Chapter XVI: Part 16

The French and Bavarians were posted behind the little stream called the Nebel, which runs almost from north to south into the Danube immediately in front of the village of Blenheim. The Nebel flows along a little valley, and the French occupied the rising ground to the west of it. The village of Blenheim was the extreme right of their position, and the village of Luetzingen, about three miles north of Blenheim, formed their left. Beyond Luetzingen are the rugged high grounds of the Godd Berg and Eich Berg, on the skirts of which some detachments were posted, so as to secure the Gallo-Bavarian position from being turned on the left flank. The Danube secured their right flank; and it was only in front that they could be attacked. The villages of Blenheim and Luetzingen had been strongly palisaded and intrenched; Marshal Tallard, who held the chief command, took his station at Blenheim; the Elector and Marshal Marsin commanded on the left.

Tallard garrisoned Blenheim with twenty-six battalions of French infantry and twelve squadrons of French cavalry. Marsin and the Elector had twenty-two battalions of infantry and thirty-six squadrons of cavalry in front of the village of Luetzingen. The centre was occupied by fourteen battalions of infantry, including the celebrated Irish brigade. These were posted in the little hamlet of Oberglau, which lies somewhat nearer to Luetzingen than to Blenheim. Eighty squadrons of cavalry and seven battalions of foot were ranged between Oberglau and Blenheim. Thus the French position was very strong at each extremity, but was comparatively weak in the centre. Tallard seems to have relied on the swampy state of the part of the valley that reaches from below Oberglau to Blenheim for preventing any serious attack on this part of his line.

The army of the allies was formed into two great divisions, the largest being commanded by the Duke in person, and being destined to act against Tallard, while Prince Eugene led the other division, which consisted chiefly of cavalry, and was intended to oppose the enemy under Marsin and the Elector. As they approached the enemy, Marlborough's troops formed the left and the centre, while Eugene's formed the right of the entire army. Early in the morning of August 13th the allies left their own camp and marched toward the enemy. A thick haze covered the ground, and it was not until the allied right and centre had advanced nearly within cannon-shot of the enemy that Tallard was aware of their approach. He made his preparations with what haste he could, and about eight o'clock a heavy fire of artillery was opened from the French right on the advancing left wing of the British. Marlborough ordered up some of his batteries to reply to it, and while the columns that were to form the allied left and centre deployed, and took up their proper stations in the line, a warm cannonade was kept up by the guns on both sides.

The ground which Eugene's columns Jiad to traverse was peculiarly difficult, especially for the passage of the artillery, and it was nearly mid-day before he could get his troops into line opposite to Luetzingen. During this interval Marlborough ordered divine service to be performed by the chaplains at the head of each regiment, and then rode along the lines, and found both officers and men in the highest spirits and waiting impatiently for the signal for the attack. At length an aide-de-camp galloped up from the right with the welcome news that Eugene was ready. Marlborough instantly sent Lord Cutts, with a strong brigade of infantry to assault the village of Blenheim, while he himself led the main body down the eastward slope of the valley of the Nebel, and prepared to effect the passage of the stream.

The assault on Blenheim, though bravely made, was repulsed with severe loss, and Marlborough, finding how strongly that village was garrisoned, desisted from any further attempts to carry it, and bent all his energies to breaking the enemy's line between Blenheim and Oberglau. Some temporary bridges had been prepared, and planks and fascines had been collected; and by the aid of these, and a little stone bridge which crossed the Nebel near a hamlet called Unterglau, that lay in the centre of the valley, Marlborough succeeded in getting several squadrons across the Nebel, though it was divided into several branches, and the ground between them was soft, and, in places, little better than a mere marsh.

But the French artillery was not idle. The cannon-balls plunged incessantly among the advancing squadrons of the allies, and bodies of French cavalry rode frequently down from the western ridge, to charge them before they had time to form on the firm ground. It was only by supporting his men by fresh troops, and by bringing up infantry, who checked the advance of the enemy's horse by their steady fire, that Marlborough was able to save his army in this quarter from a repulse, which, succeeding the failure of the attack upon Blenheim, would probably have been fatal to the allies. By degrees, his cavalry struggled over the bloodstained streams; the infantry were also now brought across, so as to keep in check the French troops who held Blenheim, and who, when no longer assailed in front, had begun to attack the allies on their left with considerable effect.

Marlborough had thus at length succeeded in drawing up the whole left wing of his army beyond the Nebel, and was about to press forward with it, when he was called away to another part of the field by a disaster that had befallen his centre. The Prince of Holstein Beck had, with eleven Hanoverian battalions, passed the Nebel opposite to Oberglau, when he was charged and utterly routed by the Irish brigade which held that village. The Irish drove the Hanoverians back with heavy slaughter, broke completely through the line of the allies, and nearly achieved a success as brilliant as that which the same brigade afterward gained at Fontenoy.

But at Blenheim their ardor in pursuit led them too far. Marlborough came up in person, and dashed in upon the exposed flank of the brigade with some squadrons of British cavalry. The Irish reeled back, and as they strove to regain the height of Oberglau their column was raked through and through by the fire of three battalions of the allies, which Marlborough had summoned up from the reserve. Marlborough having reestablished the order and communications of the allies in this quarter, now, as he returned to his own left wing, sent to learn how his colleague fared against Marsin and the Elector, and to inform Eugene of his own success.

