Chapter IV: Part 4

It was about the time of this treaty that the English court was set agog by the flirtation between Jaqueline and the duke of Gloucester, and by the application they were making to both popes to open the way to their marriage. Nothing could be more threatening to the House of Burgundy than that an English prince should acquire Holland and the other provinces that had fallen to Jaqueline; and duke Philip, notwithstanding his alliance with Henry, interfered vigorously and successfully to prevent pope Martin from annulling the previous marriage of Jaqueline. When the annulment was finally obtained from Benedict, Philip appealed to Henry himself to stop the espousals by his royal authority. But Henry was quite willing his brother should win so great a prize. There was to be sure, hazard in it; but he trusted to his own address to keep Philip quiet, and allowed the marriage to take place. Nor did he trust in vain. That gifted monarch had sounded the depths and the shallows of his ally. He knew that Philip was the most pig-headed of mortals; and that he would submit to still greater humiliations rather than give up his schemes of vengeance.

Up to this time the arms of England had been successful; but they now met with a reverse the consequences of which were far-reaching; though English historians affect either to ignore the transaction, or to refer to it as an affair of no importance. Henry had gone back to England, leaving his victorious army under the command of his brother Thomas duke of Clarence. Thomas could not forgive himself for not having been at Agincourt on that day of glory; and he resolved to have an Agincourt of his own. The French under the Marshal de Lafayette--an ancestor of our own Lafayette--were in a strong position at Beaugé. A little way off lay a body of Scotch under the earl of Buchan, ready to second the French; but the English despised the Scotch even more than they did the French, for they had beaten them oftener and at greater odds.[9]

Clarence did not hesitate to attack the French position. He was received with steadiness; and at the critical moment Buchan and his red-headed crew bore down upon the field. Clarence was slain, and his army defeated.

Henry whose opinion of the disaster was different from that of the English historians, flew back to France, and in the most obstinate of all his campaigns, succeeded in winning back the ground that had been lost. But that campaign which the defeat of Beaugé alone had rendered necessary, was fatal to him. Worn out with care, fatigue and exposure he lay dying at Vincennes.

He called to him his next brother John duke of Bedford, appointed him regent of France, and enjoined upon him always to preserve the friendship and alliance of the duke of Burgundy, as essential to the conquest of the kingdom. He constituted his brother Humphrey regent of England, and adjured him never to leave that island while the war lasted. These two injunctions had the same drift, and showed what was weighing upon Henry’s mind. He had been confident of his own power to obviate the mischief threatened by the English marriage of Jaqueline, but he was not sure his brothers would be equal to it; and the apprehension was not ill founded.

The monarch died and was embalmed and sent to England. He was perhaps the greatest of England’s kings. His chief faults were cruelty and arrogance, and they both stood in his way. Assuming to be king of France he regarded as a traitor worthy of death every Frenchman who resisted him. This theory drove the French into that tenacious defence of their towns which checked his progress; and at the same time his haughty airs alienated the Burgundian nobles. Dare you look me in the face when you speak to me? said he to L’isle Adam, Philip’s governor of Paris. Sire, replied the Burgundian, there lives not the man that I look not in the face when I speak to him.

A few weeks after Henry’s death, his poor crazy father-in-law Charles VI. was laid beside his ancestors in the abbey of Saint Denis. Not a single prince of the House of Valois followed him to his grave. Not a single prince of any blood save the duke of Bedford alone who conducted the obsequies. As they turned away from his tomb, the good monks of the abbey who had sung the requiem, fell into a dispute with the servants of the king’s household about the possession of some ornaments that had been used in the funeral. From words they come to blows, and the battle waxed so fierce that Bedford and his suite were fain to turn back and strike right and left to quell the tumult.

Henry instead of naming one of his brothers guardian and governor of his infant son now king, had conferred that office on his uncle the bishop of Winchester.[10] That bishop is the Cardinal Beaufort of Shakspeare; and we shall now call him by that name though pope Martin had not yet sent him the red hat. These Beauforts were the natural children of John of Gaunt and Catharine Swinford. In the reign of Richard II. John’s nephew, they had been legitimated; but when John’s son Henry usurped the throne, he was fearful of the ambition of his half brothers and caused his parliament to modify the legitimation so far as to exclude them from the throne. The exclusion was futile: the line of Beaufort reigns over England at this present moment, while that of Henry is extinct.

Cardinal Beaufort possessed great abilities but an imperious temper. He and his nephew of Gloucester Jaqueline’s husband were rivals, the one being regent of the king, the other of the kingdom; and this rivalry soon lapsed into a hatred so bitter that they sought only to destroy each other.

The cardinal had raised six thousand men to reinforce Bedford, when Gloucester, exercising his prerogative of regent, assumed the command of them. Then in spite of Henry’s dying injunction that he should not leave England, he took Jaqueline with him and at the head of those troops, landed at Calais. Instead of going south to join Bedford as he had promised, he marched east across the territories of the duke of Burgundy without his permission, and entered upon the provinces of Jaqueline. At their coming the war of the Codfish and the Fishhooks broke out afresh. He and Jaqueline sided with the Fishhooks which gave the Hooks a temporary superiority.

