REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 Class 
 
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enslisit) Men of Action 
 
 PETEEBOEOUGH 
 
First Edition 1890- Reprinted 1906 
 
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PETERBOROUGH 
 
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 WILLIAM STEBBING 
 
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 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 190G 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ancestry — Early Life . . . . • 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Court Favour — Cabals — Disgrace . . .16 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Command in Spain — Historical Evidences . . 45 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Capture op Barcelona . . . . .59 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 War in Valencia 73 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Relief of Barcelona ...... 90 
 
 J 56744 
 
VI CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Divided Codn'cils — Pkterborough leaveb Spain . 105 
 
 CHAPTER Vni 
 Was He an Impostor? 138 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Return — Vindication — Diplomacy . . .156 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Consolations op his Leisure — The End . . 192 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 ANCESTRY — EARLY LIFE 
 
 For the sixty years of his active career Peterborough 
 was an enigma to his contemporaries. He has remained 
 an enigma to posterity for a century and a half since. 
 Never has a character or a memory been more pelted 
 by "vvriters of authority with contradictory epithets and 
 attributes of praise and blame. He was, we have been 
 told, a man of no true judgment and less virtue. His 
 head was extremely hot, and confused with indigested 
 schemes. A friend declared that his eminent talents 
 were dashed with something restless and capricious in 
 his nature. He was vainglorious, and without common 
 sense. He was wayward, selfish, and ungovernable. 
 Sometimes he would stoop to be a knave. He had a 
 morbid craving for novelty and excitement. He was 
 addicted to frivolous and fickle amours. He loved to 
 preach in coff'ee-houses, and would play the fool as a 
 ship's chaplain. He would filch away the credit due to 
 others as patriots, and dress himself in borrowed plumes 
 as a soldier. It has even been boldly asserted that in 
 war he showed himself a coward, a liar, and a thief. 
 On the other hand, he has been extolled by authors 
 holding no retainer as biographers, as a kind friend, a 
 IE p. 
 
2 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 magnanimous enemy, an able diplomatist, a gifted 
 orator, one of those men of careless wit and negligent 
 grace who scatter without troubling themselves to re- 
 claim a thousand witty sayings and verses, a bad econo- 
 mist for himself, a good and disinterested economist for 
 the State, a general of brilliant invention, and of a courage 
 which rose to the height of fabulous heroism, at once a 
 sagacious and cautious strategist and an audacious 
 moss-trooper. All air and fire, he is described as turning 
 life into a wild romance ; as one of the phenomena pro- 
 duced by Nature once in the revolution of centuries to 
 show to ordinary men what she can do in a fit of 
 prodigality. A bitter woman summed him up as a man 
 who to vileness of soul had joined a sort of knight- 
 errantry. An enthusiastic admirer fondly pictured him 
 as a hangdog he dearly loved, and the ramblingest lying 
 rogue on earth. 
 
 Here are a few specimens of invective and applause 
 culled from a most abundant anthology. The object of 
 the present sketch is to enable modern readers to pick 
 and choose for themselves. 
 
 Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Mon- 
 mouth, Viscount Mordaunt of Avalon, Baron Beauchamp 
 and Mordaunt, was descended from a Norman family. 
 It had allied itself with many other ancient and noble 
 houses, having the gift of attracting heiresses. In the 
 early days of the Plantagenets it had acquired by 
 marriage Turvey in Bedfordshire, where it received the 
 licence of Edward the First to enclose a park. Its re- 
 presentative was created Lord Mordaunt of Turvey in 
 1 532. The splendid domain of Drayton in Northampton- 
 shire had come to him by marriage. The fourth Baron, a 
 
H/S UNCLE 
 
 Koman Catholic, was imprisoned for alleged complicity 
 in the Gunpowder Plot. His son, who turned Protest- 
 ant, married the only child and heiress of Lord Howard 
 of Effingham, eldest son of the conqueror of the Spanish 
 Armada. The marriage gave him the revenues of the 
 Reigate Priory and other estates. Charles the First 
 created him Earl of Peterborough in 1627 ; but for 
 some slight at Court he embraced the cause of the 
 Parliament, which he served as Master-General of the 
 Ordnance. He died in 1642. His political opinions 
 were not embraced by his two sons, Henry, second Earl 
 of Peterborough, and John. Clarendon names both as 
 engaged in Lord Holland's rising of July, 1648, and as 
 having accepted commissions from him. John's youth 
 renders it probable that the statement should have been 
 limited to the elder brother. Henry escaped to the 
 Netherlands. Subsequently he was allowed to return 
 and compound for his property. He owed the indulgence 
 to the exertions of his wife. Lady Penelope O'Brien. 
 After the Restoration, in 1662, Avhen Portugal ceded 
 Tangier, he was commissioned to receive the keys and 
 was appointed governor. Generally, though he found 
 leisure to assist in the compilation of a learned 
 family history, he was in close attendance upon 
 Charles. He was the only courtier at hand when 
 the King was struck down by his fatal fit. Con- 
 version to Catholicism had earned him the confidence of 
 James also. As his trusted friend he negotiated the 
 marriage with Mary of Modena. Throughout the short 
 reign of James he enjoyed great influence, and was 
 enabled to avenge himself at law for published sarcasms 
 on his secession to Rome. He paid for his ascendency 
 
4 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 at the Revolution, when he was impeached and sent to 
 the Tower. He was a fitter object of punishment for 
 his subservience to power than of the scornful compas- 
 sion Lord Macaulay extends to him as an old dotard. 
 There is no evidence that the tried counsellor of Charles 
 and James ever verged upon imbecility. 
 
 His brother John, to whom Clarendon ascribes parts 
 and great vigour of mind, nearly had his career cut short 
 in 1658. Lord Ormond alarmed Cromwell by a visit 
 to London in that year to concert a Royalist insurrec- 
 tion. John Mordaunt was supposed to be a leading 
 conspirator, and was brought before the Protector 
 for examination. He denied all knowledge of Ormond's 
 movements, but two days after corroborative testimony 
 was obtained. He was arrested, with several others, 
 and arraigned before a special court under the presidency 
 of John Lisle. Like his brother, only still more signally, 
 he was indebted to the love and energy of his bride, 
 Elizabeth, co-heiress of Thomas Carey, younger son of 
 the Earl of Monmouth. Clarendon describes her as a 
 young and beautiful lady, of a very loyal spirit and 
 notable vivacity of wit and humour. Evelyn thought 
 her the most virtuous lady in the world, a blessed 
 creature, one that loved and feared God exemplarily^ 
 munificent and charitable. He relates, and she with 
 more particularity has explained in her diary, how she 
 spirited away a principal witness, and bribed several of 
 the twenty judges. John was acquitted by the casting 
 vote of Lisle, who acknowledged himself under many 
 obligations to the prisoner's Parliamentarian mother, 
 •and " would not say he was guilty, but bade him ask 
 his own conscience whether he were or not." He was. 
 
HIS FATHER 
 
 sent back to the Tower; but Cromwell, fearing the 
 odium of a second trial for the same offence, finally per- 
 mitted him to go abroad. His narrow escape did not 
 frighten him into repose. The register of Fulham 
 Church boasts that he was up in arms for the King the 
 next year, and was declared a traitor by the Rump 
 Parliament. Towards the end of June, 1659, he had come 
 secretly over from Brussels and took part in a futile 
 rising. He hid in London. On the return, however, 
 of the expelled members of the House of Commons he 
 emerged and was exceedingly active. Some conspicuous 
 politicians and officers, for instance Ingoldsby and 
 Huntington, were brought over by him to the Royalist 
 side. According to Clarendon, whom Evelyn corro- 
 borates, he was known to be entirely trusted by the 
 King. He was created by patent on July 10th, 1659, 
 Baron Mordaunt of Reigate and Viscount Mordaunt of 
 Avalon. Sir John Grenville and he conveyed messages 
 between Charles at Brussels and Monk, the House of 
 Commons, and the City of London. For a letter from 
 Charles, of which they were the bearers, they were voted 
 by the Corporation a gift of £300 to buy each of them 
 a ring. It was Mordaunt who introduced Monk to 
 Charles at Canterbury on May 26th. His devotion was 
 rewarded by an amount of royal favour which, though 
 in Clarendon's estimation inferior to his merits, brought 
 upon him the especial jealousy and spite of less fortunate 
 Cavaliers. He was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey 
 and Constable of Windsor Castle. For his conduct in 
 the latter capacity towards a Captain William Taylor, or 
 Tayleur, he narrowly escaped impeachment by the House , 
 of Commons in 1666-67. Taylor had an office and 
 
6 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 rooms in Windsor Castle. The Constable ejected and 
 imprisoned him. Taylor alleged that his crime was the 
 resistance of a daughter to the Constable's gross violence. 
 The House of Commons discussed the matter passion- 
 ately, but a prorogation interrupted the proceedings, 
 and through the King's influence, as was supposed, 
 they were not resumed. If, as Andrew Marvell took 
 for granted and Pepys inclined to believe, he were guilty, 
 he otherwise bore for his age an honourable reputation. 
 His contemporaries saw no absurdity in the sumptuous 
 monument in Fulham Church, with which his sorrowing 
 widow honoured his memory. He was the father of 
 Charles Mordaunt. 
 
 The history of the house indicates a continuous 
 determination not to be obscure, a clear conviction that 
 the Mordaunts had inherited a prerogative to conduct 
 affairs of State, not without the attendant emoluments, 
 and an acquiescence of successive generations in their 
 right. These are family features which help us to analyse 
 the character and career of him whom the last century 
 loved to distinguish as the Great Earl of Peterborough. 
 
 Charles Mordaunt was the eldest of a family of seven 
 sons and four daughters. His birth is assigned some- 
 what doubtfully to the year 1658. No record has been 
 preserved of his boyhood. The name of his school is 
 unknown. The first specific event in his life is his 
 voyage as a volunteer in the ship of Admiral Arthur 
 Herbert, afterwards Earl of Torrington, in Sir John 
 Narborough's expedition against the Algerine corsairs 
 towards the close of 1674. Herbert was his mother's 
 half-brother through her mother Margaret Smith's 
 second marriage to Sir Edward Herbert, King Charles 
 
A NAVAL CHAPLAIN 
 
 the First's Attorney -General. Cloudesley Shovel was 
 lieutenant on board the same vessel, and Charles Mor- 
 daunt accompanied him on a cutting out expedition 
 Mordaunt fought in the battle which in February, 1675, 
 reduced the Dey to submission. The fleet, and he with 
 it, returned early in 1 677. During his absence his father 
 had died of a fever on June 5th, 1675, at the age of 
 forty-seven, and Charles came home to find himself in 
 his twentieth year Viscount Mordaunt. He very soon 
 married. His wife was Carey, daughter of Sir Alex- 
 ander Fraser of Durris, Kincardineshire. The good 
 looks she is supposed to have possessed, and the zeal 
 for her husband's interests and fame which endured all 
 tests, did not retain him long by her side. On Septem- 
 ber 29th, 1678, he and four servants embarked on a 
 frigate, the "Bristol," which was commissioned for service 
 on the Barbary coast. He seems to have shipped as a 
 passenger. Antony Langston was captain, and the 
 chaplain was Henry Teonge, who had taken to the sea 
 to escape his creditors. Teonge quarrelled with him 
 for his ambition on a November Sunday to discharge 
 duties for which his open profession of scepticism 
 scarcely qualified him. Taking advantage of the 
 chaplain's indisposition, "the Lord Mordaunt," writes 
 Teonge in his diary, "would have preached, asked the 
 captain's leave, and to that intent sat up till four in the 
 morning to compose his speech. I got up, and came 
 into the great cabin, where I found the zealous lord, 
 whom I did so handle in a smart and short discourse 
 that he went out of the cabin in great wrath," The 
 ship's company, adds Teonge, "had no prayers for dis- 
 content To show his contempt the young gentleman 
 
8 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 directed the carpenter on the Sunday morning to fit up 
 his cabin, when again the chaplain interposed. Mor- 
 daunt, determined not to be thwarted, borrowed a 
 hammer and nailed up his hangings himself. But he 
 took umbrage at the interference with his whims, and 
 within a couple of months shifted his quarters to the 
 "Rupert." *' So," moralises triumphant Teonge, "the 
 reverend lord's Sunday work is come to nothing." 
 After a year at sea he returned to his bride, who seems 
 now, and for the next thirty years, to have seen him 
 go and come with imperturbable amiability. He did 
 not stay long. In June, 1680, he joined as a mili- 
 tary volunteer the expedition despatched under Lord 
 Plymouth for the relief of Tangier, which the Sultan of 
 Fez was besieging. He was with the force thrown 
 into the town, though he obtained permission to leave 
 for England before the end of the year. 
 
 At twenty-two he was a husband, a father, and a 
 peer of the realm. Nature had endowed him with varied 
 abilities, perfect health, and a pleasant presence. Small 
 in stature and very slight, the "skeleton in outward 
 figure" of Swift's sparkling lines to "Mordanto," he was 
 full of vigour and vivacity. His features were regular 
 and handsome, and he had bright blue eyes and a deli- 
 cately fair complexion. The extant portraits. Lord Roden's, 
 that belonging to the Stopfords at Drayton House, and 
 the full length at Burghley House which came from 
 the Po3mtzes, were taken of him in advanced life, yet it is 
 not impossible to imagine from them, allowance being 
 made for wrinkles and the vast flaxen wig which re- 
 placed his own light brown hair, the headstrong free-lance 
 of politics and warfare. He had. Pope has testified, 
 
HIS ESTATE 
 
 the nobleman look, and could condescend without 
 disparagement. Few men could resist him, and fewer 
 women. 
 
 In 1680 he was free to choose his part. His father's 
 memory entitled him to favour. His trustee under his 
 mother's will was John Evelyn, who had influence at 
 Court His uncle, Lord Peterborough, was trusted by 
 the King and the King's brother. There had been a sharp 
 dispute between him and the late Lord Mordaunt over 
 their mother's inheritance, which had been decided in 
 favour of the junior. But it does not appear that the 
 earl cherished rancour against his nephew, who did not 
 practically benefit by the decision. For Charles a char- 
 acter like Mordaunt's was sure to be attractive, on 
 account of its blemishes more than for its virtues. He 
 exhibited the fashionable contempt for religion, and 
 more for morality. If his freaks had exceeded their 
 repute, they would but have gained him the more 
 €miles at Whitehall, had he cared for them. He was 
 not so rich that he could afford to despise them. He 
 had not inherited the Eeigate lands. They, through 
 a curious regrant procured by his grandmother from 
 Charles the Second, had descended to John, Lord Mor- 
 daunt, but only for life. On his death they went to 
 Earl Henry's daughter Mary. Some portion of the 
 Howard of Effingham estates may have descended to 
 Charles Mordaunt ; for a house at Ashstead in Surrey 
 seems to have formed part of them, and there in 1687 
 his wife was living, and was visited by Evelyn. But 
 his property consisted principally of the Carey posses- 
 sions, which came to him at his mother's death in 1679. 
 Among them was Villa Carey on Parson's Green, Fulham, 
 
lo PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 subsequently better known as Peterborough House. It 
 was a spacious square brick edifice. Thomas Carey is 
 reputed to have built it, and he had its many and 
 " extraordinary good rooms " decorated by a Continental 
 painter, Francis Cleyne. It stood in twenty acres of 
 gardens, abounding in fruit and flowers, as well as 
 "large cypress shades, and pleasant wildernesses, with 
 fountains and statues very entertaining." A sweet 
 place for lovers Mrs. Delany calls it, when telling how 
 its lord sheltered there in the spring of 1728 Colonel 
 Mordaunt and his bride, whom her mother. Lady Howe, 
 had turned out of doors for marrying without leave. 
 Evelyn knew it well, and Sayes Court did not disdain to 
 borrow of it tuberoses, orange and lemon trees. One 
 tulip tree, the first planted in England, was seventy-six 
 feet high, with a girth of five feet nine inches. The 
 tree died over a hundred years old in 1756, and the 
 mansion was pulled down early in the present century. 
 By unanimous admission there could not have been 
 a more delightful residence. But it was costly rather 
 than lucrative. On the death of Mordaunt's mother 
 her executors had, therefore, thought of selling it. 
 though they did not. Such a patrimony needed to be 
 eked out, as previously, by Court patronage, and the 
 Court was willing to buy its heir's adhesion. 
 
 He received earnest in his appointment in 1678 to a 
 Windsor sinecure, which probably his father had enjoyed, 
 the keepership of the New Lodge. He would appear 
 also to have obtained the reversion of the manor of 
 Dauntsey in Wilts. The manor had been forfeited to 
 the Crown, and the grant to Mordaunt, afterwards 
 enlarged, was made subject to a rent of £300, which he 
 
AN ENEMY OF PREROGATIJ'E 
 
 never regularly paid. Three years later, when he had 
 already manifested his indocility, the gift of a commis- 
 sion as captain of a ship of war was a sign that repent- 
 ance might still have been accepted. But he had a 
 rooted distaste for Stuart doctrines of prerogative. In 
 that he never wavered. Very soon after he had taken 
 liis seat in the House of Lords he threw himself into 
 irreconcilable opposition. He had family associations 
 with the Country as well as with the Court party, and 
 he preferred his grandfather's to his father's and uncle's 
 connections. He saw no inconsistency in a conjunction 
 of ample respect for old descent and the privileges of 
 nobility with contempt for royalty. His well-known 
 though not remarkable witticism, in answer to the 
 Prince de Cellamare's query concerning England, " Sacre 
 t'on les Roisf — "Qui, Monsieur, on les sacre, et on les 
 massacre aussi," represented his habitual tone with regard 
 to kings. He looked down upon them, he said, from the 
 height of his own greatness. He could not pardon them 
 when they expected sacrifices and did not make them. 
 It disgusted him to hear that neither Charles nor Philip 
 was present at the battle of Almanza, which decided 
 the fate of their rival crowns, though the Austrian 
 Prince, in discountenancing offensive operations, was 
 following his counsels. He wrote to his old adversary, 
 de Tess6, as de Tess6 told Voltaire, ridiculing the risk 
 of life for men who would not share the danger. He 
 added that slaves fight for a man ; a free man will battle 
 only for a nation. He attended the House in 1680, and 
 was present when the King with a brief and sarcastic 
 rebuke dissolved Parliament on March 31st, 1681. But 
 his first open appearance in a political character was his 
 
PETERBOROUGH 
 
 subscription to a petition of sixteen peers in 1681 
 iigainst the convocation of Parliament at Oxford. The 
 petitioners represented themselves as afraid that the two 
 Houses would be deprived of freedom of debate. In 
 company with Shaftesbury, Bedford, Essex, and sixteen 
 other lords, he protested against the refusal of their 
 House to proceed upon the Lower House's impeachment 
 of Edward Fitzharris. He identified himself with the 
 popular party throughout the troubled session, and 
 was admitted to the intimate friendship of Lord Kussell 
 and Algernon Sidney. It has been said that he accom- 
 panied Sidney on the scaffold, but the statement is in- 
 consistent with the accepted accounts of the execution. 
 The nature of his political connections may have ani- 
 mated him to greater energy in hunting down, in 
 February, 1682, the murderers of Mr. Thynne, who, it 
 was at first supposed, had been assassinated by enemies 
 of the Duke of Monmouth. Sir John Reresby, as a justice 
 of the peace for Westminster, conducted the pursuit He 
 mentions in his Memoirs that he and Lord Mordaunt to- 
 gether tracked Count Coningsmark's chief agent in the 
 crime, a German captain, Fratz. 
 
 Two years later James ascended the throne. He 
 signalised his accession by demanding of Parliament its 
 sanction to a large increase of the standing army and the 
 offer of commissions to Catholics. Neither the Lords 
 nor the Commons would tamely submit. Mordaunt was 
 foremost in expressing the indignation of a majority of 
 the Upper House. Lord Macaulay extols his speech as 
 one of the most remarkable delivered in the debate ; as 
 full of eloquence, sprightliness, and audacity. Barillon, 
 the French ambassador, testified to the force with which 
 
I A PIONEER OF REVOLUTION 15 
 
 the young nobleman warned his audience that the nation 
 was face to face with a present not with a future danger. 
 Already the land was occupied by an army officered by 
 Papists, which could have been raised for no other purpose 
 but the establishment of abhorred arbitrary power. It was 
 the first time he had addressed the House, and a sudden 
 prorogation robbed him for the present of other oppor- 
 tunities. He determined to carry his energy where it 
 might find a sphere for its exercise denied him at home. 
 Early in 1686 he obtained the royal leave to serve in the 
 Dutch fleet, which was intended for the West Indies. 
 His plans in that direction were not carried out. 
 Probably they were meant only as a screen for other 
 designs. It has been said that he passed in Holland 
 the whole interval to the Revolution, and that his wife 
 was with him. Lady Mordaunt clearly was not there 
 throughout, as the reference by Evelyn to her presence 
 in Surrey in July, 1687, proves. It would seem from 
 Gilbert Burnet's and his own subsequent allusions to 
 two or four expeditions for revolutionary purposes which 
 he paid to Holland, that he crossed backwards and for- 
 wards. On one of these excursions he may, while his wife 
 was at Ashstead, have diverted himself in London, and a 
 young lady his companion, by stealing for her a singing 
 canary from a Charing Cross coffee-house. Its mistress 
 had refused to part with it at any price, and the lady 
 was inconsolable. Mordaunt introduced, during the 
 landlady's temporary absence, a facsimile without a 
 voice into the cage. After the Revolution Mordaunt 
 pretended concern for the missing song. He found that 
 the landlady, a violent Tory, far from regretting the loss, 
 exulted in it. She imputed it to the loyalty of the bird, 
 
14 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 which from the moment of the exile of James had 
 mourned for him in silence. 
 
 Mordaunt was repeating politically his father's prac- 
 tices of thirty years before, with a difference. His serious 
 business both in Holland and in England was the insti- 
 gation of William of Orange to an immediate invasion 
 and the preparation of Englishmen for it. Burnet, the 
 future bishop, who was residing at the Hague as the 
 Princess Mary's chaplain, was suspicious of so seductive 
 a rival in William's councils. He mistrusted a deadly 
 foe of Church establishments. The breadth of the poli- 
 tical schemes alarmed him. In his history he censures 
 Mordaunt's crude thoughts, and intimates that the 
 Prince treated the plan of an immediate blow as 
 *Hoo romantical to build upon." Probably that was the 
 conclusion at which so cool an intellect arrived, and 
 rightly. The English nation was scarcely as yet pre- 
 pared to discard James. Had William tried and failed, 
 the chains would have been indefinitely riveted. Had 
 he succeeded, he would have come in as a conqueror 
 rather than as a deliverer. At the same time Burnet's 
 own evidence does not bear out Macaulay's assertion that 
 William regarded his guest as a rash and vainglorious 
 knight-errant, whom he was not likely to choose for his 
 confidant. Burnet declares, on the contrary, that he was 
 thus chosen. He became " the one whom his Highness 
 chiefly trusted, and by whose advice he governed his 
 motions." His influence, when the Prince finally decided 
 upon an invasion, showed itself in modifications of the 
 Declaration of the reasons, which had been dra^vn up by 
 the Grand Pensionary Fagel, and translated and abbre- 
 viated by Burnet. Among the exiles were many open 
 
HIS DISLIKE TO THE CHURCH 
 
 enemies of the Church of England. Their representative 
 was Major Wildman, a Cambridge scholar, described by 
 Clarendon as possessed of a pregnant wit and a smart 
 pen. According to Clarendon he had been successively 
 Cromwell's admirer, enemy, and spy. He was one of 
 the ten Anabaptist subscribers to an address to Charles 
 in 1658, and was a born caballer and wire-puller, whose 
 hand can be traced in all the intrigues of the next thirty 
 or five -and -thirty years. He could not endure that 
 the main grievance alleged against James's government 
 should wear the air, as in the draft declaration, of a 
 Church grievance in particular. He wrote, therefore, a 
 counter declaration, to which he procured the assent of 
 Mordaunt, who, indifferent to doctrines, hated the Church 
 for its advocacy of passive obedience. While the Whig 
 refugees, like Lord Macclesfield, would not adopt Wild- 
 man for their spokesman, they agreed partially with 
 Mordaunt's objection to expressions which implied that 
 they had risen especially as Church champions. William 
 recognised the justice of their verbal criticisms, and 
 amendments were introduced which satisfied moderate 
 dissentients. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 COURT FAVOUR — CABALS — DISGRACE 
 
 The Prince sailed for England on November 1st, after 
 an attempt frustrated by the weather on October 19th. 
 Mordaunt was his companion. As soon as the dis- 
 embarkation in Torbay was effected on November 5th 
 William signed a commission for him to levy a regiment 
 of horse and occupy Exeter. Burnet accompanied him. 
 The gates, which had been closed, were sulkily opened 
 at the summons of Mordaunt on November 8th; and 
 the next day William with the main body of his army 
 entered. Mordaunt marched, still in advance, into 
 Wiltshire, raising the country as he went for the Pro- 
 testant champion. Dorsetshire obeyed his invitation, 
 and the road to London was cleared. Forthwith he 
 rode northwards, to recruit, inspect, and organise. He 
 executed his charge diligently, never, he boasted, allowing 
 pleasure to seduce him when engaged in business an 
 inch out of his way. 
 
 The new sovereign did not stint his requital of the 
 daring courage and fertility of resource which had not 
 been the less invigorating that he could not at once yield 
 to their dictates. Mordaunt enjoyed the full confidence of 
 William. The second Lord Clarendon, the Queen's uncle, 
 
CHAP. II HIS REWARDS 17 
 
 enters in his diary for December 29th that he could not 
 obtain admittance to the Prince, who was shut up for a 
 long time with Mordaunt. His influence was great, as 
 Clarendon admits with a sneer, when he notes that on 
 February 6th half-mad Lord Lincoln came to the House 
 of Lords expressly to do, he said, whatever Mordaunt 
 and Shrewsbury would have him. Such as it was, it 
 was at William's entire service. Consequently a speedy 
 shower of honours and offices, small and great, rained 
 upon him. On February 14th, the day after the offer of 
 the crown to William and Mary, he was admitted into 
 the Privy Council. In March he was appointed a 
 Gentleman or Lord of the Bedchamber. He received 
 the colonelcy of a regiment of foot on April 1st, and 
 was appointed lieutenant-colonel of a volunteer cavalry 
 regiment raised by the City of London for the pro- 
 tection of their Majesties in July. While holding a 
 much loftier post he rode at its head on the occasion 
 of royal visits to the Corporation. At the end of April 
 he was nominated Lord-Lieutenant of his own county of 
 Northamptonshire, superseding his uncle Peterborough, 
 and the next month became its Custos Rotulorum. 
 In August he was made Water-BailifF of the Severn. 
 Probably about the same time he secured actual posses- 
 sion of the manor of Dauntsey, eulogised by George 
 Herbert for its noble house and choice air. In the 
 reign of Charles the Second he had acquired prospective 
 rights over the domain ; but the revenues had formed 
 hitherto part of Mary of Modena's dower. With and 
 amidst all this curious miscellany of emoluments and 
 dignities he had been appointed on April 8th First Com- 
 missioner of the Treasury, and on the day following 
 
 C 
 
PE TERBOROUGH 
 
 was created Earl of Monmouth. For one whose glory 
 through life it was that he was peculiarly disinterested, 
 the rewards for public spirit seem to have been measured 
 out bountifully. But opinion two centuries ago did not 
 expect oxen which trod out the corn to be muzzled. 
 
 The step in the peerage is supposed to have been 
 given at this date that he might be qualified to take a 
 conspicuous place in the ceremonial of the coronation. 
 The style of his earldom exposed him to as much 
 obloquy as his nomination to the Treasury. To many, 
 Lord Dartmouth says in his ill-natured notes to Burnet, 
 it seemed that the title must have been selected by the 
 donor and the recipient with the deliberate intent to 
 block the eventual restoration of the Duke of Mon- 
 mouth's children to their forfeited hereditary honours. 
 The creation of an earldom of Monmouth, though not 
 legally incompatible with the revival of a dukedom under 
 the same local name, was notice of the decision of the 
 Government not to revive it. Whatever may have been 
 the motives of William, who had not loved the duke, 
 Monmouth, as he must now for a time be designated, 
 probably had no other predilection for the denomina- 
 tion than the memory of its possession by his maternal 
 grandfather. His appointment to the Treasury, which 
 excites Lord Macaulay's surprise, would deserve severer 
 condemnation but for the exceptional circumstances of 
 the time. He had no experience in business, and at 
 any rate could hardly be in his place both at the 
 head of the Treasury and in the Bedchamber. But 
 William desired to have in ostensible command at the 
 Treasury one whom he thought he could implicitly trust, 
 and one too on whose political principles no slur rested. 
 
II AT THE TREASURY 19 
 
 Monmouth could produce unimpeachable Whig creden- 
 tials. He had as good business aptitudes as the new 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, sour, grasping Delamere, 
 afterwards Earl of Warrington. For the serious adminis' 
 tration of the department the King relied on Godolphin, 
 who, once First Commissioner, had accepted the third 
 seat at the Board. Godolphin's service under James 
 disqualified him at present for the apparent headship. 
 Without excessive invidiousness he could be introduced 
 in a subordinate capacity, though the arrangement even 
 thus had its fierce opponents. Bishop Burnet says that 
 he was brought in to the great grief of Monmouth and 
 Delamere. Monmouth despised Delamere, whom, at the 
 period of the Dutch invasion, he had privately stig- 
 matised as little better than a thief for taking £9000 
 from William for the equipment of a regiment and 
 leaving it shoeless. Morose Delamere detested Mon- 
 mouth's frivolity. They were irreconcilable, except in 
 their jealousy of their subordinate. The feeling was 
 speedily justified by their experience that "the King 
 considered him more than them both." 
 
 The apparent responsibility for the administration of 
 the finances, of which he had no experience or special 
 understanding, subjected the witty gallant of the Court 
 and indifi*erent economist in his own affairs to the 
 ridicule of political satirists and lampooners. But he 
 does not appear to have shown any conspicuous incom- 
 petence. The First Lordship of the Treasury was in no 
 way equivalent to the office of Prime Minister. It did 
 not even imply the practical control in chief of the 
 finances. Monmouth as First Commissioner had to 
 preside over the Civil Service. His real province was 
 
20 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 less finance than patronage. In that the worst charge 
 alleged against him is that he sought out for places the 
 men most noted for Republican principles. He is allowed 
 to have been generous, and to have distributed offices 
 freely. He did not, like Delamere, sell everything. We 
 know that in one instance he used his influence nobly, 
 and would gladly have exerted it on a grander scale. In 
 Holland he and his wife enjoyed the intimate friendship 
 of John Locke. When, three months after the Prince, 
 the Princess Mary embarked for England, Locke, by the 
 husband's desire, escorted Lady Mordaunt, who returned 
 in the Princess's train on February 12th, 1689. On 
 February 20th Locke received through Monmouth the 
 offer of the important embassy to William's most faithful 
 ally, the great Elector of Brandenburg. He declined on 
 account of ill health, his letter of apology being written 
 in Monmouth's room in Whitehall ; but in May he owed 
 to the new First Lord the appointment to a Commis- 
 sionership of Appeals. He was ever a welcome guest 
 at Parson's Green ; London smoke hurt him, and there 
 he escaped its evils. So much pleasure, writes Lady 
 Masham, took he always in this delightful garden, that 
 he had scarce cause to regret the necessity he was under 
 of a short absence from London. Monmouth's inter- 
 course with Locke during fifteen or sixteen years shows 
 uninterrupted delicacy and warmth of heart. He seems 
 continually grateful for obtaining leave to confer kind- 
 nesses. At Locke's request he exerted himself also for 
 Isaac Newton, who acknowledged in the September of 
 1690 Lord and Lady Monmouth's kind remembrance of 
 him, and, whether their designs succeeded or not, must 
 ever think himself obliged to be their humble servant. 
 
ON THE COUNCIL OF REGENCY 
 
 Before the autumn of 1690, however, Mordaunt's offi- 
 cial influence had been curtailed. In March of that year the 
 Ministry was essentially modified, and one main feature of 
 the change was a complete reconstruction of the Treasury. 
 Monmouth ceased to be First Lord and Delamere to be 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. For a short time Sir John 
 Lowther became First Lord, and then Godolphin, a great 
 administrator, taciturn, non-combative, and methodical. 
 Mordaunt discovered no anger at his dismissal. It was 
 softened by a pension, with the promise of the Crown's 
 manor of Reigate, and a grant of any lands in several 
 counties proved to be the property of Jesuits. He con- 
 tinued to attend the Privy Council. When William 
 went over to Ireland on June 11th he invited Mor- 
 daunt to go with him, but for some unknown reason 
 he declined. His third brother, Osmond, went instead, 
 and was slain at the battle of the Boyne. Whatever 
 was the cause of Mordaunt's own refusal the King can- 
 not have been dissatisfied with it. He named him a 
 member of the Queen's Committee of Nine. Contem- 
 porary epigrammatists, who had jeered at the chief of the 
 Treasury, with his hours distributed in morsels among 
 the Court, the State, and the calls of gallantry, vanity, 
 and wit, were yet fiercer upon the jackanapes of State, 
 the whirlwind set to guide the national bark, the arrogant 
 councillor of the Regency. He had his censors nearer 
 home. His colleagues did not trust one another, and 
 him least of all. Nor did he trust them. Shortly before 
 William's departure a circumstance had occurred which 
 heightened the mutual suspiciousness. Letters had been 
 intercepted which were addressed to a French agent, M. 
 Coutenay, at Antwerp. They were written in lemon 
 
22 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 juice ; but exposure to heat enabled them to be de- 
 ciphered, and it was found that they rcpoited in detail, 
 apparently for the information of enemies of the new 
 Sovereigns, the deliberations of the Privy Council, 
 They continued to pass, and to be intercepted, after 
 William left. An alarm was raised that there was 
 a traitor among the councillors. Ill feeling and per- 
 plexity of another kind were aroused by the conduct 
 of Lord Torrington in command of the Channel fleet. 
 A majority of the Committee of Nine, including the 
 Tory Nottingham and the Whig Monmouth, not 
 very good friends, as the Queen rightly inferred, were 
 indignant at the delay to engage the French fleet under 
 de Tourville. Monmouth offered to convey instructions 
 from the Queen to fight. Mary affected unwillingness 
 to part with one of her nine advisers, paying Mon- 
 mouth, as Nottingham observed, the high compliment 
 of a refusal to make use of his arm, having need of 
 his counsel. By way of compromise a Government 
 messenger was sent with orders to Torrington to bring 
 on a battle. Finally she yielded to pressure from two- 
 thirds of the Committee. She commissioned Monmouth 
 and Admiral Russell, also of the Committee, to fit 
 out a ship, join Torrington, and determine on the spot 
 what had best be done. Monmouth, wrote Mary to 
 William, declared that he could do the work with 
 more speed than another, and would never come back 
 if the fleet did not fight. Off Admiral Russell and 
 he hurried, with Major Wildman, who was acting 
 as his secretary. Before a vessel could be equipped 
 for them news reached Portsmouth that Torrington, 
 acting upon the prior directions before they could be 
 
THE LEMON-LETTERS 23 
 
 countermanded, had encountered the French off Beachy 
 Head on June 30th, with the result known to everybody. 
 
 Monmouth's associates on the Committee were not 
 disappointed at his return without any increase of per- 
 sonal credit. The Queen wrote to William that she was 
 not sorry to see Monmouth come so soon back, for that 
 all agreed in the same opinion of him. They had not 
 been sorry to be free from his company for an interval. 
 His and his secretary's absence had helped to confirm 
 their suspicions. Previously the correspondence with 
 Coutenay had, the Queen said, proceeded constantly ; 
 while they were away it stopped, if it were not only 
 that it succeeded in escaping detection. The belief of 
 his opponents, as Danby expressed it in his correspond- 
 ence with William, was that he concocted the letters 
 with the design that they should be intercepted, and be 
 attributed to one or another of the members of the 
 Council in notorious communication with King James. 
 This, or rather their composition from his disclosures 
 by the veteran plotter Wildman, is a plausible hypo- 
 thesis, and on the whole presents fewer difficulties than 
 that which attributes them to some Tory friend of the 
 exiles. It is incredible that any councillor in league 
 with James should have gone on despatching missives 
 which he knew would be captured and read. To struggle 
 in Monmouth's interest for the relief of his name from 
 the reproach of an underhand manoeuvre by fixing the 
 blame on another is, in view of his known character, 
 to labour in vain. The best course is to allow that he 
 was capable of tortuous acts, and endeavour to under- 
 stand how he could yet escape utter moral depravation. 
 
 He was discontented with everything and everybody. 
 