Eugene had hitherto not been equally fortunate. He had made three attacks on the enemy opposed to him, and had been thrice driven back. It was only by his own desperate personal exertions, and the remarkable steadiness of the regiments of Prussian infantry, which were under him, that he was able to save his wing from being totally defeated. But it was on the southern part of the battle-field, on the ground which Marlborough had won beyond the Nebel with such difficulty, that the crisis of the battle was to be decided.

Like Hannibal, Marlborough relied principally on his cavalry for achieving his decisive successes, and it was by his cavalry that Blenheim, the greatest of his victories, was won. The battle had lasted till five in the afternoon. Marlborough had now eight thousand horsemen drawn up in two lines, and in the most perfect order for a general attack on the enemy's line along the space between Blenheim and Oberglau. The infantry was drawn up in battalions in their rear, so as to support them if repulsed, and to keep in check the large masses of the French that still occupied the village of Blenheim. Tallard now interlaced his squadrons of cavalry with battalions of infantry, and Marlborough, by a corresponding movement, brought several regiments of infantry and some pieces of artillery to his front line at intervals between the bodies of horse.

A little after five Marlborough commenced the decisive movement, and the allied cavalry, strengthened and supported by foot and guns, advanced slowly from the lower ground near the Nebel up the slope to where the French cavalry, ten thousand strong, awaited them. On riding over the summit of the acclivity, the allies were received with so hot a fire from the French artillery and small arms that at first the cavalry recoiled, but without abandoning the high ground. The guns and the infantry which they had brought with them maintained the contest with spirit and effect. The French fire seemed to slacken. Marlborough instantly ordered a charge along the line. The allied cavalry galloped forward at the enemy's squadrons, and the hearts of the French horsemen failed them. Discharging their carbines at an idle distance, they wheeled round and spurred from the field, leaving the nine infantry battalions of their comrades to be ridden down by the torrent of the allied cavalry.

The battle was now won. Tallard and Marsin, severed from each other, thought only of retreat. Tallard drew up the squadrons of horse that he had left, in a line extended toward Blenheim, and sent orders to the infantry in that village to leave it and join him without delay. But long ere his orders could be obeyed the conquering squadrons of Marlborough had wheeled to the left and thundered down on the feeble array of the French marshal. Part of the force which Tallard had drawn up for this last effort was driven into the Danube; part fled with their general to the village of Sonderheim, where they were soon surrounded by the victorious allies and compelled to surrender. Meanwhile Eugene had renewed his attack upon the Gallo-Bavarian left, and Marsin, finding his colleague utterly routed, and his own right flank uncovered, prepared to retreat. He and the Elector succeeded in withdrawing a considerable part of their troops in tolerable order to Dillingen; but the krge body of French who garrisoned Blenheim were left exposed to certain destruction.

Marlborough speedily occupied all the outlets from the village with his victorious troops, and then, collecting his artillery round it, he commenced a cannonade that speedily would have destroyed Blenheim itself and all who were in it. After several gallant but unsuccessful attempts to cut their way through the allies, the French in Blenheim were at length compelled to surrender at discretion; and twenty-four battalions and twelve squadrons, with all their officers, laid down their arms and became the captives of Marlborough.

"Such," says Voltaire, "was the celebrated battle which the French called the battle of Hoechstaedt, the Germans Blindheim, and the English Blenheim. The conquerors had about five thousand killed and eight thousand wounded, the greater part being on the side of Prince Eugene. The French army was almost entirely destroyed: of sixty thousand men, so long victorious, there never reassembled more than twenty thousand effective. About twelve thousand killed, fourteen thousand prisoners, all the cannon, a prodigious number of colors and standards, all the tents and equipages, the general of the army, and one thousand two hundred officers of mark in the power of the conqueror, signalized that day!"

Ulm, Landau, Treves, and Traerbach surrendered to the allies before the close of the year. Bavaria submitted to the Emperor, and the Hungarians laid down their arms. Germany was completely delivered from France, and the military ascendency of the arms of the allies was completely established. Throughout the rest of the war Louis fought only in defence. Blenheim had dissipated forever his once proud visions of almost universal conquest.

%UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND%

A.D. 1707

JOHN HILL BURTON

Although not one of the longest, the reign of Queen Anne was one of the most glorious, in English history. Not only was it signalized by the victorious deeds of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession, but also by the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, one of the principal events in British annals.

Before the union England and Scotland had no political partnership save that derived through the person of the sovereign by inheritance of both crowns. From the completion of the union in 1707 both countries have been not only under one royal head, but also represented in a single Parliament. At the beginning of Anne's reign the attitude of Scotland toward England was hostile, old antagonisms surviving in memory to intensify fresh irritations. Although William III, predecessor of Anne, had urged a union of the kingdoms, all negotiations to that end had failed. In 1703, and again in 1704, the Scottish Parliament had passed an act of security declaring in favor of the abrogation of the union of the crowns which had existed for a century. The English Parliament resorted to retaliatory measures.