Philip behaved with signal imbecility. Instead of withdrawing his contingent from France, and using it to drive Gloucester out, he expostulated with Bedford concerning the invasion, and clamored for the withdrawal of the English troops. Most gladly would Bedford have withdrawn them, for he needed them himself; but Gloucester was not subject to his authority, and would not listen to him. Philip at last woke up to what everybody else saw, that he was in the predicament of fighting for the English in France and against them in the Netherlands. He levied a fresh army, took the command in person, and marched toward Holland.

When Gloucester heard of these preparations, he wrote Philip a wheedling letter saying that he had come to the continent solely in the interest of Philip and of Philip’s dear double cousin Jaqueline; and he called Heaven to witness to the purity of his intentions. Philip told him he was a liar; Gloucester told Philip he was another. Philip immediately challenged him to mortal combat, declaring that by the help of God and of God’s Virgin Mother our Lady, he would convince him of his error by running him through the body. Gloucester accepted the challenge, vowing to put Philip to death in the name of God, of our Lady and of Monseigneur Saint George. The duke of Bedford and cardinal Beaufort interfered and persuaded these two blusterers to leave the matter out to a council of doctors of law and theology at Paris. These philosophers arrived at the verdict that the two challengers had come out so even in the missives they had discharged at each other that further duelling was superfluous; and so it ended.

Philip entered Holland at the head of his army. The Codfish joined him, not that they preferred him to their lawful suzerain Jaqueline, but because those worthless Fishhooks had adhered to the other side.

At this critical moment Gloucester went back to England, leaving Jaqueline to see to her own affairs as best she might. He was called home he said, by the untoward proceedings of his uncle the cardinal. He sent to Jaqueline however, a reënforcement of three thousand men. The two armies met at Browershaven where after a day of carnage in which Englishman and Frenchman, Fleming and Burgundian, Codfish and Fishhook fell indiscriminately, the star of Philip prevailed. He was not a great general; but in the hour of combat he was an active and intrepid soldier.

Not wholly crushed by this defeat, Jaqueline donned her armor and took the field in person, and in more than one bloody conflict behaved with the steadiness of a veteran. But there was no repairing the disaster of Browershaven, and her fortunes sank. She wrote imploringly to Gloucester to come back to her. One of her letters full of affection, still exists. But they never met again. The good Humphrey had fallen in with a handsome English girl named Eleanor Cobham, and had become more intimate with her than comported with his duty to his Dutch wife.

Philip by the success of his arms and by this infidelity of Gloucester, became master of the fate of Jaqueline. He prayed pope Martin to annul her English marriage and to reinstate the one with the duke of Brabant. Martin consented and put forth a bull accordingly; and as the English marriage had been sanctioned and blessed by his Avignon rival, he let fly at him an anathema so comprehensive that it is doubtful whether he has yet been able, even after the lapse of five centuries, to dodge all its provisions.

As there was reason to fear that Jaqueline still loved her truant Humphrey, the bull in question decreed that if she again espoused him, even after the death of Brabant, she would be guilty of adultery. This at first seems illogical; but the Church is never illogical: admit her premises and you are swept to her conclusions. Let us see: According to the Church, if a woman marries again having a previous husband living, she commits adultery. If Jaqueline after the death of Brabant, should marry Gloucester, she would marry again, having a previous husband living. If you should ask who that previous husband would be, I answer the duke of Gloucester.

At all events, this syllogism was so convincing to Gloucester himself, that like a submissive son of the Church, he turned round and married his mistress Eleanor Cobham.

Nemesis followed up that marriage, and Jaqueline was avenged. A few years later, the duchess Eleanor was arraigned for witchcraft and made to do public penance at Saint Pauls. Humphrey was implicated in his wife’s sorceries; but it would not answer to make a prince of the blood do penance at Saint Pauls, so he was found one morning, dead in his bed.

As for his murderer, stop here O reader! turn to your Shakspeare, Henry VI. part II. act III. scene III.; and stand at the bedside of the dying cardinal--that scene of which Doctor Johnson says “the profound can imagine nothing beyond”--that scene of which Schlegel says “it is beyond praise; no other poet has ever drawn aside the curtain of eternity in so awful a manner”--that scene which John Richard Green says “is taken bodily from some older dramatist!”[11]

The annulment of Jaqueline’s English marriage, threw her back into the arms of the duke of Brabant who however, did not long enjoy the wife thus restored to him. He died, and his estates fell to his brother Philip who died soon after, and so suddenly that Philip of Burgundy who was, or rather claimed to be the next heir, was suspected of having poisoned him. But the fifteenth century had fairly set in, and knowledge had revived. Two intelligent surgeons cut open the dead Philip, to see what ailed him, and found in his stomach an ulcer which sufficiently explained his demise, so that Philip-the-good escaped passing into history as a poisoner.