24 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 In the first year of the reign he had tried hard, by a 
 Parliamentary cabal, to take the Speakership of the Lords 
 from his colleague, the Marquis of Halifax, the apostle 
 of the Trimmers. Halifax had been especially odious 
 to him as the too tolerant statesman who restored Not- 
 tingham and Godolphin to office. But the range of his 
 enmities since had widened almost indefinitely. Burnet 
 alleges that while he was still at the Treasury his ill 
 will extended to the King himself. According to the 
 bishop he combined with Delamere to infuse jealousies 
 of William into the Whig party. On the same authority 
 he is said to have permitted Jacobite agents to tamper 
 with his own loyalty. Mary, whose confidants were 
 Tory Nottingham, jobbing Danby, now Marquis of Caer 
 marthen, and Burnet, the Whig Churchman, manifestly 
 inclined to a similar suspicion. She could not fathom 
 his schemes. She was certain that he was the author 
 of the lemon-letters, which, in his conversations with her, 
 he imputed, if not to Nottingham, to some one in 
 Nottingham's Office. She was embarrassed by the claim 
 he insinuated to succeed Torrington. He did not de- 
 sire, he had intimated to the Committee, to supersede 
 the foiled admiral, who was his maternal uncle j but he 
 was obviously dissatisfied at not being charged with the 
 duty. His offer to go as a civilian and assist in restor- 
 ing courage in the fleet she did not seriously entertain. 
 It was not fit, she told him, for him who was a seaman, 
 to go to sea without the command. That she did not 
 care to commit to him, and listened incredulously to 
 his assertion that William had once thought of appointing 
 him, in preference to Torrington, in the first place. His 
 accusations of ill administration, and of the incapacity of 
 
SUSPECTED 25 
 
 those in trust, his <laily hints to her of the great danger 
 they were in, and his remarks on the necessity that the 
 nation should be satisfied, troubled her without inducing 
 her to rely on him for safety. Whatever the question, 
 she held herself on her guard when it was introduced by 
 him. One day, she wrote to William, Monmouth came 
 with Lord Devonshire to entreat her presence at the 
 Council to restore peace. She would not come. Another 
 day he was the mouthpiece of a promise by the Cabinet 
 to procure a loan of £200,000 for the public service, on 
 condition that she dissolved Parliament. She refused in 
 default of the King's express consent. To her Monmouth 
 seemed to be resolved to be either dictator or traitor. 
 Like his colleagues of the Committee, she was equally 
 reluctant to give him authority to act at a distance and 
 to keep him by her side. She let him go to Portsmouth, 
 believing, for her part, that he could be best spared of 
 the company. She was reassured by his return. A 
 little later he asked to be sent on a mission to Holland, 
 and again she and the rest, she writes, were inclined to 
 it for a reason she had mentioned before. From a similar 
 jealousy of the use to which he might put his independ- 
 ence, permission was ultimately withheld. William, 
 though he would not yield to his attempt to exclude 
 from office all but thorough Whigs and implacable 
 enemies of James, seems to have interpreted his 
 motives more favourably, and perhaps more equitably, 
 than contemporaries or later critics. He may have 
 adopted his Queen's evident conviction that the letters 
 were his, without sharing too vehemently her conse- 
 quent scepticism as to his great professions. He knew 
 better than she how true were Monmouth's warnings 
 
26 PETERBOROUGH 
 
 of danger, and of the existence of designs against the 
 throne. 
 
 William came back from Ireland in January, 1691, 
 and in the same month crossed over to Holland. In his 
 suite, chosen from those nearest his confidence, was 
 Monmouth, still of the Bedchamber, and Monmouth was 
 his companion in the perilous adventure of the open 
 boat off the Dutch coast. He returned with the King 
 in April, and his apartment at AVhitehall was among 
 those which suffered most severely from the fire in 
 that month at the palace. For several weeks in April 
 and May of the next year he was engaged in putting 
 Jersey and Guernsey into a position of defence, holding 
 command of the forces in those islands. Soon after his 
 return he was off again to Flanders, and narrowly 
 escaped shipwreck in a storm. He came back in July, 
 and seems to have returned to the Netherlands in the 
 course of the same summer, though the statement that 
 he served at Steinkirk in August as colonel of the Royal 
 Horse Guards has been disproved. He returned in 
 October, once again in company with William. But he 
 then took up an attitude in Parliament which estranged 
 him from the Court. He was among the eighteen lords, 
 described by Macaulay as the bitterest AVhigs and the 
 bitterest Tories in the whole peerage, who signed the pro- 
 test against the rejection on December 7th, 1692, of the 
 motion that a joint committee of the two Houses should 
 be selected to inquire into the whole management of 
 public affairs. This meant an attack upon the military 
 administration, which William regarded as virtually an 
 attack upon himself. He displayed no open anger. 
 Monmouth was suffered to go on acting as a gentleman of 
 
IN OPPOSITION 27 
 
 the Bedchamber, and to keep his colonelcy ; but the old 
 confidential relation between him and William was 
 broken, never to be restored. On his part he uttered 
 no public complaint, but chose to regard himself 
 as a victim of royal ingratitude. He was more deter- 
 mined than ever to shame the King into abandoning the 
 alliance with the false friends of any colour who robbed 
 the true, like him, of their rightful privileges. 
 
 During the three following years he found no especial 
 opportunity for striking a blow. He occupied his en- 
 forced leisure with the care of his fruits and flowers at 
 Parson's Green, and with the conversation of wits at the 
 coffee-houses he loved to frequent. Afterwards, when he 
 ruled Valencia, he longed, he wrote, to be free to return 
 to Will's coffee-house in winter. Will's was the corner 
 house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and he had for 
 some time a town house in the same street. Probably 
 he could amuse himself with other society not so inno- 
 cent as that of authors and Templars. At intervals he 
 still sat in Parliament. For instance, in February, 1693, 
 he was present at the trial of his near connection. Lord 
 Mohun, for the murder of Mountfort the actor. He 
 voted on his honour, and to his honour, in the minority of 
 fourteen against the sixty-nine peers who were for an 
 acquittal. In December he introduced a Bill for the 
 establishment of triennial Parliaments in place of that 
 which had been passed in the previous session and 
 vetoed by the King. So much umbrage did William at 
 length take at his political conduct that in February, 
 1694, his performance of his duties as a gentleman of 
 the Bedchamber was suspended. He was no longer 
 summoned to meetings of the Privy Council. His 
 
28 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 regiment of foot was given, though Avith his assent, 
 to his brother, Captain Henry Mordaunt, afterwards 
 lieutenant-general, and Treasurer of the Ordnance. The 
 chastisement did not break his spirit. He supported in 
 January, 1695, Tory Nottingham's motion for the con- 
 sideration of the state of the nation. A few weeks later 
 he zealously abetted Wharton's inquiry into the bribes 
 offered by Sir Thomas Cook, the governor of the East 
 India Company, to Danby, now Duke of Leeds and Lord 
 President of the Council. Though the single available 
 witness was persuaded to leave the country, and the 
 impeachment, therefore, had to be dropped, he had the 
 satisfaction of ejecting the duke from the conduct of 
 affairs. 
 
 The Court seems to have tried to appease him. In 
 April, 1695, Narcissus Luttrell speaks of him as waiting 
 in his place in the Bedchamber. He was, in November, 
 1695, in the royal suite and riding in one of the King's 
 carriages when, during William's autumn progress, he 
 was overturned between Grantham and Lincoln and 
 sorely bruised. Overtures towards a reconciliation were 
 of little use. He was resolved to unmask his rivals, 
 and at the end of 1696 he thought he saw his way 
 to a complete triumph. Sir John Fenwick was deeply 
 implicated in the assassination plot of 1695. After 
 eluding capture for fifteen months he had accidentally 
 been caught in Romney Marsh. Having been offered 
 life in return for a full confession of the conspiracy, 
 he pretended to comply with the condition by a 
 compilation of stories against Whigs like Russell 
 and Shrewsbury, and lukewarm Tories like Marl- 
 borough and Godolphin, who had secretly coquetted 
 
II SI/? JOHN FENWICK 29 
 
 with James while they actively served William. Dis- 
 closures which would injure real unadulterated Jacobites 
 he reserved. When Goodman, one of the only two 
 witnesses against him, had been bribed by his wife, Lady 
 Mary, to abscond, he positively closed his mouth. The 
 Whigs, equally exasperated by his accusation of their 
 leaders and the screening of his Jacobite friends, resolved 
 that he should not thus evade punishment. He could 
 not be convicted at the Old Bailey on the unsupported 
 testimony of Porter, but a Bill of Attainder was intro- 
 duced into the House of Commons and read a third 
 time, though by a diminished majority of 189 to 156. 
 On November 26th, 1696, it was carried up to the 
 Lords, and there read a first time on December 1st. 
 Fen wick's original confession was communicated to Parlia- 
 ment, and he, being brought before the House of Lords, 
 was asked if he had anything further to divulge. Mon- 
 mouth was particularly earnest in interrogating him. 
 At the commencement, as Lord Wharton wrote to 
 Shrewsbury on December 11th, he was easy and favour- 
 able, and gave him all encouragement to make out the 
 accusations in his paper. To his evident disappoint- 
 ment the prisoner could not be induced to emphasise or 
 corroborate his previous charges against Marlborough, 
 Godolphin, Eussell, and Shrewsbury. Thereupon he 
 suddenly turned upon him with " a good deal of zeal." 
 When, on December 15th, the Bill was again taken 
 into consideration, he exhibited the same rage at once 
 against Fenwick and the statesmen Fenwick could have 
 denounced and would not. The second reading was 
 carried by 73 to 55, after a passionate altercation, which, 
 but for the intervention of the House, might have had a 
 
30 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 bloody sequel, between him and the son of Jeffreys, 
 stung by an eloquent outburst against the father's in- 
 famous memory. At the debate on the third reading 
 he spoke as strongly and fiercely as before. In spite of 
 many defections the Bill was carried in the Lords on 
 January 11th, 1697, by 68 to 61. 
 
 Previously the House had discovered the cause of 
 Monmouth's hostility to the prisoner. Six years before, 
 in June, 1690, he had prided himself on the extraction of 
 revelations of Jacobite plots from a youth named Crone. 
 Now he had been flying at higher game in a similar 
 direction. He had entire faith in Fenwick's tale of 
 intercourse between highly placed statesmen and the 
 Court at St. Germain, and he wished to persuade him to 
 adhere to it. His own secret information fully accorded 
 with Fenwick's gossip. A young man named Matthew 
 Smith, who had active Jacobite connections, had 
 offered intelligence of their designs to the Earl of 
 Shrewsbury, then Secretary of State, and seems to 
 have been for a time in his pay. From the earl he 
 went over to Monmouth, whom he supplied with many 
 anecdotes of the good understanding which Whigs as 
 well as Tories maintained with King James. He related, 
 moreover, that Shrewsbury had been told of the 
 assassination plot, and had kept silence. Though in that 
 shape the assertion was false, it may not be untrue that 
 the earl had been furnished by Smith and others with 
 evidence from which, with ardent goodwill, he might 
 have inferred the extent of the peril. His vigilance 
 was, it can scarcely be denied, paralysed by a guilty con- 
 sciousness of his own intrigues with the exiles. Mon- 
 mouth's aim was to engraft Smith's facts, many of 
 
II RETALIATION 
 
 which were certainly real, upon Fenwick's second-hand 
 confession. He could not have direct access to him, as 
 formerly to Crone, but he was able to act through Lady 
 Mary Fenwick. When Fenwick would not abet him 
 in his work of separating William from untrustworthy 
 councillors, he saw no cause to save a mischievous and 
 despicable conspirator from the fate he merited. The 
 conspirator's wife could not be expected to recognise the 
 justification for the change of attitude. In her resent- 
 ment at the attacks on her husband she induced her 
 brother, the Earl of Carlisle, to inform the House of 
 Lords of the part Monmouth had played. They 
 against whom his plans were aimed, and the majority 
 they commanded, leagued at once with the reactionary 
 Tories to destroy him. Fenwick was interrogated. 
 He admitted on December 22nd that when he was 
 before the House of Commons he had received written 
 directions for his behaviour. His wife had handed him 
 the documents in Newgate. She, he understood, had 
 them from the Duchess of Norfolk, and the Duchess 
 from Mordaunt. The Duchess of Norfolk was the only 
 child of Henry, Earl of Peterborough, and therefore 
 Monmouth's first cousia As far back as 1 685 her infidelity 
 with Sir John Germaine had scandalised the town. Her 
 husband had tried to have his marriage dissolved by Act 
 of Parliament, but the Bill had been thrown out, principally 
 through her cousin's exertions. She was an intimate friend 
 of Lady Mary, who employed her as negotiator with 
 him. The House followed the clue. On January 7th it 
 examined on oath Lady Mary Fenwick, the Duchess of 
 Norfolk, Mrs. Elizabeth Lawson, who was related to 
 Lady Mary, a Mrs. Symons, who belonged to her house- 
 
32 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 hold, and Mr. Simon Harcourt, now an eminent Tory 
 barrister and afterwards Lord Keeper. According to 
 Lord Wharton, the duchess " seemed to turn the matter 
 as much to the advantage of my Lord Monmouth as she 
 well could." Harcourt's evidence was not very material : 
 he could speak only of indiscreet expressions used by 
 Monmouth at Will's coffee-house concerning the trial; 
 but that of the ladies was much more to the point. The 
 instructions delivered by Lady Mary to her husband 
 had been contained in three papers. In the first Fen- 
 wick was told to demand before the Lords that Lords 
 Portland and Komney, William's confidants, should be 
 asked what intelligence had been conveyed to their 
 master of correspondence between James and great men 
 in the Government. They were to be asked, moreover, 
 why Marlborough had been removed from his places 
 and sent to the Tower; why Shrewsbury had been 
 induced to return to oflftce, and by what pressure. 
 The second paper provided Fenwick with an argument 
 he might use on the improbability that he should 
 have brought false accusations against persons high 
 in the royal esteem. The object of the third was to 
 free Fenwick from a fear that his revelations might 
 irritate Jacobites in Parliament into voting against him. 
 It was not to be apprehended, urged the writer, that 
 Tories would be incensed at Fenwick for his denuncia- 
 tions of Whigs. At a subsequent examination the wit- 
 nesses unfolded the history of the concoction of the 
 instructions. According to them the duchess and Mon- 
 mouth, when they were explaining the plot to Mary, 
 were overheard by Mrs. Elizabeth Lawson from an 
 adjacent room. Mrs. Lawson confirmed the duchess's and 
 
II AT BAY 33 
 
 Lady Mary's reports. No paper in Monmouth's hand- 
 writing was produced, for the reason that he had insisted 
 on a return of his writings, and copies had to be made by 
 Mrs. Symons. Lady Mary testified also to the utterance 
 of violent reproaches by Monmouth against the King. 
 She said he had reviled the King for intimating to the 
 House that Fenwick's original confession was false when 
 the King knew it was wholly true ; he had complained 
 that the King had been ungrateful to him and was " the 
 worst of men." In answer, she said, to an objection 
 that, though Fenwick, in the general confusion created 
 by his charges, might succeed in defeating the Bill of 
 Attainder, he would still be liable to be remitted to trial 
 at the Old Bailey, Monmouth had bid her have no fears. 
 He boasted he had as much power in the Old Bailey as 
 over the House of Lords, " for he often conversed with 
 those people that were of juries, and he would secure 
 how Sir John should be cleared there." 
 
 He was heard in his defence on January 9th. Lord 
 Wharton says he behaved with more disturbance of 
 mind than it was thought he could be capable of. 
 His speech, three hours in length, was so confused, and 
 it was so late, and the House so weary, that it was hard 
 to make either head or tail of what he said. He 
 appealed to his sacrifices for the Revolution, to the four 
 voyages, described by Burnet as two, which he had 
 made to Holland in the evil times, to his refusal of 
 eminent places, to his contempt for money. With a 
 sneer at Lord Nottingham he observed that he had 
 bought no great estate and built no palace, that his 
 hereditary mansion was threatening to fall on his head, 
 and that he was poorer by £20,000 than at his entrance 
 
 D 
 
34 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 into public life. He scoffed at the insinuation that so 
 faithful a servant of his Majesty would have maligned 
 him. He had nothing to do, he declared, with the 
 papers in question. The whole was a plot of the 
 Papists to ruin an enemy, in which they had procured his 
 ungrateful kinswoman for their instrument. His speech 
 was received with solemn silence. AVhen he inquired 
 if he should ^vithdraw, the House, at the insidious 
 suggestion of the vindictive Duke of Leeds, decided to 
 judge only the papers for the moment, and not their 
 author, and Monmouth was thus entrapped into voting 
 by implication for his o\yn condemnation as the author 
 of writings he had admitted to be scandalous. The 
 House resolved that the contrivance of the three papers 
 was "a high crime and misdemeanour;" yet even at 
 this point attempts were still made to accommodate the 
 schism in the WTiig ranks. Monmouth and his wife, 
 while they railed at the Duchess of Norfolk as a per- 
 jured traitress, were, according to Mr. Secretary Vernon, 
 trying to persuade her to withdraw her testimony. He 
 had an interview two hours long with the King, whom 
 he sought to convince that he had kept within bounds 
 in this matter. Some of the Whig leaders were ex- 
 tremely anxious for a truce. The storm had not been 
 altogether unexpected. From the correspondence of 
 Lord Keeper Somers with Wharton and with Shrewsbury 
 towards the close of 1696, it is clear that some sudden 
 stroke of policy on Monmouth's part had been appre- 
 hended. Somers had promised Wharton in November 
 that he would endeavour to put the Earl of Monmouth 
 in good humour in relation to Sir John Fenwick's 
 business. He hoped that he had succeeded. After the 
 
DEFEA TED 35 
 
 explosion Sunderland thought it might still be practicable 
 to reconcile Monmouth and Shrewsbury. Somers him- 
 self did not want things pushed to extremity against 
 Monmouth, because no one, he said, could be responsible 
 to what degree such a temper might be driven. But 
 matters had gone too far for it to be possible for the leaders 
 to hinder the rank and file from dragging the deserter to 
 the bar. He was formally accused, and the proceedings 
 against him settled a point of practice. Then first, 
 according to Burnet, it was determined that a j^eer tried 
 for a misdemeanour should sit within the bar of the 
 House. The same point of etiquette had been raised in 
 his father's favour just thirty years before. In January 
 an inquiry was made into the origin of the documents. 
 Norfolk vouched for the credibility of his duchess : "My 
 Lord thought her good enough to be wife to me, and if 
 she is good enough for that, I am sure that she is good 
 enough to be a witness against him." By a vast pre- 
 ponderance of voices the House ordered that the earl 
 had such a share in the contrivance of the papers 
 delivered into the House by the Lady Mary Fenwick 
 that for that offence, as for the undutiful words which 
 were sworn to be spoken by him of the King, he should 
 be committed prisoner to his Majesty's Tower of London. 
 It followed up this condemnation by a fervent absolu- 
 tion of Shrewsbury which amounted to a repetition of 
 the judgment upon Monmouth as a suborner of false 
 witnesses. After examining Smith it declared his allega- 
 tions baseless, and ordered his documents to be burnt. 
 Burnet insinuates that to Monmouth the House would 
 have behaved with more severity if the King had not 
 secured the bishop's personal intervention in his favour. 
 
36 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 The bishop says he the more readily accepted the office 
 from an apprehension of new schemes of confusion 
 which Monmouth, if driven to desperation, might have 
 opened in his own excuse. To allay, he asserts, the 
 heat of the Lords he put them in mind that the earl set 
 the Revolution first on foot, and was a great promoter 
 of it. It is not easy to see that the House could have 
 inflicted heavier penalties whatever its inclination. A 
 result of its censure, for which the King cordially 
 thanked the House, was that the subject of it had his 
 name removed from the list of privy councillors, and 
 suffered, besides confinement till the end of the session, 
 the loss of all his places. The bishop depreciates the 
 practical effect of this too. He states that the loss, it 
 was believed, was secretly compensated to him, for the 
 Court was resolved not quite to lose him. 
 
 Modern historians, and even biographers, who as a 
 class follow the reverse of the practice attributed to 
 valets, have not been very lenient in their Adews of the 
 miserable business. Lord Macaulay, who dwells at 
 length upon the transaction in his History^ while he 
 panegyrises Monmouth's genius and even his virtues, 
 talks of " tricks worthy of the pillory." The best which 
 his apologists can say for him is to class the affair among 
 historical riddles, or to point out the slenderness of the 
 testimony. It cannot be safely alleged that the matter 
 is either incomprehensible or unproved. It is true that 
 nothing written by Monmouth was produced before the 
 peers. The letters w^hich the Duchess of Norfolk said 
 she had of his, containing a summary of all the papers 
 she asserted he had dictated, were not shown to the 
 House. Her word is not unimpeachable ; but there is 
 
II MONMO urn AND SHRE VVSB UK V 37 
 
 no ground for questioning the veracity of Lady Mary 
 or Elizabeth Lawson. Above all, the whole has the 
 strongest corroboration in Monmouth's own character 
 and methods of action. The scheme is precisely such as 
 his inventive brain would have been likely to devise. 
 Its lineaments prove its paternity, and the one practical 
 question is of the degree of the stain it leaves on his 
 name. In the first place, it must be allowed that con- 
 temporaries did not rate his criminality at all as highly 
 as the present age. Within a few months after the 
 immediate tempest of abuse had spent its fury his 
 own period and circle seemed to have forgotten the 
 occurrence. Amidst the multitude of criticisms which 
 his future career provoked, no use, or virtually 
 none, was made of this ready occasion of reproach. He 
 never himself exhibited any recollection of it. The 
 incident did not, as might have been anticipated, rankle 
 in his morbidly sensitive organisation. Perhaps a 
 rational explanation may be that he was not thought, 
 and did not feel, intolerably guilty, because he was not. 
 He had, writes Lord Macaulay, one of those minds of 
 which the deepest wounds heal and leave no scar; 
 Shrewsbury had one of those in which the slightest 
 scratch may fester to the death. But Shrewsbury had 
 perpetrated a crime which deserved the block. For 
 little more than a caprice at best, if not from debasing 
 cowardice or the paltriest time-serving, he had sold him- 
 self to his sovereign's and benefactor's enemy. As he 
 eat William's bread he was the pledged servant of James. 
 This is the chivalrous, generous gentleman whose per- 
 turbed delicacy students of history are instructed to 
 compassionate. Mordaunt had been far from nice in his 
 
38 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 choice of means. But at least it cannot be said of him 
 that he dealt in calumnies, or that he published libels, 
 unless of the legal kind, which are the worse in pro- 
 portion to their truth. He turned against Fenwick 
 when Fenwick would not do his bidding, which was 
 the reverse of magnanimous. He tried to ensnare the 
 King into recognising the criminal double-dealing of 
 Shrewsbury, Godolphin, Kussell, and Marlborough, 
 which was degrading work for him and an unkindness 
 to his sovereign. With all this it cannot be questioned 
 that Fenwick, judged by the standard of his generation, 
 richly merited the axe, and that Monmouth's doctrine 
 that correspondents of James were unsafe supports of 
 his son-in-law's throne might be honestly held by a 
 steadfast champion of the Revolution. 
 
 Monmouth's contemporaries are not agreed upon his 
 demeanour in prison. Lord Keeper Somers wrote to 
 Shrewsbury on January 30th, 1697, that accounts 
 differed; some said he bore it beyond measure im- 
 patiently ; some qualified it. Everybody knew that 
 his countess set "no bounds" to her indignation at 
 his enemies. His o^vn main business, wrote Somers 
 a week later, was to get out, and in order to that 
 he was ready to do anything. He had in the first 
 few days asked the King's leave to solicit the House 
 for his release. William was unwilling to interpose, 
 from a doubt, Somers surmised, that, on his release, he 
 would not take the removal from his places very 
 patiently. When he found he could not count upon the 
 King's favour he endeavoured, according to Somers, not 
 a very indulgent interpreter of his motives, to force his 
 way out as a victim of the Jacobites. The story adds to 
 
STRANGE COMPANY 39 
 
 the general sense of mystification created by the entire 
 Fenwick business. While Monmouth was in the Tower 
 Sir John Talbot brought his nephew, Colonel Talbot, to 
 Mr. Secretary Vernon. Colonel Talbot said an old 
 brother officer, named Brown, had informed him that the 
 earl was concocting a new plot. Brown, the son of an 
 Irish gentleman, had quitted the army and become a 
 student at the Temple. After a time his father had his 
 estate confiscated for Jacobitism ; the son's allowance 
 ceased and, in company with a man named Davies and 
 others, he took to the road. In the summer of 1696, 
 he said, Monmouth was returning from London to 
 Parson's Green by Chelsea when they stopped his coach. 
 It was no unusual accident. In 1692 Marlborough had 
 been robbed of five hundred guineas. Probably he was 
 not so amiable over the loss as Monmouth, who had but 
 six shillings in his purse. That they took, with his 
 hat, sword, and periwig. They did their thieving 
 so pleasantly, however, that he complimented them 
 with an expression of opinion that they must have 
 turned robbers out of sheer necessity. He was ashamed 
 of the poverty of his purse, and asked " how he might 
 place ten guineas upon them," as ransom, it may be 
 supposed, for the rest of his property. They trusted to 
 his word, and at once gave him all back, even the silver, 
 which he refused. When the guard from Chelsea 
 Hospital came to the hedge-side he stopped their fire by 
 calling out that there were none but friends, and bade 
 his coachman drive on. Brown visited him shortly 
 afterwards, showing perfect confidence, which so pleased 
 his kindred spirit that he made him presents, and en- 
 couraged his acquaintance. Colonel Talbot told Vernon 
 
40 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 that Mordaunt had tried to induce Brown, and also 
 Davies, who was lying in Newgate for another robbery, 
 to assist him in his Fenwick machinations. They were 
 to depose they had waylaid him the year before with the 
 intention of carrying him over to France, where he was 
 to be held as a hostage for the Jacobite Lord Aylesbury. 
 Though the catastrophe in the House of Lords had 
 spoiled that project in its original shape, Brown alleged 
 Monmouth was designing its revival in order to surround 
 himself with the halo of a political martyr. All this 
 seems to have been an invention of Brown's, whether 
 spontaneous or suggested. At any rate, so violent were 
 the prejudices of the time, it imposed for a while upon the 
 cool intelligence of Somers. Brown failed to keep his 
 engagement to come and be interrogated by Somers, who 
 had him arrested. On March 1st the Lord Keeper wrote 
 to Shrewsbury that, in conjunction with the Lord Chief 
 Justice and Mr. Secretary Vernon, he had been examining 
 the fellow at his own house. Nothing came of it, and the 
 inquiry was dropped on the pretence that Monmouth's 
 old Whig comrades did not like to involve him in fresh 
 disgrace. The truth more probably was that they dis- 
 covered they had been cheated by a footpad. They 
 tried in vain to induce Brown to rid them of him by 
 going abroad. In the same way they endeavoured to 
 bribe Smith, who also had eventually turned against 
 Monmouth, to pester them with no more venal revela- 
 tions. 
 
 At all events it was impossible to keep Monmouth 
 long in duress. On March 30th, seventeen days before 
 the session of Parliament ended, he was, on his petition 
 to the House of Lords, discharged out of the Tower. His 
 
II IN DISGRACE 
 
 uncle's death on June 19th made him Earl of Peter- 
 borough ; and by that name he will in future be called. 
 The addition to his titles may have helt)ed the country to 
 forget his fall. Under no new honours could he really 
 have disguised his ignominy if his reputation as Earl of 
 Monmouth had been as deeply tarnished as is sometimes 
 thought. Lord Macaulay's allusions to this period of 
 his career are consistently exaggerated. He is described 
 by the historian as being in his prison as violent as 
 a falcon just caged. Freed, we are told, he stood 
 alone in the world, a dishonoured man, more hated by 
 the Whigs than any Tory, and by the Tories than any 
 Whig. It is added that he was reduced to poverty. 
 All these assertions, unless that he stood alone, are pitched 
 in too high a key. Anxious as he was, in the words of 
 Somers, to "get out," he fretted more in the Tower over 
 his baffled combinations than at bars and gates. His dis- 
 honour was not very palpable to the world, and not at 
 all to himself. Whig and Tory chiefs knew their own 
 hands were far from clean. They were well content to 
 have repulsed his onslaught. They were not inclined 
 to rush into paroxysms of fury over his prostrate body. 
 In his ascendency he had not always been conciliatory 
 and gracious to his equals and rivals. Even if he had 
 been, prosperity like his would have produced envy 
 and jealousy which on his fall were sure to indulge 
 themselves. He did not escape ; but on the whole 
 he seems to have suffered less than in the cir- 
 cumstances might have been deemed his share. The 
 poverty which, he wrote in May, obliged him to follow 
 the plough and his wife to churn and make cheese, 
 was the poverty of the owner of two earldoms. His 
 
42 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 loss of place was partly compensated, it was reported, by 
 a pension of £2000 a year from the King's privy purse. 
 He was not destitute of friends. Not a shadow dimmed 
 the serenity of Locke's esteem. He kept the society of wits 
 and poets. He had hardly quitted his prison in 1697 
 when Dryden added to the translation of the ^neid a 
 postscript running over with most profound respect and 
 inviolable gratitude for the nobleman who, careless of 
 difference of interests and opinion, had poured favours 
 upon him so frequent that he received them almost by 
 prescription. He was treated with sufficient deference in 
 Parliament. Thus when, according to Luttrell, he intro- 
 duced in May, 1698, a motion, not mentioned in the 
 Journals of the House, " against the impudence of the 
 actors, upon Powell's wounding a gentleman," the peers 
 received it with sympathetic indignation. The lords 
 with the white staves were directed to desire his 
 Majesty that none of the players wear swords. But he 
 was without place, and for a time he was without a 
 party. 
 
 In one sense it Avas only for a time, though in another 
 sense it continued for the rest of his life. Now and 
 hereafter he remained faithful to the doctrines of the 
 Revolution. For purposes of Parliamentary tactics he 
 began to approximate to its opponents or lukewarm 
 adherents. His voluntary absence from the House of 
 Lords did not last for more than a year. From the 
 spring of 1698 his name occurs frequently in the list 
 of peers present at debates. He reappeared as the 
 associate of Marlborough and Godolphin, a member of 
 a third party composed of Tories who did not regret 
 James and of Whigs who were discontented with 
 
WHIG AND ANTI-WHIG 43 
 
 William. On the two or three occasions on which 
 before the next reign he played a prominent part in 
 Parliamentary controversies, he stood forward as the 
 adversary of Whig interests and Whig chieftains. In 
 July, 1698, he joined Godolphin and Dartmouth in pro- 
 testing vigorously against the Government for its favour 
 to the new East India Company. The House, in Feb- 
 ruary, 1699, had to interfere to keep the peace between 
 him and the Whig admiral, Russell, now Lord Orford, 
 in a dispute about the army. He was one of the thirty- 
 two peers who in 1701 advocated by votes, and by a 
 protest, the demand of the House of Commons to be 
 permitted to impeach, after its own method, Lord 
 Somers for his participation with Orford, Halifax, and 
 Portland in the conclusion of the Treaty of Partition, 
 and for other illegal acts. He and his companions 
 denounced a pretended trial by the peers which only 
 tended to protect Lord Somers from justice under colour 
 of an acquittal. His elder son. Lord Mordaunt, had 
 been elected member for Chippenham in 1700, being 
 only just of age. Young as he was, he had been chosen 
 one of the managers of the impeachment. On the other 
 hand, Peterborough's own enmity against Somers cannot 
 have been very implacable if it be true that a version 
 of the Olynthiacs and Philippics of Demosthenes, 
 printed in 1702, was published under the direction of 
 Somers, and that Peterborough translated for him the 
 first of the three Olynthiacs. He remained even so 
 far identified in popular estimation with the Whigs, 
 whose chosen chiefs he had been persecuting, that he 
 incurred the wrath of a Tory House of Commons 
 which had been elected at the end of 1701. An 
 
44 PETERBOROUGH chap, ii 
 
 election committee reported that he had unduly inter- 
 fered in the election for Malmesbury. By a majority 
 of 141 to 56 the House, in February, 1702, after hearing 
 him at his request, resolved that he had been guilty of 
 many indirect practices in endeavouring to secure the 
 return of Colonel Park. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 COMMAND IN SPAIN — HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 
 
 William died on March 8th, 1702, and Peterborough 
 saw an official career open anew before him. The feud 
 between him and Marlborough had long been pacified. 
 He and his wife, being out of favour at Court, as was 
 Marlborough, had acquired the regard of Lady Marl- 
 borough while William lived. Anne's accession, which 
 gave Marlborough his opportunity, afforded Peterborough 
 his also. In the Queen's first year he was reappointed 
 Lord-Lieutenant of Northamptonshire, and was nomi- 
 nated Captain -General and Governor of Jamaica in 
 December, 1702. He received the office as supple- 
 mentary to the command, which was conferred upon 
 him in the same year, of an expedition against the 
 Spanish West Indies. The original intention was that 
 it should be exclusively English; but the Queen's 
 Dutch allies heard of the project, and insisted that 
 they should be allowed to share in an enterprise which 
 promised to be profitable. When their request was 
 granted, they suddenly discovered that they needed 
 their stipulated contingent of some three or four 
 thousand men for service in Flanders. Godolphin seems 
 to have been anxious that the English ships and troops 
 
46 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 should sail alone and at once. Peterborough, on whom 
 the immediate responsibility of failure would have lain, 
 was more prudent. He wrote to Locke at the end of 
 January, 1703, that the expedition had fallen, as a mush- 
 room rises, in a single night. He had made all his 
 preparations. His wife and he, as Locke's health pre- 
 vented him in the late autumn from venturing to London, 
 had driven down to Oates, in Essex, that he might say 
 good-bye. He had engaged as secretary Arent Furly, 
 a kind of adopted child of Locke's. He was looking 
 happily forward to a series of successes, upon which he 
 promised Locke, in a letter of December 26th, that he 
 should not sleep, when the Dutch squadron with its 
 troops was withdrawn from the joint expedition. He 
 had received orders for his departure by January 16th. 
 His equipage and servants were already gone. Then 
 on the 14th he was summoned, he said, to the place of 
 Avisdom to be asked whether, as Holland needed her 
 ships and troops for other services, and as the season was 
 far spent and the winds contrary, he could effect with 
 three thousand or rather two thousand eight hundred 
 men that which he was to have attempted with more 
 than double the number. His reply, he told Locke, was 
 that he was no worker of miracles, and he refused to go 
 to the other world loaded with empty titles. With 
 some difficulty he induced the Treasury to recoup the 
 expense of the transport of his equipage to Jamaica and 
 a sum of £300 he had laid out upon medicines. 
 
 For some time he had still to seek occupation for 
 his faculties in the arena of politics. With the con- 
 sistency which, it must be admitted, distinguished his 
 Parliamentary career, he vehemently opposed, and 
 
Ill GENERAL AND ADMIRAL 47 
 
 assisted in rejecting, the Bill for preventing Occasional 
 Conformity. The Whig peers, in January, 1703, nomi- 
 nated him one of their managers with Somers, Halifax, 
 Burnet, and Devonshire at the free conference with 
 representatives of the Lower House which favoured it. 
 His resistance, he told Swift, implied no hostility to the 
 Church, or at all events no friendliness to Noncon- 
 formists. But the war proceeded. It was decided to 
 despatch reinforcements to the Peninsula, and Peter- 
 borough was asked to lead them. The air had long 
 been full of rumours of important posts he was to occupy. 
 At last he was gazetted General and Commander- 
 in-Chief of the Forces in the Fleet, on March 31st, 
 1705. He had been restored to his seat in the Privy 
 Council two days before. In April he was appointed 
 General and Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces in 
 Spain. On May 1st he was made Joint-Admiral and 
 Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet. His instructions 
 gave him liberty to serve on board the fleet or ashore at 
 his own discretion. It was a bold step to commit a fleet 
 to the charge of a politician now in his forty-seventh 
 year, who had not served on board ship for a quarter of 
 a century, and had never discharged active duties beyond 
 those of a cadet. There was almost more audacity in 
 entrusting an army to one who, unless possibly at 
 Tangier at the same distance of time, is not supposed 
 to have been ever in the presence of an enemy by land. 
 But in that age experiments of the kind, when a 
 peer aspired to military honours, were not rare. Marl- 
 borough, when an army was first confided to him, had 
 scarcely more experience. Besides, Marlborough, in- 
 duced by his wife, warranted Peterborough, as Peter- 
 
48 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 borough was proud to admit and as the duchess never 
 forgot. Public feeling in general was not shocked b}' 
 the arrangement. Only one Thornton, a Northampton- 
 shire justice of the peace, spoke *' reflecting words " on 
 his lord-lieutenant, and he was struck out of the com- 
 mission for his candour. 
 
 Peterborough's colleague at sea was Sir Cloudesley 
 Shovel, with whom he had in boyhood sailed and fought. 
 Sir John Leake was another of the admirals. His second 
 in command of the troops was Major- General Henry 
 Conyngham. He was accompanied by Brigadier- 
 Generals Lords Donegal, Charlemont, and Shannon, 
 Richard Gorges and James Stanhope. Colonel John 
 Richards was director of the artillery. Major-General 
 Scratenbach and Brigadier -General St. Amant com- 
 manded the Dutch contingent of troops. The original 
 intention seems to have been to aid the Duke of Savoy. 
 Victor Amadeus the Second, though his second daughter 
 was married to Philip the Bourbon King of Spain, had 
 thrown in his lot with the Allies. He was endeavouring 
 to wrest from the French the Spanish possessions in 
 Italy, and also threatened an invasion of Provence and 
 Languedoc. In September Peterborough was confidently 
 expected at Nice, which, it was supposed, would be his 
 base of operations. Cavalier had come thither and was 
 preparing for a rising of the Camisards. The English 
 Ministry did not concentrate its attention upon Spain 
 proper. It thought of the Spanish dominions at large, 
 and, desiring to strike a blow at any spot in them where 
 it would be most injurious to France, began by consider- 
 ing that the campaign which the Duke of Savoy was 
 conducting offered the most efficacious point. Accord- 
 
Ill THE POINT OF A TTACK 49 
 
 ingly it had meant Peterborough to make for that. 
 Lord - Treasurer Godolphin appears to have never re- 
 linquished this view, and to have been continually 
 aggrieved at the deviation from it. Twice in Sep- 
 tember he reminded Peterborough that Savoy was his 
 rightful destination. At the same time the general's 
 instructions undoubtedly left him much latitude in the 
 choice of operations to suit the circumstances as they 
 appeared on the spot. Though in various ways he 
 knew the inclination of the Government and its chief, 
 the line laid down for him was little more precise than 
 that he was to make a vigorous push in Spain. After 
 a time, when it became necessary to fix the direction 
 of the attack, it seems that the Queen's ministers, 
 Godolphin among them, were disposed to think that 
 the expedition, before going to Nice, might take ad- 
 vantage of its presence in Spanish waters to attempt 
 some point on the coast. It had been represented 
 to them that Catalonia was prepared to rise, and they 
 directed Mr. Mitford Crowe, an able diplomatic agent, 
 to report on the feeling of the Catalans. While 
 it is too much to assert that Peterborough was com- 
 missioned to commence his campaign in Catalonia, 
 it is plain that an attack at some time upon the 
 French rule in that province had been deliberately 
 contemplated. 
 