By this time, however, the wiser statesmen in both countries saw that open hostilities could be averted only by a complete political union of the two kingdoms, and they used all their influence to bring it about. How this great historic reconciliation was accomplished, Burton, the eminent Scottish historian and jurist, shows with equal learning and impartiality.

The English statute, responding by precautions and threats to the Scots Act of Security, contained clauses for furthering an incorporating union as the only conclusive settlement of accumulating difficulties. It provided that commissioners for England appointed by the Queen under the great seal shall have power "to treat and consult" with commissioners for the same purpose "authorized by authority of the Parliament of Scotland." The statute of the Parliament of Scotland completing the adjustment, with the short title "Act for a treaty with England," authorizes such persons "as shall be nominated and appointed by her majesty under the great seal of this kingdom" to treat and consult with "the commissioners for England."

The next great step was the appointment of the two commissions, thirty-one on either side. On the English were the two archbishops; for Scotland there was no clerical element. It was noticed that for England all the members not official were from the peerage, while in Scotland there seemed to be a desire to represent the peerage, the landed commoners, and the burgesses or city interest, in just proportions. At an early stage in the daily business, the English brought up a proposition about the reception of which they had considerable apprehension: that there should be "the same customs, excise, and all other taxes" throughout the United Kingdom--virtually a resolution that Scotland should be taxed on the English scale. This was easily passed by means of a solvent--due, no doubt, to the financial genius of Godolphin--that, on an accounting and proof of local or personal hardships arising from the adoption of uniformity, compensation in money should be made from the English treasury. But a more critical point was reached when, on April 24th, the chancellor of Scotland brought forward, among certain preliminary articles, one "that there be free communication, and intercourse of trade and navigation, between the two kingdoms and plantations thereunto belonging, under such regulations as in the progress of this treaty shall be found most for the advantage of both kingdoms." This was frankly accepted on the part of England, and faithfully adjusted in detail. It was felt to be a mighty sacrifice made to exercise indefinite but formidable calamities in another shape.

At this point in the progress of the union all interest resting on the excitements of political victory and defeat, or the chances of a bitter war, came to an end. There were a few small incidents in Scotland; but England was placidly indifferent. She had cheerfully paid a heavy stake as loser in the great game, and it would trouble her no more. The statesmen of the two countries knew that the union must pass unless the Jacobites of Scotland were joined by an invading French army; and that was not a likely casualty while Marlborough was hovering on the frontiers of France. There was a touch of the native haughtiness in this placid indifference of England. No doubt it helped in clearing the way to the great conclusion; but for many years after the fusing of the two nations into one, disturbing events showed that it had been better had the English known something about the national institutions and the temper of the people who had now a right to call themselves their fellow-countrymen.

It was expected that Scotland would be quietly absorbed into England--absorptions much more difficult in the first aspect were in continuous progress in Asia and America. The Englishman had great difficulty in reconciling himself to political and social conditions not his own, and his pride prompted him to demand that, if he left England, any part of the world honored by his presence should make an England for his reception. When expecting this on the other side of the border, he forgot that the Scot had too much of his own independence and obstinacy. True, the Scot, among the sweet uses of adversity, had imbibed more of the vagrant, and could adapt himself more easily to the usages and temper of other nations. But on the question of yielding up his own national usages and prejudices in his own country he was as obstinate as his mighty partner.

There was stills world of business to be transacted in details of the unattractive kind that belong to accountants' reports. These may be objects of vital and intense interest--as in the realizing of the assets in bankruptcies, where persons immediately interested in frantic excitement hunt out the array of small figures--two, three, four, or five--that tells them whether they are safe or ruined. But the interest is not of a kind to hold its intensity through after generations. On some items of the present accounting, however, there was, in the principle adopted, a fund of personal and political interest. The heavy debts of England had to be considered--and here, as in all pecuniary arrangements, England was freehanded. The Scots made an effort to retain their African Company, but they fortunately offered the alternative of purchasing the stock from the holders. On the alternative of retention the English commissioners were resolute in refusal and resistance, but they were ready to entertain the other; and they accepted it in a literal shape. To have bought the stock at its market value would have been a farce, after the ruin that had overcome the company. But if it could not be even said that England had ruined the company, the sacrifice had been made in the prevalence of English interests, and while there was yet a hold on England it should be kept. There was no difficulty in coming to a settlement satisfactory to the Scots, and willingly offered by the English. It was substantially payment of the loss on each share, as calculated from an examination of the company's books.

The adjustment of the several pecuniary claims thus created in favor of Scotland was simply the collective summation of the losses incurred by all the stockholders; and when the summation was completed the total was passed into a capital sum, called the "Equivalent." This sum total of the various items, with all their fractions, making up a fractional sum less than four hundred thousand pounds, might be otherwise described as a capital stock held by the shareholders of the old company trading to Africa and the Indies, each to the extent of his loss. Odious suspicions were, down to the present generation, propagated about an item or group of items in the Equivalent. A sum amounting to twenty thousand five hundred forty pounds seventeen shillings sevenpence had been made over by the English treasury, to be paid to influential Scotsmen as the price of their votes or influence in favor of England.

