman Catholic subjects; and several acts of his reign unquestionably favor this opinion. If so, it is a curious historical fact, illus

trative of the silent changes of time on human affairs, that the Whigs of 1688 took the crown from his head, and placed a new dynasty on the throne, for attempting to do the very thing which their successors in 1829, after thirty years' incessant efforts, actually accomplished. As it was, the attempt lost James and his family the throne, threw England permanently into the Protestant alliance, and, by giving her the lead in the great confederacy against France, contributed more. than any other cause to place her on that lofty eminence which she has ever since maintained in European affairs. The constancy of James in misfortune was as remarkable and more respectable than his vehemence in prosperity; with mournful resolution he continued to assert to his dying hour the cause of legitimacy against that of revolution, and died an exile in a foreign land, the martyr of religious fidelity and royal resolution.

22.

ment of the

war.

War having been resolved on, the first step was taken by the emperor, who laid claim to Milan as a fief of Commence the empire, and supported his pretensions by moving an army into Italy under the command of Prince Eugene of Savoy, who afterward became so celebrated as the brother and worthy rival in arms of Marlborough. The French and Spaniards assembled an army in the Milanese to resist his advance; and the Duke of Mantua having joined the cause, that important city was garrisoned by the French troops. But Prince Eugene ere long obliged them to fall back from the banks of the Adige to the line of the Oglio, on which they made a stand. But though hostilities had thus commenced in Italy, negotiations were still carried on at the Hague. It was soon found, however, that the pretensions of the French king were of so exorbitant a character that an accommodation was impossible. He had recently taken a step which showed how much his ambition had increased with the vast accession of power he had received. Charles II. had declared in his testament that the Duke of Anjou should renounce his rights to the crown of France be

fore receiving that of Spain; but Louis would not permit him to make such a renunciation, and he accepted the Spanish crown without any qualification. The resolution to unite the two crowns on the same head was therefore not attempted to be disguised.

Forces on

France.

When the contest commenced, the forces which the contending parties could command seemed nearly equal 23. to each other, and the result showed that they were the side of very equally matched. On the side of Louis was France, which, with a population of twenty millions, could maintain two hundred thousand soldiers in arms, and Spain, with its vast and varied possessions in the Peninsula, Flanders, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia,* containing at least thirty millions of inhabitants, besides the colonies beyond seas, of great importance from the revenue-not less than five millions sterling-which they furnished to the Spanish government. Bavaria, too, was an important outwork, not merely from the courageous disposition of its inhabitants, and the firm adherence of its government, through jealousy of Austria, to the French interest, but from the entrance which it afforded to hostile armies into the heart of Germany. The central position, however, of France, and the close proximity of its frontiers to the seat of war in Flanders, Italy, and on the Rhine, rendered it easy to foresee, what the event soon demonstrated, that the weight of the contest, save in the Peninsula, would fall on its forces. But they were numerous and efficient, admirably disciplined, and led by generals of talent and experience; and, above all, they were inspired with that confidence in themselves, and justifiable pride, which is the invariable consequence of a long train of military success.

Forces of

On the other hand, the allies had the troops of Austria, England, Holland, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and the 24. lesser states of Germany, with slight succor from the allies. Prussia and Denmark. These powers had a numerical

* SISMONDI, Xxvi., 286, 290.

320.

CAPEFIGUE, Hist. de Louis XIV., iv., 296,