 On May 22nd, after receiving the sacrament in church 
 and taking the oaths in the Court of Queen's Bench, 
 he posted to Portsmouth. The expedition sailed with 
 him from Spithead at the end of May, and reached 
 Lisbon on June 20th. He found there King Charles, and 
 Lord Galway still suffering from the loss of an arm at 
 
 E 
 
so PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Badajoz. Landgrave George of Hesse Darmstadt, the 
 hero of Gibraltar, arrived on July 11th from that fortress, 
 and a council of war was held the next day. Some 
 present appear to have recommended an attack upon 
 Cadiz; but the peremptory refusal of the Portuguese 
 to assist put an end to that project. A majority, 
 including the King, Prince George, Peterborough, and 
 Galway, preferred to try Barcelona. The Prince 
 six weeks earlier had preferred a disembarkation on 
 the Valencian coast and a march direct to Madrid ; now, 
 in deference, it is said, to the English Ministry, he re- 
 commended strongly the Barcelona project. He had 
 been a very popular Viceroy of Catalonia under Charles 
 the Second of Spain, and maintained a close connection 
 with influential inhabitants. Not a whit discouraged 
 by the ill success- of the attempt of the year before 
 when he had accompanied Rooke, he was certain that 
 the peasantry would rise, and that the citizens would 
 open the gates so soon as he was known to be at hand. 
 Peterborough favoured the enterprise, as the only plan 
 which, after the Portuguese rejection of the Cadiz 
 project, Avas feasible. He wrote on July 20th to Sir 
 John Leake that all advices agreed six thousand men 
 and twelve hundred horse were ready in Catalonia ex- 
 pecting their arrival, with a general goodwill of all the 
 people. It was decided to sail to Barcelona, and Prince 
 George returned meanwhile to Gibraltar. 
 
 Peterborough's army numbered six thousand five 
 hundred, two -thirds English and Irish and one -third 
 Dutch. There were three English, three Irish, and 
 four Dutch regiments. The English and Irish were 
 principally raw recruits, with a plentiful proportion 
 
J 1 1 S UPPLEMENTA R Y PRE PA RA TIONS 5 1 
 
 of gaol-birds. ^lany are said to liave been kidnapped 
 rustics and artisans. Galway, however, lent Peter- 
 borough Lord Kaby's and General Conyngham's 
 dragoons. A regiment five hundred strong had been 
 raised from among the Catalan refugees and acted as 
 Charles's personal guard. The expedition had been sent 
 out very poorly equipped. As Master-General of the 
 Ordnance the Duke of Marlborough, who thought no 
 ^campaigning except his own material, grudged an outlay 
 of £13,764 by his department. He had not thought 
 "half the stores necessary." A consequence was that 
 Peterborough's first business was to raise money to 
 supply deficiencies. He induced a Portuguese Jew, 
 Curtisos, to lend £100,000 on bills drawn upon Lord- 
 Treasurer Godolphin. Six weeks passed before he was 
 ready to proceed, though he was not to blame for the 
 delay. John Methuen, the British Minister in Portugal, 
 wrote to Godolphin, who was properly solicitous that the 
 expedition should not loiter at Lisbon : " My Lord 
 Peterborough seems as little to need the being put in 
 mind that time is on this occasion of all things most 
 precious as any man I ever saw, being employed every 
 hour, day and night, in hastening all he can." Sir 
 ■Cloudesley Shovel and the main body of the fleet sailed 
 irom Lisbon before the troops were ready. On July 
 24th Peterborough followed with the troops, having 
 on board as his guests Charles, his minister the Prince 
 von Lichtenstein, and the rest of his suite. He spent on 
 their entertainment a large sum, which is supposed to 
 have been never repaid to him. Paul Methuen, John 
 Methuen's son, went as Queen Anne's envoy to the King, 
 and off Tangier they were met by Shovel and the fleet. 
 
52 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 At Gibraltar, b}^ previous arrangement with Gal way, 
 two raw English regiments were replaced by three 
 regiments of Guards, and by Marines, in all three 
 thousand two hundred seasoned men. There Prince 
 George joined them with a detachment of Spanish 
 troops. Among the officers was Juan Basset y Ramos, 
 a colonel in the Austrian service, and an engineer who 
 had served under the Prince during the siege of 
 Gibraltar. He was a native of Valencia, where he is 
 said to have followed the profession of a sculptor, 
 but his enemies alleged that he was a fugitive from 
 justice. 
 
 At this point the campaign may be considered to have 
 opened, and few in military annals have been more re- 
 markable. It is only to be regretted that the evidence 
 on which the story rests is not a little more consistent 
 and unassailable. In quantity there is no deficiency. 
 The drawback is that the whole is tainted in all direc- 
 tions with a violent spirit of partisanship. Peter- 
 borough, in every phase of his character and every 
 point of his career, had and has the gift of dividing 
 inquirers into two hostile camps, furious eulogists and 
 furious censors. Dr. John Freind, as accomplished a 
 logician and scholar as he was eminent in science and 
 medicine, attended him in his Spanish campaigns as 
 physician to the British forces. Peterborough on his 
 return handed his papers to Freind that he might com- 
 pile a vindication from them. It was published in Lon- 
 don in 1707, under the title of An Account of the Earl of 
 Peterborough'' s Conduct in Spain, chiefly since the raising the 
 Siege of Barcelona, 1706. Though composed mainly of 
 official documents, its object lays it open necessarily to 
 
HI CAPTAIN CARLETON'S MEMOIRS 53 
 
 the suspicion of bias in the acceptance and in the rejec 
 tion of details. In a sequel of a less official complexion 
 the author described the campaign of Valencia. He 
 seems in that to have given himself a freer hand, and 
 to ha\'e woven into his narrative, with or without 
 Peterborough's connivance, an assortment of camp 
 stories. The Account was followed by a cloud of 
 pamphlets on both sides, but on neither are they of 
 much if any. historical authority. 
 
 Long afterwards, in 1728, there came out the Military 
 Memoirs of Captain Gem'ge Carleton, from the Dutch IFar, 
 1672, in tvhich he served, to the conclusion of the Peace at 
 Utrecht, 1713. The volume is still one of the mysteries 
 of literature. Its reputed author, who describes himself 
 as a nephew of Sir Dudley Carleton, says that he fought as 
 a volunteer at Solebay in 1672. In 1674, after peace was 
 concluded between Charles the Second and the Dutch, 
 he accepted a commission from the Prince of Orange. 
 He remained in the Netherlands till the Peace of 
 Ryswick, and afterwards served in England and Ireland. 
 In 1705, the writer says, Peterborough employed him 
 on the recommendation of Lord Cutts in his Spanish 
 expedition. Though not a professed engineer he acted as 
 one at the siege of Barcelona, and was on the English 
 general's staff. He stayed in Spain after Peterborough's 
 departure, first as a combatant and subsequently as a 
 prisoner, till 1712. An officer of the name was in 1700 
 u captain in the 27th regiment, then stationed at Dublin, 
 m which year he was for a brawl placed on half-pay. As 
 a volunteer, without a particular post, he went to Spain 
 in 1 705, and served as an assistant. Among the Treasury 
 papers in the Record Office is a memorial, dated February 
 
54 PETERBOROUGH chap, 
 
 16th, 1722, demanding arrears of pay, by a Captain 
 George Carleton, described as an engineer in Spain. This 
 proves the existence of such a person as the alleged 
 author. The memorialist states that Lord Peterborough 
 commanded him to serve as an engineer at the sieges of 
 Barcelona, Requena, and Cuenca, and that he also acted 
 as engineer at the sieges of Alicante and Denia, where 
 he was taken prisoner. He must have died before Sep- 
 tember, 1730, when he would have been seventy-eight, 
 since in that month administration of his effects was 
 granted in Ireland. The author allows it to be under- 
 stood that he employed his leisure in setting down his 
 reminiscences. 
 
 Though historians in the last century did not 
 refer to the memoirs as authoritative, no writer of 
 the period appears to have declared them fictitious. 
 Readers of Boswell will recollect how Johnson, when 
 the work was introduced to his notice by Lord Eliot 
 in 1784, sat up half the night devouring it. He 
 accepted it simply as that it pretended to be, finding 
 in it, he said, such an air of truth that he could 
 not doubt its authenticity. In the present century 
 Sir Walter Scott showed the same faith. An edition 
 called the fourth, but really the fifth, was published 
 in 1809, for which Scott wrote a delightful preface, 
 with characters both of Carleton and Peterborough, 
 implying his entire belief in the veteran. Since the days 
 of Scott, Major Warburton, Peterborough's first regular 
 biographer, and Colonel Frank S. Russell, whose life of 
 him appeared in 1887, agree in treating the memoirs as 
 direct evidence by an eye-witness. Lord Stanhope, in 
 his History of the . War of the Spanish Succession, is as 
 
THEIR AUTHOR 55 
 
 trustful. He commends the plain, soldier-like narrative 
 as the most valuable, perhaps, because the most un- 
 doubtedly faithful and impartial, of all our materials for 
 this war. Yet for some time past the genuineness of 
 the work has been very seriously questioned. A\'alter 
 Wilson, a biographer of De Foe, claimed it for him in 
 1830 on the evidence of style. Lockhart, in his life of 
 Scott, in 1836, adopted the same view. He allows that 
 the compiler or editor may, as De Foe in his Cavalier^ 
 have had before him " the rude journal of some officer 
 who had fought and bled in the campaigns described 
 with such an inimitable air of truth." But he thinks 
 there was a compiler or editor, and he believes he knows 
 who he was. He speaks confidently of *' a pretty general 
 belief now that Carleton's memoirs were among the 
 numberless publications of De Foe." Another critic 
 prefers to attribute them to a Eev. Lancelot Carleton, 
 Rector of Padworth, Oxfordshire, who seems to have 
 previously been chaplain to a dragoon regiment in the 
 Spanish war. The latest theory is that of Colonel Arthur 
 Parnell in his very recent Histm-y of the War of the Suc- 
 cession. He is convinced that Captain Carleton's share 
 in the volume, if anything at all, was confined to the 
 loan of some rough jottings to an accomplished book- 
 maker. The promoter of the work, who " conceived its 
 production, paid for its publication, and inspired its 
 central position," was, he has satisfied himself, Peter- 
 borough, to " the lying relation " of whose actions and 
 conduct much of it is confined. The actual writer, he 
 thinks, was most probably Dean Swift. On the evidence 
 of style it is most unlikely that Swift composed a volume 
 free from a single sarcasm or vituperation. It is equally 
 
56 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 difficult, on the mere evidence of style, to assign to 
 De Foe a book which did not even appear in his life- 
 time, and was never attributed to liira for a hundred 
 years after his death. AVonderful as was De Foe's 
 invention of the method of historical fiction, imitation 
 was not impossible; and great as is the merit of the 
 Memoirs, it scarcely reaches De Foe's high standard. 
 Probably the share of the editor who put the materials 
 into shape was rather less, and the share of the old 
 officer who lent his name rather more than it has 
 become of late the fashion to concede. But at the 
 same time it may be freely admitted that, with such a 
 joint authorship, it is impossible at this date to separate 
 the original from the added ingredients. On the whole, 
 it is too hazardous to cite Carleton's Memoirs as sober 
 history. 
 
 Happily for the conscientious enjoyment of the Peter- 
 borough epic, the present age, if it has to station Captain 
 Carleton in the limbo of historical romance, has dis- 
 covered evidences indisputably authentic, and mutually 
 independent, yet telling generally the same story. Nar- 
 cissus Luttrell's Brief Relation of State Affairs from 1678 
 to 1714, printed by the Clarendon Press some thirty 
 years back, supplies a multitude of corroborative allu- 
 sions to the importance of the position occupied in 
 popular estimation by Peterborough as a military leader. 
 Lord Stanhope, in 1834, printed from the originals at 
 Chevening a collection of letters addressed from the 
 continent to his ancestor, the first Earl Stanhope, by 
 Peterborough between March 31st, 1705, and July 18th, 
 1707. The Marlborough correspondence includes many 
 letters between the duke and duchess, and between one 
 

 III CORROBORATTVEeVIDENCE 57 
 
 or other of them and Godolphin or Peterborough himself, 
 which shed light on the earl's Spanish cami)aigns. Both 
 the Chevening and the Blenheim papers accord on the 
 whole with the popular view. Still more direct testi- 
 mony to the agreement of the current Peterborough 
 tradition with the judgment of professional experts has 
 been discovered. It is contained in the Kichards papers, 
 part of the Stowe manuscripts sold at the fourth Earl of 
 Ashburnham's death to the British Museum, and in a 
 journal kept without apparent view to publication by- 
 Colonel James de St. Pierre, an officer present during 
 the siege of Barcelona with his regiment, the Royal 
 Dragoons, and found many years after his death among 
 family documents. General Richards served under 
 Galway in the campaigns of 1703 and 1704 on the 
 Portuguese frontier. He accompanied Peterborough 
 from Lisbon as a colonel and commandant of artillery, 
 took a conspicuous part in the siege of Barcelona, 
 and was sent with despatches home. He went with 
 Brigadier-General Stanhope, and returned in the spring 
 Avith Stanhope in Sir John Leake's fleet. After the 
 relief of Barcelona he attended Peterborough to 
 Valencia in June, and on July 13th was again sent by 
 him on a mission to England. Much credit is due to 
 Colonel Russell for the care with which he has collated 
 Colonel de St. Pierre's and General Richards's journals. 
 Statements by the latter, as in his Memorial of the 
 Expedition to Barcelona, are of especial importance on 
 account of the attitude their author eventually assumed 
 towards Peterborough, whom he judged without en- 
 thusiasm or sympathy. When praise is awarded it 
 carries double weight ; and for the conduct of the siege 
 
58 PETERBOROUGH 
 
 of Barcelona it is given liberally. Together Richards 
 and St. Pierre, of whose substantial existence, with 
 the authenticity of their diaries, there is no question, 
 supply very sufficiently the place left vacant by the 
 shadowy Dublin captain Carleton. 
 
CHAPTER lY 
 
 CAPTURE OF BARCELONA 
 
 At Gibraltar a plan of operations was settled, and on 
 August 5th the confederate fleet sailed towards the north- 
 west. It anchored for a time in Altea Bay in Valencia. 
 A manifesto was here circulated in which the Spaniards 
 were told that the allies came to deliver the Spanish nation 
 from the insupportable yoke of foreigners, that is, French- 
 men, and that they were escorting the true king. The 
 fortified town of Denia surrendered, and Juan Basset y 
 Ramos was appointed its governor. Charles the Third 
 was proclaimed King of Spain and the Indies. At this 
 juncture a project occurred to Lord Peterborough which, 
 in Lord Stanhope's opinion, " exhibits in strong colours 
 his rare union of the most calculating skill with the most 
 chivalrous courage." Philip's forces were occupied either 
 in garrisoning Barcelona, or under Berwick on the Portu- 
 guese frontier in watching Galway and the Portuguese 
 general las Minas. Peterborough's plan was to march 
 straight upon Madrid, which was only a hundred and 
 fifty miles off. Barcelona he knew to be strong, if not 
 impregnable ; and on the road between the Valencian 
 coast and the capital Charles, he thought, might reckon 
 upon faint opposition and much active assistance. But 
 
6o PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 he could not persuade the Austrian councillors, who were 
 ])ent on commencing with an attempt upon friendly 
 Barcelona, after which they professed themselves willing 
 to try Madrid. Peterborough had to yield to them, 
 and to 0, council of war which thought such an enterprise 
 hazardous. The fleet, moving onwards, anchored off the 
 east of Barcelona on August 16th, and narrowly missed 
 capturing a Neapolitan ship, which was conveying re- 
 inforcements, with the Duke and Duchess of Popoli, 
 into the town. 
 
 Immediately it became manifest to Peterborough's 
 officers, military and naval, that they had been brought 
 on a bootless errand. They had been led to believe by 
 the Prince of Hesse, and the London Gazette had an- 
 nounced at home, that the city was ill fortified and ill 
 garrisoned. They expected that the townsmen w^ould 
 rise and open the gates, and they understood that the 
 peasantry had levied an army of ten thousand men to 
 cover their landing. They found a formidable fortress 
 with strong walls, plentifully provisioned at the expense 
 of the neighbourhood which had been stripped bare, 
 held by a force of five, if not seven, thousand soldiers 
 under a vigilant governor, Francisco Velasco, well able 
 to repress any mutinous spirit among the inhabitants. 
 The allied army, with the additions it had received at 
 Gibraltar, was little more than seven thousand, a number 
 utterly inadequate for the regukr siege, by batteries and 
 trenches, of a city of the size and power of Barcelona. 
 Only enough serviceable horses survived to mount a 
 hundred and twenty dragoons. The local army, which 
 was to co-operate, had shrunk to a body of fifteen 
 hundred half-disciplined Miquelets, as the armed peasants 
 
IV BEFORE BARCELONA 6i 
 
 were called, after a former and famous captain. Peter- 
 borough's instructions obliged him to consult his officers, 
 whether ashore or afloat, before any decisive movement ; 
 his Government, which had given him an army, being 
 possibly conscious that a command does not necessarily 
 bring experience. A council of war was consequently 
 convoked on board the " Britannia " so soon as the fleet 
 arrived off the city, at which the King was present. The 
 unanimous conclusion of the eleven military officers was 
 that a siege was impracticable, for the engineers 
 declared that the batteries would take a longer time to 
 construct than the Dutch ships, which were wanted else- 
 where, could stay. The council offered instead, either 
 that the fleet should sail to the help of the Duke of 
 Savoy, or that Peterborough's alternative of leading the 
 troops along the coast should be accepted. After reduc- 
 ing the country to obedience he could, he explained, find 
 them winter quarters, where they might be held ready 
 for a spring march on the capital. A little later a dis- 
 embarkation, which was consistent with either resolu- 
 tion, seems, after a failure due to the surf, to have been 
 successfully effected, though the contemporary accounts 
 do not agree on the day. It must have been before August 
 22nd, when the second council of war was held, if it be 
 true that every council after that of the 16th met in the 
 camp before Barcelona. The troops were landed two 
 miles east of the town, near Badalona at the mouth of the 
 Basoz, in five hours, without any resistance from the 
 garrison. The second council, on the 22nd, affirmed the 
 view of the first, though Peterborough had then come 
 over to the side of Charles, to whose wish he represented 
 the propriety of paying the utmost respect. The King 
 
62 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 earnestly entreated that siege operations should be con- 
 ducted at all events for eighteen days, and when the third 
 council assembled on August 25th, Peterborough had 
 won over his friend Brigadier James Stanhope, after- 
 wards the well-known Lord Stanhope, and Brigadier 
 de St. Amant to consent so far. The Dutch commander 
 and several other officers still held out ; but finally, on 
 August 26th, the council acquiesced in the mounting of 
 a battery of fifty-two guns, subject to the conditions 
 that the King should supply Miquelet auxiliaries, 
 and that the fleet, which was to furnish the guns, 
 should contribute the means of working them, together 
 with fifteen hundred sailors to reinforce the regular 
 troops. If a practicable breach were made, it was agreed 
 that an assault should be delivered ; but on all sides it 
 was determined that the siege should not be prolonged 
 beyond eighteen days, according to the letter of the 
 King's entreaty. 
 
 Peterborough's real inclination and intentions, during 
 the controversy and for the following fortnight, are not 
 easily traced. It was alleged against him that he voted 
 sometimes one way at a council in the camp and another 
 way at a naval council ; that at first he changed his mind 
 almost daily. Prince George and the King never had any 
 doubts. From the first they were resolved to besiege 
 Barcelona, and they let no rival plan draw them away. 
 Without their pertinacity English military history would 
 have missed one of its most brilliant pages. From 
 Peterborough's demeanour it would appear that from an 
 early period he regarded the enterprise as a suicidal folly, 
 into which he had been tricked by sanguine schemers. 
 Yet the invaders enjoyed several advantages. Velasco, 
 
IV ABOUT TO KE- EMBARK 63 
 
 though a brave soldier, was inert. He had not, as he 
 might have, interrupted the landing, nor was he ad- 
 dicted to the making of sorties. The country, with all 
 the avenues of information, was at the absolute disposal 
 of his enemies, for the Miquelets, if inefficient as 
 regular combatants, hermetically sealed the garrison and 
 citizens within the walls. But all this was to little purpose 
 against fortifications which were, for the force the 
 expedition could bring to bear upon them, impregnable. 
 The battery manned by seamen, and eight field guns on 
 the hills, barely sufficed to check the fire from the walls, 
 while the nature of the ground, a dead boggy level, pre- 
 vented the construction of approaches. Thus the 
 prescribed eighteen days were all but spent, and wholly 
 Avithout effect. ♦Councils were called both ashore and on 
 board ship, and on August 28th it was decided that 
 further attempts were useless. The heavy artillery 
 was embarked, the tents and baggage were being 
 packed, and notice was given to Shovel that he must 
 prepare to sail. Soldiers and sailors, especially the latter, 
 were sulky at the confession of failure. The King and 
 his Court were profoundly indignant, and the Prince 
 of Lichtenstein in particular is described as giving him- 
 self " most horrible airs." Peterborough was the chief 
 mark for indignation. The Germans regarded his 
 colleagues as his mere instruments, refusing to believe 
 in the ministerial directions to go to Italy to which 
 he had appealed. Violent efforts were made to have 
 the departure deferred, and Shovel, who with his 
 officers thought September too late for a voyage to Nice, 
 seems to have encouraged them. Peterborough was 
 willing to come to a compromise which should disguise 
 
64 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 defeat. Freind, whom Carleton follows, reports that 
 he and the Prince had ceased to speak for some time, 
 estimated by Carleton at more than a fortnight, before 
 September 13th; but though their controversies had 
 doubtless left much soreness this cannot be strictly tnie. 
 An intricate negotiation on the character the; campaign 
 was henceforward to assume was being at that very 
 period conducted between them. They agreed that the 
 troops should march along the coast to Tarragona, and a 
 naval council of war, at which both Shovel and Leake 
 were present, on August 31st, stated its willingness to 
 concur. On September 2nd Peterborough wrote asking 
 the Prince to give the necessary orders to his Spaniards 
 for this march, as an alternative proposed by a council of 
 land officers to the attack on Barcelona which it had 
 pronounced impracticable. Then, between September 
 2nd and September 7th, Peterborough and his officers 
 must have been induced to entertain a design for 
 another stroke at the city. On the latter day the 
 Prince assured Peterborough of the King's sincere 
 intention to assist the march to Tarragona, and hoped 
 that Peterborough was equally determined to make 
 the fresh attempt on Barcelona of which the council 
 of war had approved. On September 8th Peter- 
 borough, being busy writing, asked the Prince, if at 
 leisure, to spare him a moment, and a letter of the 
 next day from the Prince, avowing eternal friendship 
 and perfect veneration, alludes, though not very clearly, 
 to the arrangement they had made. Apparently Peter- 
 borough had offered, if Charles would undertake the 
 responsibility to the English Government for a further 
 stay on the Catalonian coast, to abstain from raising the 
 
IV A FINAL EFFORT 65 
 
 siege formally and finally. Charles seems to have 
 regarded Shovel as the prime mover in the transaction ; 
 and Prince George wrote to the admiral on September 
 10th to say how much the King rejoiced at this good 
 resolution to go on with the enterprise, which he believed 
 to be owing entirely to Shovel. But it is manifest 
 that the Prince, if he trusted Shovel more, maintained 
 an intimate correspondence with Peterborough ; that he 
 knew the determination of the plan of the campaign 
 rested chiefly with him ; that he and the King rejoiced 
 at the grant by him, with the consent of his council, of 
 any respite from an absolute abandonment of the siege. 
 It is also clear that on September 10th they did not 
 imagine they were on the eve of the adoption of a step 
 which has elevated the siege of Barcelona to the rank 
 of an epoch in military history. The fresh attempt on 
 the town to which the Prince held Peterborough pledged, 
 and for which he had thanked Shovel, cannot have 
 been the coming attack of September 13th, since it was 
 distinctly one of which a council of war had heard and 
 approved. 
 
 An essential point in the defences of the city was 
 Montjuich or Monjuich, a fort surmounting a hill seven 
 hundred and thirty-five feet high, and commanding, as 
 it still commands, the city from the south-west. It 
 was a position of no vast dimensions but strong by 
 nature, and military engineers had provided it with 
 abundance of bastions and other outworks. The officers 
 of the garrison of Barcelona, deeming it impregnable, as 
 indeed it had hitherto shown itself, had not been careful 
 to man it very liberally. Peterborough determined to 
 assault it ; and the received English belief has been that 
 
66 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 it was peculiarly his own plan. Richards, who found 
 nothing to commend in Peterborough's subsequent con- 
 duct of the war, described him as "the sole projector." 
 But lately doubts have been cast upon that view, and 
 Colonel Parnell has transferred the whole merit of the 
 design, and, by implication, of the execution also, to the 
 Prince of Hesse. Peterborough is shown very truly to 
 have had little love of the siege. He had proposed at 
 Denia to supersede it by a march on Madrid; he 
 allowed the operations to be conducted in a half-hearted 
 fashion ; he willingly accepted, if he did not initiate, 
 the decision to retire, whether upon Tarragona or to 
 Italy. Thence it is inferred that it is unlikely he should 
 have formed the Montjuich scheme, and even in his 
 own time the honour was in some quarters given to 
 Prince George, though, as Dr. Freind observes, the 
 Prince had no command in the army, and therefore no 
 power of carrying out the design, whoever may have 
 been its author. 
 
 Peterborough may have borrowed the idea from one 
 quarter or another. Colonel Russell cites a statement by 
 Colonel de St. Pierre in his diary, made with details which 
 are very circumstantial and very improbable, that he 
 hazarded the suggestion to Peterborough on Friday night, 
 September 11th. No delusion is more common among 
 the most honest subordinates in an army than that 
 they are the real authors of decisive movements which 
 their chief has the credit of having carried out. Upon 
 Peterborough, at any rate, it depended whether the 
 attack should be undertaken, and how. Secrecy was of 
 the essence of success, and it was guarded most carefully 
 on the present occasion. In that Peterborough would 
 
IV SECRET! VENESS 67 
 
 find no difficulty, for he loved a secret, and used to say 
 of himself, "When I desire a thing extremely I rather 
 conceal than own my inclination." His real intention, 
 which may or may not have been formed some time 
 previously, was even now not disclosed to his friend 
 Stanhope, or to Paul Methuen, the British diplomatic 
 agent at the little Court. Richards, being command- 
 ant of the artillery, had to be told, but he did not 
 hear of the plan before the evening of September 13th. 
 The exact period of the disclosure to Prince George 
 is uncertain. On Sunday morning, September 13th, 
 Peterborough, it seems, came to the Prince's quarters, 
 and we may reasonably suppose that the plan was then 
 laid before him. At any rate he had time to send word 
 of it on that day to the King, since a letter is extant, 
 dated on the same evening, in which Charles expresses 
 his joy at the news brought him by the Prince's adjutant 
 that the attack was about to be made. The army at large, 
 however, was undoubtedly kept in entire ignorance. It 
 simply received orders that a force of twelve hundred 
 Englishmen and two hundred Dutchmen was to be ready 
 before night to proceed towards Tarragona. The news 
 reached the garrison of Barcelona, and it celebrated the 
 discomfiture of its antagonists with festivities. 
 
 At six in the evening the march towards Tarragona 
 began. Four hundred grenadiers formed the advance 
 guard. Peterborough, accompanied by Richards, called 
 at Prince George's quarters. According to Carleton, he 
 said the Prince might now judge whether the troops 
 had deserved the character he had so liberally given 
 them ; and the Prince, it is alleged, replied that he 
 could hardly believe troops marching that way would 
 
68 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 make any satisfactory attack against the enemy. The 
 story is manifestly a camp legend, except the con- 
 clusion that without further words he called for his 
 horse. By ten o'clock he and Peterborough overtook 
 the advance guard. Then the course was changed, and 
 two hours before dawn the column was at the foot of 
 Montjuich. A body of two hundred men had missed 
 the path : the remainder halted for rest and daylight ; 
 and at break of day simultaneous assaults on other 
 outworks east and west were commenced. Peterborough 
 and the Prince joined in the assault on the east, and 
 Carleton says he was with them. A bastion towards 
 the town was captured, and Peterborough with the 
 Prince pursued the flying garrison through a covered 
 way, which they occupied and barricaded with stones. 
 Two reverses all but fatal followed. First the Prince 
 of Hesse fell mortally wounded by a cannon shot in 
 Peterborough's sight, and two hundred of his men were 
 taken prisoners. He had imprudently approached with 
 his brother. Prince Henry, close to the inner fort, in the 
 belief that the shouts raised by its defenders in welcome 
 to a reinforcement from the city were shouts of surrender. 
 Immediately afterwards, Peterborough having quitted the 
 bastion for a short space in order to ascertain the truth 
 of a report that a great body of horse was galloping from 
 Barcelona, a panic seized his men in the outworks. It wa& 
 shared, or at any rate was not checked, by Lord Charlemont, 
 who had been left in charge. The position was being evacu- 
 ated when news of the movement was brought by Carle- 
 ton himself, it is stated in the Memoirs, to Peterborough. 
 Richards agrees with Carleton that without the Earl all 
 would now have been lost. Falling, says Richards, into 
 
IV CAPTURE OF MONTJUICH 69 
 
 the horriblest rage that ever man was seen in, with a 
 great deal of bravery and resolution he led the troops 
 back again to the posts which they had quitted. " The 
 resolution," he adds, " was becoming so great a man. We 
 should have lost all we had got, had not my Lord Peter- 
 borough come up with us, who, as he was the sole pro- 
 jector of the enterprise, so was he our only support in 
 our misfortune." According to Carleton, the capture of 
 the Prince of Hesse's two hundred soldiers averted a 
 worse evil. They were met on their way to the town by 
 the three thousand of the garrison whom Peterborough 
 had gone to reconnoitre. Their statement, on being 
 questioned, that the leaders of the attack on Montjuich 
 were Peterborough and the Prince, was taken as proof 
 of the presence of the whole besieging army. In dismay 
 the relieving column retired. The attack by the other 
 division on a demi-bastion westwards had been equally 
 successful. The fortress was isolated from the town 
 through the abandonment of the fort of San Bertran by 
 its garrison. Stanhope came up with a thousand men : 
 five guns taken in the outworks were turned against the 
 inner citadel ; and a couple of hundred sailors dragged up 
 heavy guns and mortars from the fleet. On the fourth 
 day the end came. Colonel Southwell fired a shell which 
 blew up the powder magazine, with Prince Caraccioli, the 
 commandant of the fortress, and fifty of his men. The 
 Miquelets rushed in, followed by Peterborough in time 
 to prevent a general massacre. 
 
 First the funeral obsequies of the Prince of Hesse, 
 slain at the age of thirty-six, were splendidly solem- 
 nised in a Capuchin convent beside the Montjuich 
 hill, Peterborough, who had forgotten old enmities, 
 
70 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 making them his own especial care. Thenceforward he 
 set himself down in earnest to the capture of the city. 
 No longer had either he to complain of sulky criticisms 
 and grudged obedience, or the Austrian Court of a 
 mere pretence of a siege. Formidable batteries were 
 erected and regular approaches planned. Five hundred 
 bombs were thro^^Ti in from ketches. The defence 
 was as passive as before, and much less obstinate and 
 confident. A rebellious spirit showed itself among 
 the citizens, which Yelasco tried to repress by expelling 
 the malcontents. By October 3rd a practicable breach 
 had been effected, and on that day Peterborough 
 wrote to Queen Anne, referring modestly to the 
 capture of Montjuich, and requesting "supports of all 
 kinds for this happy beginning." In vain Velasco con- 
 structed fresh intrenchments within, and laid mines. 
 Peterborough, who, as well as the King, was only 
 too reckless of danger, personally directed the throwing 
 of a couple of shells. They tore down the new work 
 and exploded the mines prematurely. He might have 
 stormed the town at once but for his numerical weakness. 
 Taking his power to do it for the deed, he wrote on 
 October 6th to his wife, giving her joy " upon taking 
 Barcelona, which is effected." With the same sense of 
 perfect ability to be its master at any moment he chose, 
 he addressed a summons, the last letter, he said, which 
 he should write, to the governor. Velasco agreed to 
 capitulate if he were not relieved in four days. The 
 garrison, it was stipulated, was to march out with all the 
 honours of war, to take away with it nineteen pieces 
 of artillery with the proper ammunition, and to be 
 conveyed by sea to a place selected by the governor. 
 
IV CAPITULATION OF THE TOWN Ji 
 
 The gate of San Angelo was to be delivered up straight- 
 way to Peterborough. 
 
 On October 9th the capitulation was signed. Stan- 
 hope and a brigadier from Barcelona were exchanged as 
 hostages. But next day the townsmen, alarmed at a 
 rumour that Velasco intended to transport with him 
 many of them as hostages, rose against the garrison. 
 The rioters were aided by Miquelets, whom the careless- 
 ness or complicity of the sentries had allowed to steal inside. 
 The turmoil within made itself perceptible to the besiegers, 
 and Peterborough, at the request, according to St. 
 Pierre, of Velasco, intervened. He entered by a wicket 
 in the gate of San Angelo, and was joined from the 
 town by Stanhope, who, having resided in Madrid when 
 his father was ambassador to Spain, knew the language 
 well. Carleton says he was with them. Peterborough's 
 first care was to protect a convent in which many ladies 
 of birth had taken refuge, and had the particular 
 pleasure of rescuing from the Miquelets the fair Duchess 
 of Popoli, whom he gallantly conducted to a place of 
 safety outside the walls. The rioters fired at him, and one 
 bullet pierced his wig. Stanhope afterwards told Burnet 
 that the Earl and he ran more danger from this riot 
 than during the whole of the siege. The English troops 
 at length quelled the tumult. When tranquillity was 
 restored they would have withdrawn till the day specified 
 in the capitulation but for the prayer of Velasco, who 
 found his authority at an end. So the gates were all 
 thrown open, and he was escorted on board an English 
 man-of-war. The residue of the garrison was permitted 
 to march out with the honours of war, and by Velasco's 
 desire conveyed to Malaga. Not more than fifteen 
 
72 PETERBOROUGH chap, iv 
 
 hundred accepted the terms, very many having deserted 
 to the Austrian side. In one particular the capitulation 
 was not observed. No ordnance or stores were resigned 
 to the departing garrison, Peterborough's excuse being 
 the unfitness of a ragged military rabble for such a 
 charge. To the citizens he came as a firm, just, and 
 generous deliverer from a cruel yoke. He at once invited 
 all who had lawful claims upon Velasco to lodge them at 
 the town hall, promising that he would see them satis- 
 fied. So soon as the . garrison was gone he entertained 
 splendidly at his own expense the principal citizens, 
 partisans of King Philip as well as of King Charles. 
 So implicit was the trust he inspired that, on the morn- 
 ing after the occupation, the shops and bazaars were all 
 open and transacting business. Some fear had been felt 
 of a freethinking Protestant's possible trespasses on the 
 monopoly of Catholic worship. His answer to somebody 
 in authority who had inquired where he would like his 
 troops to celebrate their devotions was reassuring. 
 " Wherever," said he, " I may have my quarters I shall 
 have conveniency enough to worship God ; and as for the 
 rest of the army, they shall perform divine service among 
 themselves, without giving offence to anybody." 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 WAR IN VALENCIA 
 
 A MIRACLE had been worked for Charles, who thought 
 his fortunes now assured. He entered the gates on 
 October 23rd, and was proclaimed King of Spain. Loyal 
 Barcelona prepared a stately pageant, which he saw 
 from Peterborough's balcony, while the English general 
 scattered dollars in handfuls. At the end of October 
 General Stanhope and Lord Shannon were sent to Eng- 
 land, with letters both from Charles and from Peter- 
 borough. The King wrote to Queen Anne on October 
 22nd that the Earl in particular had shown throughout 
 the expedition constancy, bravery, conduct, zeal, and 
 application. He expressed his admiration of the troops 
 for their abstention from the common practice of pillage, 
 and for their good faith in appeasing the disorders with 
 a discipline and generosity without example. Reports 
 had circulated in England towards the end of October of 
 the capture of Montjuich and death of the Prince of 
 Hesse. The first attack was said to have been repulsed. 
 Then, after an interval of several days, a shell, it was 
 rumoured, had exploded a magazine, and Peterborough 
 had stormed the citadel sword in hand. Stanhope arrived 
 on November 23rd with authentic news. On the 29th 
 
74 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 the Queen in person announced the "great and happy 
 successes " to both Houses, and communicated to them 
 the King's letter and extracts from that which the Earl 
 had written. Parliament in return presented addresses 
 on the glorious successes of her Majesty's arms. The 
 London Gazette published a series of accounts of the 
 exploit. In them praise and regret were awarded to the 
 Prince of Hesse \ but it was assumed that the success 
 was wholly due to the "great courage and resolution 
 of the Earl of Peterborough," whom the Prince was 
 said to have, like Lord Charlemont and other officers, 
 " accompanied." 
 