Fortunately this affair was closely investigated by the celebrated committee of inquiry that brought on Marlborough's dismissal and Walpole's imprisonment. It was found that the Scots treasury had been drained; and the crisis of the union was not a suitable time either for levying money or for leaving debts--the salaries of public offices especially--unpaid. England, therefore, lent money to clear away this difficulty. The transaction was irregular, and had not passed through the proper treasury forms. It was ascertained, however, that the money so lent had been repaid. In discussions of the affair, before those concerned were fully cleared of the odium of bribery, taunting remarks had been made on the oddity and sordid specialties of the items of payment. Thus the allowance to the Lord Banff was, in sterling money, eleven pounds two shillings. It would have had a richer sound, and perhaps resolved itself into round numbers, in Scots money; but as it is, there is no more to be said against it than that, as a debt in some way due to the Lord Banff, the exact English book-keeper had entered it down to its fraction.

There remained a few matters of adjustment of uniformities between the two countries for the advantage of both--such as a fixed standard for rating money in account. The Scots grumbled, rather than complained, about the English standard being always made the rule, and no reciprocity being offered. But the Scots were left considerable facilities for the use of their own customs for home purposes in pecuniary matters, and in weights and measures. If, for the general convenience of commerce and taxation, any uniformity was necessary, and the practice of the greater nation was a suitable standard for the other, it was the smaller sacrifice, and to both parties the easier arrangement, that those who were only an eighth part of the inhabitants of the island should yield to the overwhelming majority.

It was in keeping with the wisdom and tolerance prevailing throughout on the English side of the treaty that it should be first discussed in the Parliament of Scotland. If this was felt as a courtesy to Scotland it was an expediency for England. All opposition would be in Scotland, and it was well to know it at once, that disputes might be cleared off and a simple affirmative or negative presented to the Parliament of Scotland.

The Parliament of England has ever restrained vague oratory by a rule that there must always be a question of yes or no, fitted for a division as the text of a debate. In Scotland on this occasion, as on many others, there was at first a discussion of the general question; and when this, along with other sources of information, had given the servants of the Crown some assurance of the fate of the measure, there was a separate debate and division on the first article, understood on all hands to be a final decision. The debate was decorated by a work of oratorical art long admired in Scotland, and indeed worthy of admiration anywhere for its brilliancy and power. It was a great philippic--taking that term in its usual acceptation--as expressing a vehement torrent of bitter epigram and denunciatory climax.

The speech of John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven, "On the subject-matter of a union betwixt the two kingdoms of England and Scotland," was so amply dispersed in its day that if a collector of pamphlets on the union buys them in volumes he will generally find this speech in each volume. It is, no doubt, an effort of genius; but what will confer more interest on the following specimens selected from it is that it was an attempt to rouse the nation to action at this perilous and momentous crisis, and succeeded only in drawing attention and admiration as a fine specimen of rhetorical art:

"I think I see the present peers of Scotland, whose noble ancestors conquered provinces, overran countries, reduced and subjected towns and fortified places, exacted tribute through the greater part of England, now walking in the court of requests like so many English attorneys, laying aside their walking-swords when in company with the English peers, lest their self-defence should be found murder.

"I think I see the royal state of boroughs walking their desolate streets, hanging down their heads under disappointments, wormed out of all the branches of their old trade, uncertain what hand to turn to, necessitate to become 'prentices to their unkind neighbors, and yet after all finding their trade so fortified by companies and secured by prescriptions that they despair of any success therein. But above all, my lord, I think I see our ancient mother, Caledonia, like Caesar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking round her, covering herself with her royal garment, attending the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with a _'et tu quoque mi fili,'_"

The great remedy for all is an end of rancorous feuds and hatreds dividing Scotland; and this calls from him a glowing picture of the land that by union and industry has made itself too powerful to be a safe partner for humiliated Scotland:

"They are not under the afflicting hand of Providence as we are; their circumstances are great and glorious; their treaties are prudently managed both at home and abroad; their generals brave and valorous; their armies successful and victorious; their trophies and laurels memorable and surprising; their enemies subdued and routed. Their royal navy is the terror of Europe; their trade and commerce extended through the universe, encircling the whole world, and rendering their own capital city the emporium for the whole inhabitants of the earth."

The speech was for the country, not for the House. The great points about trade and virtual independence had been conceded by England, and a union was looked to rather as a refuge and a gain than as oppression and plunder. It has even been said that there was some inclination to receive the speech with irony; and Defoe, who seems to have been present on the occasion, gives this account of what followed:

"Mr. Seton, who made the first speech, stood up to answer the Lord Belhaven; but as he had already spoken, the order of the House--viz., 'that the same member could not speak twice in the same cause'--was urged against his speaking, and the Earl of Marchmont standing up at the same time, the lord chancellor gave place to him, who indeed made a short return to so long a speech, and which answer occasioned some laughter in the House. The Earl of Marchmont's speech was to this purpose, viz.: He had heard a long speech, and a very terrible one; but he was of opinion it required a short answer, which he gave in these terms: 'Behold he dreamed, but, lo! when he awoke, he found it was a dream.' This answer, some said, was as satisfactory to the members, who understood the design of that speech as if it had been answered vision by vision."