Jaqueline was reduced to extremities. Philip had cornered her up in Zealand, and set to watch over her a lieutenant of his named Philip Borssele who had risen in his service by his business talents. Jaqueline the inheritor of some of the richest provinces in Europe, was so straitened that she had not money enough to defray her housekeeping. One day her mother had sent her a present of a span of horses, and she could not find a single florin in her purse to give as drink-money to the grooms who had brought them. One of her attendants suggested to her to apply to Borssele who always had money to lend. She spurned the thought of being beholden to that low-born myrmidon of her hated cousin. But finally her necessities prevailed. She sent to Borssele to borrow a small sum. He not only lent it to her but told her he had more at her disposal. Jaqueline was mollified: we are all mollified with a little money and the promise of more. She made up her mind he was not a myrmidon after all but an honest fellow. She admitted him to her presence. Borssele was handsome and graceful; and she did not frown upon him. He took a pliant hour, and though he had never read Othello, he told his tale of love as eloquently as the Moor. They were privately married.

When Philip-the-good heard of this fresh escapade of his double cousin, he flew into a towering passion--or at least, pretended to do so. He stamped and stormed. That Jaqueline of Bavaria, duchess of Brabant, daughter of Burgundy and of France, should stoop to the hand of Philip Borssele! So he seized the bridegroom and shut him up in the castle of Rupelmonde; and thus was Jaqueline deprived of her fourth husband.

But there is reason to believe that Philip-the-good was putting on airs, and that he was secretly glad of the advantage which Jaqueline’s imprudence had given him over her. She had never ceded her estates to him by any formal act: he held them as a brigand holds his prey; but now he brought her to surrender to him her whole patrimony as the ransom of her husband. Borssele was set free, and in order to raise him to a rank a little more commensurate with that of his wife, Philip created him count of Ostravant, and conferred upon him the collar of the Golden Fleece, an order of chivalry which Philip himself had established as a rival to the English order of the Garter; and he settled upon the newly married pair a part of the revenues of Ostravant, so that his double cousin and cousin-in-law might not starve.[12]

We know but little of the remaining years of Jaqueline’s life. We hope they were more tranquil than those we have recounted. She died in 1436, at the age of thirty-five, leaving no issue.

The domains which she had inherited formed technically a part of the Empire Holy and Roman; and at her death the emperor Sigismund claimed that they had escheated to him. The claim was in accordance with feudal law, but Philip was already in possession and was too powerful to be dislodged. Thus did the provinces of Jaqueline go to swell the dominion of the House of Burgundy--that house whose fate it was never to decline after the manner of empires, but to grow in power and splendor under each succeeding duke until the day when Charles-the-rash, son of Philip, should stretch forth his hand to a regal diadem; and then the storm came which swept away both duke and dominion.

* * * * *

The same year that Jaqueline of Bavaria married Philip Borssele, Jaqueline of Luxembourg married the duke of Bedford.

But to introduce our second Jaqueline with due ceremony we must go back ten years; and I promise not to be so long as that in fetching up the arrears of my story.

After the death of Henry V. his brother of Bedford was at first desirous to obey the injunction of the dying king, to keep on good terms with the duke of Burgundy. There had been love passages, ardent no doubt, but still diplomatic only between Bedford and Anne of Burgundy Philip’s sister, a comely maiden of eighteen. Bedford pressed his suit and was accepted, and Anne made him a good wife, at least in a political sense, for her kind offices were often required to keep peace between her arrogant husband and her obstinate brother.

Bedford was endowed with all the haughtiness of his brother Henry without his genius; and he affected to treat Philip as his inferior which he certainly was not. The House of Valois descended in direct male line from Hugh Capet, had nothing to yield to the House of Plantagenet whose highest male descent was from the counts of Anjou vassals of the line of Capet. Besides, duke Philip was an hereditary sovereign, while duke John of Bedford was only regent of a kingdom not yet achieved, and not destined to be achieved.

On one occasion, in the presence of both English and Burgundian nobles, Bedford so far forgot himself as to threaten that if his brother Philip did not behave, he would send him to England to drink more beer than he liked. This was a gross affront. Philip had been brought up on the delicious wines of his native Burgundy; and he detested beer. But the good duchess Anne interposed and persuaded her husband not to make her brother drink beer, and peace was maintained.

After nine years of married life Anne died. This event might not have dissolved the alliance between the two powers, had not Bedford conducted himself with a wanton disregard to Philip’s sensibilities. Among the vassals of the House of Burgundy the most illustrious was a branch of that of Luxembourg; and the gentlemen of that house were among the most ardent partisans of the English cause. It was John of Luxembourg into whose hands the maid of Orleans had fallen after her capture at Compiegne. John took her to his castle of Beaurevoir where she was received with kindness by the ladies of his house, especially by his young niece Jaqueline of Saint Pol, or of Luxembourg.

The high rank and eminent services of this family had brought them into social relations with the regent Bedford; and Anne of Burgundy was no sooner in her grave than he offered his hand to Jaqueline. And so promptly did they dispatch the business that it might be said of that as of another occasion well known to you, that the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Jaqueline of Luxembourg was Philip’s vassal, and by feudal law, had no right to marry without his consent, but he was not even consulted. This disrespect to the memory of his dead sister, and contempt of his own authority exhausted his patience. He had long had his head broken at home over his English alliance. His eldest sister had married Arthur of Brittany, count of Richmont, Constable of France. His next sister was the wife of the count of Clermont afterwards duke of Bourbon. Both these gentlemen were partisans of king Charles. Philip who as we have said, was good-tempered, had kept on friendly terms with his sisters, though their husbands would now and then burst into his territories and lay them waste; and he now empowered those fighting brothers-in-law to open negotiations in his name with the king.