 Peterborough was neither trustful nor exultant. He 
 besought Godolphin for supplies. "We perish," he 
 wrote on October 12th, "for want of money. I have in 
 a manner supported all here with my little stock. I sold, 
 mortgaged, and took up a year's advance upon my estate, 
 got all my pay advanced, took all the money up at 
 Lisbon upon my own account that I could anywise get. 
 I have left my wife and children nothing to live upon." 
 He was forced in November to lay an embargo, for the 
 sake of the safety of Barcelona which was destitute of 
 powder, upon half the stock some ships in port were 
 conveying to North Italy. His excuse was a rumour 
 that the Duke of Savoy, not yet, as he was soon to be, 
 his confidant, had made his peace with France. The 
 same month Messrs. Arundell and Bates, English mer- 
 chants at Genoa, informed Godolphin that, from a sense 
 of patriotism, they had advanced to Peterborough after 
 the capture of Barcelona a sum of twenty thousand 
 dollars. An appeal to the generosity of British mer- 
 chants for such a trifle shows the straits to which the 
 
THE AUSTRIAN COURT 75 
 
 allied army was reduced. He saw magnificent oppor- 
 tunities all in course of being wasted. Even before 
 the capture of Barcelona all the other towns in Cata- 
 lonia of any account except Rosas had acknowledged 
 Charles. Lerida had obeyed the summons of the Cond6 
 de Cifuentes, whom Philip's conduct had alienated. 
 Gerona had received a Carlist garrison. Tarragona 
 by the end of September had capitulated to a squadron 
 of ships under Captain Cavendish, and to Joseph 
 Nebot, who had also occupied Tortosa. Yet it was 
 long before Peterborough could obtain the means of 
 garrisoning the last, which by its bridge across the Ebro 
 was the key to Aragon and Valencia. He could procure 
 no baggage -wagons, medicine, ammunition, or provi- 
 sions. He could not so much as get the breach of 
 Barcelona repaired. The Dutchmen, whom he praised 
 both as soldiers and sailors, extolling their docility and 
 good faith, had not a farthing of pay but as he gave it 
 them, and his credit was now gone. He could not even 
 raise £6000 to save his own troops from starvation. A 
 thousand men had already been lost by ill usage. 
 Meanwhile the Austrian Ministers, who had neither 
 money, sense, nor honour, were selling places to their 
 greatest enemies ; to Counts Uhlfeldt and Zinzerling, 
 above all, to Lichtenstein, described by Paul Methuen 
 as haughty and weak, and by Peterborough as a 
 compound of falsehood, pride, and greediness, who 
 meddled with everything and understood nothing, 
 pompous in success, and given to crying like a child 
 on the least reverse. He had, however, a superior in 
 rapacity and incompetence. It was the captor of 
 Lerida, the Cond6 de Cifuentes, for many of his con- 
 
76 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 temporaries eloquent and patriotic, for Peterborough 
 " maddest of Spaniards," *' the Pembroke of Spain," "a 
 Spanish bully," without experience or money, whom this 
 " gang of robbers " had made a grandee of the first class 
 and a viceroy. Peterborough was a good hater and an ac- 
 complished reviler, who did not always spare his English 
 comrades. For example, his second in command, Major- 
 General Henry Conyngham, was an eternal screech-owl. 
 Lord Charlemont he wished to compel to sell his regi- 
 ment for his acquiescence in the panic at Montjuich. 
 He was ready himself to buy him out with £1500, 
 though he could not assent to the condition that he was 
 to be described into the bargain as a hero. But he had 
 fair cause for wrath at the terrible abuse of invaluable 
 time ; and as the only remedy, he craved the supreme 
 command both of army and of fleet, without which he 
 desired to be recalled. 
 
 He had hoped, so soon as order was thoroughly 
 established in Barcelona, to extend the sphere of opera- 
 tions. His plan had been to march in person with one 
 division of his army south into the kingdom of Valencia 
 while the other half invaded Aragon. But General 
 Conyngham and the Dutch commander, Scratenbach, 
 were urgent on the need of repose for the troops, 
 and Charles also wished to keep them in the city. At 
 length delay became clearly impossible. Events had 
 been moving rapidly in Valencia, both in favour of 
 Charles and against him. Juan Basset y Eamos, the 
 governor of Denia, had by the beginning of December 
 succeeded in seducing from allegiance to Philip, Colonel 
 Raphael Nebot, who had been set with a cavalry 
 regiment to watch the town. Raphael was brother to 
 
SAN MA TEO 77 
 
 Joseph Nebot, and was not likely to be inaccessible to 
 arguments. Together, Eaphael Nebot and Kamos re- 
 duced Oliva, Gandia, Alcira, and Jativa, and then 
 marched upon Valencia, which opened its gates to them. 
 The Prince of Serclaes, captain -general of Aragon, 
 despatched the Conde de las Torres with a thousand 
 foot and fifteen hundred horse to recover the lost 
 province. Four days before the end of December Las 
 Torres, whose force had been increased on the march, 
 invested San Mateo, a fortified town held by Lieutenant- 
 Colonel John Jones with a garrison of thirty Royal 
 Dragoons, three hundred Catalan Miquelets, and seven 
 hundred Valencian militia, in addition to armed towns- 
 men. Neither the defenders nor the besiegers possessed 
 cannon. The siege lasted thirteen days, and the fall of 
 the town seemed inevitable, when suddenly, on January 
 9th, the besiegers drew oif. At the beginning of the 
 investment Jones had been able to send messages to 
 Brigadier - General Killigrew at Tortosa entreating 
 relief, and compliance with the prayer would seem to 
 have been accelerated by a report which reached Barce- 
 lona, while the besieging force was still on its march, 
 that it was encompassed by sixteen thousand armed and 
 hostile peasants. Charles wrote to Peterborough on 
 December 31st that the appearance on the scene of 
 regular troops would throw the Bourbon army into 
 utter confusion, a request which the English general 
 interpreted by hastening in person to the relief. 
 Travelling night and day he reached Tortosa. Then com- 
 menced an extraordinary series of marches, manoeuvres, 
 and stratagems. The chief authority for the narrative 
 is Dr. Freind's account of the campaign of Valencia, to 
 
78 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 which he appended his more argumentative apology for 
 the Earl's conduct in Spain, on the ground that the doings 
 in Valencia had been "so entirely concealed." When 
 they had been mentioned, they had been depreciated, he 
 declares, as " a course of happy temerities." His desire 
 was to prove that they were " the effect of thought and 
 application," that if "his lordship had been much 
 favoured by Fortune it was because he never depended 
 on her." 
 
 At Tortosa Peterborough learned that the rumour 
 of the difficulties of las Torres was baseless. On the 
 contrary, it was manifest that the siege was being actively 
 prosecuted by a force estimated at four thousand foot 
 and two to three thousand cavalry, all well equipped 
 except for the want of artillery. Killigrew is said by 
 Colonel Parnell to have been on the point of starting 
 to the relief of Jones when Peterborough amved. 
 It was for the general then to decide. Colonel Parnell 
 states that the available forces were four hundred and 
 seventy horse, eleven hundred foot, and five hundred 
 Valencian militia, besides a train of four guns. By the 
 accounts drawn up by or for Peterborough, the figures 
 are eleven hundred infantry, a hundred and fifty raw 
 Spanish recruits without muskets, and a hundred and 
 seventy Royal Dragoons mounted on horses which " could 
 not have galloped a mile had it been to- conquer the 
 kingdom of Spain." No mention is made of artillery. 
 In comparative numbers the strength of the relieving 
 army is set down as not more than one -fifth of the 
 besiegers. Peterborough determined to redress the 
 adverse balance by policy. 
 
 The march commenced on January 6th. On the 8th 
 
V STRATAGEMS FOR ITS RELIEF 79 
 
 Peterborough divided his force into detachments. They 
 took by his direction separate paths, all converging on 
 Traguera, a town six leagues from San Mateo. He hired 
 local spies, whose families he held as sureties for their 
 good faith, and sent two of them forward as if with 
 messages to Jones. One was prepared to be captured, 
 being instructed to affect ignorance of Peterborough's 
 strength and designs, and to refer his interrogators for 
 information to the other, upon whose track he had 
 orders to put them. The second, who had no suspicion 
 that he was meant to be caught, carried an explicit 
 letter from Peterborough to the governor, asserting 
 that an army of six thousand men was then at Traguera, 
 though it was not to be expected Jones "should 
 believe it till he saw them." On the first sight of the 
 troops on the hill-tops near the enemy's camp he was 
 ordered to open the gate towards Valencia and let loose 
 his thousand irregulars for the employment they loved 
 and were fit for, the pursuit and pillage of a flying 
 enemy. He was not to mind what became of the town : 
 "Leave it to your mistresses." He need not try to 
 occupy the hills. On one side would be Peterborough's 
 army ; on the other, five or six thousand peasants were 
 Ijdng in wait. Las Torres had, the letter alleged, no 
 possible outlet but by the way of the plain, and the 
 Miquelets, Catalan and Valencian, ought to make sure 
 of him there. The stratagem was successfully carried 
 out. Both messengers were taken. Peterborough had 
 beset all the paths with his skirmishers, who intercepted 
 any veracious intelligence, while his regular troops in 
 small bodies spread themselves everywhere about the 
 heights visible from the camp. At an opportune moment 
 
8o PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 for the inflammation of the panic a mine burst pre- 
 maturely and blew up forty of the pioneers, and at 
 length on January 9th las Torres gave the word for a 
 retreat. Jones pursued the rear of his army a couple 
 of leagues as far as Perrasol, while Peterborough seized 
 the camp with a large store of war material, and entered 
 the town itself triumphantly on January 10th. But 
 though las Torres had met with a check, he was still 
 much superior in point of numbers. Peterborough 
 equally feared to pursue him, thereby compelling him to 
 measure forces, and to leave him unmolested in the 
 locality. He extricated himself from the dilemma by 
 an ingenious stratagem. Two peasants guided ten Royal 
 Dragoons across the mountain to the neighbourhood of 
 the enemy's left flank. Going into the camp the spies 
 circulated hints of a plan for blockading the passes into 
 the plain of Valencia. They were not believed, and off'ered 
 to have their truthfulness corroborated by independent 
 testimony. A couple of Spanish officers were sent back 
 with them, and the dragoons captured them. In the 
 course of a drunken carouse the spies proved their good 
 faith by helping the officers to escape, and their state- 
 ment on their return appeared to confirm the previous 
 account. Las Torres made a forced night march to 
 secure the precious passes, and relieved Peterborough 
 from the threat of his vicinity. 
 
 Peterborough had now breathing-space for the 
 consolidation of his position in Valencia if he were 
 to remain there at all. On the policy of his stay 
 different opinions existed among the King's supporters. 
 Catalonia, it could not be questioned, was now in instant 
 peril. Peterborough learnt by a despatch received from 
 
V JiE FUSES TO CHANGE HIS PLANS 8i 
 
 Barcelona, while he was pursuing las Torres as far as 
 Albocacer, that three armies were about to invade it. 
 A French marshal, the Comte de Tesse, was proceeding 
 with King Philip through Aragon towards Tortosa : the 
 Prince of Serclaes was menacing Lerida ; and the Due de 
 Noailles was marching upon Barcelona from Roussillon. 
 Charles and his advisers, who had but just before been 
 immoderately sanguine, were now in despair. They 
 had heard that Peterborough had ordered a thousand 
 Spanish foot and three hundred horse, entrusted with 
 the defence of Tortosa, to join him in Valencia. Under- 
 standing that the brunt of the French invasion would 
 fall on Tortosa and Lerida, they, not perhaps unreason- 
 ably, countermanded his directions. Charles wrote to 
 him in terms which indicated his desire that the Earl 
 should relinquish his designs in that quarter and con- 
 centrate all his efforts on the rescue of Catalonia. A 
 council of war, convoked by Peterborough at Albocacer on 
 January 12th, took the King's view, and recommended 
 the occupation of a position from which the troops could 
 at once pass to the aid of Barcelona. He had no inten- 
 tion of abandoning Valencia, where all the Carlist gains 
 were sure to be lost if he withdrew his troops. It was 
 even possible that by his progress there he might draw 
 off the attack of Tess6, as is said to have nearly 
 happened. Charles in his letter had, by the use of 
 some vague compliments, left him, as he chose to in- 
 terpret the words, a discretion. Rather audaciously he 
 availed himself of it. He took the opportunity of his 
 reply on January 27th to the royal letter both to explain 
 his resolution and administer a rebuke which long 
 rankled. "With what I have," said he, "I march 
 
 G 
 
82 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 straight to Valencia. I can take no other measure, 
 leaving the rest to Providence." He wished, he said, 
 to perish at least with honour, if the time lost, so much 
 against his inclination, required the sacrifice of him. 
 "If your Majesty," he continued, "had permitted me 
 to march into the kingdom of Valencia when I so 
 earnestly desired it, without making me stay under 
 pretence of the march of imaginary troops, your Majesty 
 probably had not only had at this time a viceroy of 
 Valencia but the kingdom." At the same time he re- 
 taliated upon the King's councillors for having presumed 
 to overrule his order to the Spanish garrison at Tortosa. 
 He sent a repetition of his former instructions, with 
 others in the alternative. If the Spaniards, over whom 
 he had no direct authority, were not allowed to join 
 him, he directed Colonel Wills to bring from Lerida or 
 Barcelona an equal number of British regulars. Dis- 
 mayed at the prospect of losing the backbone of the 
 garrison of Catalonia, Uhlfeldt, Lichtenstein, and the 
 rest raised the embargo on the troops at Tortosa. 
 
 Peterborough, without any real intention of sending 
 away the soldiers he had led from Catalonia, so far 
 accepted the advice of the council at Albocacer as to 
 quarter his footsore infantry at Vinaroz. There they 
 had the sea in front, so that it was at all events possible 
 for them to use it, either to escape or to carry succour 
 to Barcelona. He did not stay there himself, but 
 forthwith began beating up the country for a supply of 
 horses. At the head of a hundred and fifty Royal 
 Dragoons he had a brush at Alcala de Chisvert with the 
 vanguard of the army of las Torres, and sent it flying 
 twenty leagues backward. Galloping with an insignifi- 
 
V MOUNTS HIS INFANTRY 83 
 
 cant escort to the gates of Nules, which was a centre of 
 the French party, he offered the town six minutes for 
 capitulation. In terror it surrendered, and obeyed his 
 requisitions of forage, food, and two hundred serviceable 
 horses. Las Torres heard who was on his track, and 
 hurried out of Almenara. Peterborough did not trouble 
 to follow him, but ordering up Lord Barrymore's foot 
 regiment of four hundred men from Vinaroz to Oropesa, 
 he mounted it on the horses he had collected, with the 
 saddles and accoutrements he had procured from Barce- 
 lona. It became Pierce's Dragoons, and thirty of its old 
 officers were sent to England to raise a new regiment 
 of foot. Altogether he increased his cavalry force from 
 two hundred to a thousand. Not yet content, he started 
 off for Tortosa to hurry up the force he had summoned 
 there. He met it on the march, and led both it and a 
 body of insurgent Valencian militia to his headquarters. 
 Finally, with an army composed of four infantry bat- 
 talions and two cavalry squadrons, making up three 
 thousand and seventy regular soldiers, besides three thou- 
 sand five hundred Valencian irregulars whom his scribes 
 do not count, he moved forward to relieve the besieged 
 capital. 
 
 Las Torres had been enabled by his superiority in 
 cavalry to reform his army soon after his failure at San 
 Mateo. On his march southwards he occupied by a 
 trick Villareal, where he butchered and pillaged, and 
 Quart, which he burnt. At Murviedro, the site of 
 Saguntum, he placed his sick and wounded under shelter 
 of the castle, which a brave Irishman, Colonel Daniel 
 Mahony or Mahoni, in the French service, held with 
 eight hundred Irish dragoons. He himself moved within 
 
84 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 six miles of Valencia, and joined his forces with a body 
 of two thousand three hundred led from Castile by 
 Philip's viceroy of Valencia, the Duke of los Arcos. 
 Together they blockaded the city, and repulsed with loss 
 all the sallies of Basset y Eamos. Nothing but their 
 want of artillery prevented an effectual assault; but they 
 soon quarrelled, and las Torres threw up his command. 
 By this time Peterborough had arrived at Murviedro. 
 A rapid stream with a fortified bridge overlooked by 
 the castle, which was in Mahoni's hands, blocked his 
 progress. Between the opposite shore and the city 
 stretched a wide plain, which would give an advantage 
 to the enemy's cavalry if los Arcos offered battle. Peter- 
 borough concocted an elaborate, indeed a superfluously 
 elaborate, scheme for removing the obstacle without 
 positive violence. He paraded a body of men on the 
 neighbouring hillside, and invited Mahoni to an inter- 
 view, with whom he was connected through his aunt 
 the late Lady Peterborough. At first he endeavoured, 
 or affected to endeavour, to win Mahoni over to the side 
 of King Charles. He pleaded the uselessness at all 
 events of exposing Murviedro, which Mahoni could not 
 defend with his horsemen, to the horrors of an assault by 
 an overwhelming force. Mahoni was convinced. He 
 agreed to surrender the castle if he were allowed to con- 
 vey away the sick who were in the to^vn. Thereupon, 
 according to the story, two Irish dragoon officers, prob- 
 ably seduced from Mahoni, were instructed by Peter- 
 borough to go to los Arcos. They told him they had 
 overheard a promise by Peterborough to obtain Mahoni's 
 promotion to the command of two thousand Irish Catho- 
 lics with the rank of major-general, and hinted at an 
 
V AN EQUIVOCAL TRANSACTION 85 
 
 immediate gift of five thousand pistoles. In proof they 
 predicted that a message would be sent by Mahoni 
 requesting him to march forthwith to a point in the 
 plain where he apprehended an attack. In due course 
 a messenger arrived asking the viceroy for assistance 
 in the convoy of the wounded, which seemed to los 
 Arcos to prove Mahoni's treachery. The two Irish 
 officers, returning to Murviedro, spread a suspicion 
 among the multitude of the commandant's perfidy, 
 while Peterborough produced a panic by a discharge 
 of musketry on the river -banks. Mahoni, seeing 
 symptoms of a tumult, consented to the parade of 
 some English dragoons outside the wall, to be ready 
 in case of disturbances for the maintenance of order 
 and for the defence of the citizens from the foreign 
 soldiery. Mahoni's own men, with their train of sick, 
 took alarm at the mysterious complication ; their march 
 became a flight, and the fright extended to the Bour- 
 bonist viceroy's camp. The whole surprising and dis- 
 creditable tale is told by Freind, Peterborough's own 
 apologist, without the least intimation of a sense of 
 shame. The best to be supposed is that the imagination 
 of the camp may have invented, or deeply coloured, 
 Peterborough's personal part in the circumstances 
 which led to doubts of Mahoni's fidelity. Suspicions 
 easily might have sprung up spontaneously, and Peter- 
 borough would be too cynical to repudiate his individual 
 responsibility for their rise. 
 
 In any case Mahoni evacuated the castle and town on 
 February 3rd. Los Arcos had him arrested as a traitor, 
 and sent him to Madrid, where, however, he quickly 
 cleared himself of the charge. The road to Valencia was 
 
86 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 left entirely open, and on February 4th Peterborough 
 entered the city in triumpli, amidst " extraordinary 
 demonstrations of joy," as the London Gazette reported. 
 For four nights the streets were illuminated, and the 
 monks and ladies are represented as being particularly 
 enthusiastic in their welcome. By all he was hailed as a 
 deliverer at once from the attacks of los Arcos and from 
 Basset y Ramos, whose tyranny, according to Peterborough 
 *'not conceivable," had, if the stories of it be authentic, 
 been such as completely to justify the Earl's ungracious 
 reception of him. Charles at Barcelona seemed to esteem 
 Peterborough's services as highly as the Valencians. He 
 conferred upon him full powers for the civil administra- 
 tion of the province, having already given him a commis- 
 sion of captain-general in the Spanish service. Unfortun- 
 ately his strength for operations in the field appears to 
 have been in no way equal either to the splendour of his 
 titles or to the extent of territory which owned his rule. 
 In Valencia he had, by his own calculations or those of 
 his mouthpieces, no more than about three thousand 
 men. Possibly he reckoned only regular troops, his one 
 thousand and seventy horsemen, and Donegal's, Mount- 
 joy's, Gorges's, and Colberg's infantry regiments, which 
 mustered two thousand. He would not count his Valen- 
 cian militiamen, who are said to have been three 
 thousand five hundred. From Colonel Parnell's comput- 
 ation it would appear that he also omitted two thousand 
 four hundred regulars, horse and foot, Spaniards and 
 Neapolitans, whom he had summoned, much against the 
 inclinations of Charles, from Tortosa and Lerida. If 
 that be the more accurate account, he must have out- 
 numbered the opposing forces, now again under the 
 
HIS UBIQUITY 87 
 
 command of las Torres, who had replaced los Arcos. 
 Las Torres had led from Aragon two thousand five 
 hundred men, and los Arcos two thousand from Castile. 
 Some important reinforcements, by which las Torres 
 expected to correct, and* more than correct, any 
 inferiority, Peterborough succeeded by his energy in 
 intercepting. Sixteen twenty -four- pounders, on the 
 way from Alicante, would have silenced the English 
 artillery, and four thousand Castilians were close at 
 hand to supply numerical deficiencies. The Earl fitted 
 out eight hundred foot and four hundred horse, who 
 in the night forded the Jucar without detection, fell 
 at early morning upon the unsuspicious Castilians, and, 
 as much to the surprise of the Valencians as of las 
 Torres, re-entered the gates with six himdred prisoners. 
 Shortly afterwards a detachment despatched by Peter- 
 borough seized the Alicante guns and their ammunition. 
 Again, his sagacity, aided by the alertness of his volun- 
 teer intelligence department, served chiefly by devoted 
 monks, and by ladies whom he had the strange gift of 
 fascinating without rousing the jealousy of their lords, 
 enabled him to guess and anticipate the enemy's design 
 of occupying Sueca and Alcira. The two places com- 
 .manded the bridge of Cullera over the Jucar, and his 
 supplies would have been cut off. With all this, how- 
 ever, he had disastrous experience that he must not rely 
 upon the firmness of his native auxiliaries in a direct en- 
 counter with trained troops, unless he were actually at 
 their head. Thus he had conceived an admirable plan 
 for a 'combined attack by himself, and by the six hundred 
 foot and four hundred horse he had stationed in Alcira, 
 upon a division of the besiegers cantoned in villages 
 
88 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 fifteen miles from the city. He was at the rendezvous 
 by daybreak, and by signal out sallied the Alcira garri- 
 son. Unexpectedly it came upon a picket of twenty 
 Castilian soldiers ; instantly the whole body fled, so 
 panic-stricken that the men'slew many of their own com- 
 rades, and only his arrival hindered a massacre. With 
 difficulty he restored order, and then opposed so sturdy 
 a resistance to the pursuers that they did not venture to 
 press their advantage. 
 
 Subject to such occasional disappointments, his success 
 in Valencia was marvellous, and opened to him a grand 
 vista. He looked on the acquisition of Valencia for 
 King Charles as part of a vast programme. His design 
 was at once to distract Bourbon counsels by the danger 
 there, and to use Valencia as a magazine of resources 
 against the invaders of Catalonia. Everything was 
 possible if his own Government would but support him, 
 and if he were allowed to maintain his independence of 
 action against the incompetent and corrupt Austrian 
 Court. He had done wonders in the face of the 
 greatest discouragements. He had won back for 
 Charles the hearts of the Valencians whom Basset y 
 Ramos had estranged, and, as he truthfully asserted, he 
 had such assurance from the Spaniards as one could 
 hardly believe they would give to a foreign heretic. 
 He had created an army which would fight bravely 
 and skilfully enough behind cover, though the 
 ofiicers might be mere robbers, and the soldiers 
 cowards. He, an English Protestant, had effected 
 the whole in a most bigoted corner of Spain, and Avith 
 the minimum of help fr9m Protestant England. " The 
 first money," he wrote to Godolphin on March 29th, " I 
 
HIS WORK 89 
 
 touched came two nights ago. Judge, my lord, our severe 
 trial — information of a flood of enemies from all parts, 
 without a letter in near five months, without any 
 assistance of men or money, without any ground for 
 hopes." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 RELIEF OF BARCELONA 
 
 While Peterborough, by military genius, statesmanship, 
 and sympathy, was making of the loyalty of Valencia 
 a stronghold for Charles, of which he was for long 
 afterwards to reap the benefit, the safety of Barcelona 
 and the King himself was seriously threatened. Tl\e 
 capture of Barcelona had alarmed and irritated Philip 
 and his grandfather. Marshal de Tesse, recalled from 
 the Portuguese frontier, led an army into Aragon. On 
 January 21st, 1706, he was at Saragossa, and ready to 
 follow the course of the Ebro into Catalonia. His own 
 plan was to commence by cutting the communications 
 between Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, and he would 
 have postponed his march upon Barcelona till, to guard 
 his line of retreat, he had captured Lerida, Tortosa, and 
 Gerona. The French Government as well as Philip's 
 Spanish adherents preferred an immediate attack upon 
 Barcelona. The marshal was instructed not to waste 
 strength on his communications ^Wth Aragon. His base 
 was to be a French fleet of twenty-eight sail of the line, 
 eighteen frigates, galleys, and bomb vessels, and a 
 hundred and eighty-four transports laden with a siege 
 train, ammunition, and provisions, which was sailing 
 
CHAP. VI THE FRENCH IN CATALONIA 91 
 
 under the Comte de Toulouse from Toulon. General 
 Conyngham, who was in command at Lerida, checked 
 at the cost of his own life Tesse's progress for a 
 moment, but the enemy was too powerful to be finally 
 repulsed. In the second week of March Philip arrived 
 in the camp. A bridge was thrown by Tesse over the 
 Ebro near Lerida, where Landgrave Henry of Hesse 
 Darmstadt had succeeded Conyngham as governor : on 
 March 17th Catalonia was entered ; and notwithstanding 
 the resistance maintained among the mountain passes 
 by Cifuentes and eight to ten thousand Miquelets, the 
 invaders sat down before Barcelona on April 3rd. 
 About the same time General de Legal arrived from 
 Roussillon with nine thousand men, chiefly drawn from 
 the French armies of the Ehine and Flanders, and 
 fifteen field-guns, and two days previously the Toulon 
 fleet had cast anchor in the roads. Tesse's own force 
 numbered twelve thousand. In all, his army contained 
 thirty -six battalions of French and four of Spanish 
 infantry with thirty squadrons of French and six of 
 Spanish cavalry ; Colonel Parnell, however, differs as to 
 the Spanish constituents, placing the total at twenty-one 
 thousand, of whom all, except two troops of horse, were 
 Frenchmen. The camp is said to have covered fifteen 
 miles. Barcelona was at first very inadequately defended. 
 The garrison was scanty. It had been necessary to rob 
 it of Hamilton's foot regiment, a battalion of Neapolitans, 
 and some Catalan recruits for the supply, it is asserted, 
 of Lerida and Tortosa, from which Peterborough had 
 withdrawn two thousand four hundred men for his 
 Valencia campaign. Colonel Parnell reckons the regular 
 garrison of Barcelona by the end of March at no more than 
 
92 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 fourteen hundred, with a small English train and some 
 Spanish gunners from Velasco's troops. Dr. Freind puts it 
 at only five hundred when the enemy was five leagues off. 
 Baton April 3rd Hamilton's foot, numbering four hundred, 
 rejoined from Tortosa : Lord Donegal, with St. Amant, 
 eluding the blockading fleet, introduced eighteen hundred 
 men from Gerona, where he was governor in the place of 
 Scratenbach who had died; and a dismounted detach- 
 ment of Conyngham's dragoons slipped in from Lerida. 
 With these the total strength by the end of the first week 
 of April was nearly four thousand regulars, more than 
 half being English and Dutch. In addition five thousand 
 citizens had volunteered for defensive duties, and there 
 were fifteen hundred Miquelets. Outside, Prince Henry 
 and Cifuentes, who may have been mad but was certainly 
 a most efficient partisan, so harassed Tesse's rear that he 
 lost all communication with the interior, and but for the 
 fleet would have starved. The city was never so be- 
 leaguered that the entrance of Miquelets and provisions 
 was entirely barred. Still the siege works went steadily 
 on. So early as April 4th the Capuchin convent at the 
 foot of Montjuich was captured. On the 1 3th General de 
 la Para, the chief French engineer, " the most famous 
 of France," says Freind, was able to cannonade the 
 Montjuich fort itself, which since the former siege had 
 been greatly strengthened by Colonel Petit, the English 
 chief engineer. In the face of an obstinate resistance by 
 Donegal, who was in command, the besiegers made con- 
 tinual though slow progress, and on the 21st they stormed, 
 when Donegal was killed, and all except the keep was 
 taken. That, having become untenable, was evacuated by 
 Count Uhlfeldt, the governor of Barcelona, on April 25th. 
 
vr A FLAN A' MOVEMENT 93 
 
 Not till tlie crisis of the assault on Montjuich did 
 Peterborough appear in person on the scene. Had his 
 counsels prevailed, his presence elsewhere would have 
 continued to be more necessary and beneficial. In a 
 letter of March 1 3th, before the siege was begun, he had 
 entreated Charles to quit the town. His plan, which he 
 prayed might be kept a secret from every one but the 
 Portuguese ambassador, was that Charles should leave 
 Prince Henry viceroy of Catalonia, under orders to 
 follow his advice "in what concerned the war." He 
 "would undertake to maintain Catalonia and Valencia, 
 and perhaps open the way to Madrid." Charles himself 
 was to embark on one of the ships he had ready at 
 Denia, no French vessel being on the coast to endanger 
 the passage. Within a week the King, he engaged, would 
 be in Portugal, where twenty-five thousand troops were 
 opposed on the Spanish border to five thousand of 
 Philip's. Nothing was in the way to prevent a triumphal 
 progress to Madrid. " This, sir," he exclaimed in his 
 letter, " perhaps were the finest stroke in politics that 
 any age has produced, and the least expected." The 
 King's withdrawal, far from being an unfair desertion 
 of the Catalans, was the greatest kindness Charles 
 could render them. He was the prize that rendered 
 the capture of Barcelona valuable to his rival, and his 
 departure would chill the ardour of the attack. Charles 
 did not leave the town. Marshal de Tess6's French 
 biographer asserts that originally he had desired to go, 
 and was restrained only by a popular tumult. When he 
 found it impossible, he declared that the Virgin and two 
 Angels had assured him he might safely stay. After the 
 capture of Montjuich once more he would have gone, and 
 
94 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Lichtenstein advised it, but the to^vnsmen again inter- 
 posed. As the siege proceeded he became conscious of his 
 precarious plight, and invoked more mundane assistance 
 from Peterborough. Writing on March 30th, he cried : 
 " My hopes are all in you. Lose no time to come to my 
 assistance, lest it prove too late." There is no cause for 
 suspecting that Peterborough was dilatory in his com- 
 pliance with the summons. He despatched Killigrew 
 with a couple of thousand foot and six hundred horse, 
 and overtaking them at Tarragona, led them into the 
 camp of Cifuentes on April 21st. 
 
 His arrival animated the courage both of the 
 Miquelets and of the besieged. He and Cifuentes might 
 in politics be mortal enemies, as soldiers they worked 
 zealously together. Peterborough knew what irregulars 
 could do and what they could not. In a very in- 
 vidious way he had to show his moral courage by the 
 rejection of requests to him to attempt miracles. He 
 could not but turn a deaf ear to the royal orders or 
 petitions for a rash assault, which was certain to be 
 defeated, upon the fortified French lines. A council 
 of war was unanimously of the same opinion, with 
 the exception of Colonel de St. Pierre who did not 
 gainsay the extreme hazard of the attempt. Peter- 
 borough himself formed a plan for the capture of the 
 intrenchments, in concert with a sortie of the garrison, 
 which failed through the arrest of a messenger whose 
 papers disclosed it. His general policy, as had been that 
 of Cifuentes and Prince Henry, was to exhaust the be- 
 siegers by an incessant guerilla warfare. As usual he did 
 not spare himself. The defence of Barcelona was included 
 in his retrospect, when subsequently he asserted of his 
 
A CA'IS/S 95 
 
 Spanish campaigns that " he had rarely if ever sent out 
 a i)arty of thirty horse without himself personally leading 
 them." Some exploits, however, seem to have been 
 erroneously attributed to him. Thus he is described as 
 having conducted the Gerona garrison, with its chief Lord 
 Donegal, into the city which it had really entered a fort- 
 night before his arrival. But more commonly the credit 
 of his initiative has been transferred to others. Though the 
 degree of his direct authority over the foreign troops of 
 Charles is somewhat obscure, he evidently was recognised 
 as chief in command over the whole of the forces when 
 he was on the spot. For movements such as the 
 skilful introduction of bodies of Neapolitan soldiers 
 into the town by Prince Henry on April 23rd, and again 
 on April 29th, he must be presumed to have been 
 responsible, and deserves, along with the actual leader, 
 to be praised. 
 
 He soon was compelled to recognise that he and the 
 Miquelets could not save the place by themselves. 
 The town might have been stormed, he says, "almost 
 any time after about May 1st." The sole remaining 
 hope was in the advent of the British fleet, and that 
 he set himself to hasten. Queen Anne's Govern- 
 ment had at once promised the reinforcements which, 
 through his friend Stanhope and directly by letters 
 to Godolphin, he and King Charles had been solicit- 
 ing since his capture of Barcelona ; but it was slow in 
 redeeming its pledges. At length ^6250,000 was voted 
 by the House of Commons for the service of Charles, 
 and five fresh regiments with draughts for those 
 already engaged were ordered to proceed to Spain. 
 The total is reckoned by Colonel Parnell as approxi- 
 
96 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 mating to five thousand men. Some were to be con- 
 veyed by Commodore Price from Plymouth, with six 
 sail of the line and a Dutch squadron, and the rest 
 from Cork by Commodore Walker, with five men-of- 
 war. Sir George Byng was to bring thirteen ships from 
 Portsmouth. Stanhope, appointed ambassador to Charles 
 in place of Paul Methuen, and the Count of Noyelles, a 
 Spaniard in the Dutch service whom Charles had in- 
 vited to lead his Spanish forces, embarked with Price. 
 Vice- Admiral Sir John Leake, who already had under 
 him a fleet of twenty-One sail of the line and twelve 
 frigates, was to command the entire fleet, and with 
 Lieutenant -General Hugh Wyndham Leake embarked 
 as successor to Conyngham. Not till May 3rd was 
 the whole expedition, consisting of thirty-nine English 
 sail of the line and thirteen Dutchmen, with frigates and 
 transports, united near Altea. There is some conflict 
 of evidence on the dates of Leake's movements do^vn 
 to the day on which he bent his course directly to 
 Barcelona. He appears, after the utmost allowance for 
 contrary winds, and whether he stopped twelve days 
 in Altea Bay or two, to have been at least extremely 
 cautious for an English admiral. Until all the sub- 
 sidiary squadrons he expected should have arrived he 
 was unwilling to confront the Comte de Toulouse ; and 
 only under the pressure of an urgent letter from King 
 Charles had a council of war at Gibraltar decided to 
 move on to Altea, and thence to Barcelona, if it should 
 be ascertained that the enemy numbered no more than 
 twenty-seven sail. 
 