In the debates on the union, some Scots statesmen found a tactic, infinitely valuable to them in the united Parliament, of voting in a group. They were called the "New party," and nicknamed the "_Squadrone volante_." In the correspondence already referred to, it was good news at St. Stephen's when it was announced that the New party had adopted the union. On the critical division the numbers stood one hundred eighteen for the article and eighty-three against it. The remainder of the clauses passed without division, a ready acceptance being given to amendments, that were virtually improvements, in giving effect to the spirit of details in the treaty; as where it was adjusted that, for trading purposes, vessels bought abroad for trade from the Scots harbors should be counted equivalent to vessels of Scottish build.

There was a considerable noisy excitement through the country, the Jacobites ever striving to rouse the people in the great towns to riot and sedition, and, when they found that impossible, spreading exaggerated accounts of the effects of their efforts. A mob was raised in Edinburgh, but it was appeased without the loss of life and with no other casualty save the frightening of the provost's wife. There were some eccentric movements among the Cameronians, rendered all the more grotesque by the Jacobites taking the leadership in them; and some of the more vehement clergy betook themselves to their own special weapons in the holding of a day of humiliation and prayer.

Ere the whole came to a conclusion, a point was yielded to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. It was passed as a separate act before the Act of Union was passed--the separate act stipulating its repetition in any act adopting the Treaty of Union. It provided for the preservation of the discipline, worship, and ecclesiastical government of the establishment. It was further provided that every sovereign of the United Kingdom, on accession to the throne, should make oath in terms of this act. Hence it happens that this oath is taken immediately on the accession, the other oaths, including that for the protection of the Church of England, being postponed till the ceremony of the coronation. On October 16, 1706, there came a vote on the passing of the "Act ratifying and approving the Treaty of Union." This was carried in the Scots Parliament by one hundred ten to sixty-nine.

It was the determination of the Queen's ministers for England to carry the treaty as it came from Scotland, word for word; and they employed all their strength to do so. It was the policy of the English government and their supporters in the matter of the union, to avoid a Parliamentary debate upon it clause by clause at St. Stephen's.

To this end there was an endeavor to give it, as much as in the peculiar conditions could be given, the character of a treaty between two independent powers, each acting through its executive, that executive acknowledging the full power of Parliament to examine, criticise, and virtually judge the act done as a whole, but not admitting Parliamentary interference with the progress of the details. If there were an illogicality in the essence of a treaty where the executive--the Queen--was the common sovereign of both realms, the difficulty could be discarded as a pedantry, in a constitutional community where the sovereign acts through responsible advisers. Some slight touches of apprehension were felt in England when it was seen that the Scots Estates were not only voting the separate articles, but in some measure remodelling them.

The Estates were taking the privilege naturally claimed by the weaker party to a bargain in protecting themselves while it was yet time. When all was adjusted, England, as the vast majority, could correct whatever had been done amiss in the preliminary adjustment of her interests, but poor Scotland would be entirely helpless. There was another reason for tolerating the alterations, in their being directed to the safety and completeness of the legal institutions left in the hands of Scotland untouched, as matters of entire indifference to England; still it weakened the hands of those who desired to evade a Parliamentary discussion on the several articles in England that this had been permitted in Scotland, and had become effective in the shape of amendments. John Johnston, who had been for some time secretary of state for Scotland--a son of the celebrated covenanting hero Archibald Johnston of Warriston--was then in London carefully looking at the signs of the times. He wrote to Scotland, saying: "You may, I think, depend on it that the alterations you have hitherto made will not break the union; but if you go on altering, it's like your alterations will be altered here, which will make a new session with you necessary, and in that case no man knows what may happen." All is well as yet (January 4th), and if there be no more serious alterations the English ministers will be able to give effect to their resolution "to pass the union here without making any alterations at all."

By what had been usually called a message from the throne, the attention of Parliament was directed to the treaty as it had come from Scotland, but the matter being of supreme importance the Queen was her own messenger. From the Commons she had to ask for a supply to meet the equivalent. To both Houses she said: "You have now an opportunity before you of putting the last hand to a happy union of the two kingdoms, which I hope will be a lasting blessing to the whole island, a great addition to its wealth and power, and a firm security to the Protestant religion. The advantages that will accrue to us all from a union are so apparent that I will add no more, but that I shall look upon it as a particular happiness if this great work, which has been so often attempted without success, can be brought to perfection in my reign."

The opportunity was taken to imitate the Scots in a separate preliminary act "for securing the Church of England as by law established." There was a desultory discussion in both Houses, with a result showing the overwhelming strength of the supporters of the union. In the House of Lords there were some divisions, and among these the largest number of votes mustered by the opposition was twenty-three, bringing out a majority of forty-seven by seventy votes for the ministry. The conclusion of the discussion was a vote of approval by each House.

The opposition, however, did not adopt their defeat. They were preparing to fight the battle over again, clause by clause, when a bill was brought in to convert the Articles of Union into an act of Parliament. The English House of Commons has always been supremely tolerant to troublesome and even mischievous members, so long as they adhere to the forms of the House--forms to be zealously guarded, since they were framed for averting hasty legislation and the possible domination of an intolerant majority. It was determined, however, that the impracticals and impedimenters should not have their swing on this occasion, when the descent of a French army to gather to its centre the Jacobitism still lingering in the country darkened the political horizon. Both Houses had a full opportunity for discussing the merits of every word in the treaty, and the risk of national ruin was not to be encountered because they had not expended all their loquacity, having expected another opportunity.