Cardinal Beaufort--we have anticipated in referring to his death-bed--Cardinal Beaufort made a strenuous effort to turn aside the peril. He induced Philip and Bedford to agree to a personal interview, and they went to Saint Omer for that purpose. But a question of precedence arose: neither of them would pay the other the first visit. In vain did the cardinal represent to Bedford that it was he who had given the cause of offence, and it was he who had everything to lose by the rupture. The self-willed Plantagenet would concede nothing. The cardinal then tried Philip, calling him his dear nephew.[13] But the Burgundian’s blood was up and he was as intractable as the Englishman. So the two princes left St. Omer without seeing each other.

The envoys of the king of France and of the duke of Burgundy met in the church of Saint Vaast in the town of Arras. Cardinal Beaufort took part in the conference on behalf of England; and the cardinal of Santa Croce on the part of the Roman pontiff. In an eloquent speech Beaufort pleaded in the name of that Church of which he was a prince, that Philip could renounce his alliance with England only at the cost of his salvation. He had taken an oath, and if he broke that oath his soul was lost. On the contrary the cardinal of Santa Croce maintained that Philip’s first and greatest sublunary duty was to his liege lord king Charles, and if he were recreant to that duty he would be damned. And to prove that it was he and not the English cardinal who spoke by the authority of the Church, he wrought a miracle on the spot. They brought to him a consecrated wafer--the BREAD that the hand of the priest had transformed into the very substance of the Omnipotent. He cursed it, and it turned black; he blessed it and it turned white again.

This was beyond gainsaying. Beaufort withdrew; and the treaty of Arras was signed, in which Philip dictated nearly his own terms. Among other concessions Charles agreed to build an expiatory chapel at Montereau where John-the-fearless had been murdered, and to maintain there daily low mass for the repose of his soul. Not a word about John’s victim the equally murdered Louis of Orleans the king’s uncle. His soul was left to shift for itself without diplomatic succor. Time once more vindicated its reputation for putting things to rights. Before the century was out the generation of Charles VII. was extinct; and that of the neglected Louis mounted the throne and sat there till the end.[14]

The defection of the duke of Burgundy resulted as Henry V. had foreseen: it rendered hopeless the Plantagenet cause in France. But indeed the tide had already turned, and the remnant of the kingdom left to Charles VII. had suddenly shown itself a match for its enemies. The superstitious spirit of the age attributed this change to the direct interposition of Providence in the advent and career of Jeanne Darc the famous Maid of Orleans; and the English have seemed willing to leave this coloring upon it in order to throw a mist over some of the most unfortunate passages of their military history. The true explanation like most true explanations, is simple enough. There had sprung up around the falling throne of Charles an array of military talent not equalled elsewhere. Charles VII. was not a great king, but so fortunate was he in making use of the greatness of others that he gained the name of Charles-the-well-served. Foremost among those to whom he owed that title, was his cousin the count Dunois called in the early part of his career and in Shakspeare, the Bastard of Orleans.

So little can be gathered in English histories concerning this great man, that I will say a word more about him. Louis of Orleans, the husband of Valentina, was not true to her. An intrigue with the wife of the lord of Canny, resulted in the birth of a boy. Why the mother did not take charge of her offspring I do not know; but it is certain that Valentina herself adopted this by-blow of her husband, and brought him up with her own little brood. It is even said that he was her favorite among them, from his singular wit and spirit. After having tried many years in vain to bring the lordly assassin of her husband to justice, Valentina lay on her death-bed. She called her children to her side; she called to him who was not her child, but whom she loved as well; and she told him that he above them all was chosen to be the avenger of his father. But Heaven had marked out for him a higher rôle than to avenge an unworthy sire. It was he who was ever at the side of the Maid of Orleans eking out her inspiration with his own, and at times setting aside the mandates she received from above, in favor of the suggestions of his own genius; and then with true magnanimity ascribing to her all the glory of the success.

After the capture of the Maid, the renown of Dunois, no longer obscured by the cloud of superstition in which he himself had been willing to envelop it, shone forth with its proper splendor.

Bedford, after having hacked the spurs off the heels of one of his bravest captains, because he had lost the battle of Patay, took the field himself against Dunois; and at Lagni was forced to abandon to him his cannon and his baggage. Subsequently Dunois was made lieutenant general of France.

The hundred years war ended by the dismemberment not of the French empire but of the English. The vast continental domains of the Plantagenets, the inheritance of Eleanor of Aquitaine, containing nearly one-third of France, which they had held three centuries--as long indeed as they had held the throne of England--were all conquered and annexed to the French crown. Nothing remained but the town of Calais which however was not a part of Eleanor’s patrimony.