 Leake's lazy humour and unwillingness to stir one 
 step out of the way, as Peterborough described his 
 
VI SIR JOHN LEAKE ' 97 
 
 conduct, may well have been increased by a manifest 
 difference of policy in the two authorities he had to 
 serve. Peterborough had originally received a joint 
 commission as admiral of the fleet which Shovel 
 commanded, and this seems to have been renewed and 
 confirmed in a way which gave him a controlling juris- 
 diction over the fleet in charge of Leake. Writing 
 from Valencia in virtue of such powers, on March 21st 
 and 25th, he sent Leake orders, which arrived on April 
 2nd, to land the troops at El Grao, the port of Valencia, 
 at Denia, or at Altea, whence the fleet was to sail at 
 once to Barcelona against the French ships ; his own 
 design being, when he had united the fresh troops 
 with his own, to march at once on Madrid. On 
 March 29th, in a letter received by Leake on April 
 17th, he repeated his injunctions; any troops sent 
 towards Barcelona were sent, he declared, " so far out 
 of the way." On April 7th, the day on which he started 
 for the Miquelet camp outside Barcelona, he wrote a 
 fresh letter, in which he reminded Leake, who received 
 it on April 29th, of his supremacy at sea as well as by 
 land. He intimated that his directions had a prior right 
 to obedience over those which he said he was aware 
 Charles had given, to the effect that Leake was to 
 convey the troops to Barcelona instead of Valencia. By 
 the middle of April it was known in England that he 
 had ordered Leake to land the soldiers at Altea, and 
 thence sail to fight Toulouse at Barcelona, and no 
 doubt was felt at home of his authority so to direct 
 Leake's movements. Gorges, Peterborough's lieutenant 
 in Valencia, himself, on the night of April 29th, carried 
 on board the flagship orders from the general that 
 
 H 
 
PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 the troops should be landed, part in Valencia and the 
 rest at Tortosa. By other letters received together by 
 Leake on May 7th, the admiral was directed to land the 
 mass of the troops at Vinaroz or Tarragona, reserving 
 a thousand for Barcelona, the motive being that the 
 fleet should not be encumbered in a fight by the 
 presence of superfluous soldiers and transports. Leake, 
 with the warships, was entreated to hurry forwards. The 
 destiny of Spain, he was warned, depended upon the 
 arrival of thirty of her Majesty's ships before the taking 
 of Barcelona. Peterborough was the more fretted, and 
 Leake may have been the less disposed to act with 
 sharp promptitude, that the Austrian Court, as he knew, 
 was giving dissimilar orders to the admiral. It was 
 constantly calling for the immediate conveyance of every 
 man of the reinforcements to the besieged city. On 
 May 7th in particular Leake received from Charles an 
 importunate prayer not to linger, or to disembark the 
 troops elsewhere, " as some persons may pretend to 
 direct you, for they can be nowhere so necessary as in 
 this town, which is on the very point of being lost for 
 want of relief." It has been alleged recently that Leake 
 complied with the request of Charles and altogether dis- 
 regarded Peterborough's, thereby saving Barcelona from 
 capture and the Austrian cause from ruin. It had been 
 charged in Queen Anne's reign by the general's critics 
 that " Sir John Leake relieved Barcelona, if not directly 
 contrary, at least not pursuant, to Lord Peterborough's 
 method." The admiral's neglect of Peterborough's right- 
 ful authority is more manifest than his zeal in obeying 
 the King. He loitered to an extent for which the diffi- 
 culties of navigation before steam, and the pertinacity 
 
VI IN SEARCH OF A FLEET 99 
 
 of a strong north-west wind, can scarcely have been 
 altogether accountable; and it may be suspected he would 
 have been still more deliberate but for the stimulus 
 sharply administered to him by Peterborough. 
 
 Stanhope from the fleet and Peterborough from the 
 shore kept up an active correspondence, and the former in 
 vain urged Leake to hasten on without waiting for Byng. 
 He had arranged with Peterborough that the receipt of 
 a blank sheet of paper cut in a particular way, which 
 would compromise no messenger it might be found 
 upon, should be the sign that the several squadrons had 
 united in Altea Bay and were ready to sail together for 
 Barcelona. At last the token came. Peterborough had 
 ready a thousand English marines and four hundred 
 Dutch infantry, and with these he instantly set out for 
 Sitjes, twenty -one miles west of the city. Within a 
 •couple of days he had collected three or four hundred 
 boats for the transport of his whole force, and at once 
 ■embarked in a felucca with a single aide-de-camp, after 
 giving orders to his officers to make for Barcelona in 
 their boats with all their troops so soon as they saw the 
 allied fleet or heard firing. It was necessary for him to 
 go in person, since his naval supremacy commenced 
 " whenever he thought fit to go on board." All night he 
 lay out at sea waiting for the ships, but no trace of them 
 could be discovered and with morning he returned ashore. 
 The day he spent on a hill, watching. A messenger from 
 ■Charles who had run the blockade implored immediate 
 succour ; it was impossible, wrote the King, to protract 
 the defence. Off again to sea put Peterborough. He 
 was anxious for the relief of the city ; he was equally 
 anxious that the French admiral should not hear of the 
 
PETERBOROUGH 
 
 approach of so overwhelming a navy and escape from 
 the trap. He hoped to be in time to leave part of the 
 fleet behind, so that Toulouse, when the approach of the 
 Allies was announced, might imagine himself a match 
 for them. Farther and farther he bade his boatmen 
 push, till suddenly through the darkness a British war- 
 ship, the " Leopard," was descried. Going on board he at 
 once took command and sent his orders to Leake. In 
 the course of the morning he shifted his quarters to the 
 "Prince George," the flagship, w^hen the Union Jack was. 
 hoisted at the maintop. Mr. Paul Methuen asserted 
 that for this Peterborough was very ill with the seamen, 
 and particularly with Sir John Leake ; but the offence 
 could not have been the hoisting of the flag, which was 
 the mere result of the presence of the commanding 
 officer. It must have been thought he had no business, 
 by coming on board either the "Leopard" or the "Prince 
 George," to avail himself of his technical right under his 
 commission to take the naval command out of a professed 
 sailor's hands. He had none, unless he sincerely be- 
 lieved, as in the circumstances he had some ground for 
 believing, that the fleet, if handled by him, was more 
 likely to relieve Barcelona instantly, and also to bring 
 the Comte de Toulouse to a decisive battle. Off Sitjes 
 the flotilla, with his troops on board, joined; on 
 May 8th the entire fleet moored in the Barcelona road- 
 stead, and the same evening Peterborough disembarked 
 the troops. He found no French ships to encounter. The 
 Comte de Toulouse had learnt that the confederate fleet 
 was at hand, and how strong it was, when it was still 
 eighteen miles away, and had forthwith sailed for 
 Toulon. Had he been more obstinate, reckless, or con- 
 
VI DE TESSI^ RETREATS 
 
 lOI 
 
 fident Peterborough might have been the hero of a signal 
 maritime victory as well as of a couple of famous sieges. 
 The arrival of the fleet gave Barcelona absolute safety 
 on the sea-front. By land it lay almost as entirely as 
 before at the mercy of the enemy. All military evidence 
 concurs in the conclusion that, even after the flight of 
 Toulouse, a vigorous assault could hardly have been re- 
 sisted. Notwithstanding the additions to the garrison, 
 the besiegers, who are reckoned in Tessa's memoirs 
 at fifteen thousand, remained stronger in number. The 
 ilefenders, worn out by the incessant toils of thirty-five 
 days, were inclined still to despair, and all Peterborough's 
 energy was required to put heart into them. Fortun- 
 ately Tess6 had been moved more than the garrison by 
 the success of Peterborough and the Miquelets in 
 severing communications. All the passes into Aragon 
 had been seized, and he could obtain neither intelli- 
 gence nor supplies from central Spain. If he eluded 
 the vigilance of his opponents, and pierced through 
 the obstacles to his retreat by the road to Tortosa, 
 or by that to Lerida, he was aware that he would have 
 to fight Galway and das Minas, who were advancing 
 to Madrid and were stronger than he. In Barcelona 
 itself, if he took it, his King's person would be ex- 
 posed to extreme danger. His base of operations had 
 been the French fleet in the roads, and that was gone. 
 Philip was bent on one more attack on the fortifications, 
 but Tess6 persuaded a council of war to overrule him, 
 and on the night of May 11th the French army began 
 its retreat towards Koussillon by Perpignan, discouraged 
 by the total eclipse, on the day before, of the sun, which 
 was the Bourbon emblem. On the rear of the retiring 
 
I02 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 army hung the Miquelets, who had guessed the French 
 movement and were fully prepared to take advantage 
 of it. Afterwards it was made a subject of accusation 
 against Peterborough that the regular troops did not join 
 in the pursuit, and the omission certainly seems strange. 
 An excuse, though scarcely sufficient, may be that Peter- 
 borough feared the risk of a battle, for the French army 
 was still superior in strength. Tess6 carried off his 
 baggage, but not his siege-train of a hundred and seventy- 
 five brass guns, thirty mortars, and three thousand barrels 
 of powder, nor an immense stock of flour. To the sur- 
 prise of the Allies he left the whole untouched. He 
 was able to convey with him two thousand sick and 
 wounded ; nine hundred, for want of transport, he 
 was obliged to leave. On their behalf he wrote to 
 Peterborough : " My Lord, you serve me with circum- 
 stances more glorious for you, and more mortifying for 
 me, as last year I did my Lord Galway in the siege of 
 Badajos. You perceive the miserable necessity I am 
 under of raising this siege by the arrival of your fleet 
 and the retreat of ours. The fortune of war makes your 
 glory, and at this day my misfortune." Peterborough 
 granted the request, and provided generously, as the 
 French acknowledged, for the medical treatment of his 
 unbidden guests. 
 
 It never occurred to Tess6 that the leader of the defence, 
 and author of his defeat, was not Lord Peterborough ; 
 that the real chief to be solicited was King Charles, 
 Cifuentes, Lichtenstein, Uhlfeldt, Prince Henry, Leake, 
 anybody rather than the commander-in-chief by land and 
 sea of the Allies. To Marlborough likewise it did not 
 appear that his eulogy might bear a wrong address 
 
VI THE CREDIT OF VICTORY 103 
 
 when he wrote to Peterborough from his camp at Aer- 
 zeele on June 17th: "I congratulate your lordship on 
 the great and glorious success of the arms of her Majesty 
 and her allies in obliging the enemy to raise the siege of 
 Barcelona, and to retreat in such confusion and disorder 
 that we are given to hope it has proved the ruin of the 
 greatest part of their army. All the world does justice 
 to your lordship in acknowledging the share you had in 
 this happy success." There was nothing, the Duke said, 
 which might not be expected from Peterborough " after 
 such astonishing actions." The news excited the liveliest 
 admiration at home for the general to whom the credit 
 of the success was mainly ascribed. Since February 
 frequent rumours of his exploits in Valencia had been 
 received. It was said that he had beaten Tesse ; it was 
 said that Tesse had taken him prisoner and that he had 
 escaped ; las Torres and Tesse were said to have com- 
 bined their forces. At length it was clearly understood 
 that Peterborough had circumvented all Philip's officers 
 in Valencia, stealing Murviedro from Mahoni, surprising 
 the reinforcements of los Arcos, intercepting the Ali- 
 cante guns, and generally winning a kingdom for Charles. 
 Justice was then done in the London Gazette to his feats. 
 Already, in April, the Queen was preparing to express 
 her gratitude by the present of a rich coach of state 
 and £20,000. The arrival of Captain Delavall on May 
 30th with despatches describing the relief of Bar- 
 celona and retreat of the French, elicited more demon- 
 strations of loyal satisfaction. When, on June 27th, a 
 public thanksgiving was solemnised for the Duke of 
 Marlborough's victory of Eamillies, "our great successes 
 in Catalonia and other parts of Spain " were also ordered 
 
104 PETERBOROUGH chap, vi 
 
 to be commemorated. The Queen attended St. Paul's in 
 state, and one of her chaplains, Dr. George Stanhope, 
 Dean of Canterbury, preached. He mingled with allu- 
 sions to the triumph in Brabant encomiums on the swift 
 reduction first, and the seasonable relief afterwards, of 
 Barcelona by the genius of Peterborough, whose activity, 
 vigour, and noble fire peculiarly adapted him to such an 
 undertaking. A gift of ten thousand ounces of silver 
 plate was added to the coach. On June 11th he was 
 nominated Ambassador-Extraordinary to Charles, with 
 £1500 for his equipage and <£100 a week for his table. 
 He valued the post, he told Stanhope, because its powers 
 were "calculated to reduce our German ministers to 
 some bounds." The too youthful father was less grateful 
 when he heard a little later that, out of courtesy to him, 
 his elder son, Lord Mordaunt, was conveying the Queen's 
 compliments to the King of Spain upon the affairs of 
 Flanders. "I own," he wrote, "I could have spared 
 that favour." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 DIVIDED COUNCILS — PETERBOROUGH LEAVES SPAIN 
 
 After a week of rejoicing and rest the plan of future 
 operations was discussed. Methuen, while he still repre- 
 sented Queen Anne at the Court of Charles, had written 
 to his father, the ambassador in Portugal, on May 26th, 
 1706, of the heavy and reciprocal complaints exchanged 
 between the Court and Peterborough during the siege. 
 The Court accused him, with some justice, of having left 
 Barcelona in no adequate condition of defence. Not less 
 justly he retorted with abuse of its mismanagement. 
 The vague extent of his designs perplexed and disturbed 
 it. Its thoughts were of Spain, and his were of the 
 whole Spanish monarchy. He hoped to settle Italy as 
 well as Spain, and for the purpose wished the fleet to 
 winter between Genoa and Leghorn. Methuen explained 
 that he had quarrelled all round ; with Cifuentes, 
 and with Lichtenstein, whose intolerable haughtiness, 
 unaccountable weakness, and rapacity Methuen also 
 detested; with the King, by his conduct in keeping 
 back money ; with the Catalans, whose loyalty he had 
 decried as inferior to that of the Valencians ; and with 
 the British fleet, by his dispossession of Sir John Leake. 
 Now, however, for a moment the strife was stilled by 
 
io6 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Tessa's retreat. He himself was content to undertake 
 one thing at a time and not all things at once. A con- 
 ference of sixteen ministers and officers, held under the 
 presidency of the King on May 18th, approved his 
 proposal that the King should march to Madrid through 
 Valencia, and that the general rendezvous should be at 
 Valencia city. By that route the fleet could render 
 essential help. Peterborough's belief was, that in the 
 disorder caused by Philip's failure at Barcelona the 
 speedy presence of Charles at the capital would bring 
 over most of the kingdom. A moderate force in com- 
 mand of the passes towards Navarre would absolutely 
 bar the re-entrance of Philip with his Frenchmen. Four 
 thousand five hundred, or, as was a little later computed, 
 six thousand foot and two thousand horse, besides irre- 
 gulars and an artillery train, it was calculated, could be 
 made ready, with the requisite transport service, to follow 
 the King and Peterborough. Seven thousand one hun- 
 dred British and Spanish troops would remain for the 
 defence of Barcelona, Gerona, Lerida, and Tortosa, with- 
 out count of the Miquelets. 
 
 Peterborough, AVyndham, and Richards started on 
 May 28th or 29th by sea for Valencia, and according to 
 the London Gazette it was agreed that the King should 
 follow on June 6th. Peterborough proposed, with the 
 resources he had in hand, to strike a blow which 
 he judged would encounter no resistance. But the 
 Austrians procrastinated; according to Freind, Charles 
 waited a month beyond the stipulated date before 
 he could resolve to start. The delay obliged Peter- 
 borough to provide for a methodical invasion of Castile. 
 In Valencia he was so far master as to have been 
 
VII BY VALENCIA TO MADRID 107 
 
 able, without fear for its security, to leave it while the 
 siege of Barcelona lasted. Las Torres, who lingered in a 
 remote corner, was powerless to attack. A regular ex- 
 pedition for the escort of the King through a hostile 
 country, which was beginning to recover from its first 
 panic, could not be instantly extemporised. After three 
 weeks of hard work some deficiencies still remained. On 
 June 23rd Charles actually had marched, when, on the 
 26th, it is said he was met on the Valencian frontier by 
 a despatch from Peterborough asking him to wait awhile, 
 as the stores for the army's subsistence were not yet 
 entirely in order. The wants of the commissariat 
 were soon supplied. Before this the military forces of 
 the province had been organised for the occupation of 
 the road thence to Madrid, and were fast accomplish- 
 ing their task. Peterborough, always sensible of the 
 importance of cavalry in Spain, had purchased some 
 hundreds of serviceable horses for £10 a head, which if 
 imported from England would have cost <£60. On them 
 he mounted foot-soldiers, whom in six weeks he drilled 
 into a very fair semblance of a dragoon regiment. In half 
 the time he had a movable column of fifteen hundred 
 men ready. He sent it, under General Wyndham, into 
 New Castile to capture Kequena, thirty miles off, on 
 the road to Madrid. Carleton, who, we know, acted 
 as an engineer, says that he accompanied Wyndham 
 in that capacity. Wyndham, as he advanced, took 
 Cuenca, ninety miles from Madrid; Gorges marched 
 against Alicante; Alnutt invaded Murcia; Killigrew 
 with five regiments was kept by Peterborough at 
 Valencia. All was in fair train for the King's 
 progress by Valencia to join the Allies in Castile. 
 
io8 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Peterborough wrote on June 23rd to Godolphin : " The 
 two thousand horse and six thousand foot with which 
 I march from Valencia into Castile make the case 
 desperate" for Philip. He was able on July 5th 
 to report to Charles the success of the attempts on 
 Requena and Cuenca, and the arrival of two thousand 
 foot and some horse at Alarcon. There was no occasion, 
 he assured him, to postpone his journey any longer. 
 *' The way is so free between this and Madrid that the 
 deserters pass three or four in a company. Your 
 Majesty may pass to your capital this way as in a most 
 profound peace, and with what expedition you think fit 
 to make." He sent a deputation of Valencians to Bar- 
 celona to solicit the King's presence in their country ; 
 he argued on behalf of the route in letter after letter ; 
 he declaimed against the refusal to advance towards a 
 crown, against the rejection of a course which would bring 
 the King to Madrid in a few days in favour of a journey 
 of six weeks or two months by way of Aragon, " and all 
 the aiFairs of Europe in the meantime in suspense." If 
 it were deemed politic to arrange for a military demon- 
 stration on the side of Aragon, troops might, he said, be 
 led by that route round to Madrid. The essential thing 
 was that the King himself should travel by the shortest 
 road. Earnestly he besought Charles to hasten : " Sir, 
 it is only in your capital where the proper and necessary 
 orders can be given." He spared no efforts or toil to 
 attain his end : " I am dead," he exclaims, " for want of 
 sleep. Drudgery and writing have brought a defluxion 
 upon my eyes. Were it not for my resolution not to 
 fret, I should die in this hot weather." He was tor- 
 mented by mosquitoes; he was "out of his wits for 
 
VII CHANGE OF ROUTE 109 
 
 want of wherewithal to enable the troops to march." 
 His requital was contemptuous neglect of the sole 
 procedure by which he knew success was practicable. 
 
 For some time he must have felt that a positive 
 change of plan at Court was the cause of a delay 
 of at least two months from the time it was pos- 
 sible, as he wrote to Marlborough, to have commenced 
 the march upon the capital by Valencia. The Valencia 
 route had long been opposed by other counsellors, 
 by Lichtenstein, Uhlfeldt, Cifuentes. They could 
 adduce cogent arguments for their view, though not of 
 the permanent force of those at Peterborough's disposal. 
 Prince Henry had entered Aragon after the siege of 
 Barcelona was raised, and had found the population 
 inclined to the King's cause. His successes showed the 
 existence of an advantageous opportunity. Noyelles 
 led some regiments from Catalonia, and on June 13th he 
 and Prince Henry united their strength. Together they 
 occupied Saragossa, whose citizens had not forgiven the 
 excesses of Tessa's troops in the winter and warmly 
 invited Charles to make their city a stage on his journey 
 to Madrid. Cifuentes used his eloquence to flatter their 
 vanity with invidious comparisons between their volun- 
 tary acceptance of the King and the enforced submission 
 of Valencia. They offered a liberal subsidy. The intelli- 
 gence reached Charles at the time he had been on his 
 way to Valencia city ; and he changed his old resolution 
 to direct his progress by that route. He was glad of an 
 excuse for slighting Peterborough, resenting profoundly 
 the caprice, as he regarded it, by which Peterborough 
 had sent him back to Barcelona from the borders 
 of Valencia. This decided him, it was said, to go by 
 
110 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Aragon, declaring that he would have nothing more to 
 do with a man who had made him despicable to his 
 people. He was as indignant at the pertinacity with 
 which Peterborough importuned him to adhere to the 
 old project, and took no notice of several letters, till at 
 length, in reply to that of July 5th, and to three similar 
 appeals since June 30th, he wrote in a tone indicating 
 royal disgust at the freedom of his adviser. Peterborough 
 had offered to go to Barcelona to discuss with him the 
 journey by Valencia; for his zeal the King expressed 
 himself as very much obliged, but, being upon the road 
 to Aragon, and engaged to pursue that way, he con- 
 sidered the journey Peterborough must make to Sara- 
 gossa to meet him would be too long and difficult. The 
 allied fleet being expected each moment on the coast, he 
 bade him stay where he was to direct the important 
 affair of the Duke of Savoy. This was the mode in 
 which Peterborough was informed of the decision of the 
 King, taken at a council on June 29th against the ad\dce 
 of the Portuguese and British envoys, d'Assumar and 
 Stanhope, to proceed by Saragossa, and of the com- 
 mencement of his progress thither. Down to this time, 
 or within a few days of it, Peterborough had acted as if 
 the original arrangement held good, and was awaiting, 
 or affecting to await, the arrival of the King at Valencia. 
 That for the present was out of the question. He wrote 
 on July 10th : " It is no more proper to speak to your 
 Majesty upon the resolutions you have taken," though 
 he went on to speak of them, and Avhile promising to 
 sustain what the King had resolved upon and to send a 
 couple of regiments to Aragon, he could not refrain 
 from adding they were so far advanced in Castile that 
 
MISUNDERSTANDING WITH GALWAV 
 
 their march by ^ladrid would prove the shortest and 
 most practicable Avay to go to Saragossa. 
 
 The change of plan was a cruel disappointment to 
 him, and an irreparable injury to the cause of the Allies 
 ill Spain. He saw the whole evil of it present and future. 
 On August 1st he wrote to Stanhope : " The consequences 
 of the most fatal resolution taken by the King appear 
 every day more and more, and I can hardly persuade 
 myself that men in their common senses could fall into 
 such measures. In my opinion, from being absolutely 
 secure of the kingdom their affairs were never in worse 
 circumstances ; and a most scandalous and unexpected 
 revolution may happen." Unless in respect of temper and 
 manner, throughout the whole controversy he seems to 
 have been in the right. It was unfortunate that he put 
 himself in the wrong by his neglect of the occasion for 
 acting in Castile in concert with Galway since Charles 
 refused to use the opportunity of acting in concert there 
 with him. By June 27th the Allies under Galway and 
 das Minas had occupied Madrid, where the addition of the 
 army of Valencia would have been of the greatest benefit 
 to them. Their apologists alleged that he turned a deaf 
 ear to repeated requests for his aid j but he always 
 asserted that he received no solicitations and no intelli- 
 gence. Two expresses from Galway, he stated in the 
 course of the subsequent inquiry in England, had traversed 
 Valencia without any communication for him ; one mes- 
 senger he had compelled on July 6th to sign a memor 
 andum that he passed through the city of Valencia on a 
 certain day without any letter for the Earl of Peterborough. 
 Galway admitted the account to be true of one messenger, 
 but not of two. He explained that the officer had been 
 
PETERBOROUGH 
 
 ordered to go by Saragossa, but, the road being barred by 
 the enemy, had travelled by Valencia. Other officers, he 
 declared, he had sent straight to Peterborough to ask 
 for assistance, and they had delivered their despatches. 
 Peterborough in any case must have been aware of the 
 movements of the Allies in Castile, and have understood 
 the importance of a junction of his forces with theirs. 
 He ought not to have held aloof on a point of etiquette. 
 The defence which might be of avail in respect of a 
 certain period, that he had to reserve his strength as an 
 escort for the King, will scarcely cover the critical time 
 from the commencement of July. Probably the most 
 real excuse for him is that, in common with the Allies 
 in general, he was not fully conscious before August of 
 the precariousness of the advantage they had gained 
 from the French discomfiture at Barcelona. The English 
 Government assumed that Charles was so far triumphant 
 in Spain as to be able to spare Peterborough's forces for 
 the maintenance of the war elsewhere. Instructions, 
 dated June 12th and 19th, were sent to him and Leake 
 to despatch the fleet with three or four regiments on 
 board to the relief of the Duke of Savoy, who was being 
 besieged in Turin, after which service the forces 
 were to go on to Naples. Peterborough, if it could 
 be arranged, though the Queen left the decision 
 to his discretion, was to lead the troops, on account, 
 Mr. Secretary Hedges told him, of the Duke of Savoy's 
 faith in his great courage and conduct and the success 
 accompanying his person, whereby he had more than 
 once restored affairs when under intricate difficulties. 
 Charles's acceptance of the scheme, besides that it enabled 
 him to intimate his independence of Peterborough's assist^ 
 
VII DIFFICULTIES UNDERRATED 113 
 
 aiice in Spain, implied a sincere belief that the war there 
 was virtually at an end. Assuming with haughty con- 
 fidence the entire devotion of Aragon, and the absolute 
 security of the road thence to Madrid, he directed Peter- 
 borough to prepare for an expedition either to North 
 Italy or to the Balearic Isles. Peterborough himself had 
 formed plans which, if more ingeniously adapted for 
 distracting the attention of the enemy, must equally 
 have diminished the resources for attacking the main 
 body. The instructions he brought from England in 
 1705 contemplated an attempt upon Cadiz to follow that 
 upon Barcelona, and he now proposed to proceed with that 
 article in the programme. In a letter of June 20th to 
 Stanhope he suggested a descent by sea upon Cadiz with 
 six thousand men : " Perhaps it were no paradox to say 
 Cales taken were better for England, and the war of 
 Spain not wholly ended, than even the King at Madrid." 
 He was well disposed also towards the ministerial scheme 
 of an Italian expedition, which he, in conformity with 
 Godolphin's own views, had long cherished. He re- 
 minded Stanhope on June 30th how much it would add 
 to the romance of their undertaking if within the year 
 he could settle in a manner the crown of Spain and 
 save Italy. Obviously by him for some time, as longer 
 by Charles and Lichtenstein, Godolphin and Marlborough, 
 the magnitude of the peril with which the cause of the 
 Allies was confronted was underrated, though not after 
 the early part of July. Till then he was as mistaken as 
 the rest in imagining that the best devised and executed 
 policy could have set the Spanish crown suddenly and 
 solidly on the head of Charles. But at least the measures 
 he had proposed alone offered a prospect of eventual 
 
14 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 success. From the instant of their repudiation the course 
 was continually downwards. 
 
 Tidings suddenly reached Valencia of a rising of the 
 population of New Castile against the Portuguese and 
 Gal way . Then at last Peterborough determined to march to 
 their help. A council of war, to which he summoned both 
 Valencian dignitaries and his own officers on July 26th, 
 supported his resolution, and further expressed an opinion 
 that, even at this late hour, the King should be advised 
 to return from Aragon and accept Peterborough's escort 
 to Madrid from Valencia. The troops were about to 
 start when the royal orders arrived for the expedition to 
 foreign parts. In the circumstances they would not 
 have hindered the march, but a despatch of a very 
 different character followed close on their heels. The 
 Austrian Court too had heard the news from Castile. 
 Charles, who on July 24th had quitted Saragossa, 
 prayed Peterborough to hurry forward with every 
 available man. He interpreted this as a direction to 
 bring to the King's assistance any troops which could 
 travel fast. Taking four hundred dragoons he came up 
 with him near Pastrana on August 4th, and two days 
 later escorted him to the camp of the Allies at 
 Guadalajara. 
 
 He found them discontented and disheartened. Their 
 numbers are variously estimated at fifteen to eighteen 
 thousand. The King and Peterborough added little to 
 the numerical strength, bringing with them, according 
 to Galway, only two regiments of Spanish dragoons and 
 part of Pierce's dragoon regiment. Galway alleged that 
 Peterborough had left behind in different places two 
 entire dragoon regiments, with the rest of Pierce's, and 
 
VII . A PLURALITY OF LEADERS 115 
 
 thirteen battalions of English infantry. On the opposite 
 side the Duke of Berwick commanded an army swollen 
 to a total of twenty-five thousand men. Las Torres had 
 brought his fifteen hundred men in June from the 
 frontiers of Valencia, and the King's delay, of which 
 Galway and Peterborough equally complained though 
 they accounted for it dissimilarly, had permitted 
 Berwick's junction on July 28th with these troops and 
 with a French force under Legal from Navarre. The 
 citizens of the principal towns befriended him. Spaniards 
 did not love Philip's Frenchmen, but they abhorred, 
 especially in Castile, the domination of the troops of 
 their Portuguese cousins and neighbours. Bands of 
 armed peasants plundered adherents of King Charles, 
 and slaughtered stragglers ; worst of all, the councils of 
 Charles were agitated by internal jealousies. Four 
 officers now in the camp at Guadalajara could each show 
 a title of his own to command in chief, and all were more 
 or less mutually jealous and contemptuous. As Stanhope 
 gloomily wrote to the Secretary of State a few months 
 later, so at present, it was clear that the army would 
 do no great matters while it had so many generals so 
 little disposed to agree. The aged Marquis das Minas, 
 the Portuguese general, had been allowed to appear 
 to command the united British and Portuguese army 
 in deference to Portuguese pride. Galway, whom the 
 King of Portugal had created Governor of the Army, had 
 precedence in military experience, and the terms of his 
 British commission w^ere wide enough to comprise a cam- 
 paign anywhere in Spain. On Field-Marshal Noyelles, 
 besides his Dutch commission, Charles had conferred the 
 command of his Spanish troops. Peterborough held the 
 
ii6 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Queen's commission as commander-in-chief by land and 
 sea of the independent Catalonia expedition ; a distinct 
 Spanish commission also had been granted to him by 
 Charles after the capture of Barcelona. Gal way, crippled 
 with wounds, desired to be recalled, and was ready to 
 waive any rights he possessed. Upon Peterborough's 
 arrival he paid him a visit, and in his own words 
 " offered him the command of the English, and to receive 
 his orders till I should have the Queen's leave to go 
 home." He added in his defence before the House of 
 Lords : " But because the Marquis das Minas would not 
 do so too my Lord Peterborough chose not to stay with 
 the army." Peterborough's account differed in some 
 particulars; he intimated that he should have been 
 satisfied with equality. By a letter of August 8th he 
 suggested that das Minas should lead the troops on the 
 Portuguese establishment, and Noyelles the Dutchmen, 
 while the Spaniards, and the British troops belonging to 
 the Catalonia expedition, should be under him. The 
 King would be general -in -chief. That arrangement, 
 which, it must be admitted, is open to the gravest 
 objections, was carried into effect after he left by das 
 Minas, Galway, and Noyelles. For his own part he was, 
 he asseverated, willing to serve as a simple volunteer. 
 His real anxiety, he professed, w^as that the Allies, under 
 whatever commander or commanders, should adopt a 
 definite policy for the campaign, and wait upon the 
 enemy without hazarding a set battle in the open field. 
 
 When he understood that neither the post of com- 
 mander-in-chief nor any independent command was 
 available for him in Castile, and that his colleagues were 
 not favourable to his views of strategy, he decided to 
 
VII THE KING'S AVERSION 117 
 
 withdraw. He had for some time past been of opinion 
 there were " generals enough, and that he might well be 
 spared to return to his cabin." Lord Stanhoj)e supposes 
 he signified his intention in the confident belief that he 
 would not be allowed to accomplish it ; he must in any 
 case have been much disappointed at the eagerness with 
 which his departure was sanctioned. It produced a 
 general sense of relief. He had raised up enemies on all 
 sides by his dogmatism, the refusal of his confidence, and 
 the fluency of his biting pen and tongue. King Charles 
 seldom won affection. Galway, who was not hypercriti- 
 cal, said of him, with Marlborough's approval, that nobod}^ 
 who did his duty could please him. It was not to be ex- 
 pected that Peterborough would catch his fancy, while for 
 the English general he was an example of ingratitude, 
 villainies, and foolish ill-breeding. The correspondence 
 between Peterborough and Stanhope reveals an intensity 
 of anger against him which the former was certain 
 not to labour to hide. Charles of Austria was to him at 
 the best but a convenient instrument of British policy, 
 and less convenient, probably, than the Duke of Savoy 
 might have been. Too evidently he felt no personal 
 loyalty for him. He undervalued his bravery and sense 
 of duty, and had no indulgence for his pride and pre- 
 judices. Charles's minister at the Court of St. James, 
 the Count of Gallas, was instructed to offer a solemn 
 remonstrance on one occasion ; on another, Mr. Walpole, 
 Stanhope's secretary, presented to Queen Anne a vigorous 
 letter of complaint against him from the King. The 
 latter grievance was of old standing, of earlier origin 
 even than the French siege of Barcelona, where we have 
 seen how Methuen speaks of the ill-will he had excited. 
 
ii8 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 But if Charles was outraged by Peterborough's criticisms, 
 to the ministers of Charles, against whom they had 
 always been poured out in a torrent, he was sure to be 
 still more odious. He perceived that Lichtenstein, 
 Uhlfeldt, and the rest were stolid, dogged, and ex- 
 tortionate. So they were, and Godolphin thought the 
 same of them; but Peterborough took positive pleasure in 
 publishing his thoughts abroad. When men in authority 
 were disagreeable persons, ill-bred, selfish, arrogant, 
 stupid, he said out loud that they were so. Others, who 
 only thought it, grudged him the pleasure of his candour. 
 He was an indefatigable correspondent, and his very 
 frank letters to friends at home were too sparkling to be 
 kept for private consumption. Thus, Walsh wrote to 
 Pope in September, 1 706, that Lord Wharton had been 
 showing him a letter from a certain great general in 
 Spain. W^alsh's account of it, half jesting and half 
 serious, was that he would have that general recalled, as 
 it was impossible a man with so much wit could be fit 
 to command an army or do any other business. Peter- 
 borough never dissembled that he found nothing to 
 admire in Galway's strategy, that he regarded his delay 
 in the occupation of Madrid as a proof of incapacity. 
 Notoriously he despised das Minas. Even the intimacy 
 with Stanhope no longer was what it once had been ; as 
 Methuen predicted a short time before. Stanhope was 
 becoming uneasy under the impossible task of steering 
 between his friend and the Court so as not to disoblige 
 both. 
 
 The antipathy he had aroused among his fellow-workers 
 in Spain marred his usefulness. It would not necessarily 
 have been fatal to his position if he had retained the 
 
VII MARLBOROUGH'S AND GODOLPHIN'S 119 
 
 confidence of his own Government ; its loss rendered 
 him impossil)le. The English ministers were equally 
 tired of his invectives against the Austrians and of theirs 
 against him. Marlborough, who virtually was minister 
 of war as well as commander-in-chief, wrote to Godol- 
 phin on June 13th of the plan for an expedition from 
 Spain to raise the siege of Turin, in a tone implying a 
 full understanding of the strained relations between him 
 and them. " The Duke of Savoy has desired that Lord 
 Peterborough may go with the succours. The King of 
 Spain, I suppose, will not be sorry to part with him, as 
 his lordship will be naturally willing enough to go, if he 
 does not suspect that it will make the King of Spain 
 easy." Godolphin, it has been supposed, continued to 
 be dissatisfied with Peterborough's postponement of the 
 Savoy expedition to the invasion of Catalonia. He was 
 the angrier at the trouble caused by the strifes with 
 Charles and Charles's Germans that Peterborough had 
 weakly thrown aside his policy in deference to the wishes 
 of these, on his own showing, despicable persons. At 
 any rate by July his as well as Marlborough's impatience 
 of the petulance on both sides was become explosive. 
 He wrote on July 18th : " A letter from my Lord Peter- 
 borough of a very old date from Barcelona is full of 
 extraordinary flights and artificial turns. But one may 
 see by it that there is room for anything that has been 
 thought or said of his conduct there ; and at the same 
 time, by that and other letters of more credit, nothing ever 
 was so weak, so shameful, and so unaccountable in every 
 point as the conduct of the Prince de Lichtenstein and 
 the rest of the King of Spain's German followers." 
 Marlborough answered from Helchin on August 16th in 
 
PETERBOROUGH 
 
 language which, like Godolphin's, condemned the Austrian 
 councillors as well, but indicated extreme dissatisfaction 
 with Peterborough. " I agree with you that the Ger- 
 mans that are with King Charles are good for nothing ; 
 but I believe the anger and aversion he has for Lord 
 Peterborough is the greatest cause for taking the resolu- 
 tion of going to Saragossa, which I am afraid will prove 
 fatal ; for Mr. Crowe tells me he once said to him that 
 he would not accept of health from Lord Peterborough. 
 I suppose this expression is better in Spanish than in 
 English" — meaning thereby that an Englishman would 
 have borrowed a more positive phrase from the Athan- 
 asian creed. It has been plausibly surmised that 
 Richards, whose diary shows that he was become 
 estranged from Peterborough, was the agent in turning 
 Marlborough and Godolphin against him. He quitted 
 Spain on July 1 3th, and on his way visited Marlborough 
 at Helchin. Towards the end of August he was in 
 England, and had interviews with Godolphin. It may 
 easily be believed that he fomented the prejudices of 
 both, but the dates of their correspondence prove how 
 firmly rooted already was the sentiment. Both had 
 for months past been of the opinion expressed by 
 Godolphin on August 24th : " Lord Peterborough is both 
 useless and grievous there, and is preparing to be as 
 troublesome here whenever he is called home." The 
 next month Marlborough, in the frankness of his corre- 
 spondence with his duchess, ejaculates : " Lord Peter- 
 borough should not be consulted. I do not think much 
 ceremony ought to be used in removing him from a place 
 where he has hazarded the loss of the whole country." 
 Yet almost simultaneoush^ the Queen, acting, it may 
 
VI r DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH'S FRIENDSHIP 121 
 
 be presumed, at the instance of her minister, had 
 publicly commended Peterborough. Lord Barrymore 
 had accused Peterborough to her of having ruined his 
 foot regiment by taking away its best officers for his 
 new cavalry. She replied that she had every reason to 
 believe everything Lord Peterborough did was well 
 done, and she would change nothing. Marlborough him- 
 self had in June been warmly complimenting Peter- 
 borough, and with apparent sincerity. For a long time 
 his relations and those of his wife with Peterborough 
 and his wife had been demonstratively friendly. Lut- 
 trell notes that on December 20th, 1706, the countess 
 " treated the Duke of Marlborough and several general 
 officers." She frequently asked, and he commonly 
 was ready to grant, favours in the way of military 
 patronage, and Peterborough's letters to the duchess 
 continued to breathe entire faith in her goodwill. 
 He sent her an enthusiastic message in June upon the 
 tidings of the battle of Ramillies, "which has cleared our 
 way to Madrid," and she reciprocated his panegyric upon 
 the duke's victories by " owning the successes in Spain 
 to be the occasion of my lord duke's good fortune." 
 Playfully he put in a plea for the gardener's place at 
 Blenheim, if he should have the luck to return to 
 England. He dilated to her on his troubles from 
 German folly, and from the everlasting struggle of the 
 King's ministers against the interest of their master. 
 The tone of her replies was constantly sympathetic; 
 and meanwhile she and all his admiring colleagues were 
 plotting hard to ruin him without risk to themselves. 
 