The tactic for evading the danger was credited to the ingenuity of Sir Simon Harcourt, the attorney-general. The two acts of ecclesiastical security and the articles of the treaty were all recited in the preamble of the bill under the command of the mighty "Whereas," the enacting part of the act was dropped into a single sentence, shorter than statutory sentences usually are. The opposition might throw out the measure, and the ministry with it, if they had strength to do so; but there had been sufficient discussion on the clauses, and there should be no more. In the descriptive words of Burnet: "This put those in great difficulties who had resolved to object to several articles, and to insist on demanding several alterations in them, for they could not come at any debate about them; they could not object to the recital, it being mere matter of fact; and they had not strength enough to oppose the general enacting clause; nor was it easy to come at particulars and offer provisos relating to them. The matter was carried on with such zeal that it passed through the House of Commons before those who intended to oppose it had recovered out of the surprise under which the form it was drawn in had put them."

There was thus but one question, that the bill do pass, and the opposition had not reaped encouragement to resist so great an issue. The Lords had, in their usual manner of dignified repose, managed to discuss the clauses, but it was rather a conversation, to see that all was in right order, and that no accident had happened to a measure of so vital moment, than a debate.

On March 6, 1707, the Queen came to the House of Lords, and in a graceful speech gave the royal assent to the act.

%DOWNFALL OF CHARLES XII AT POLTAVA%

TRIUMPH OF RUSSIA

A.D. 1709

K. WALISZEWSKI[1]

[Footnote 1: Translated from the Russian by Lady Mary Loyd.]

The battle of Poltava was selected by Sir Edward Creasy as one of the fifteen great decisive contests which have altered the fate of nations. His able narrative of the battle has been superseded in scholars' eyes by the more modern work of the great Russian authority, Waliszewski; but the importance of the event remains. It reversed the positions of Sweden and Russia in European politics, and placed Russia among the great countries of the modern world; Sweden among the little ones.

Before 1709 Sweden still held the rank to which Gustavus Adolphus had raised her in the Thirty Years' War. Her prestige had been a little dimmed by the victories of the "Great Elector" of Prussia; but her ally Louis XIV had saved her from any considerable diminution of the extensive territories which she held on the mainland to the south and east of the Baltic Sea. About 1700 the young and gallant warrior, Charles XII, the "Madman of the North," reasserted her prowess, made her once more the dictator of Northern Europe, one of the five great powers of the world.

Meanwhile Peter the Great was progressing but slowly with his transformation of Russia. His people had little confidence in him; his armies were half-barbaric hordes. When he ventured into war against Sweden Europe conceived but one possible result: these undisciplined barbarians would be annihilated. At first the expected occurred. Again and again large Russian armies were defeated by small bodies of Swedes; but with splendid tenacity Peter persisted in the face of revolt at home and defeat abroad. "The Swedes shall teach us to beat them" was his famous saying, and at Poltava he achieved his aim. From that time forward Russia's antagonism to her leader disappeared. His people followed him eagerly along the path to power.

It would appear that it was not till Peter's visit to Vienna, in 1698, that he conceived the idea of attacking Sweden. Up till that time his warlike impulse had rather been directed southward, and the Turk had been the sole object of his enmity. But at Vienna he perceived that the Emperor, whose help he had counted on, had failed him, and forthwith the mobile mind of the young Czar turned to the right-about. A war he must have of some kind, it little mattered where, to give work to his young army. The warlike instincts and the greed of his predecessors, tempted sometimes by the Black Sea, sometimes by the Baltic and the border provinces of Poland, had, indeed, always swung and turned back and forward between the south and the north. These alternate impulses, natural enough in a nation so full of youth and strength, have, since those days, been most unnecessarily idealized, erected into a doctrine, and dignified as a work of unification. It must be acknowledged that every nation has at one time or the other thus claimed the right to resume the national patrimony at the expense of neighboring peoples, and Peter, by some lucky fate, remained in this respect within certain bounds of justice, of logic, and of truth. Absorbed and almost exhausted, as he soon became, by the desperate effort demanded by his war in the North, he forgot or imperilled much that the conquering ambition of his predecessors had left him in the South and West. He clung to the territory already acquired on the Polish side, retired from the Turkish border, and claimed what he had most right, relatively speaking, to claim in the matter of resumption, on his northwestern frontier.

On that frontier the coast country between the mouth of the Narva, or Narova, and that of the Siestra, watered by the Voksa, the Neva, the Igora, and the Louga, was really an integral part of the original Russian patrimony. It was one of the five districts (_piatiny_) of the Novgorod territory, and was still full of towns bearing Slavonic names, such as Korela, Ojeshek, Ladoga, Koporie, Iamy, and Ivangrod. It was not till 1616 that the Czar Michael Feodorovitch, during his struggle with Gustavus Adolphus, finally abandoned the seacoast for the sake of keeping his hold on Novgorod. But so strong was the hope of recovering the lost territory, in the hearts of his descendants, that, after the failure of an attempt on Livonia, in Alexis' reign, a boyar named Ordin-Nashtchokin set to work to build a number of warships at Kokenhausen, on the Dvina, which vessels were intended for the conquest of Riga. Peter had an impression, confused it may be, but yet powerful, of these historic traditions. This is proved by the direction in which he caused his armies to march after he had thrown down the gauntlet to Sweden. He strayed off the path, swayed, as he often was, by sudden impulses, but he always came back to the traditional aim of his forefathers--access to the sea, a Baltic port, "a window open upon Europe."