This was the severest blow England ever received: it reduced her to a second class power, and left to her kings hardly more territory than they had inherited from their Saxon predecessors. In treating of this great war, English historians with some exceptions, strive to make nothing conspicuous but English victories; and the thoughtful reader is puzzled at the result, if indeed the result is disclosed to him. Well, let him admire the patriotism of the English writers and look elsewhere.

But the Jaquelines! We have tried to explain how they were a cause, albeit a minor one, of this outcome, by the dissention which the love affairs of both fomented between the Plantagenets and the Burgundian Valois. A major cause was the soldiership of Dunois and his companions in arms.[15]

Three years after his marriage with Jaqueline of Luxembourg, the duke of Bedford, worn out like his brother Henry, with care and toil, died at Rouen, leaving his widow childless. Her further history demands that we go back two years.

Near the town of Beauvais there was a dilapidated castle called Gerberoy. In the neighborhood were hovering La Hire and Saintrailles two of the hardest fighters in the service of king Charles. Bedford feared that these gentlemen might seize Gerberoy and make it tenable, so he despatched one of his captains the earl of Arundel to intercept them. Arundel was approaching Gerberoy without having discovered any signs of the enemy; and there was apparently nothing to apprehend from a ruinous old stronghold which could not contain half as many men as he had at his back. Nevertheless like a prudent general he sent forward Sir Ralph Standish with a hundred men to reconnoitre. Sir Ralph arrived under the walls, and observing a soldier on the parapet, summoned him to surrender. The soldier answered with a gibe, and the next moment Sir Ralph and his hundred men were flying for their lives. La Hire and Saintrailles had thrown themselves into the place in the night with a corps of picked men. Not content with putting to flight Sir Ralph, they instantly fell upon the main body of the English which according to Hume, was five times their number. Arundel was slain and his detachment routed.

Among the prisoners taken, was an English knight named Richard Woodville, and it is on this occasion, I believe, that he makes his début on the page of history. He had fought with blind and misdirected valor in the battle, and so had other knights whose names have not come down to us. His name would not have spanned such a distance had it not been his fate to become the father of the long line of kings referred to in the beginning of this essay; nor is that the only royal line that traces descent from him.

He soon recovered his liberty and entered the personal service of the duke of Bedford as a sort of staff officer, and had frequent occasions to admire the charming duchess. After Bedford’s death Sir Richard ventured to lift his eyes to the widowed Jaqueline. Like Borssele he was handsome; and Jaqueline of Luxembourg took a leaf out of the book of Jaqueline of Bavaria, and became the bride of Sir Richard Woodville.

Their daughter was that Elizabeth Woodville, lady Grey who came and knelt before Edward IV. and prayed that he would lift from her and her children the attainder that had fallen upon them because her husband had perished at Saint Albans, fighting for the House of Lancaster. Edward granted her prayer, fell in love with her and married her. Their daughter was Elizabeth Plantagenet who became the queen of Henry VII.

One more love story is needed to complete the mosaic. Catharine of France widow of Henry V., became enamoured of what one English historian calls “an obscure Welch gentleman named Owen Tudor.” This was the gravest misalliance of all. Catharine of Valois, daughter of a king, sister of a king, widow of a king, mother of a king, stooped to be the wife of an obscure country gentleman. Their son Edmund Tudor, married Margaret Beaufort of the Beaufort family already mentioned. The son of Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort was Henry earl of Richmond who seized the crown as the prize of his victory at Bosworth, and then strengthened his claim to it by marrying Elizabeth Plantagenet, Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV. and grand daughter of Jaqueline.

Thus did the blood of Beaufort come to the throne; and thus were Jaqueline of Luxembourg and her true knight the progenitors of the line which Macbeth said would stretch out to the crack of doom.

VALOIS, BURGUNDY, HAPSBURG, BOURBON.

(The italics mark the line of descent.)

_Charles-le-temeraire_, Charles-the-rash, miscalled by the English, Charles-the-bold, was the last Valois duke of Burgundy. He left an only child _Mary of Burgundy_ who married _Maximilian of Hapsburg_, afterward emperor. Their son was the _Archduke Philip_ who is counted as Philip the first of Spain though he never reigned. Philip married _Joanna_ daughter of _Ferdinand_ and _Isabella_, and sister of Catharine of Aragon wife of Henry VIII. The son of Philip and Joanna was the great emperor _Charles-the-fifth_ who was Charles the first of Spain. The crown of Spain then fell from father to son, to _Philip II._, _Philip III._, _Philip IV._ and Charles II. where the male line of the elder branch of Hapsburg ended. The crown then fell to _Philip V._ (Bourbon), grandson of _Louis XIV._ and _Maria Teresa_ eldest daughter of Philip IV.

The younger, the Austrian branch of the House of Hapsburg, is descended from the emperor Ferdinand brother of Charles-the-fifth.

Hoche

Many years ago I knew a Frenchman whose father a captain of infantry, had been killed in La Vendée fighting under Hoche. He had many things to tell me about Hoche which interested me in his career, and led me to treasure up in my memory whatever I came across afterwards concerning him.

There was a certain confidential air about the communications of my French friend, which leads me to say to the reader that I trust to his honor not to divulge what I say to him touching the warrior in question.