 A council of ministers and generals met in the camp on 
 August 9th, and unanimously approved Peterborough's 
 
122 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 withdrawal from Spain for a season. The motives publicl}' 
 assigned were the conveyance of aid to the Duke of Savoy 
 and an attack in the course of his return upon Minorca. 
 His instructions from England seemed to justify a visit 
 to Italy for the former purpose ; the latter enterprise he 
 had been requested to undertake by the King before he 
 left Valencia. But an additional, and in the King's 
 judgment a more urgent object for his journey was 
 recommended less ostentatiously. Charles hoped that he 
 might be able to raise a loan of £100,000 at Genoa on 
 the credit of the royal domains in Spain, backed by das 
 Minas as representing Portugal and by the presumed 
 authorisation of the English Treasury. The Austro- 
 Spanish Court w^s constantly embarrassed for money, 
 and the financial relations between it and Peterborough 
 throughout were exceedingly complicated. Queen 
 Anne's Government, with the main financial responsi- 
 bility upon it of a great war raging at once in the 
 Low Countries, Spain, and Italy, could not satisfy 
 the manifold calls upon its funds. Marlborough, being 
 dictator at Whitehall, insisted upon being served first ; 
 Spain received only driblets, and of them the army of 
 Portugal and Castile doubtless absorbed most. Such 
 part as reached the eastern provinces seems to have 
 usually come to Peterborough, who looked upon it as 
 primarily intended for the subsistence of his Englishmen. 
 He resented, as he told Godolphin, the expectation 
 of the Court that the British Treasury was to fortify 
 and provision every place, and even to buy the King's 
 meat and clothes. He insisted that it was matter of 
 charity, not of obligation, for him to keep the 
 King of Spain's Germans and Spaniards from starving, 
 
THE MILITAR V CHEST 
 
 as he assured Stanhope at the same time they must, 
 if he should not find ways to support them at the 
 hazard of his own fortune. When money reached him, 
 from whatever source, he treated it as at his discretionary 
 disposal, and to the indignation of Charles and his Court 
 would not recognise their independent right to a share. 
 He kept no accurate accounts, for which he afterwards 
 suffered. Private funds belonging to himself he declared 
 he spent to enable the troops to march, and wrote to 
 Stanhope that he had laid out £10,000 of his OAvn 
 money since he came to Valencia. Anything he for- 
 warded to the Court he had a habit of regarding as a gift 
 whatever its original source. In his letter of July 10th 
 to Charles he said : " I see how much your Majesty is in 
 want of money. I have some little come from England, 
 and will send it immediately to Saragossa." He had 
 referred to this remittance, five thousand pistoles, in a 
 letter to Stanhope as " a good sum of my own, of which 
 the King and his troops shall have every farthing, that 
 1 may see if anything can touch a German heart." 
 Whether the money on this occasion were his own or a 
 subsidy from the Treasury can scarcely be ascertained 
 from the language he uses ; in either case he would have 
 considered his bestowal of it upon the King as an act 
 of personal bounty. There may be ground for a charge 
 that he grudged the diversion to objects outside his im- 
 mediate command of the meagre resources supplied to 
 him from home. The accusations, however, brought 
 against him in England that he intercepted for illegiti- 
 mate purposes £103,000 which had been sent for the 
 payment of the troops, and at Barcelona by Methuen, 
 who judged him suspiciously, that he pretended a want 
 
24 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 of money, parted with little, and wrote continually for 
 more, while he was " known to have a great deal," rest 
 on no adequate foundation. Now at any rate he was 
 ready to play the part of a financial Providence on 
 behalf of the Austrians. 
 
 He left Guadalajara the day after the council with an 
 escort of eighty Royal Dragoons. When he reached 
 Huete he heard of a calamity which had befallen him 
 the day before at that place. He had not known how 
 brief would be his stay in New Castile, and his baggage, 
 with a supply of provisions, was following him from 
 Valencia, a train of sixteen wagons and forty-two mules 
 guarded by forty horse, a hundred and fifty foot, 
 and two guns. A colonel of Philip's, pretending to 
 be on Charles's side, took the troop unawares, and cap- 
 tured property of Peterborough's worth eight to ten 
 thousand pistoles, or .£6000 as he reckoned it to Stan- 
 hope. His remaining wardrobe consisted of one suit of 
 clothes and six shirts, but his chief regret was for his 
 barbs and his cheese. Galway and Stanhope shared his 
 misfortune, for eight of the wagons contained eatables 
 and drink for them, which "good management" had 
 lost. In a panic the citizens of Huete offered him com- 
 pensation. After his magnificent fashion he accepted it 
 in the form of enough corn for the army for six weeks, 
 which he made them forward to the camp of the Allies. 
 On his journey he met as usual with adventures. The 
 legends of them, embodied and embellished in, not in- 
 A^ented for, Carleton's Memoirs, anybody is free to 
 believe or disbelieve at pleasure. A lady lodging for 
 the sake of safety in a convent at Huete, was en- 
 amoured of his fame and let him know she wished to 
 
A COURTEOUS ANTAGONIST 125 
 
 see him. As the abbess interposed difficulties he had 
 to tlireaten an exi)ropriation of the nunnery as the 
 site of a fort, which Carleton says he was directed 
 to build or plan, and only the united prayers of the 
 Superior and her fair pensioner could move him from 
 his purpose. The road from Valencia was no longer 
 safe. A party of convalescent English soldiers had, on 
 the morning of Peterborough's arrival, been murdered 
 by the Campilio villagers, and in the church clothes 
 were recognised which had belonged to the victims. 
 On the evidence he hanged the sacristan to his own 
 knocker, and then galloped to a hole on the hillside 
 down which he heard the bodies had been flung, in 
 time to rescue one wounded soldier who had clung to 
 the side of the rock. On his arrival two days after at 
 Valencia he rejoiced to find all his documents, which had 
 been captured with his baggage. He had been soliciting 
 Stanhope's diplomatic intervention for the recovery of 
 Lieutenant Ronan, his aide-de-camp, and his papers from 
 the Duke of Berwick, which could, he said, be of no further 
 use to the Duke when read. But Berwick chivalrously 
 returned them unopened. They were hereafter to prove 
 very useful. He received also despatches from home, 
 couched in a very different tone from Godolphin's and 
 Marlborough's private correspondence. In excellent 
 spirits he wrote to Stanhope : "As to my own affairs, 
 they cannot be in better circumstances. The city made 
 a public compliment on my behalf, in conjunction with 
 my Lord Marlborough ; and my Lord Godolphin sends 
 me word that my commission for Vice -Admiral of 
 England is passed, but they do not send it me for fear 
 of tempting me from the land service, where, he is 
 
126 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 pleased to say, they think me so necessary. I had 
 been undone if we had more success and my Lord 
 Marlborough less." His Valencians too continued to 
 applaud and love him, though in disgrace with the King. 
 So popular was he that, at his personal request, assisted 
 by a salve of fresh dowers which he generously bestowed 
 on the convent, the ecclesiastical authorities condoned 
 the temporary elopement of two nuns with a couple of 
 his officers. The erring vestals were excused the normal 
 starvation to death inside a stone wall, while the seducers 
 had already secured their own safety by flight. 
 
 His stay at Valencia was broken by an excursion to 
 Alicante towards the end of August. In July he had 
 sent Gorges against it with thirteen hundred foot and 
 two hundred horse, while Leake was to support the attack 
 from the sea. By August 8th the town was in the hands 
 of the Allies. The sailors having already entered, the 
 citizens are alleged to have opened the gates to Gorges 
 that he might protect them from maltreatment. He was 
 accused of having inveigled them into depositing in the 
 great church their most precious goods, which he then 
 sold by auction for the benefit of his troops. Peter- 
 borough arrived on the scene a little later, while the 
 governor Mahoni was still being besieged in the castle, 
 and on hearing the townsmen's complaint indig- 
 nantly denounced the treachery of which they had 
 been victims. He had brought a similar indictment, 
 in a letter of July 20th to Stanhope, against the 
 admirals of having plundered Cartagena " that admitted 
 them with all imaginable civility and gallantry," a 
 proceeding, he affirmed, as new as scandalous. On 
 September 8th Mahoni capitulated, more fortunate 
 
VII THE BALEARIC EXPEDITION 127 
 
 than subsequently was Richards tlie diarist, who was 
 blown up in the citadel when governor, but before the 
 surrender of the citadel Peterborough was gone from 
 Spain. He had been preparing for an expedition against 
 the Balearic Isles when orders came for the departure 
 of a large squadron to the West Indies, and the remainder 
 of the fleet he thought inadequate for the attempt. In 
 vain he endeavoured to persuade the admirals to pay no 
 heed to the instructions ; in vain he sent a ship home 
 with the utmost and most pressing arguments for 
 stopping the West India squadron. The ministers were 
 obdurate, and so were the officers, though they all allowed 
 "the orders were improper, and might prove fatal in our 
 present circumstances." They had not, and are not to 
 be censured for not having, either the will or the courage 
 to disobey them. He told Stanhope that the admirals 
 were jealous of him and of his commission to command 
 them ; and a letter from him on August 25th, praying 
 Leake not to resign though he had been appointed to 
 the joint command of the fleet, points to the same 
 conclusion. He and his colleagues were at cross 
 purposes to such an extent that undertakings which 
 seemed to, or were made for, him impracticable with the 
 available resources became practicable when he was 
 removed. Thus, on September 13th Leake despatched 
 the squadron of nine ships to the West Indies which 
 had occasioned Peterborough's refusal to conduct the 
 Balearic expedition. The same day he sailed for Iviza, 
 which tendered its submission, and a popular rising 
 forced the governor of Majorca to capitulate at Palma on 
 September 28th. Leake had thus the glory of a conquest 
 which, but for defects of temper, Peterborough might 
 
128 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 as happily have accomplished. His admirers have 
 reasonable ground for their allegations that Leake 
 showed throughout the naval campaign of 1706 either 
 indecision, incapacity, or sulkiness : they can contend 
 that by his tardiness he nearly risked the loss of Barce- 
 lona ; but Peterborough by other errors surrendered 
 opportunities he ought to have seized, and allowed 
 spiteful statesmen to represent Leake as the true hero 
 of the war in eastern Spain. 
 
 The Balearic Isles being cut out of the programme, 
 Peterborough reverted to the original arrangement 
 which directed his steps first to North Italy ; but it 
 was necessary to provide for the welfare of Valencia 
 and of the force he had consolidated for its defence. 
 For this purpose he convoked a council of his fourteen 
 senior officers at Alicante on September 6th. Galway 
 and Charles, grievously pressed by Berwick, would have 
 liked to denude Alicante of its garrison of nine hundred 
 men. From England, as well as by the King's advisers, 
 it had been suggested that the army of Valencia might 
 supply aid also for the Duke of Savoy. The council, 
 under Peterborough's guidance, resolved that, for the 
 sake both of the safety of the whole coast from 
 Alicante to Tortosa, and of the communications between 
 the army in Castile and the sea, the military strength 
 of Valencia must be in no way weakened. Further, 
 the council added its approval of the general's 
 temporary absence in Italy, hoping, like the council 
 at Guadalajara, that he would bring back some money 
 for the replenishment of its military chest. The 
 troops in Valencia had received no pay for months, and 
 in their destitution they could not be restrained from 
 
DESIGNS UPON TOULON 129 
 
 plundering the peasantry, to the odium of the Austrian 
 cause. 
 
 Thus fortified with official consents, and having 
 secured the interests immediately in his charge, he was 
 able, as it seemed, with a good conscience to take a short 
 holiday. His restless nature, which was capable of fits 
 of vehement labour, demanded intervals of idleness. He 
 knew and asserted that in Spain he was for the present 
 superfluous. He cannot but have suspected that he was 
 absolutely detrimental. He might well believe that his 
 merits would become more visible at a distance. He 
 was sick of a country where the only tolerable thing, he 
 wrote to the Duchess of Marlborough from on board the 
 "Resolution" on September 4th, was her sex; and perhaps 
 he may have been a little sick of that also. He had, 
 moreover, much to discuss with the Duke of Savoy. One 
 notable project he had conceived or reconstructed for a 
 combined invasion of France from Spain and from Pied- 
 mont, with the assistance of a covering British fleet. The 
 authorship of the idea, which Godolphin approved, has 
 been disputed. Peterborough assumed it, though touches, 
 he admitted, were subsequently added by the Duke of 
 Savoy and Prince Eugene. Galway in the House of 
 Lords, in 1711, ascribed to Marlborough and the Duke 
 of Savoy's ministers, the Count of Brian9on and Count 
 Maffey, a similar plan for an attack upon Toulon by 
 troops from Savoy and a fleet from England. Marl- 
 borough on the same occasion appeared to claim the 
 merit of the scheme. He described it as one of the 
 most effectual means to finish the war, though he denied 
 that the Duke of Savoy had authorised or desired 
 Peterborough to arrange for the disabling of the army 
 
I30 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 in Spain for active operations there by the detachment of 
 five thousand men on the side of Roussillon. Whatever 
 the exact source or final shape of the project, which 
 Alexander Cunningham, the historian and diplomatist, 
 says he himself heard Sir Isaac Newton discuss and 
 recommend so early as in 1705, Peterborough identified 
 himself with it generally. Now and the next year he 
 went to Italy with the intent to organise its execution. 
 
 He sailed in the " Resolution." It was the flagship of 
 his second son Henry, now about twenty-five, a gallant 
 sailor, and silent member for Malmesbury, who was 
 acting commodore of a squadron of frigates. In con- 
 formity with the decision of the council of war he took 
 no troops from Valencia. Reports, which, it appeared, 
 were premature, of a signal victory of the Duke of 
 Savoy in a sally from Turin, had saved him the trouble 
 of trying to collect them from Catalonia or elsewhere. The 
 same story had reached England from Alicante, and 
 added to the perplexity among the Queen's ministers as 
 to the true motive of Peterborough's journey. Godol- 
 phin wrote to Marlborough that the victory had left 
 nothing apparently for Peterborough to do, unless to 
 enlist a few German troopers. He must have gone, 
 therefore, for some deeper purpose. Godolphin said he 
 had instructed the British Resident at Turin to ascertain 
 the subject of the Earl's conferences with the Duke. A 
 voyage of seven days brought him to Genoa. There 
 he learnt that the rumours had been corroborated 
 by events. The French had been obliged to raise the 
 siege of Turin, and the Piedmontese were in a mood for 
 striking a return blow. Though destitute of any 
 credentials for the purpose, with his habitual and 
 
VII RETURN TO VALENCIA 131 
 
 splendid audacity he consulted with the Duke at 
 Turin, and with Prince Eugene at Pavia, on the grand 
 joint expedition against Toulon. So excellent a judge 
 as the Prince was struck by his military sagacity. He 
 l)oiTowed the £100,000 at Genoa, obtaining the accom- 
 modation for .£1000 above the current rate of exchange. 
 To effect the loan, again without leave, he engaged the 
 credit of the British Treasury as well as that of Charles, 
 the Portuguese Government, and his own. In 1711 
 he complained to the House of Lords that he had been 
 held personally liable. The British Government pro- 
 tested the bills drawn by him in favour of a merchant 
 who had £1400 of his, and the merchant, he as- 
 serted, had insisted upon a right to detain the money. 
 For the moment he was disturbed by no fears on that 
 account. He had done the work for which he came, and 
 he intermingled with his labours a fair measure of 
 enjoyment. After a sojourn made up, he boasted to 
 Stanhope, of happy days, he determined to return to 
 Spain. He was back with the money and his Toulon 
 scheme on December 27th at Barcelona. If St. Simon 
 were well informed, as probably he was not, he brought 
 besides the Genoese loan a hundred and fifty thousand 
 pistoles, part of the contributions extorted by Eugene 
 from the Milanese. 
 
 From Barcelona he made his way to Valencia by 
 January 10th, 1707. Being incommoded in his foot he 
 was obliged, he said, and doubtless was freely quoted as 
 having said it, to travel the pace of a Spaniard, of one, 
 he explained, that was not going to rob nor was flying 
 from an enemy. While he was in Italy he had heard of 
 a series of casualties which had brought the Court and 
 
132 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 army from Castile. The Allies in three divisions, 
 independently led by das Minas, Galway, and Noyelles, 
 had moved from Guadalajara on August 11th, the day 
 after Peterborough left them, to Chinchon. In that 
 position, which was more directly on the route to 
 Valencia, they lingered till September. Finding them- 
 selves far outnumbered by Berwick, who had twenty-six 
 thousand men, on the 9th of that month they began their 
 retreat towards the sea, and followed closely by the French 
 marshal reached the province of Valencia on the 28th. 
 Their total by that time was twelve thousand. Stanhope 
 wrote to Peterborough on October 1 2th that things were 
 going "from bad to worse," and a few days later Noyelles 
 followed in the same strain, lamenting the want of "good 
 conduct." Nothing remained to the Allies in Castile but 
 Cuenca and Eequena, and they were shortly captured. 
 Murcia was recovered by Berwick, who compelled 
 Cartagena to capitulate. Peterborough, then on his way 
 to the King, satirically expressed his surprise that things 
 had not progressed "de mieux en mieux," when so dis- 
 agreeable and useless a person as he was out of the way. 
 He found himself as welcome as we may be certain 
 he considered he deserved to be. Noyelles, Zinzerling, 
 Stanhope, and the King had, as appears from his state- 
 ments, written to hasten his return. During his absence 
 they had all discovered they were as unpleasant company 
 for each other as he had been for them. Galway, in 
 addition to his weariness and wounds, had been vexed by 
 the superior influence of Noyelles with the King. He 
 was more anxious than ever to be relieved, and he re- 
 garded Peterborough as his destined successor. Stanhope 
 wrote on October 24th to Godolphin that Galway had 
 
A DEFENSIVE POLICY 133 
 
 been fully resolved to resign in favour of Peterborough 
 when Peterborough should have come back from Italy. 
 Godolphin in November repeated to Marlborough with 
 much expressed amazement the intelligence that Gal- 
 way had recommended him as "the properest person 
 to succeed him in the care of the whole." Though 
 Queen Anne's ministers, as was to be anticipated, 
 did not accept the suggestion, he continued to exert 
 much weight in Charles's councils of war. At two in 
 particular, held on January 15th and February 4th, 1707, 
 he took a part which subsequent events rendered his- 
 torical. Already, if his memory is to be trusted against 
 Gal way's forgetfulness of the request seven years after- 
 wards, he had urged Galway to send five thousand men 
 into Catalonia. They were to make a diversion thence 
 on the Roussillon frontier, in concert with the Duke of 
 Savoy's contemplated attack on Toulon. Now, in the 
 council of January 15th, he explained in a written speech 
 the policy of which that formed part. His view was that 
 the war should be offensive on the side of Italy. In 
 Spain defensive operations alone were, he argued, ad- 
 visable. Aragon, as it had proved, could defend itself. 
 Valencia and Catalonia were safe, so long as the allied 
 army was kept within their borders, and while a British 
 fleet was at hand to guard the coast and convey supplies. 
 A march to Madrid promised little advantage and 
 threatened terrible dangers. Means of subsistence 
 in Castile were scanty. The enemy, with his clear 
 superiority in cavalry, would continually harass the 
 Allies if they took the direct Valencia route. By way 
 of Murcia they would have to cross the Tagus without 
 pontoons and surmount its cliffs. They might be forced 
 
134 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 to fight on the plain of Aranjuez, where Berwick's 
 horsemen would beat upon them with a shock against 
 which their feeble artillery train was incapable of protect- 
 ing them. The possession of Madrid without a victory 
 was, as had been found the year before, of small benefit. 
 A defeat would lose them Catalonia, which the French 
 in Roussillon were preparing to invade vigorously. 
 Later on, and after reflection, he sketched an alternative 
 programme to suit statesmanship determined at all 
 events upon a forward movement. He explained it in a 
 letter of April 21st, written from Turin, four days before 
 the battle of Almanza, to his trusted friend d'Assumar, 
 the Portuguese minister with King Charles. His plan, 
 he said, was to defend the entrance into Valencia with 
 two thousand horse and eight thousand foot. With 
 eleven thousand foot and five thousand horse he would 
 have reached the head of the Tagus by a stolen march. 
 It might with alertness have been possible to put the 
 Tagus between the Allies and the enemy, and so have 
 hindered the junction of the reinforcements on their 
 way from France. The result would have been to 
 cut off Madrid from relief, and Philip must have fled 
 a second time to Burgos. But in this letter of April, as 
 in the winter, he showed himself wholly convinced of 
 the madness of staking the crown of Spain upon the 
 chance of a gain so ambiguous as the possession of 
 Madrid, and upon the contingency of victory in an 
 unequal battle. 
 
 He argued to no purpose, though for reasons of their 
 own Charles, Noyelles, and Lichtenstein were against a 
 second invasion of Castile, In March the King with his 
 Court and Noyelles went to Barcelona. Galway's and 
 
VII DIFFERENCES WITH STANHOPE 135 
 
 Stanhope's partisans declared that Charles broke up the 
 army to its permanent injury by taking five thousand 
 troops with him. Peterborough said he withdrew no more 
 than about two hundred miserable Spanish dragoons. In 
 any case Stanhope, who diplomatically represented the 
 British Government, and Galway, acting on instructions 
 from home, were resolute to attempt Madrid once more, 
 whether with or without the King. Peterborough's own 
 account hereafter was that the judgment of the King, of 
 his generals, of his ministers, and of himself, with which 
 the Duke of Savoy's and Prince Eugene's advice to 
 Charles agreed, was overruled at the councils of war })y 
 one man. That was " the Queen's minister, who gave her 
 positive orders to march to Madrid, and not divide the 
 forces." Stanhope's letter of January 15th to Hedges, 
 written after the conference, is to the same general 
 effect. He excused himself for having protested in her 
 Majesty's name against a defensive war " in presence of 
 my Lord Peterborough, who has characters from her 
 Majesty so much superior to mine, and from whom it 
 was my fortune to differ in opinion on this occasion." 
 He appended a significant intimation of a doubt whether 
 Peterborough's policy might not after all be right. He 
 was not certain but that some infantry might not ad- 
 vantageously be spared from the allied army if the 
 Duke of Savoy and the Emperor were really meaning to 
 make an expedition by land against Toulon, and if the 
 British fleet were instructed to assist. Such a detach- 
 ment of force from the main body for the support of 
 Peterborough's offensive Italian strategy must, in the 
 attenuated state of Gal way's army, have implied the con- 
 tinuance of the defensive tactics in Valencia for which 
 
136 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 he pleaded. Public opinion in England was, however, 
 impatient at the postponement of any decisive return 
 for the expenditure in Spain. Marlborough is supposed 
 to have approved, if he did not dictate, a plan of 
 campaign which would have been admirable if he, and 
 not Galway, could have been employed to carry it out 
 The result was the advance of Galway into Murcia on 
 April 10th, and the bloody defeat on April 25th at 
 Almanza. Peterborough's gloomiest auguries turned 
 out true, and the wisdom of his counsels fully justified. 
 His bitter comment on the catastrophe was aimed first 
 at his former friend Stanhope. Writing on July 22nd 
 to Marlborough, whom he did not or affected not to 
 suspect of having had any part in recommending the 
 policy, he exclaims: "Mr. Stanhope's politics have 
 proved very fatal, having produced our misfortunes and 
 prevented the greatest successes." 
 
 Peterborough's disputes with Charles and his German 
 councillors originally impelled his own Government to 
 remove him. Their recent favour for him had the 
 same effect. Freind quotes a saying of his which may 
 readily be credited, that he never met with the least 
 difficulty from the King when he himself was present 
 with his Majesty. Misunderstandings abounded when 
 they were apart. His personal influence could at Val- 
 encia be exercised directly, and was for the time pre- 
 dominant. The impression was so far lasting as to relieve 
 the London rumour in the course of the spring that 
 the King had appointed him general of all his forces in 
 Catalonia and Valencia from the air of mere paradox 
 it wears to those who recollect only the ebullitions of 
 royal anger against him. But Godolphin and Marl- 
 
VII RECALLED 137 
 
 borough were not to be conciliated by a restoration of 
 amiability which proceeded from Peterborough's advo- 
 cacy of views as vexatious to the Queen's ministers as 
 they were pleasing to the Austrian Court. His attitude 
 at the councils of January and February was distasteful 
 both to Marlborough and to Godolphin. For Godol- 
 phin the last straw would be the presentation at 
 Whitehall of the Genoa bills for £100,000. It may 
 have been hoped, perhaps, that he would tire of his 
 equivocal position and deprive himself by a voluntary 
 resignation of the vantage-ground of the grievance of 
 an abrupt recall. As he stayed on, he received on Feb- 
 ruary 22nd a despatch discharging him from his official 
 duties as Admiral, General, and High Commissioner 
 with the King. Simultaneously arrived another an- 
 nouncing the appointment of Galway as Commander-in- 
 Chief of all the British forces in Spain. Peterborough 
 would not take the broadest hints. He kept his place 
 at the King's Court, and his authority with the Yalencian 
 population, until a missive came from England on March 
 14th formally summoning him home. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WAS HE AN IMPOSTOR? 
 
 In the narrative here given of the campaigns of Cata- 
 lonia and Valencia, Peterborough, as in other biographies 
 of him, occupies the foreground. His heroic figure, in 
 the character now of Achilles, now o( Ulysses, now of 
 Alcibiades, overshadows all besides. Whenever he ap- 
 pears everybody else is obscured. He holds aloof or is 
 disregarded, and there is universal failure. He inter- 
 venes, and all is prosperity. The name of Galway 
 shrinks, writes Lord Stanhope, into utter insignificance 
 when compared with his. In Lord Stanhope's eyes he 
 had a talent for partisan warfare which has very seldom 
 been equalled, and hardly ever exceeded. Lord Stanhope 
 accounts him courageous to the verge of rashness, 
 generous to the verge of profusion, and endowed with 
 extraordinary military genius and as surprising dis- 
 interestedness. He is, in the judgment of Scott, one of 
 the most heroic characters, according to ancient ideas of 
 heroism, which occur in English history. He knows the 
 exact moment to strike, and the season for quiescence. 
 He is superhumanly prompt in action. Never was there 
 courage so reckless, or such abounding energy. He is 
 ubiquitous, riding round the walls of a beleaguered city 
 
CHAP. VIII ANOTHER VIEW 139 
 
 with a single aide-de-camp, rowing over midnight seas 
 to grasp the command of a loitering fleet and wake up 
 lethargic admirals. He is as sagacious in counsel, especi- 
 ally when closeted with himself, as in the field. If he 
 have a defect it is that he is only too crafty and far-seeing, 
 a Machiavel spoilt by a Cassandra. Had he not been 
 thwarted he might, he almost must have changed the 
 coiu'se of European history. When the danger or incon- 
 venience to the balance of power from an amalgamation 
 of the vast Spanish and Austrian dominions is con- 
 sidered, some consolation is found for the vexatious 
 phenomenon that this meteoric genius had its beams 
 intercepted and finally extinguished by a combination of 
 jealous rivalry, dull wits, sluggish tempers, and selfish 
 rapacity. 
 
 That is the glowing, rapturous picture to which Eng- 
 lish imaginations, and even English historical students, 
 have been accustomed for more than a century and a 
 half. But there is another view of the scenes of the 
 War of the Succession in which he no longer shines forth 
 as the foremost champion. It was a view not unknown 
 to politicians in the reign of Queen Anne. Since that 
 time it had remained practically in abeyance until in 
 1888 Colonel Arthur Parnell embodied it, with much 
 force and learning, in his History of the War of the Suc- 
 cession. Colonel Parnell puts different personages in 
 Peterborough's triumphant place, and either defaces or 
 obliterates him. His supplanter in the first place is 
 Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt. Prince George had 
 fought bravely under William the Third in Ireland. 
 Having subsequently turned Catholic in order to serve 
 the Emperor, he was disqualified for direct military 
 
140 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 employment in the English army, but was the better 
 qualified on the Continent. His connection, Charles 
 the Second of Spain, appointed him Viceroy of Catalonia. 
 When the War of the Succession commenced he re- 
 turned to the Peninsula with a high commission from the 
 Austrian Pretender, Charles the Third. To him the 
 capture and preservation of Gibraltar are in a great 
 measure due. There he was stationed as Charles's 
 representative when the English expedition arrived at 
 Lisbon on June 20th. In the account which sets him 
 in the front rank we find that nothing but his disquali- 
 fication as a Catholic for an English commission hindered 
 his direct appointment to the command of the expedi- 
 tion. As he must not appear, an English general 
 had to be selected to act under his guidance. Peter- 
 borough was chosen as a figure-head. On the arrival of 
 the fleet at Lisbon the Prince hastened from Gibraltar. 
 At the council of war it was on his motion that it was 
 formally resolved to attack Barcelona. To Gibraltar he 
 returned forthwith to prepare its seasoned troops for 
 joining in the undertaking. The direction of the expedi- 
 tion, we are told, was assumed by him when the fleet 
 sailed from Gibraltar. At the news of his arrival on the 
 coast of Valencia the population flocked to the shore to 
 welcome him. When Denia declared for Charles, the 
 Prince arranged for its occupation and selected Major- 
 General Basset y Ramos as commandant. Preceding the 
 fleet he called out the Miquelets. It was he whom the 
 Catalans were eager to greet and honour. When the 
 volunteer peasants were assembled he decided their 
 duties, assigning to them the investment of the city. 
 When the English generals at councils of war resisted 
 
VIII PRINCE GEORGE OF HESSE 141 
 
 the plan of a siege the Prince led the party which 
 supported it. 
 
 With dogged perseverance, and in the teeth of 
 the constant opposition of fools and knaves, as he 
 called his English adversaries, he had to try to force 
 the Allies to attempt the work for which they came. 
 Their army consisted of six thousand six hundred British 
 soldiers, two thousand five hundred Dutch, five hun- 
 dred and seventy Catalans, three thousand Miquelets, 
 and a swarm of enthusiastic countrymen. It was sup- 
 ported by a fleet of sixty-six sail of the line carrying 
 twenty-four thousand seamen and three thousand five 
 hundred guns. The garrison to which it was opposed 
 had no more than three thousand two hundred foot 
 and eight hundred horse, many of them disaffected. 
 The fortress was defended chiefly by a wall exposed 
 to artillery fire at all ranges, with small towers, a few 
 bastions, a ditch, and a low glacis. Failing in persuading 
 the English generals to cannonade the town, though 
 siege works, if not very effectual, were begun, the Prince 
 contracted his ambition. With him, and him solely, 
 it seems, originated the idea of the assault on Montjuich. 
 The fort, we are informed, was small in itself and weak. 
 It was held by no more than two hundred soldiers, and 
 was indifferently strengthened by an unfinished line 
 of bastioned advanced works. It nowise constituted a 
 citadel for Barcelona, and its capture was by no means 
 essential to the capture of the town. But he hoped that 
 success against it might encourage the Englishmen to fly 
 at higher game. He made an offer, which was accepted, 
 to conduct the assault in person. He looked after the 
 necessary preparations, and himself selected the officers. 
 
142 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 When the assault was delivered he was in command of 
 the stormers, and gave them their orders. He per- 
 ceived the importance of the occupation of the post of 
 San Bertran, half way on the steep hill-road between the 
 city and Montjuich. While he was leading in that en- 
 terprise he met his death. His fall caused such terror 
 among the troops that it nearly produced the collapse 
 of the whole undertaking. Virtually it sealed the doom 
 of the throne of Carlos Tercero. The void in the 
 conduct of the expedition made by Prince George's 
 death is represented as having been partially filled by 
 a group of successors. At Barcelona we are shoAvn 
 Richards bombarding Montjuich, Southwell advancing 
 sword in hand to the breach, Shovel directing naval 
 attacks upon the city. Petit raising batteries, prominent 
 Catalans marshalling the Miquelets, and Lichtenstein 
 acting in Prince George's place as the King's minister 
 of war. When Governor Velasco was dismayed at 
 the temper of the citizens, Charles, whose protection 
 was invoked, and Stanhope with his singular tact in 
 appeasing Spanish tumults and his knowledge of the 
 language, are seen alone on the stage. As managers 
 of the submission of the countries of Catalonia and 
 Valencia to the Austrian sovereign, various men stand 
 forth who have appeared to Peterborough's biographers 
 mere subordinates or mischief-makers. The Count of 
 Cifuentes with two thousand four hundred Miquelets 
 seized Lerida and all the other strongholds towards the 
 Catalan frontier of Aragon. In the south Joseph Nebot, 
 another bold partisan, subdued Tortosa on the Ebro, 
 and, with the help of Captain Cavendish's frigates, 
 Tarragona. In the north-east Gerona was occupied. 
 
VIII THE REAL HEROES OF VALENCIA 143 
 
 Some thirty or forty other forts were similarly reduced 
 by spontaneous Catalan efforts ; and still there is not a 
 word of the British commander-in-chief. 
 
 The story of the adhesion of Valencia to King Charles 
 in the new version is marked by the same omission. 
 Basset y Ramos is here the hero. He induced Raphael 
 Nebot, who was blockading him at Denia on behalf of 
 King Philip, to desert to the standard of King Charles. 
 Together they seized several fortified Valencian towns. 
 At last Basset y Ramos with seven hundred men 
 besieged the strong and populous city of Valencia, which 
 the inhabitants surrendered to him. In the tale of the 
 siege of San Mateo the honours are awarded exclusively 
 to Colonel John Jones, the governor. When it is relieved 
 by the Tortosa garrison it is remarked incidentally that 
 the relieving force was accompanied by Peterborough, 
 who happened to join it as it was starting. Praise is 
 given to Basset y Ramos for his conduct of the defence 
 of Valencia against las Torres and los Arcos. The 
 fact of its relief by Peterborough, whose name is coupled 
 with Killigrew's as if they had been joint generals, 
 is noted with no comment, unless that he and his 
 men obtained at Valencia very comfortable quarters. 
 Mahoni's capitulation at Murviedro is stated without 
 particulars. All that marvellous medley of knight- 
 errantry, Quixotism, and gaminerie, known as the war 
 of Valencia, which has fascinated such diverse natures 
 as Swift's, Johnson's, Scott's, Macaulay's, is clean wiped 
 out of existence by the annihilation of its one central 
 figure. 
 
 The reader may still have hoped to stumble back on 
 the familiar track as he approaches the defence of Barce- 
 
144 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 lona against King Philip and Tess6. He will be dis- 
 appointed. He is introduced to several remarkable 
 characters. King Charles remained undaunted. His 
 ministers, Lichtenstein the secretary for war and 
 Uhlfeldt the governor, were doing their best. Colonel 
 Petit, their chief engineer, had put the fortifications into 
 an efficient condition. By Lichtenstein's orders Donegal 
 and St. Amant valiantly brought eighteen hundred 
 soldiers in boats from Gerona. The governor of Tortosa 
 sent Hamilton's foot regiment by forced marches on mules, 
 and Wills contributed a dragoon detachment from Lerida. 
 Fifteen hundred Miquelets had volunteered for the 
 walls, and five thousand burghers formed a faithful city 
 guard. Cifuentes from the hills skilfully harassed the 
 powerful French army, and cut its communications mth 
 the interior. Donegal fiercely defended Montjuich, which, 
 however, had finally to be abandoned. Prince Henry of 
 Hesse with wonderful adroitness and courage insinuated 
 four hundred Neapolitans into the town by water through 
 the blockading fleet. Uhlfeldt, Peterborough's maligned 
 bugbear, led gallant sorties. Breaches were met by 
 Petit with retrenchments, and mines with countermines. 
 When the siege was raised Cifuentes showed indefati- 
 gable activity in pursuing the retreating Frenchmen. 
 Sir John Leake himself, whose dilatoriness has often 
 been criticised, has no fault found with him on that 
 score. On the contrary, he is extolled for having ac- 
 complished one of the most important instances on 
 record of the naval relief of a beleaguered fortress. The 
 only man of all officially associated with this series of 
 events never once mentioned for good in the revised 
 account is he to whom it has been the practice to 
 
VIII TRAITOR AND COWARD 145 
 
 attribute the entire glory of them. More inglorious still 
 would seem to have been the commander-in-chiefs part 
 in the following campaign. In it he is a mere cipher. 
 Of his share as the directing strategist in the creation of 
 a line of communications between Valencia and Castile 
 there is not a word. He sailed on September 15th, and his 
 career in Spain was at an end. His reappearance in 
 Valencia from Italy in January, 1 707, is passed over with 
 the remark that he was necessarily superseded by his 
 senior, Galway, in the command of the English troops. 
 