His interview with Augustus II at Rawa definitely settled his wavering mind. The _pacta conventa_, signed by the King of Poland when he ascended his throne, bound him to claim from the King of Sweden the territories which had formerly belonged to the republic of Poland. For this end the help of Denmark could be reckoned on. The Treaty of Roeskilde (1658), which had been forced on Frederick III, weighed heavily on his successors, and the eager glances fixed by the neighboring states on Holstein, after the death of Christian Albert, in 1694, threatened to end in quarrel. There were fair hopes, too, of the help of Brandenburg. When Sweden made alliance with Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, that country abandoned its historic position in Germany to Prussia. But Sweden still kept some footing, and was looked on as a rival.

Further, Augustus had a personal charm for Peter sufficient in itself to prove how much simplicity, inexperience, and boyish thoughtlessness still existed in that half-polished mind. The Polish Sovereign, tall, strong, and handsome, an adept in all physical exercises, a great hunter, a hard drinker, and an indefatigable admirer of the fair sex, in whose person debauch of every kind took royal proportions, delighted the Czar and somewhat overawed him. He was more than inclined to think him a genius, and was quite ready to bind up his fortunes with his friend's. At the end of four days of uninterrupted feasting, they had agreed on the division of the spoils of Sweden, and had made a preliminary exchange of arms and clothing. The Czar appeared at Moscow a few weeks later wearing the King of Poland's waistcoat and belted with his sword.

In the beginning of 1700 Augustus and Frederick of Denmark attacked Sweden; but Peter, though bound by treaty to follow their example, neither moved nor stirred. Frederick was beaten, his very capital was threatened. So much the worse for him! Augustus seized on Dunamunde, but utterly failed before Riga. All the better for the Russians; Riga was left for them! Another envoy came hurrying to Moscow. The Czar listened coolly to his reproaches, and replied that he would act as soon as news from Constantinople permitted it. Negotiations there were proceeding satisfactorily, and he hoped shortly to fulfil his promise, and to attack the Swedes in the neighborhood of Pskof. This was a point on which the allies had laid great stress, and Peter had studiously avoided contradicting them. It was quite understood between them that the Czar was not to lay a finger on Livonia. At last on August 8, 1700, a courier arrived with the longed-for dispatch. Peace with Turkey was signed at last, and that very day the Russian troops received their marching orders. But they were not sent toward Pskof. They marched on Narva, in the very heart of the Livonian country.

The army destined to lay siege to Narva consisted of three divisions of novel formation, under the orders of three generals--Golovin, Weyde, and Repnin--with 10,500 Cossacks, and some irregular troops--63,520 men in all. Repnin's division, numbering 10,834 men, and the Little Russian Cossacks, stopped on the way, so that the actual force at disposal was reduced to about 40,000 men. But Charles XII, the new King of Sweden, could not bring more than 5300 infantry and 3130 cavalry to the relief of the town. And, being obliged, when he neared Wesemburg, to throw himself in flying column across a country which was already completely devastated, and, consequently, to carry all his supplies with him, his troops arrived in presence of an enemy five times as numerous as themselves, worn out, and completely exhausted by a succession of forced marches.

Peter never dreamed that he would find the King of Sweden in Livonia. He believed his hands were more than full enough elsewhere with the King of Denmark; he was quite unaware that the Peace of Travendal, which had been signed on the very day of the departure of the Russian troops, had been already forced upon his ally. He started off gayly at the head of his bombardier company, full of expectation of an easy victory. When he arrived before the town, on September 23d, he was astounded to find any preparations for serious defence. A regular siege had to be undertaken, and when, after a month of preparations, the Russian batteries at last opened fire, they made no impression whatever. The artillery was bad, and yet more badly served. A second month passed, during which Peter waited and hoped for some piece of luck, either for an offer to capitulate or for the arrival of Repnin's force. What did happen was that on the night of November 17th news came that within twenty-four hours the King of Sweden would be at Narva. That very night Peter fled from his camp, leaving the command to the Prince de Croy.

None of the arguments brought forward by the sovereign and his apologists in justification of this step appears to me to hold water. The necessity pleaded for an interview with the Duke of Poland, the Czar's desire to hasten on Repnin's march, are mere pitiful excuses. Langen and Hallart, the generals sent by Augustus to observe the military operations in Livonia, gravely reported that the Czar had been obliged to go to Moscow to receive a Turkish envoy--who was not expected for four months! The Emperor's envoy, Pleyer, is nearer the mark when he says the sovereign obeyed the entreaties of his advisers, who considered the danger too great for him to be permitted to remain. And Hallart himself, speaking of these same counsellors, whether ministers or generals, does not hesitate to declare, in his rough soldierly language, that "they have about as much courage as a frog has hair on his belly." The Russian army, disconcerted by the unexpected resistance of the Swedes, ill-prepared for resistance, ill-commanded, ill-lodged, and ill-fed, was already demoralized to the last extent. The arrival of Charles caused a panic, and from that panic Peter, the most impressionable of men, was the first to suffer.