The French themselves hold that next to Napoleon Bonaparte, the most brilliant soldier thrown to the surface by the revolution, was Lazarus Hoche. This seems too to be the opinion of a writer in the Encyclopedia Brittanica who says that the death of Hoche deprived the French people of the only man capable of making head against the ambition of the Corsican. And it still adds force to that view to bear in mind how short a time was allotted him to win immortality: he never lived to be thirty. Indeed I remember but one general in history who died so young with so high a reputation; and that was that wondrous boy Gaston de Foix nephew of Louis XII., who fell at the age of twenty-three at Ravenna after having there as elsewhere totally overthrown the famous Spanish infantry.

Perhaps some honest reader still callow from the study of John Richard Green, may remind me that that unique historian not only makes the Spanish infantry triumphant at Ravenna, but cites it as their typical exploit. Well, we must be thankful that Mr. Green does not cite the Caudine Forks as the typical exploit of the Roman legions.

Lazarus Hoche was born near Versailles in June 1768. He was the son, not of a common workman as some of the encyclopedias do vainly talk, but of a common soldier, or rather of an uncommon soldier; for his father on account of his uncommonness, was taken from the line and made keeper of the royal kennels at Versailles; and the first useful occupation of the boy, if useful it were, was to help his father in the care of the king’s hounds.

Nature had endowed him with a handsome and vigorous body and a precocious intellect. He had a maternal uncle who was curé of Saint Germain-en-laye and a man of some learning. This good priest interested himself in the education of his clever nephew, and taught him the elements of latin and mathematics; and thus he received instruction beyond what was common in his station in life. And you academical gentlemen will insist I suppose, that his subsequent advancement was all owing to this latin and mathematics.

But his instincts were military and he resolved to be a soldier, and with a boyish longing at the same time, to see the world, he enlisted when he was sixteen in what he supposed to be a regiment bound for the Indies; but his friends had played a trick on him, and he found himself enrolled in a home regiment. He made the best of it however, and soon attracted the attention of his superiors by his prompt and intelligent observance of duty.

But there were some exceptions to his good behavior. On one occasion a soldier of his regiment had been killed in a pot-house brawl. Hoche joined with some of his comrades in razing to the ground the house of the assassin. For his share in this riot he was condemned to three months imprisonment. Another act of violence which cost the life of a fellow being, brought him no punishment whatever, as it was within the tolerance of the service. A corporal was noted for his skill in handling the sabre. He had already slain two opponents in his duels. He insulted Hoche who instantly challenged him. Hoche received a cut across the forehead, which nearly split his skull, and left a long deep scar there the rest of his days; but he put an end to the duelling of his antagonist by running him through the body.

Of his personal comeliness it is related that once, on parade, a noble lady pointed him out to her companion and exclaimed: What a splendid looking general that would make! She little knew she was playing the part of a prophetess.

And it was not long before his fine bearing stood him in still better stead. Near by was a regiment of grenadiers of the king’s guard. These superb fellows had noticed the soldier-like qualities of Hoche, and they petitioned that he might be enrolled among them. The petition was granted.

These men when in barracks, were allowed to earn money by any honest industry that did not interfere with their duty, and Hoche addicted himself to embroidery. If you think this an effeminate occupation for a soldier, I would remind those of you who have been to sea in a sailing ship, that you must have observed that sailors who are certainly as rough as soldiers, are often skillful in needle work useful and ornamental.

With the money Hoche earned in this manner, he bought books, especially books of history; and as he dwelt upon the renown of Hannibal and of Caesar, of Turenne and Condé, of Marlborough and of Frederic, it was his dream to write his own name some day on that immortal list, I say dream, for it could be nothing more then, under the old régime when the command of armies was the prerogative of the nobility alone.

In 1789 occurred the first overt act of the French revolution--the storming of the Bastille. It was the same year that George Washington was inaugurated first president of the United States. The end of our revolution was the beginning of that of the people of France, and ours precipitated theirs. It was high time perhaps that the old régime came to an end; but we Americans ought none the less look back upon it with gratitude. Without its aid we could not have compassed our independence. It was the troops sent us by Louis XVI. that offset the German forces that came here in aid of our enemies.

Hoche was too well informed not to understand the issue between the government and the people, and he believed in his heart that the people were right; but he was the sworn soldier of the king and he was determined to defend him so long as defence was possible. He was present at Versailles when the Parisian mob worthily led by that frail beauty Théroigne de Méricourt broke into the chateau and made the king come out on the balcony with the cap of liberty on his head. Hoche stood there shoulder to shoulder with his comrades ready to charge upon the rabble the moment the signal was given. But the signal was never given: Louis XVI. was the best of men and the worst of kings: He had not the heart to shed the blood of his subjects, so they shed his blood.

Legend says there was also there on that occasion another young man of still rarer qualities, who whispered to a companion that the king was an imbecile not to order those fine guards to slaughter the vagabonds and put an end to the disturbance. The anecdote may not be true, but it is none the less characteristic: it is perhaps the reflex of what that young man himself did a few years later.