 The banishment of that shining personality from 
 scenes in which it has dominated for more than a cen- 
 tury and a half is not accomplished by means merely of 
 negatives. So soon as August 5th, in Altea Bay, Peter- 
 borough is alleged to have "manifested a repugnance 
 to active operations," because he wished, it is said, to 
 divert the expedition to Italy. The successive councils 
 of war at which his officers protested against a siege were, 
 it is hinted, called by him to justify his dislike for fighting. 
 When he agreed to attack Barcelona before marching to 
 Valencia, he, from " cowardice, disaffection, and jealousy 
 of the Prince," gave his confidant, Eichards, orders to 
 amuse the King by a mock show of activity. He violated, 
 it is declared, as "no real soldier, bred in habits of dis- 
 cipline, could," by his project for proceeding to North 
 Italy, the Queen's explicit instructions which commanded 
 him first to attempt Barcelona and then Cadiz. He told 
 a falsehood when he pretended that private letters from 
 ministers, alluding to the difficulties of the Duke of Savoy, 
 amounted to orders to go and aid him. He promised 
 Prince George the fleet's help in the siege, and as joint 
 admiral protested against its grant by Shovel. He affected 
 
 L 
 
146 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 loyalty to King Charles, while his private letters to the 
 Duke of Savoy convict him of a perfidious understanding, 
 which in one of them took the open shape of a desire to 
 substitute the Duke for Charles on the Spanish throne. 
 He was regarded in the army and fleet with contempt 
 for his design of deserting the Catalans, and was properly 
 classified by Prince George with "fools or knaves." He 
 consented to the assault on Montjuich, which he disliked, 
 as he disliked fighting of any kind whenever it could be 
 avoided, only because he became sensible of the indignation 
 of the camp, and foresaw it would be reproduced in Eng- 
 land. Instead of mourning with sincerity the death of 
 Prince George he WTote to Godolphin on October 23rd, 
 thatit wasof the greatest importance for the public success, 
 for the people w^ould never submit to German governors. 
 He did not care for the harm he might do to the cause 
 provided he could wreak his spite on anything German. 
 He cherished a grudge against Charlemont for his gal- 
 lantry at Montjuich, and for that crime shortly afterwards 
 deprived him of his regiment by "a shabby subterfuge." 
 He is represented as defending the province of Valencia 
 ingloriously, and as having loitered in Valencia city from 
 mere love of ease and pleasure. His refusal to comply 
 with King Charles's wish that he should fall upon Tessa's 
 lines at Barcelona in April, 1706, was simply "want of 
 courage," though he shielded it behind the resolutions of 
 a council of war. He did all he could to thwart the 
 prayers of Charles and the doggedly loyal plans of 
 Leake for the relief of the city by the English fleet. He 
 acted a part at once treacherous and cowardly in idling 
 on the coast for a convoy for his fourteen hundred 
 troops, who, if they had been under the orders of gallant 
 
A DESERTER 147 
 
 Prince Henry, would long before have cut their own 
 way into Barcelona. Capping incapacity or perfidy with 
 a mean vanity which exposed him to the ridicule of the 
 fleet, he sought to appear as the saviour of the town by 
 lioisting his admiral's flag at the mainmast of Leake's 
 .ship. He vaunted the providence and energy by which 
 he pretended he had in his sojourn of two months at 
 Valencia paved a safe and abundantly supplied road 
 to Madrid. It was all make-believe, as he practically 
 had to confess. Instead of striving to compensate for 
 <leficiencies, he frittered aw^ay the strength of which he 
 really could dispose on worthless enterprises. Urgent 
 requests from Galway for succour he totally neglected. 
 When he marched at last into Castile he brought with 
 him not a tenth of the force he had at his command. He 
 was useless in the camp, and he played the part of a 
 €Oward in quitting it. "Considering that at the time 
 Berwick was immediately in front of the Allies, this 
 voluntary act of departure was nothing less than deser- 
 tion from the army in the face of the enemy, the most 
 heinous of all military crimes." Colonel Parnell mani- 
 festly would have endorsed and even amplified Peter- 
 borough's modest avowal, as recorded by Pope, that " in 
 the presence of a proper danger — nay, of any and every 
 <langer — he could be as frightened as another man." 
 His ostensible mission in Italy was the negotiation of a 
 loan. He really skulked off, we are told, to amuse him- 
 self and, it is insinuated, to prosecute his intrigue with 
 the Duke of Savoy. So bad had all his conduct been in 
 Spain, which, "fortunately for the Allies," he at last 
 left, that it had greatly disgusted Marlborough and 
 the Queen's ministers, "though they were of his own 
 
148 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 political party." It is added that there is little doubt 
 he had embezzled public money. Finally he is dismissed 
 from further military and historical notice as an 
 impostor. 
 
 Hard hitting is always attractive, and the framer of 
 this tremendous indictment possesses the art. In days- 
 in which all sorts of dubious characters are being re- 
 habilitated, it is natural there should be an occasional 
 experiment at the opposite process. The blackening of 
 Peterborough is a counterpoise to the white-washing of 
 many worse than piebald reputations. But it is possible 
 to be as unjust in dethroning popular idols as in robbing 
 the gibbet. Now, in the first place, it is difficult to see 
 in what capacity Prince George is to snatch from Peter- 
 borough the responsibility and honour of conducting the 
 Barcelona campaign. His rank even at King Charles's. 
 Court was vague. In no case could it empower him to 
 assume the direction of the army of the Allies. Peter- 
 borough was commander-in-chief of the British contingent, 
 which was the backbone of the expedition. He was 
 joint admiral of the fleet. None but he, not even King 
 Charles, was entitled to order the movements of the 
 Queen's troops. Neither the British Ministry, nor 
 Peterborough, nor the officers of the expedition recog- 
 nised the Prince, except as an experienced local counsellor. 
 It is not shown, though it is asserted, that the Prince 
 ever acted as generalissimo, or that Peterborough did 
 not thus act. Then there is the particular question of 
 the storming of Montjuich. According to Colonel Par- 
 nell, the author of the scheme, whoever he was, had small 
 cause for pride in it, the fort being an inconsiderable little 
 post, not worth the inevitable waste of life involved in 
 
VIII THE ATTACK ON MONTJUICH 149 
 
 its assault. Yet Colonel Parnell is zealous in claiming a 
 monopoly of the idea for the Prince, as if it were a high 
 distinction, by arguments which prove little more than 
 that he may have conceived it, as Colonel de St, Pierre, 
 praised by Colonel Parnell for his honest independence, 
 says he conceived it. Doubtless it occurred to several, 
 including Peterborough, though Richards seems to have 
 known nothing of the title of anybody else. He 
 asseverates that Peterborough was the real projector ; 
 and he scarcely was the tame satellite that he seems 
 to Colonel Parnell. So harsh a critic as he eventually 
 became would not have left his very favourable state- 
 ment of Peterborough's conduct of the assault in his 
 journal uncancelled if the facts had seemed to him cap- 
 able of a contrary construction. The explanation of 
 Peterborough's apparent difficulty in making up his 
 mind is that he delighted in keeping others in perplexity ; 
 in sending them off on a wild-goose chase of his intentions. 
 It was a habit for which perversity of temper more than 
 fear of the publication of his designs was answerable. 
 In his own day he suffered for it in the anger and evil 
 speaking of such as Richards. He pays the penalty at this 
 interval of years in the denial to him of any credit for 
 the accomplishment of his own project As a matter of 
 moral justice that is very right ; but in point of historical 
 truth it would be unsafe so to punish him. On the 
 balance of evidence and conjectures the most probable 
 inference is that Prince George had thought of an attack 
 upon Montjuich independently, and that Peterborough 
 thought of it independently, but that Peterborough, being 
 commander-in-chief, decided upon it in his own right, 
 and whether on Sunday evening or, as is more likely, on 
 
ISO PETERBOROUGH 
 
 Sunday morning, stated to the Prince his decision, not 
 his acquiescence. 
 
 It seems idle to dispute that the accomplishment of 
 the plan was due to the commander-in-chief of the Allies, 
 who was present in person. Unless for his intervention 
 it is admitted there would have been a fatal failure. If he 
 were, as is alleged, unjust to Charlemont his error is to be 
 regretted. It was natural, and all but unavoidable, when 
 he saw the acting leader and his men flying together 
 with none in pursuit. The final capture of the fort is 
 attributed to him on testimony as sufficient as that by 
 which any general wears his honours. At all events it 
 cannot be claimed for Prince George, who died at a crisis 
 of defeat. If it were not in itself of essential consequence, 
 but only desired by the Prince as an incentive to a serious 
 attempt on the town, it can as plausibly be contended for 
 Peterborough that this was his motive also. There is a 
 difference in his favour that he realised his calculation. 
 It is a fanciful assumption that all his military colleagues 
 voted vigorously against a siege from subservience to a 
 chief for whom, we are assured, they felt no respect. 
 They expressed, it may reasonably be presumed, their 
 sincere opinion, which at one time, for good cause, was 
 his. Only, their reluctance had outlasted his. When he 
 became convinced that it was impracticable to induce the 
 King to march upon Madrid, as Prince George himself 
 would originally have preferred, he well may have sought 
 an occasion to animate them to an attack on Barcelona. 
 He found it in the storming of Montjuich. Why 
 it is thought necessary to exalt the legitimate merit 
 of Shovel in the operations at the expense of Peter- 
 borough is not very comprehensible. As joint admiral. 
 
viii A NUCLEUS OF FACT 151 
 
 Peterborough was responsible with Shovel for the naval 
 aid. From him solely Petit and Richards derived their 
 authority for their engineering feats. It seems as strange 
 to leave out of account his part in the rescue of the 
 garrison and city at large from an agony of anarchy, and 
 to transfer the praise to one of his brigadiers. 
 
 The capture of Barcelona may not have been the 
 arduous and glorious exploit which Peterborough's 
 panegyrists have accounted it. But the chief credit, 
 whatever its degree, is his by right. In the indictment 
 agamst him full allowance is made for the difficulties 
 involved in the subsequent wresting of Valencia from 
 the Bourbon King, and the discomfiture of the French 
 armaments in Catalonia. Here too, however, as in the 
 previous events, Peterborough becomes a vanishing 
 point, and, if visible, is rendered ridiculous. All his 
 romantic marches and countermarches, the scaring of 
 superior hosts, the audacious trickeries, the wisdom, the 
 valour, the self-restraint, at one time are stigmatised as 
 the buffooneries of a coward ; at another they are massed 
 together, and, with much harshness to a very respect- 
 able writer. Major George Warburton, dismissed as 
 " a tissue of ludicrous invention, compiled by him under 
 the guise of a biography." Freind, who really is the 
 responsible authority, has, it may be conceded, here and 
 there coloured a story, as often as not in a manner to 
 tell against its hero. For the absolute relegation of 
 his narrative to the realm of myths no ground exists. 
 Still less reason is there for ascribing the initiative 
 in military movements, upon which grave issues de- 
 pended, to anybody rather than the commander-in-chief. 
 If by the middle of 1706 King Charles was recognised 
 
152 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 as sovereign throughout Valencia, it is impossible 
 to see on what fair pretext the honour is to be ab- 
 stracted from Peterborough. At his entrance he found 
 a powerful Bourbon army with no adversary to oppose 
 it in the field. He left the province virtually freed and 
 cleared. The criticism on a commander before whom a 
 superior force has retreated in dismay, that during his 
 progi'ess he had taken, according to his own account, the 
 most extraordinary precautions to avoid the possibility 
 of being obliged to fight, is not convincing. 
 
 In the endeavour to deprive Peterborough of the 
 renown of the relief of Barcelona from Tesse there is the 
 same weakness. Happy results certainly effected are 
 imputed to anybody but the one person immediately 
 answerable. Peterborough entertained the belief after, 
 as before, the capture of Barcelona that Madrid might 
 be occupied by a bold march from Valencia. The period 
 of the French siege of Barcelona was exceptionally 
 favourable. Had Charles escaped, as Peterborough 
 advised, from the city, where his presence was a most 
 vital danger to his dynasty, he could have headed an ex- 
 pedition to the capital sure to have succeeded. If the 
 policy were mistaken, the error is not to be branded as 
 either treacherous or dastardly. In no case was there 
 any of the supposed incompatibility between the employ- 
 ment destined by Peterborough for the troops on board 
 and the relief of the blockaded port by Leake's warships. 
 When the plans for some more profitable use of the 
 soldiers were definitely rejected Peterborough devoted 
 his energies with a zeal which, if theatrical, seems to 
 have been entirely sincere, to the hastening of the fleet 
 with all its armament to the city. Leake must to 
 
VIII MERITS AND DEMERITS 153 
 
 anxious expectants have appeared to be extremely 
 slow. Peterborough might naturally believe that his 
 personal intervention was necessary. Of right his flag 
 was flown when he boarded the vice-admiral's ship. 
 When he arrived in Barcelona, by equal right he took 
 the lead in the defence. To him, by right again, belongs 
 such praise as commonly attends the relief of a besieged 
 town at a crisis of despair. The history of the period 
 which followed is a tangle of cross purposes. Hard as 
 the clue is to discover and grasp, it will not be denied 
 that Peterborough was wise in recommending the route 
 by Valencia for the King's progress to Madrid. He 
 advised it in good faith, and by that way had the means, 
 which he desired to apply, of promoting success. When 
 the King surrendered himself to rival counsellors 
 Peterborough reviled or sulked. He had not the grace 
 to take up cheerfully plans formed by others against 
 which he had struggled. That was his defect, and a 
 great defect, though not of the class indicated by the 
 censures upon him. Against the remainder of the 
 accusation, based on his departure from the Guadalajara 
 camp with its surfeit of generals, he requires no 
 defence. Personally he ran more risk in his journey to 
 the coast with eighty dragoons than by staying in the 
 midst of an army. 
 
 If any one choose to charge against Peterborough 
 that he was furiously bent upon having his own way ; that 
 he could agree with none who were in command ; that 
 he was fond of independence to the point either of 
 license or of tyranny ; that he loved the appearance as 
 well as the reality of power ; that he would scheme and 
 plot ; that he was an in~nlwfLinfti(-in mnnnt unless to a 
 
154 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 very docile master, and a vexatious colleague for 
 partners who would not consent to be clerks ; that he 
 could not appreciate good service, like that of Cifuentes 
 and Basset y Ramos, which was not after the English 
 model ; that he was sceptical of virtues, like the courage 
 and honesty of Charles, on account of their framework of 
 haughtiness and fanaticism ; that though to friends or 
 dependents who could not be rivals he might exhibit the 
 easiness of access and noble openness of mind extolled 
 by Dr. Freind, he was in public life addicted to 
 mysteries and to mystifying; that he was in the 
 habit of attitudinising ; that himself and his admirers 
 grudged his associates all share in his fame ; that exploits 
 were ascribed to him which he neither performed 
 nor ordered ; that many Spaniards combated as bravely 
 and obstinately for King Charles as he and most of 
 his Englishmen ; that his activity often degenerated 
 into fussiness; that neither in words nor deeds was 
 he always scrupulously honest ; that he played at war, 
 as he had played at politics ; that his brightest exploits 
 glorified the doer rather than promoted a cause; that 
 interested contemporaries, and posterity enamoured of 
 the picturesque or grotesque, have exaggerated the 
 marvels of the siege and rescue of Barcelona, and the 
 conquest or deliverance of Valencia ; that he committed 
 mistakes, as when he omitted to head the pursuit of de 
 Tessa's retreating army, and haggled unworthily over 
 the precise amount of strength requisite for the subju- 
 gation of the Balearic Isles ; that much of the enthusiasm 
 for him was a form of spite against his enemies — if, 
 in short, the object be to insert shadows, or to qualify 
 the extravagances of partisanship, he must be a very 
 
VIII A PORTRAIT, OR A CARICATURE 15s 
 
 absolute apologist who would venture to protest. But 
 to rank Peterborough as a nonentity, who suffered others 
 to exercise the prerogatives which were his ; a betrayer 
 of the interests he had pledged himself to guard ; a 
 poltroon who was ever considering how to save his skin ; 
 a thief who boasted of his private sacrifices when 
 he was lavishing the pay of the State's soldiers on his 
 private pleasures and vices; a braggart who imposed 
 upon nobody — is to draw, instead of a portrait a cari- 
 cature, and to try to rob history of a delightful episode, 
 in acts and in character, without the gift of aught in its 
 place. It is satisfactory to be able to come to the con- 
 clusion that the accustomed figure remains much as it 
 was, and where it was, though its pedestal may have 
 been somewhat lowered. The standard of stature in 
 the gallery of the War of the Spanish Succession is not 
 so heroic that it could afford without a struggle to part 
 with the one type not drearily commonplace. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 RETURN — VINDICATION — DIPLOMACY 
 
 Peterborough did not disobey the order for his 
 return to England to the literal extent of staying in 
 Spain. He took his own self-willed and embarrassing 
 mode of complying. Captain Henry Mordaimt was still 
 on the Valencian coast, and a son of Stanhope was captain 
 of one of the five frigates under his command. Peter- 
 borough embarked with Charles's envoy to Piedmont on 
 board the "Resolution." On the fifth day they fell in with 
 six French men-of-war. Peterborough and the minister 
 were persuaded, for the sake of the safety of their papers, 
 to change their quarters to a faster frigate. Favoured 
 by darkness they reached Leghorn. Henry Mordaunt 
 fought his ship from six in the morning to three in the 
 afternoon, when he ran her ashore. The next day a 
 French eighty-gun ship worked her way in, and Mor- 
 daunt with a severe wound in his thigh carried his 
 crew in boats to land. The news reached England, from 
 a Dutch source in the first place, on April loth. Peter- 
 borough stopped to be assured of Henry's escape and 
 then proceeded to Turin. There he would have 
 resumed the old discussion with the Duke on an expedi- 
 tion against Toulon and into Roussillon. Marlborough, 
 
CHAP. IX AT TURIN 157 
 
 from intelligence he had received from Italy, reported to 
 Godolphin that Peterborough's chiefest business at Turin 
 had been to persuade the Duke to send troops to Cata- 
 lonia, so that they might be able to make a diversion in 
 Roussillon. He wanted that to be done from Piedmont 
 which he had failed to induce Gal way to do from 
 Valencia. He had, moreover, another plan which he was 
 simultaneously promoting, though it met with less 
 sympathy from the Duke of Savoy. He wished to 
 j)ersuade the Queen's Government to despatch the fleet 
 for the reduction of the Neapolitan dependencies of the 
 Spanish crown. That scheme, according to a subsequent 
 statement by Marlborough in Parliament, was discoun- 
 tenanced by the Duke of Savoy, who feared it might 
 weaken the Toulon project. Peterborough's assistance 
 even in the latter question, about which the Duke was 
 sincerely anxious, could not be safely accepted. Though 
 Peterborough held himself out as accredited by the King 
 of Spain, the Duke was prudent enough to see in him 
 only an English subject out of favour. Chetwynd, 
 the British envoy, had been instructed to repeat 
 to him the Queen's positive mandate that he was to 
 return to England, and had notified to the ministers 
 at Turin that his commissions as plenipotentiary and 
 general had been revoked. The Duke told Chetwynd 
 he stopped Peterborough so soon as the Toulon matter 
 was mooted. He told him that he was unable to treat 
 with a subject of the Queen till he had justified himself 
 in England of what he seemed to be accused ; and to 
 England the Duke as a friend advised him to hasten. 
 His interpretation of the Queen's orders and the Duke's 
 counsel was, when he left Turin on April 30th, to set off 
 
158 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 on a circular tour by Austria, Saxony, and the Nether- 
 lands. 
 
 At every stage he stirred the speculation of 
 Europe, as was his pleasure. The Emperor Joseph, 
 King Charles's brother, received him well at A^ienna. 
 He was supposed, Marlborough had heard, to be gone 
 thither in quest of troops for the operations in 
 Spain, though, he added, "his mind changes so often 
 that there is not much weight to be laid upon his 
 motions." The main subject of his conversation seems 
 to have been the Neapolitan expedition, which had 
 caught the fancy of King Charles and the Emperor, and 
 his advocacy of it put him into the good graces of the 
 Austrian Court. Count Wratislaw, the Emperor's 
 minister, who had been prejudiced against him, was 
 captivated. He addressed Marlborough strongly in his 
 favour and against Galway, whose incapacity, he pre- 
 dicted, would ruin Godolphin's administration. On 
 July 2nd he wrote : " Lord Peterborough is on the eve 
 of his departure to visit you. He has shown himself 
 sufficiently humble, though his ardour has occasionally 
 transported him beyond the limits of moderation. I 
 have persuaded him not to publish his manifesto before 
 he converses with you ; and if the Court does not perse- 
 cute him he will not do it. I believe it will be danger- 
 ous to offend him, as he is an Englishman and has been 
 supplanted by a Frenchman, who has been the cause of 
 this irreparable loss. When you have spoken to him 
 you will probably be more satisfied with him than you 
 imagine ; for Prince Eugene has written to me that his 
 lordship thinks like a general, though he does not 
 always express himself with propriety ; and it is likewise 
 
IX WITH CHARLES OF SWEDEN 159 
 
 true that he predicted the misfortunes which have come 
 to pass." 
 
 By arrangement with Wratislaw Peterborough's 
 next point was Leipsic. Wratislaw wished to ascertain 
 the intentions of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden more 
 freely than was possible through regular diplomacy at a 
 Court, where, as Peterborough wrote to Marlborough, 
 private persons had the advantage of ministers, especially 
 if they would put on a blue coat and a black cravat. 
 Charles, having reduced Augustus of Saxony to abject 
 submission, was preparing for his invasion of Russia. 
 The world's gaze was concentrated on his movements. 
 Marlborough had visited him in the spring, and had con- 
 descended to gross flattery in order to persuade him to 
 direct his forces against France. Peterborough fancied he 
 might be more successful, through the sympathy perhaps of 
 mixed heroism and craziness. A narrative of his visit has 
 been preserved in an intercepted letter from Besenval, the 
 French Agent with Charles. The King, though apprised 
 of the visit, did not admit Peterborough to his presence 
 at Leipsic, and rode oif to the camp at Altranstadt 
 without giving him notice. Peterborough, hearing he 
 was gone, borrowed a groom's horse and followed. At 
 length coming up he begged Charles not to go so fast, a 
 liberty, he sarcastically said, he would not have taken if 
 he had been mounted on the smallest of the horses with 
 which his Majesty's stables were filled. Charles laughed 
 and listened to him all the way to Altranstadt. Six 
 years later he regarded Charles as a mere headstrong 
 youth, who had lost many kingdoms by pride and folly. 
 Now he could not determine whether he were very wise 
 or very foolhardy, any more than Besenval could tell 
 
i6o PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 whether Peterborough himself were bold or a madman. 
 His theme he had carefully meditated, and committed to 
 paper. As they rode side by side he expounded it with 
 a personal charm acknowledged by all his contem- 
 poraries. It was adapted to the Koyal Swede's absolute 
 selfishness and insatiable vanity. He argued, not from 
 a British or from an European point of view, but from 
 that of his companion, which, he believed, might ulti- 
 mately be equally for the benefit of England. He 
 showed how, with the eighteen thousand horse, eight 
 thousand dragoons, and fifty thousand foot, the best 
 troops in the world, mad enough to obey with pleasure 
 all he could command, the King might determine the fate 
 of Europe in the quality of arbitrator. Charles was not 
 likely to be offended by his "too great vivacity." The 
 little impression his efforts produced he was disposed to 
 attribute to the antagonism of some Swedish ministers 
 who were suspected of being pensioners of England. His 
 real and invincible obstacle was the fixed idea in the 
 King's mind of a supreme blow at the Czar, which, it 
 was fated, should be struck, and rebound, at Pultowa. 
 
 The visits to Charles and the Emperor had been 
 two motives of Peterborough's circuit through Europe. 
 On his passage from point to point he amused himself 
 according to his nature and his philosophy of life. He 
 wrote to Stanhope, still intimate though no longer 
 trusted, that he did not mean to reach Parliament and 
 old England before the autumn. In the meantime he 
 was enjoying the pleasure of liberty and idleness, going 
 from Court to Court, seeing wonders. Among other 
 diversions was a visit to Hanover. There he is said to 
 have flattered the wish of the Electress Sophia to pay a 
 
IX VISITS MARLBOROUGH i6i 
 
 visit to England as heiress presumptive to the Crown. 
 In return she entertained him daily at dinner and 
 supper, sending a state-coach with six horses to fetch 
 him. Apparently the impression he made upon a more 
 important person, her son, was unfavourable. But an 
 interview with Marlborough was his true object, and 
 to that both intending guest and host looked with some 
 anxiety. Peterborough announced from Altranstadt the 
 stage he had reached on his road. He spoke frankly 
 of his visit to the Swedish camp, of his dislike for the 
 offensive war programme forced upon the Allies in Spain, 
 in deference to "Mr. Stanhope's politics," and of his 
 regret at the neglect of his advice to sail against Naples. 
 Above all, he embraced the opportunity of warning Marl- 
 borough, as a confidant of the ministry, of the line he 
 intended to take towards it. He should be glad, he 
 wrote on July 22nd, to meet with a suitable protection, 
 at least justification, from the Queen, and he had waited 
 with great patience to the end. If it were not rendered, 
 he could give it himself at any time ; and he could not 
 doubt but that the Queen would permit him to employ 
 himself elsewhere if her Majesty had no occasion for his 
 services. Marlborough had not, it seems, replied very 
 quickly to the Earl's letters. He told his duchess at 
 the end of June that he had not sent answers to any of 
 them, not knowing where to forward them. As early, 
 however, as May he had received with polite warmth the 
 first suggestion of a visit. Lady Peterborough appears 
 to have intimated that she might perhaps cross the 
 Channel to meet her husband, and the Duke prayed that 
 in such an event he might be allowed to welcome both 
 in his camp. To the Earl he wrote, when he learnt 
 
 M 
 
i62 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 where to address him, hoping that "your friendship to 
 me," together with the " curiosity of seeing this army," 
 would bring him very quickly. He forwarded • a 
 French pass to Cologne, which would enable him to 
 travel by the shortest route without risk from French 
 partisans. Not long before he had seriously and with 
 no apparent irony been contrasting, in a letter to Lady 
 Peterborough, the "perfect friendship and good corre- 
 spondence " of Noyelles and Peterborough with the bad 
 understanding between "our other generals and the 
 Court of Spain," which had led to the " misfortunes we 
 now lie under in that country." But he recommended 
 to Count MafFey caution in his intercourse with the 
 traveller, who, he said, was capable "d'elarger, et de 
 donner tout un autre tour a ce qu'on lui voudrait 
 dire." 
 
 Peterborough arrived at Marlborough's headquarters 
 at Soignies early in August, and stayed too long for his 
 host's liking. He and Marlborough were at the opposite 
 poles in character. Though they had long been intimate, 
 and continued to exchange compliments with one another 
 as late as 1709, they were naturally mistrustful. Spon- 
 taneously he would hardly have sought the Duke's 
 society more than the Duke sought his. Now, how- 
 ever, he had something to gain. He had his case to 
 place before one who, of all contemporary Englishmen, 
 was the most potent to give it vogue. For ten days 
 he went over his campaigns and his controversies. Marl- 
 borough was strongly prejudiced against his conduct, and 
 regarded all apologies for him as damaging to their 
 authors. He had written to his duchess on June 27th, 
 1707, that the people in Holland who seemed to be 
 
IX AN UNWILLING HOST 163 
 
 favourable to Lord Peterborough were of all the worst 
 in that country. Probably he always had an aversion 
 which he had silenced for a while out of policy, or 
 perhaps in deference to his wife. Kecently the feuds 
 at the Court of Charles had perplexed the minister 
 on whom Marlborough relied. Unless so far as the 
 interests of the English war party were involved, Marl- 
 borough's concern in the merits of Peterborough's policy 
 was slight. His tendency always was to feel jealous of 
 any fervent English interest in the campaigns in Spain, 
 from a fear that it might lead to a curtailment of his own 
 military resources. Here at Soignies he was closeted 
 with him and could not escape, but beneath his mask of 
 invariable serenity he suffered atrociously. He groaned 
 on August 1 5th to his wife over the continual rain ; 
 the weather shut off all possibility of a break in 
 interminable conversations, in which " everything said 
 one day the next destroyed." Three days later he 
 wrote in despair to Godolphin that Lord Peterborough 
 had said all that was possible, but said nothing of 
 leaving the army. He was intensely wearied by the 
 tale, which left his real conviction very much what it 
 had been. He was but slenderly impressed by the 
 kindness felt for the Earl by the Duke of Savoy. Of 
 the very obliging letters from the King of Spain which 
 he showed, he ironically remarks that he could not 
 but wonder at them after what the King had written 
 against him. Peterborough had boasted that he should 
 justify himself in every particular. The utmost that 
 Marlborough could force himself to say in a letter, prob- 
 ably open, which he gave him at his departure to pre- 
 sent to Godolphin, was that, so far as he was capable of 
 
i64 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 judging, the Earl had, he verily thought, acted with 
 great zeal. The one clear conclusion on his behalf was, 
 as it had been before, that, as Wratislaw warned, he 
 might, innocent or not, be dangerous if persecuted. He 
 was in embarrassed circumstances, which itself in Marl- 
 borough's eyes meant mischief. He had declared he 
 was some thousand pounds the worse for the service, 
 having lost his equipages ; and this would certainly seem 
 very serious to Marlborough. Six weeks earlier he had 
 written that all he knew concerning Lord Peterborough 
 was that he would do anything to get the payment of an 
 arrear of about £3000. A needy, reckless genius re- 
 quired wary handling. The duchess was recommended 
 to watch her pen in any answer to his letters ; for that, 
 sooner or later, it would be in print. A few months 
 before he had impressed caution in the same spirit : 
 " There is nothing that may not be expected from Lord 
 Peterborough and his fair lady. I have observed since 
 I have been in the world that the next misfortune to 
 having friendship with such people is that of having any 
 dispute with them, and that care should be taken to 
 have as little to do with them as possible." One of his 
 character could not with impunity be either encouraged 
 or, Godolphin is reminded, rebuked : " He is very 
 capable of pushing his animosities so far as to hurt him- 
 self, and give a good deal of trouble to others, which 
 were to be wished might have been avoided, especially 
 this winter." 
 
 He returned on August 20th, and surprised every- 
 body by doing nothing. He had been ten days or a 
 fortnight in town without even trying to see the Queen 
 or the ministers. His explanation was that, having been 
 
IX RECEPTION IN ENGLAND 165 
 
 struck out of the Privy Council, he thought it improper 
 to go to Court unless he were sent for. His reference 
 was not to his expulsion from the Council in the 
 previous reign, which had been reversed by his restora- 
 tion in March, 1705. But in May, 1707, in consequence 
 of the Act of Union with Scotland, a new Privy Council 
 for Great Britain had been constituted. Peterborough 
 and fifteen others, who were members of the old Council 
 for England, partly on account of absence from London 
 and partly for political reasons, were not summoned to 
 attend. He, therefore, was for the present not a Privy 
 Councillor. Another explanation he is said to have 
 given of his delay was that he was waiting for an 
 assurance of a good reception. His old friends and 
 colleagues had no intention to accord it to him. They 
 declared he must first render an account of his negotia- 
 tions and transactions, and that his general instructions 
 positively required it. A week before his arrival Mr. 
 Secretary Harley, acting, as Godolphin believed, with 
 the sympathy of Halifax, Somers, and Sunderland, 
 had advised more positively harsh measures. He told 
 Oodolphin that Peterborough ought to be required to 
 show he had obeyed orders, and in default should be 
 sent to trial for a misdemeanour before a common 
 jury. Harley 's opinion was that it was better to 
 find him work to defend himself than to leave him 
 at leisure to do mischief. At length he applied for 
 an audience. Sunderland is said to have refused 
 it until he should have cleared himself of several 
 charges. He must explain why he had not marched to 
 Madrid in the last campaign, and why he had not given 
 King Charles the money entrusted to him for the pur- 
 
i66 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 pose ; he must also excuse his journey to Italy without 
 orders from home, and the disadvantageous terras of his 
 Genoa loan. His reply was addressed to the nation, 
 not to the Secretary of State. He had said : " I have 
 overcome all my enemies except lies, and those I have 
 papers enough with me to defeat." From them Freind, 
 as has already been mentioned, drew up the Account of 
 the Earl of Peterborough's Conduct in Spain. Its official 
 dryness was leavened by a measured indignation which 
 was loudly echoed by a multitude of enemies of the 
 Government. Tories were able to claim the merit of im- 
 partiality in their sudden admiration of its theme. A 
 AVhig of Whigs, Peterborough was abhorred and perse- 
 cuted by his political brethren ; the Tories caressed him 
 as if out of pure patriotism. They lauded his constant 
 success; they inquired the reason for the neglect and 
 premature recall of the only general who, as Swift later 
 expressed it, " by a course of conduct and fortune almost 
 miraculous had nearly put us into possession of the 
 kingdom of Spain." He had resumed his attendance 
 in Parliament. In his presence, on December 15th, 
 1707, the Tory Lord Eochester alluded to him as having 
 been employed in most important posts, and been 
 neither thanked nor censured. Peterborough spoke, not 
 defending himself, but simply demanding an inquiry. 
 The Queen was privately present. On a subsequent 
 motion for an address to the Queen in favour of con- 
 tinuing the war in Spain, and persuading the Emperor 
 to aid his brother more vigorously by the despatch of 
 reinforcements under Prince Eugene, he inveighed 
 against peace on any other terms than the enthrone- 
 ment of Charles at whatever cost. Rather than leave 
 
IX PA R LI AMENTA A' i ' INQ UIR Y 1 67 
 
 the crown with the Bourbons he would return and serve 
 under the Earl of Gal way. 
 
 Shortly afterwards a distinct demand was raised for 
 a recognition of Peterborough's services. Halifax re- 
 plied for the Government. With intentional ambiguity 
 he admitted that the achievements, if Dr. Freind were 
 to be believed, were only to be equalled by those re- 
 lated by Quintus Curtius of Alexander the Great. But 
 charges had been brought which must be refuted before 
 rewards were given. He contended that inquiry was 
 necessary first into the whole tenor of the general's 
 conduct, and he understood the Earl himself to have 
 nothing more at heart. At once the challenge was 
 accepted. An inquiry was ordered, and it commenced 
 in January, 1708. A vast body of evidence, both docu- 
 mentary and oral, was produced, which nobody cared to 
 weigh judicially. The inquiry was a trial of strength 
 between the Ministry and the Opposition, in which the 
 question of Peterborough's generalship was tossed to and 
 fro like a football. As Swift, not yet as close a friend 
 of his as he was soon to become, described it, with some 
 indignation at the waste of public time, the affair seemed 
 to be little more than an amusement. It was a perfect 
 jest, he wrote on February 5th, 1708, to see how in 
 this game of cross purposes Godolphin's Whig Cabinet 
 insinuated that the commander it had chosen was an 
 impostor, while the Tories hotly upheld the heroism of 
 as great a Whig as could be found in the kingdom. A 
 week later he wrote that it was still upon the anvil, and 
 what they would beat it into no man could tell. 
 Peterborough's speeches appear to have been extremely 
 long. One on January 13th is said to have lasted for 
 
i68 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 three hours ; but they did not tire out his hearers, so 
 bravely did he defy the ministers, and so sharply and 
 wittily did he fire into their ranks. According to 
 Addison, he showed more than ordinary gaiety both in 
 the House and out of it. The result of ten days of 
 controversy, scattered over January and February, was 
 not very decisive. The House affirmed the allegation 
 against the Government that, at the date of the 
 battle of Almanza, only eight thousand six hundred 
 men were in English pay when, according to the votes, 
 the number should have been twenty-nine thousand six 
 hundred. On the personal question of Peterborough's 
 conduct it adopted none of the accusations. A Dr. 
 Kingston, who had ventured to print some reflections 
 on his Spanish campaigns, was ordered into the custody 
 of the Black Eod, and on January 20th the Attorney- 
 General was directed to prosecute him. On the other 
 hand, a motion for a vote of thanks was defeated. 
 Halifax's contemporary biographer boasts this was 
 due to that statesman's "dexterous management in 
 favour of the Duke of Marlborough, who would other- 
 wise have resented the refusal of thanks to himself." 
 Such dexterity is not admirable. An inquiry by a 
 board of generals at Whitehall in February, under the 
 presidency of the Duke of Schomberg, into the behaviour 
 of Lord Charlemont at Montjuich and Peterborough's 
 conduct in depriving him of his colonelcy by disbanding 
 his regiment in disgrace, was equally inconclusive. The 
 board would not take the responsibility of condemning 
 either Charlemont or Peterborough. 
 
 Popularly it had been supposed that the Government 
 would accept the Parliamentary debates as a complete 
 
HIS ACCOUNTS 169 
 
 justification. At the end of July, 1708, it was rumoured 
 that Peterborough had kissed the Queen's hands, and was 
 about to be gazetted Governor of Jamaica. The first part 
 of the story was true. Godolphin wrote on July 30th 
 from Windsor to Marlborough that Peterborough was 
 come hither that morning with instructions to wait upon 
 the Queen for the first time since his return to England. 
 Nothing was farther from the intention of the Govern- 
 ment than the grant of any bounty, irritated as they 
 were by his pertinacity in attacking their military policy. 
 The retort was a succession of importunities for the 
 details of his receipts and disbursements. Richards re- 
 marks in his journal upon the laxity of his book-keeping, 
 and his habit of giving money to his officers without 
 security for its due expenditure. As he could render no 
 regular accounts, his property was attached till he should 
 have cleared up his pay-lists. It was retaliation for 
 the insinuations of his supporters that the country had 
 been taxed for the maintenance of thousands in Spain 
 who were never there. Throughout the remainder of 
 1708 and the early months of 1709 he was occupied 
 with the compilation of ledgers. He was made answer- 
 able for others, from whom he had not obtained dis- 
 charges. These fiscal worries explain the disappearance 
 of his figure from public life for some time after the 
 inquiry closed. At one moment the Treasury appeared 
 to be inclined to leniency. On January 31st, 1709, a 
 privy seal was drawn for the discharge of the Earl of 
 Peterborough's lands from any demands of the Crown on 
 account of his late employment in Spain. But the 
 ministerial temper soon resumed its old harshness. He 
 exclaimed indignantly to Godolphin in a letter of March 
 
I70 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 26th, 1709, that for all his services the recompense he 
 had to expect was not to be master of his own estate, 
 under the pretext that he had the disposition of public 
 moneys. He requested an official audit, and Godolphin 
 ordered it. Fresh demands sprouted out from it. Thus 
 in April, 1709, the Prize Committee called for money- 
 chargeable on the prizes which had been made while he 
 was in command. 
 