The startling rapidity with which Charles had rid himself of the weakest of his three adversaries, under the very walls of Copenhagen, would have been less astonishing to Peter if the young sovereign had better realized the conditions under which he and his allies had begun a struggle in which, at first sight, their superiority appeared so disproportionate. King Frederick had reckoned without the powers which had guaranteed the recent Treaty of Altona, by which the safety of Holstein was insured; without the Hanoverian troops, and those of Luneburg, which at once brought succor to Toeningen; without the Anglo-Dutch fleet, which forced his to seek shelter under the walls of Copenhagen, and thus permitted the King of Sweden to cross the Sound unmolested, and land quietly in Zealand; and finally, he reckoned--and for this he may well be excused--without that which was soon to fill all Europe with terror and amazement: the lucky star and the military genius of Charles XII.

This monarch, born in 1682, who had slain bears when he was sixteen, and at eighteen was a finished soldier, greedy for glory and battle and blood, was the last representative of that race of men who, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, held all Central Europe in their iron grip; fierce warriors who steeped Germany and Italy in fire and blood, fought their way from town to town, and hamlet to hamlet; giving no truce and showing no mercy; who lived for war and by war; grew old and died in harness in a very atmosphere of carnage, with bodies riddled with wounds, with hands stained with abominable crimes, but with spirits calm and unflinching to the last. Standing on the threshold of the new period he was the superb and colossal incarnation of that former one, which, happily for mankind, was to disappear in his person.

Count Guiscard, who as envoy from the King of France accompanied him on his first campaign, describes him thus: "The King of Sweden is of tall stature; taller than myself by almost a head; he is very handsome, he has fine eyes and a good complexion, his face is long, his speech a little thick. He wears a small wig tied behind in a bag, a plain stock, without cravat, a very tight jerkin of plain cloth, with sleeves as narrow as our waistcoat sleeves, a narrow belt above his jerkin, with a sword of extraordinary length and thickness, and almost perfectly flat-soled shoes--a very strange style of dress for a prince of his age."

In order to reach Narva with his eight thousand men, Charles, after having crossed a tract of desert country, was obliged, at a place called Pyhaioggi, to cross a narrow valley divided by a stream, which, if it had been fortified, must have stopped him short. The idea occurred to Gordon, but Peter would not listen to him, and it was not till the very last moment that he sent Sheremetief, who found the Swedes just debouching into the valley, received several volleys of grape-shot and retired in disorder. The mad venture had succeeded. But Charles' farther advance involved the playing of a risky game. His men were worn out, his horses had not been fed for two whole days. Still he went on; he reached Narva, formed his Swedes into several attacking columns, led one himself, and favored by a sudden hurricane which drove showers of blinding snow into his adversaries' faces, threw himself into their camp and mastered the place in half an hour. The only resistance he met was offered by the two regiments of the guard. All the rest fled or surrendered. A few Russians were drowned in the Narva. "If the river had been frozen," said Charles discontentedly, "I do not know that we should have contrived to kill a single man."

It was a total breakdown; the army had disappeared, and the artillery. The very sovereign was gone, and with him the country's honor. That had sunk out of sight amid the scornful laughter with which Europe hailed this undignified defeat. The Czar was in full flight. All Peter's plans of conquest, his dreams of European expansion and of navigating the northern seas, his hopes of glory, his faith in his civilizing mission, had utterly faded. And he himself had collapsed upon their heaped-up ruins. Onward he fled, feeling the Swedish soldiers on his heels. He wept, he sued for peace, vowing he would treat at once and submit to any sacrifice; he sent imploring appeals to the States-General of Holland, to England and to the Emperor, praying for mediation.

But swiftly he recovered possession of his faculties. Then, raising his head--through the golden haze with which his insufficient education, the infatuation inherent to his semi-oriental origin, and his inexperience, had filled his eyes, through the rent of that mighty catastrophe and that cruel lesson--he saw and touched the truth at last! He realized what he must set himself to do if he was to become that which he fain would be. There must be no more playing at soldiers and sailors; no more of that farce of power and glory, in which, till now, he had been the chief actor; no more aimless adventure, undertaken in utter scorn of time and place. He must toil now in downright earnest; he must go forward, step by step; measure each day's effort, calculate each morrow's task, let each fruit ripen ere he essayed to pluck it; learn patience and dogged perseverance. He did it all. He found means within him and about him to carry out his task. The strong, long-enduring, long-suffering race of which he came endowed him with the necessary qualities, and gave him its own inexhaustible and never-changing devotion and self-sacrifice.

Ten armies may be destroyed, he will bring up ten others to replace them, no matter what the price. His people will follow him and die beside him to the last man, to the last morsel of bread snatched from its starving jaws. A month hence, the fugitive from Narva will belong to a vanished, forgotten, almost improbable past; the future victor of Poltava will have taken his place.