The king was led to Paris and kept virtually a captive in the Tuileries, and Hoche with his regiment passed under the command of La Fayette whose purpose was not to overthrow the monarchy but to reform it on a constitutional basis. But the French revolution was different from ours: ours was aristocratic, a change at the head only, still retaining remnants of feudal tyranny--such for example as the divine right of sovereigns not to pay their debts--which we are not yet emancipated enough to throw off. Theirs on the contrary was democratic, or rather volcanic, the very dregs from the bottom thrown to the top.

La Fayette was obliged to fly for his life; and the army went over and _fraternised_ as it was called, with the populace. The rise of Hoche was now rapid. Beside courage he was gifted with a thoughtful self-possession which never failed him. The display of this virtue on an occasion when he covered the retreat of a beaten army, attracted the notice of Carnot the minister of war--“the organiser of victory” as he was called--and he made Hoche a brigadier general.

In 1792 the supreme authority of France was usurped by a body known as the Convention. In 1793 the king was brought to the block, and all Europe rose to avenge his death. The English government had fitted out an army under the command of the duke of York, son of George III., to cooperate with the allied enemies of the new republic. York was a methodical soldier, and minding the old rule not to leave a hostile stronghold in the rear, he turned aside to besiege Dunkirk in the north-east corner of France, instead of hastening south. Carnot caught at the fault of the Englishman and put it to profit. He ordered Hoche to throw himself into Dunkirk with a few battallions and hold it to the last extremity. Hoche found the defences in bad condition and the inhabitants who were a conglomeration of various nationalities, not in the least disposed to aid him in repairing them. He seized the chief magistrate and threw him into prison, and warned the other functionaries that they would be sent to join him, if they did not come up to his help against the English. They came; and by the time the duke had established his lines of circumvallation with scientific skill, Hoche and his men were prepared to do all that was expected of them, namely, to keep the duke of York out of mischief for some time to come. One day the sound of cannon was heard off south, and soon the English were observed to be preparing to quit. Hoche though shut in from outward news, penetrated the situation. An allied army under Freytag coming up from the south-east, and a French army under Houchard coming up from the south-west, had intercepted each other and given battle. The English had received a message from Freytag, notifying them to come to the aid of their friends. Hoche resolved that they should do nothing of the sort. He sallied out upon them, threw them into some disorder and thus detained them till the battle of Hondschoote was lost and won. Houchard victorious pushed for Dunkirk. The English, hindered by this fresh sortie of Hoche, came tardily and faultily into order of battle, and after a short struggle, broke and fled leaving their artillery and their baggage.

Hoche shared with Houchard the glory of this double victory. The conduct of the duke of York was the subject of a parliamentary inquiry in which he was duly whitewashed as became a prince of the blood. Had he been a commoner he might have shared the fate of Admiral Byng.[16]

Carnot showed anew his appreciation of Hoche by giving him the command of the army of the Moselle--a grave responsibility for a youth of twenty-five; and Carnot made the mistake of not letting the responsibility rest squarely upon his shoulders: he sent commissioners to direct him.

An allied army superior in force and in a strong position, under the duke of Brunswick, lay at Keyserslautern. The commissioners counselled an attack. Hoche though daring was not rash, and the born instinct of the soldier within him whispered that the risk was too great; so he hesitated. The commissioners insisted, and he led forward his troops. The battle lasted two days, and never perhaps was the genius of the young general more conspicuous. Repulsed, he marched his men off the field as he had marched them on--shoulder to shoulder, beaten but not demoralized, and the enemy did not follow him up.

Carnot was sufficiently just not to blame him for this failure. On the contrary he sent him reënforcements, and he sent him also what he would willingly have dispensed with--fresh commissioners to advise him. Hoche had pondered deeply the cause of his defeat, and had resolved that that cause should not again operate. He refused to consult with the commissioners: he would neither tell them his own plans nor listen to theirs. Taking off his cap and shaking it in their faces in that dramatic style so very French, he exclaimed: If that cap knew my thoughts I would throw it in the fire! Finding him obdurate they went back to Paris and made no favorable report of him.

Hoche had under him at this time several officers of about his own age who afterwards made their mark in history: Moreau the victor of Hohenlinden, who fell at last at Dresden fighting against France; Ney the bravest of the brave. Desaix who came late but not too late on the field of Marengo, and died at the head of his column; Le Fèvre the hero of the 18. Brumaire when he scattered the council of the five hundred with his grenadiers, and saved Bonaparte; Soult who won his baton of marshal by piercing the Russian centre at Austerlitz. He distinguished himself afterwards in Spain; and what is a more interesting distinction for you esthetic gentlemen, he sold to the French government for 615,000 francs--the highest price ever paid for a picture--the sublime Murillo of the Louvre. And I am sorry I cannot tell you how he came by it: there was scandal thereunto anent.

It is probable that Hoche imparted his plans to these able lieutenants, for it is otherwise inexplicable that they should have acquiesced in the strange measures he adopted. Instead of seeking the enemy, he took every pains to avoid him. He blew up the bridges and tore up the roads; and the allies seeing him bent on defensive measures only, failed to watch him as he deserved. And there were disquieting rumors in Paris. Hoche was certainly not a coward, but was he not a traitor? Had he not sold himself for Austrian gold? Such things had been.

One day the news came that he and his army had disappeared in the night. Perhaps they had gone over to the enemy; for the atmosphere was charged with treachery, and men were daily changing their politics with the changing fortune of war. The next news of Hoche was that he had fallen as if from the clouds, upon a strong Austrian position the other side of the Vosges mountains. And the position was so strong too that for a moment he was in danger of a second repulse. A battery on a height made such havoc with his men that they quailed. Six hundred francs a piece for those cannon! cried he, pointing with his sword. It is a bargain replied one of his officers. You shall judge between us added another as they clambered up. The battery was taken; and the Austrians fell back on the Prussian position at Sultz where their joint forces awaited the coming of the French. They did not wait long and their defeat was total.

The victory was as important as decisive. The purpose of the allied army there was to prevent the junction of Hoche and Pichegru, the latter commanding the army of the Rhine. That junction now took place. According to military rule Pichegru the older man and the older officer outranked Hoche and was entitled to the chief command; but the Convention, dazzled by the brilliancy with which Hoche had redeemed his reputation decreed that he should have the precedence, and Pichegru after some protest consented to serve under his boy superior.

The allies had withdrawn behind the fortifications of Landau and Wissembourg, and so long as they were there the French frontier was infested and nothing permanent accomplished. Hoche resolved to dislodge them. He told his troops he had a bloody task for them: They must storm Landau! They responded by waving their caps and shouting Landau ou la mort, Landau or death! And it was no idle boast: Amid a scene of sickening carnage Landau was taken and the allies disheartened did not wait for that terrible forlorn hope to mount to the breach at Wissembourg.

The frontier was thus cleared of enemies, and the Republic set free to follow up that spasmodic career of conquest which brought for a moment the continent to her feet.

Hoche now took it into his head to get married, though we cannot imagine how he could stop fighting long enough to attend to anything so sentimental. Perhaps he did not object to variety in his fighting. He had met at Thionville a graceful girl who had strongly attracted him. On inquiry he learned that her character was as commendable as her manners, and he offered her his hand. Her family though respectable was not wealthy, and through diffidence she hesitated. What was she that the first soldier of France should pick her out! But her friends would not let her miss such a chance, and they were married; and I leave you to the chronicles which aver that she made him a good wife.

At any other epoch of the history of France, and at any epoch whatever of the history of any other people, a young general who had encircled his name with so much glory, would have been the idol of the nation; but France had fallen upon strange lines. The Reign of Terror was at its height; the Convention had turned upon itself; the Girondists, republicans all, had gone to the scaffold; Danton the rival of Robespierre, had fallen; and that sanguinary triumvirate Robespierre, Saint Just and Couthon were the arbiters of life and death to all so unfortunate as to live under the aegis of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

It is necessary to consider a moment the state of things under the Terror, in order to make the rest of this story credible. Lamartine, a republican himself, says: “More than eight thousand _suspects_ encumbered the prisons. In one night three hundred families the most notable in France, historical, military, parliamentary, episcopal, were arrested. No crimes were invented for them: they were guilty by the quarter they lived in, by their rank, their fortune, their relations, their religion, their opinions, their presumed opinions. One died for having said what he thought; another for having held his tongue; one for having emigrated and come back; another for having staid at home; one for having increased the public distress by not spending his income; another for having insulted the public distress by spending it too lavishly. In a word there were no longer any innocent or any guilty: there were only the proscribers and the proscribed.”

Under this fearful régime many of the truest and bravest soldiers of France had perished: the duke of Lauzun and Biron who had fought for us under Washington and La Fayette; the count d’Estaing who at the same time commanded the French fleet off our coast; Custine the victor of Mayence, and strangest of all, Houchard the victor of Honschoote. La Fayette had saved himself by flight; so had Dumouriez the victor of Jemappes. Some of these were proscribed because they were of noble birth; others because, though plebeian and republican, they did not fully come up to the standard of fanaticism then in vogue.

Robespierre and Saint Just are two of the monsters of history; yet we cannot doubt that they were animated by what they regarded as devoted and unselfish patriotism. They were as ready to lay down their own lives as to take the lives of others, and they did lay them down.

They were among the best illustrations of that saying of Gibbon that fanaticism can turn the noblest natures into beasts of prey.

Hoche had lost much of the friendship of Carnot by flouting his authority in the matter of the commissioners, and by setting up on his own account as an “organiser of victory.” Robespierre looked upon all great warriors as a menace to Liberty, Equality and Fraternity; and since the campaign of Wissembourg, Hoche was regarded as the first of living generals. He had moreover been approached by the royalists with the same temptation that was afterwards spread before Bonaparte, namely, that he should undertake the rôle of General Monk, and if he succeeded, the lofty function of Constable of France was to be revived for him. He had scorned these offers; yet with the perversity of human nature especially of human nature under the Terror, he was held accountable for their having been made.

The Convention resolved to arrest him before he became too strong for them. But did they dare seize him at the head of the troops he had led and who adored him? The Terrorists had not only General Monk to reflect upon but the case at their own doors of Dumouriez. When they had sent commissioners to arrest that officer in his camp, he had ordered a file of soldiers to seize them and deliver them over to the enemy.[17]