 In the same year and in the next he had other and 
 more grievous cause for want of interest in public affairs, 
 and for an intention, arising, he said, from the little 
 satisfaction he found in this country, to ask the Queen's 
 leave to go abroad. He alluded in his letter of March 
 26th to Godolphin to his wife's indisposition. On May 
 13th she died of a quinsy. A poet of Grub Street 
 describes her as possessed of beauty and wit and every 
 charming grace. The muse in praising her was truthful 
 if venal. She was the friend of Locke, and a brave, 
 clever, fascinating, and faithful wife, who seems to 
 have held her husband's aifections much more durably 
 than he with his chronicles of gallantry liked the world 
 to suppose. He buried her in the family tomb in Turvey 
 Church, which, with the dilapidated hall degraded into a 
 farmhouse, practically represented his share of the ancient 
 patrimony of Mordaunt. Her death was not to be Peter- 
 borough's only bereavement. In February, 1710, his 
 second son Henry, the hero of the "Kesolution," after a 
 slow recovery from his terrible wound, had been carried 
 oif by smallpox, to the general regret of all who knew 
 him ; and in April his elder son John fell a victim to 
 the same fatal disease. John, Lord Mordaunt, was a 
 brilliant soldier. Marlborough complimented his father 
 
IX LOSSES IN HIS FAMILY 171 
 
 upon the good share he had in the victory over the 
 Bavarians at Schellenberg, and he lost an arm at 
 Blenheim. He also had distinguished himself in the 
 House of Commons. Six months before, Peterborough 
 had been visiting him at his or his wife's house in 
 Yorkshire. One daughter, Lady Henrietta, and 
 two grandsons, John's children by his wife, a daughter 
 of the Duke of Bolton, were the wreck of Peter- 
 borough's family. The representation of the house of 
 Mordaunt in the male line after his own death was 
 continued by his elder grandson Charles, who became 
 fourth Earl of Peterborough. He was succeeded by 
 his son, Charles Henry, fifth and last Earl. Peter- 
 borough's daughter is described in a letter from Lady 
 Mary Coke among the Melbourne Hall Papers as a 
 great beauty, but "so ill-bred that she could not 
 make a curtsy." She was married to Lord Huntly 
 in February, 1707, became Duchess of Gordon, and died 
 hi 1760. 
 
 Peterborough was warm-hearted with all his affectation 
 of frivolity. He may well, as is stated, have been stunned 
 by his successive losses. But his nature was elastic, 
 and circumstances did not permit him to languish in 
 dejection. A Court earthquake in 1710 made him look 
 on English politics with new and hopeful eyes. His 
 principles were, as has before been said, sound Whig 
 principles. Yet fate willed it that he should more than 
 once be indebted for a fresh start to a crushing calamity 
 of the Whig cause. The Duchess of Marlborough's feud 
 with her mistress overthrew the so-called Whig ministry. 
 A Tory or neo-Tory ministry, of which the chiefs were 
 Harley and St. John, succeeded. The governing strength 
 
172 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 of the ministry was in the Commons; in the Lords, 
 where it had a large numerical following, it was greatly 
 outweighed in debating power and statesmanship by the 
 Whig junto. Harley judged that Peterborough was, 
 as he said, to be had, and that he was worth having. 
 Not allowing himself to be disturbed by the recollection 
 of his advice to Godolphin in August, 1707, or by Peter- 
 borough's notorious dislike of Tory and High Church 
 doctrines, he proceeded to engage him in the confederacy 
 against Marlborough. Peterborough was flattered by 
 seeming to be taken into the inner circle of the coterie. 
 He was one of the five original guests at Harley's Satur- 
 day dinners, where the Brothers, as they styled them- 
 selves, settled over their wine the policy of the party. 
 His prospects of office grew bright. The Godolphin 
 administration had not been dismissed a week when it 
 was rumoured that he was, like the late Prince George 
 of Denmark, to combine the offices of General of the 
 Marines and First Commissioner of the Admiralty, with 
 Leake as second to him. According to a correspondent 
 of the Duchess of Marlborough it was currently believed 
 in August and September that he might have the 
 appointment if he would. Only he himself demurred, 
 pretending not to care for coming into the Admiralty, but 
 only to go to sea. Finally the Admiralty was otherwise 
 disposed of; but he was appointed on November 2nd 
 Captain-General of the Marines, with £5 a day pay. Next 
 month he was nominated Ambassador-Extraordinary to 
 Vienna. The object of his mission was said to be to move 
 the Emperor to prosecute more vigorously the war in 
 Spain. As a means to that end he was to try to 
 restore cordiality between the Emperor and the Duke 
 
IX APPOINTED TO VIENNA 173 
 
 of Savoy. Peterborough had only to be trusted with 
 any business, for it to grow into overwhelming import- 
 ance, and so it happened with his embassy to Vienna. 
 Though, with his usual futile sagacity, he foresaw, as 
 he told Swift, that he would be allowed to do no good 
 by his present journey, his fancy treated it as a pivot 
 on which European politics in general should revolve. 
 Undoubtedly it possessed real importance. Marl- 
 borough wrote in May to Secretary St. John, and to 
 the same purport to the Duke of Shrewsbury, that no 
 proper measures could be adopted with respect to a final 
 arrangement of the affairs of the Spanish Succession until 
 the steps taken by Peterborough with the Court of Vienna 
 and the Duke of Savoy should be known. But few 
 missions could have been actually so weighty as his 
 seemed to him. Swift, who was one of the society of 
 the Brothers, in a letter of January 3rd, 1711, sketches 
 vividly the man's eager and exuberant energy. " Lord 
 Peterborough yesterday called me into a butcher's 
 shop, and there he talked deep politics. He desired me 
 to dine with him to-day at the Globe in the Strand. He 
 said he would show me very clearly how to get Spain. 
 I went accordingly, and saw him among half a dozen 
 lawyers and attorneys and hangdogs, signing deeds and 
 stuff before his journey, for he goes to-morrow to Vienna. 
 I sat among that scurvy company till after four, but 
 heard nothing of Spain." 
 
 He did not go on the morrow, for a reason which 
 was sufficient for him, who sincerely believed that he 
 was entrusted with affairs of essential gravity. It was 
 much more than sufficient for the ministers. They had 
 invented the Austrian mission to keep him engaged, and 
 
174 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 were afraid chiefly that he should turn it into a reality. 
 His servants were at Greenwich on their way to embark 
 when the two Houses resolved to inquire into the con- 
 duct of the war in Spain from the beginning. In 
 December, 1710, through the absence of proper intelli- 
 gence about the enemy's position such as Peterborough 
 always succeeded in collecting, Stanhope and a couple 
 of thousand Englishmen had been forced to surrender 
 at Brihuega. The nation was enraged at the manage- 
 ment which had conduced to such an end of the 
 Spanish struggle. Harley and his colleagues were 
 willing to gratify the sentiment to the utmost. Peter- 
 borough, they knew, would rejoice to help them to tear 
 open the whole history on his own account. Con- 
 sequently the Duke of Beaufort moved on January 4th, 
 1711, that he and others should be asked to explain to 
 the House of Lords the circumstances of the Spanish 
 campaigns, and on the next day the investigation 
 began. Peterborough, Galway, and Sir Charles O'Hara, 
 now Lord Tyrawley, were the principal officers 
 called. Peterborough was interrogated on the policy 
 of Galway's stay of a fortnight at Madrid in the 
 summer of 1706, and on his alleged omission to keep 
 Peterborough at Valencia informed of his movements ; 
 on the King's choice of the route to Aragon instead 
 of to Valencia ; and on the decision of the councils of 
 war, in the winter of 1707, particularly that of January 
 15th, for offensive operations, and for a second march 
 upon Madrid, with the reasons for the King's consequent 
 departure to Barcelona. 
 
 At the invitation of the House he elaborately defended 
 himself in a speech, which was also an indictment of 
 
IX A FRESH INVESTIGATION OPENED 175 
 
 Godolphin's cabinet and of its favourite Galway. He 
 had been, he charged, ill supported and traduced, and 
 the public had been imposed on. The London Gazette 
 allowed the country to presume that twenty-five thousand 
 troops sailed Avith Stanhope in the spring of 1706, when 
 the true number was five thousand. Such poor rein- 
 forcements as came were miserably equipped : there were 
 no carriages, mules, or horses, either for the men or the 
 guns ; while for money he had to shift with the little 
 he had of his own or could pick up about the world. 
 Yet, he proudly asserted, no party of men under his 
 command was ever beaten, and no ship was ever lost. 
 He extended his apology for himself to the time after 
 he had ceased to participate in active military opera- 
 tions. He had been recalled, he complained, by the late 
 ministry on the plea that, without the Queen's authority, 
 he had negotiated matters of so high a nature as British 
 armed concert with the Duke of Savoy in the siege of 
 Toulon. He had gone to Turin, he confessed, for the 
 purpose, and he contended that the negotiation was in 
 precise accordance with his instructions. In pursuance, 
 he argued, of a policy which it was his direct duty to 
 promote, he had returned to Spain to arrange with 
 Galway for a supply of five thousand auxiliaries for the 
 Duke. His voice had been for an ofi'ensive war on the 
 Italian frontier, and an attitude of defence in Spain. 
 Galway rejected his advice in both particulars, and the 
 result was Almanza. His own reward had been an 
 abrupt letter of recall, which, however, he had sent back 
 unopened, and, on his return to England, cold and averted 
 looks. 
 
 A series of questions was addressed to him, and he 
 
176 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 answered them, first orally, and then in a written re- 
 capitulation, as he called it. Freind was summoned 
 before the House on the fourth day of the inquiry, to 
 swear to the authenticity of the documents he had 
 printed in his Account. Galway in vain read an elaborate 
 explanation, which testified at least to the honour and 
 loyalty of the hardly-used veteran. In vain he tried to 
 prove that the council of war of January 15th, 1707, at 
 which Peterborough had given his opinion against offen- 
 sive operations, was only one of a number of consulta- 
 tions, and that at others which followed Peterborough 
 had himself voted for marching to Madrid by way of 
 Aragon. In vain Marlborough appealed for justice to 
 Galway, a faithful servant to England, though "un- 
 happy." To his and Lord Cowper's remarks on the 
 merits of an offensive war, as maintained by Galway, 
 Peterborough retorted with irony that one would be 
 apt to think that the ministry was for a defensive 
 war, when it suffered him to want men, money, and all 
 necessaries. The testimony of events was all for him, 
 and against the obstinately brave and tactically skilful 
 but uninspired Huguenot. The dispute was protracted, 
 with intervals, over several weeks, and had various 
 stages. On January 9th the House voted, by 59 
 to 45, that Peterborough's account of the council of 
 war at Valencia was just, faithful, and honourable, dis- 
 regarding Bishop Burnet's objection to the epithet of 
 just as implying that Galway had not spoken truth in 
 his contradiction. On January 11th the debate was 
 resumed. Peterborough explained his journey to Italy 
 to concert, he said, the siege of Toulon in conformity 
 with his instructions. He commented on his recall by 
 
IX TRIUMPHANT AT LAST 177 
 
 Secretary Sunderland in a despatch of September, 1706, 
 which censured him for negotiating matters of so high 
 a nature without the Queen's authority. Incidentally 
 an angry and confused altercation arose over a letter 
 he wrote to Secretary Hedges on September 10th, 
 stating that he thought the capture of Toulon prac- 
 ticable. The inquiry took a fresh departure on January 
 12th. The respective responsibility of the cabinet and 
 of the ministers for the conduct of the war was dis- 
 cussed. Peterborough inveighed against the control 
 exercised by members of the so-called cabinet over 
 affairs. A doubt having been expressed of the meaning 
 of the term Cabinet Council, he described it as "a body 
 of persons who fingered the money, meddled with war, 
 meddled with things they did not understand, so that 
 sometimes there was no minister in the cabinet council." 
 Then there was a pause to consider Galway's guilt or 
 innocence in having yielded the right, the post of honour, 
 at Almanza to the Portuguese. The House went into 
 that theme on January 17th, and voted very absurdly 
 that Galway had acted contrary to the honour of the 
 Imperial Crown of Great Britain. After another in- 
 terval it considered, on January 31st, in order to cast 
 odium on the Godolphin administration, the discrepancy 
 between the number of troops Parliament had voted for 
 Spain and the number which served there. The majority 
 was determined at once to condemn the late ministry 
 and to justify Peterborough. By 68 to 48 it resolved 
 that the late ministers were justly to be blamed for con- 
 tributing to all disasters in Spain, and to the consequent 
 disappointment of the expedition against Toulon, by 
 carrying on an offensive war; that the Earl of Peter- 
 
 N 
 
78 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 borough had performed many great and eminent services ; 
 and that his opinion in the council of war at Valencia, 
 had it been followed, might very probably have pre- 
 vented the subsequent misfortunes. Thirty -six peers 
 protested against the vote. Motions by the Dukes of 
 Argyle and Buckingham for a compliment to him and 
 a vote of thanks were carried without dissent. Lord 
 Keeper Harcourt had been a witness in the wretched 
 sequel to Fenwick's Attainder Bill ; now he was the 
 mouthpiece of the enthusiasm of his brother peers for 
 Peterborough's amazing success in Spain, due to his 
 personal bravery and conduct. "Such," he said, "is 
 your lordship's known generosity and truly noble 
 temper, that I assure myself the present I am now 
 offering is the more acceptable, as it comes pure and 
 unmixed, and is unattended by any other reward, which 
 your lordship might think an alloy to it." Peter- 
 borough answered with eloquent simplicity that such a 
 recompense was more than sufficient for any past hard- 
 ships, and nothing could give an addition to it. On 
 February 10th an address was presented to the Queen, 
 expressing the admiration of the House for the many 
 great and eminent services performed by the Earl of 
 Peterborough. 
 
 The votes of the peers proved, it must be confessed, 
 literally nothing on their declared subject. They are 
 no more evidence that Peterborough was a pattern of 
 generalship, valour, and wisdom, or that Galway was an 
 obstinate military pedant with a Frenchman's indifference 
 to the honour of the British flag, than, if sixty-eight peers 
 had happened to be Whigs and forty-eight to be Tories, 
 the reverse resolutions would have settled Galway's merit 
 
IX THE MEANING OF HIS TRIUMPH 179 
 
 and Peterborough's demerit. With the existing balance 
 of parties, and in the existing fury of party spirit, they 
 were a foregone conclusion. But they answered 
 their purpose. They testified to utter weariness of 
 the war and to dislike of Marlborough. Marlborough, 
 when he defended Galway, was repelling an attack upon 
 himself, for Galway's failures were not so obnoxious as 
 Marlborough's glory. The panegyrics on Peterborough 
 were intended, and interpreted, as rebukes to the more 
 famous general. He was exalted that the other might 
 be abased. Everybody has read how a London mob, 
 mistaking, which must have been difficult for the blindest 
 mob, the restless wiry earl for the stately and serene 
 duke, was threatening violence, when Peterborough dis- 
 abused it by two demonstrative arguments : " In the first 
 place, I have only five guineas in my pocket, and 
 secondly, here they are entirely at your service." Marl- 
 borough's odium gave Peterborough favour at Court as 
 with the populace. A freethinker, and reputed a loose 
 liver, he owed to the alliance between the Whigs and 
 Marlborough no little favour also with devoted Church- 
 men. His republican tendencies were condoned for 
 the same reason by ardent Tories. As Marlborough's 
 rival in military lustre he earned at once the compli- 
 ments of Harley, St. John, and Harcourt, and the hatred 
 of the duchess, who bracketed him with " Tyburn Dick " 
 Rivers, the father of Richard Savage, as a type of 
 vileness of soul. 
 
 He did not linger in London to enjoy his notoriety. 
 From Westminster, after his victory, he drove home, 
 only pausing at a poulterer's to select a fat chicken for 
 his dinner. Granville, or Grenville, Lord Lansdowne, 
 
i8o PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 who happened to pass as the choice was being 
 made, was invited to accompany him and dine upon 
 it and a bottle of claret, and related the transaction. 
 The next morning he was on his way to Vienna. His 
 task was complicated by dissensions in the cabinet he 
 was serving. In a letter addressed from Vienna to 
 
 Swift, as "Bishop or Dean of ," he expressed 
 
 his scorn of the internal discords, of which rumours had 
 reached him. Even Tokay, he said, could not cheer him 
 when faction was so strong and credit so weak. He 
 had no doubt of his success in diplomacy : he had 
 ridden the restive horse, he boasted, till it had become 
 tame; but he hated diplomatic formahsm. In the de- 
 bates of 1708 he had spoken as if he had laid aside the 
 sword for ever, and would fight no more, however long 
 the war lasted ; now he regretted his old campaigning 
 life. " It is time," he wrote to Swift, " that statesmen 
 employ me in my own trade, not theirs. If they have 
 nothing else for me to subdue let me command against 
 this rank Whiggish puppet show. Tell St. John he 
 must find me work in the old world or the new." 
 Nevertheless he succeeded in extracting concessions from 
 the Emperor. His work, as defined by his instructions, 
 was, according to a complaint by St. John to another 
 diplomatist, only half done, when with his customary im- 
 petuosity he quitted Vienna for Turin. He coloured the 
 offers the Emperor had empowered him to make to the 
 Duke of Savoy more brightly than seems to have been 
 justified by his commission, though Marlborough con- 
 sidered it had " a very good effect at this juncture." At 
 any rate he induced the Duke to agree to lead his 
 troops to the Ehone. The death of the Emperor Joseph 
 
IX HIS CONDUCT AT VIENNA i8i 
 
 })y smallpox on April 17th, 1711, opened a wider field 
 for his love of combinations. Charles, it was anticipated, 
 would succeed to his brother's Imperial Crown. Peter- 
 borough appears to have consequently resumed an old plan, 
 and to have taken some steps, without any orders from 
 his Government, towards an engagement to transfer the 
 Spanish throne to the Duke of Savoy. As a preliminary 
 he projected an immediate return of Charles to Germany. 
 Marlborough opposed an abrupt removal from Spain as 
 likely to be calamitous for military prospects there. 
 Peterborough, however, kept his own view, which he 
 stated in a letter of twenty sheets to Secretary St. 
 John. In it, St. John told Lord Eaby, the whole 
 world was parcelled out, as if with his fiat and 
 the breath of his mouth it could be accomplished. He 
 hurried to Genoa, to discuss ways and means with the 
 Duke of Argyle, who had been appointed commander-in- 
 chief of the British forces in Spain. His original inten- 
 tion, which was thwarted by lack of encouragement from 
 Argyle, had been to continue his journey to Barcelona, 
 whence he purposed to escort Charles homewards. As 
 an alternative he intercepted the King at Milan, and 
 was able to assure him that the rumours of the intention 
 of England to make separate terms with France were 
 unfounded. At Vienna despatches in reproof of his 
 compromising engagements overtook him, and after a 
 halt of three days he started, without having been 
 officially recalled, for England to explain and main- 
 tain. He landed at Yarmouth on June 23rd, attended 
 by a single servant, boasting that he had seen more 
 kings and more postilions than any one else in 
 Europe. In this last journey he had, he told Swift, 
 
i82 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 scattered the rest of his suite in several towns of Ger- 
 many. "He sent," says Swift, "expresses, and got here 
 before them. He is over fifty, and as active as one of 
 twenty-five. " From the Queen, of whom, on the morrow 
 of his disembarkation, he had an audience to give an 
 account of his mission, he met with a gracious reception, 
 but her ministers could not conceal their dissatisfaction. 
 His head, wrote St. John to Marlborough, sure of 
 sympathy on this subject, was extremely hot, and con- 
 fused with various indigested schemes. His projects 
 were vast, and supposed nothing less than the restoration 
 of all the troops which belonged to the Spanish war 
 to their established number of fifty-two thousand men, 
 besides taking five thousand Swiss and eight thousand 
 Imperialists into the Queen's pay. Marlborough would 
 know, said St. John, how little able England was to 
 enter into such an increase of charge, and would there- 
 fore easily believe that these papers were already grown 
 dusty on the office shelves. Swift, who appreciated 
 Peterborough's capacity much more justly than St. John, 
 described to a correspondent in July his discontent 
 at the general disposition towards peace, and at the 
 waste, therefore, of the skill with which he had persuaded 
 the Emperor and Duke of Savoy to continue operations. 
 " A person of great talents, but dashed with something 
 restless and capricious," comments Swift, "and a sort of 
 person which may give good advice which wise men 
 may reasonably refuse to follow." There we have his 
 character, and the moral of his whole career. 
 
 He was a troublesome colleague. Harley and St. 
 John would not have been inconsolable had a carriage 
 accident he experienced during his visit to England pro- 
 
IX AT FRANKFORT 183 
 
 duced yet worse effects than some alarming internal 
 complications. But he could be a more inconvenient 
 antagonist. So he was gazetted Ambassador-Extraor- 
 dinary to the Diet about to assemble at Frankfort for the 
 election of the Emperor Joseph's successor. A Diet 
 always was a nest of intrigues, and Peterborough did not 
 hold aloof from them. Notwithstanding a severe and 
 nearly fatal illness at Frankfort connected with the hurt 
 which he had given no time to heal, he was reported to 
 have employed himself upon large projects. In default 
 of male heirs to Charles he is said to have suggested 
 that the King of Saxony might be elected King of 
 the Romans. His view, as he had expressed it to Swift, 
 whom he half in earnest invited to come out as his 
 chaplain and secretary in order to qualify for a bishopric, 
 was that, with proper support from home, he could act 
 the Roman senator, and have a levee of suppliant kings 
 expecting their destinies from England. Such visions 
 whispered at Frankfort must have equally disturbed the 
 German and the English Government. They certainly 
 alarmed the councillors of Charles. Gallas, Swift says 
 in his history of the Queen's last four years, sent an 
 Italian clerk to Frankfort, with instructions to pretend 
 to be a Spaniard, and to insinuate himself into the secrets 
 of the ambassador's household. Practically Peterborough 
 had, he felt, no influence at the Diet. He must have 
 rejoiced when a rule, which forbade the presence of 
 strangers at an Imperial installation, constrained him to 
 leave the town on the eve of the Emperor Charles the 
 Sixth's coronation on December 22nd, 1711. He used his 
 leisure to visit Prince Eugene's headquarters at Spires. 
 Then, after a brief return to offer the Queen's congratu- 
 
i84 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 lations to his old acquaintance, the new Emperor, he 
 proceeded to Italy. Contemporaries amused themselves 
 with fancies that his true business there was a love 
 mission. But it would rather seem that the ingenuity 
 of his ministerial friends, eager simply to occupy him, 
 had set them upon engaging their Sovereign to devise 
 for him a hunt after a mare's nest. The Electoral Prince 
 of Saxony was about to visit Rome. There had been 
 rumours of the new Emperor's willingness to affiance the 
 young archduchess to him, but his Protestantism was 
 an obstacle. Queen Anne had been privately informed 
 that efforts would be made to induce the Prince to turn 
 Catholic at Rome. She wrote herself to Peterborough 
 asking him to insinuate himself in Italy into the Prince's 
 good opinion and induce him to preserve his faith. 
 If the Prince's freedom of action were threatened he 
 should try to secure his safe withdrawal from the Papal 
 dominions. Such, the letter proceeded, was the nature 
 of this service that the Queen could neither enjoin him to 
 correspond with either of the Secretaries of State nor 
 limit the time of his return. The good Queen doubtless 
 wrote in all sincerity ; but it is difficult not to suspect a 
 plot by St. John, in which he had made his mistress, 
 with her affection for the Protestant Church, an innocent 
 accomplice, for giving Peterborough confidential employ- 
 ment without confidence. He was shrewd enough not 
 to be thus deluded, and St. John, discovering it, disclosed 
 his knowledge of the royal project, with which he in- 
 timated he had no sympathy. It was, he wrote, a com- 
 mission which, he perceived, Peterborough did not much 
 relish. He tried to soothe his vanity by expressions of 
 implicit trust and frankness. 
 
IX A HO LI DA Y IN ITAL V 185 
 
 Peterborough preserved to a laudable extent an appear- 
 ance of good humour, and treated the Secretary as the 
 friend he said he was. When he was leaving England in 
 February he had sent him twelve dozen flasks of Burgundy, 
 half for Swift, which Swift never received, St. John con- 
 fessing he never was quiet till the whole twelve dozen 
 were drunk. He also lent him his house at Parson's 
 Green while he was away at Frankfort. Thither St. 
 John, by his own account to Peterborough, often came, 
 to indulge himself in all those pleasures which shady 
 walks and cool retreats inspire. Nothing was wanting, 
 he exclaimed, but the master to make him willing to 
 continue there for ever. Swift dined at Parson's Green 
 with him, and fell in love with the finest fruit garden 
 ever, he wrote, seen about this town. If pretty speeches 
 concerning himself and his orchards from ministers and 
 their associates could have satisfied Peterborough for the 
 absence of serious employment, he was welcome to as 
 many and as fervid as any one could desire. But he was 
 not their dupe, and cherished deep resentment for the 
 want of faith in him. In his poor state of health, how- 
 ever, he was glad to be free to go to Italy, whither the 
 Queen, it had been reported in London in October, 1711, 
 was sending him for the sake of the climate. He could 
 divert himself with the Carnival of Venice, to which, 
 according to London gossip, he was bending his steps 
 towards the end of January, 1712 ; and possibly he was 
 already in love with Anastasia Robinson, who was then 
 living with her family in Venice. Not till December, 
 1712, did he resolve to come home and force his Govern- 
 ment to an explanation. He is said by Swift to have been 
 accompanied by a lady, of whom no other particulars 
 
i86 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 are given ; as Anastasia and lier relatives returned to 
 England about this time scandal may, as frequently, 
 have misinterpreted the character of his company. The 
 instant of his arrival in London, on January 10th, 1713, 
 he stepped over from his house in Bolton Street to Harley 
 in Dover Street. Harley, now Earl of Oxford and Lord 
 Treasurer, was entertaining St. John, who had been 
 created Viscount Bolingbroke, and the rest of the Brothers 
 at their weekly Saturday dinner. On the announcement 
 that Peterborough was at the door " the Lord Treasurer 
 and Lord Bolingbroke," wrote Swift the same night, 
 "went out to meet him, and brought him in. As soon 
 as he saw, he left the Diike of Ormond and other lords, 
 and ran and kissed me before he spoke to them, but chid 
 me terribly for not writing to him. He left England 
 with a bruise, by his coach overturning, and was so ill 
 we expected every post to hear of his death ; but he out- 
 rode it, or outdrank it, or something, and is come home 
 lustier than ever. He is at least sixty, and has more 
 spirits than any young man I know of in England." 
 
 He returned in a fit of impatience at the slowness 
 of the ministers in finding him work, but he showed 
 no desire to quarrel Avith them. Though his attend- 
 ance in Parliament was interrupted in the early spring 
 by illness, his attitude, when he was there, implied 
 friendly neutrality. The Peace of Utrecht, which strongly 
 contravened his prepossessions, he neither defended nor 
 attacked. His part in the debate on the allusions in the 
 Queen's speech in April to the negotiations was confined 
 chiefly to a refutation of some criticisms on himself by 
 Halifax, and to an insinuation of the private and pecu- 
 niary interest of Marlborough in the continuance of war. 
 
IX WHIG PRINCIPLES AND TORY ALLIES 187 
 
 On the only other two occasions on which lie spoke his 
 attitude was that of a good Whig. In May he opposed 
 a repeal of the union with Scotland, a marriage, he said, 
 which, having been made, could not be broken, adding 
 that the Scots would never be satisfied, though they 
 had received more money from England than the value 
 of all their estates in their own country put together. 
 This was understood as aimed at Argyle, once a close 
 all}^, with whom he had quarrelled over the plan of oper- 
 ations in Spain ; and Argyle replied in a speech described 
 as warm. On Whig principles, again, he supported Whar- 
 ton's motion that the Queen should be asked to require 
 of Lorraine and other foreign States with which she had 
 diplomatic connections the refusal of an asylum to the 
 Pretender. A Tory peer. Lord North and Grey, asked 
 where, then, was the Prince to live % Peterborough is 
 said to have answered, though the equivocal honour of 
 the ill-natured sneer has been claimed for Halifax, that 
 as the Pretender began his studies in Paris, the fittest 
 place for him to improve himself was Rome. Socially, 
 Oxford and Bolingbroke remained on excellent terms 
 with him; ministerially, they fully admitted his claim 
 upon the State, though they adjourned full satisfaction. 
 Yet from time to time crumbs of patronage, by way of 
 earnest, were thrown. In the spring he was appointed 
 to the colonelcy of the Oxford Regiment of Horse, better 
 known as the Royal Horse Guards Blue, then vacant by 
 the death of Lord Rivers. In the first week of August he 
 was elected and installed a Knight of the Garter in com- 
 pany with the Lord Treasurer. At last, in November, 
 something in the nature of real work was assigned to 
 him. He was nominated Ambassador-Extraordinary to 
 
i88 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 t}ie Duke of Savoy, become, by the Treaty of Utrecht, 
 King of Sicily, and to the other Italian reigning 
 princes. The mission was not of the last degree 
 of importance ; yet the Government was not without 
 fear in confiding it to him. He possessed in perfection 
 the art of amplifying the dignity of affairs in which he 
 happened to be engaged, and he had his own peculiar 
 manner of construing the least grant of discretionary 
 powers. Bolingbroke addressed to Bromley, his fellow- 
 Secretary of State within whose province France lay, 
 an emphatic entreaty to tie him down by instructions 
 to the points he might meddle with in his passage 
 through that kingdom, and on no account was he to be 
 left at liberty to entertain the French ministers and him- 
 self with a variety of schemes. Bromley might as well 
 have tried to chain the wind. For himself, Bolingbroke 
 added, he had avoided touching in his instructions upon 
 the question of the Elector of Bavaria's demand of 
 Sardinia, not knowing how far the pleasure of giving 
 away kingdoms might transport his lordship. 
 
 The new ambassador had not much opportunity of 
 displaying either his diplomatic dexterity or his indocility, 
 but his mission enabled him to employ a remarkable man. 
 As chaplain and secretary he took on Swift's recommend- 
 ation Berkeley, the metaphysician and future Irish bishop. 
 At his entrance into public life he had loved and be- 
 friended John Locke ; it is pleasant to think that he used 
 the concluding stage of his official career for the benefit 
 of a still more subtle, though less solid, thinker. It is 
 an injustice to posterity that no record is left of Peter- 
 borough's colloquies with either. With Berkeley for his 
 companion, at the end of November he started for Paris, 
 
IX MISSION TO SICILY 189 
 
 «_ 
 
 where, during a fortnight's stay, he probably did his best 
 to embarrass Bromley and Prior. Thence, after an in- 
 troduction by Torcy to King Lewis, he proceeded by 
 Toulon to Italy. In the absence of his equipage, which 
 was coming round by sea, he was obliged to defer his 
 solemn entry into Palermo, but characteristically antici- 
 pated it by a preliminary excursion from Genoa or Leg- 
 horn to Sicily in a little Maltese brig, accompanied only 
 by a couple of servants. After a conference with 
 the new King, which had no momentous consequences, 
 he returned to the mainland till, on the arrival 
 of his ambassadorial paraphernalia, he embarked once 
 more, and was received in state as a newcomer. He 
 wrote home an ample narrative of the rehearsal and of 
 the incidental hardships and casualties, which proved 
 his zeal. Lord Oxford sent it on to Prior that he might 
 say what it all came to. Prior, not unmindful, perhaps, 
 of the Paris visit, epitomised the heroic pilgrimage for 
 the Prime Minister's edification. "Lord Peterborough 
 is gone from Genoa in an open boat — that's one ; 
 three hundred miles by sea — that's two ; he was forced 
 ashore twenty times by tempests and majorkeens to 
 lie among the rocks — that's — how many, my Lord 
 Treasurer 1 " 
 
 It was not so much Peterborough's fault as his mis- 
 fortune that he constantly had to emphasise or to inflate 
 the business given him to perform. By the unkindness 
 of fate a man endowed with faculties sufficient to have 
 rearranged the globe was set tasks over which often it 
 would have been most beneficial to his countrymen if he 
 would or could have slept. But sleep he would not and 
 could not. He was of a type which natures so unlike as 
 
I90 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Godolphin's and Bolingbroke's despised, and others so un- 
 like as Pope's, Swift's, Johnson's, Scott's, and Macaulay's 
 found engaging and seductive. On the whole, it would 
 have been better, and especially for the Catalans, if 
 he had never captured Barcelona; it may even be, if 
 he had not relieved it. His conquest of the kingdom 
 of Valencia was like drawing water into a sieve. As 
 Ambassador-Extraordinary in Italy he pursued the same 
 process of doing busily what might as well have been let 
 alone. He had the art of dictating to several amanuenses 
 at once, and he practised it at King Victor's Court. Pope 
 was assured by an eye-witness that he was seen walking 
 round a room and instructing nine secretaries at once ; 
 probably, as his friend suggested, half the letters were 
 trivialities ; but the ambassador satisfied himself that he 
 was a man of affairs in dreadful earnest. With Victor, 
 who was a consummate schemer, he doubtless drafted 
 and redrafted the map of Europe to their mutual satis- 
 faction. At any rate, the King presented him with a 
 gold watch in token of his gratitude for sympathy and 
 encouragement to his ambition. Nothing else came of 
 it, though perplexity to the Queen's Government might 
 in due time have arisen if there had remained a Queen's 
 Government to be perplexed. Such was the feverishness 
 of domestic politics in the few months for which Peter- 
 borough represented Great Britain at Palermo, that 
 nobody had leisure either to check or to be alarmed at 
 his Sicilian proceedings or meditations. The one aim 
 was to pacify and neutralise all subordinate agitations 
 and agitators. Officially he was encouraged to believe 
 his zeal was approved, by fair words and by his appoint- 
 ment in March, 1714, in supersession of the Duke of 
 
IX QUEEN ANNE'S DEATH 191 
 
 Argyle, to the sinecure governorship of Minorca. With 
 his diplomatic achievements authority did not trouble 
 itself until Queen Anne died on August 1st. Then the 
 Government of King George lost little time in recalling 
 the Whig aversion of the Whigs, and on this occasion he 
 accepted his dismissal without any show of rebelliousness. 
 But in the eyes of Europe he was still a great personage. 
 On his way home by Paris Torcy entertained him at 
 dinner. The King ordered the fountains at Marly to be 
 set working in his honour, keeping him by his side as he 
 walked, and treating him "avec beaucoup de distinction." 
 Yet he was hardly surprised to find himself a fallen 
 star in England. The day after his return he presented 
 himself at Court \ he was very coldly received, and an 
 order was sent to him forbidding his reappearance. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CONSOLATIONS OF HIS LEISURE — THE END 
 
 Peterborough's career has been treated as closed at the 
 accession of George the First. There was an end of him 
 officially, but only officially. He still remained a con- 
 spicuous figure in contemporary life, both public and 
 private, environed with romantic legends and a source of 
 delightful possibilities. Nobody knew exactly what he 
 had done, and nobody could predict what he might 
 not do. His kind is rare in English history ; and work- 
 ing statesmen of successive eras, the Somerses and the 
 Godolphins, are to be congratulated on its scarcity. For 
 the reader of history the apparition now and then is a 
 boon. Peterborough's eccentric personality laid his con- 
 temporaries under an obligation still greater, as the curi- 
 osity with which they followed his gyrations testified. 
 He kept their attention on the alert, and in multifarious 
 directions, for twenty years after a Court and its coun- 
 sellors had thought they had extinguished him. 
 
 He spoke in Parliament with vigour and independence. 
 He resisted, or he supported the measures of Government 
 on their merits alone. There was no more vehement 
 opponent of the Septennial Bill, which he taxed the 
 WTiig ministers with having introduced in defiance of 
 
CHAP. X IN PARLIAMENT 193 
 
 Whig principles. The measure was rested on the danger 
 of frequent elections when the adversaries of the Pro- 
 testant Succession were as active as the rebellion of 1715 
 indicated. Lord Islay, Argyle's brother, taunted the 
 opposition with its desire to avenge itself, by hampering 
 public business, for the signs of royal favour to those 
 who had ventured their lives on the King's side against 
 the Pretender. Peterborough had faced Islay before in 
 the House. Now, with a scoff at the Scotchman's 
 prudent care of his person, he remarked that men who 
 do not fight for a cause cannot die for it. He asked, 
 moreover, what would be the position of the Scotch 
 peers elected for a Triennial Parliament during the four 
 years' extension^ They would be, he craved pardon 
 of the bishops for saying it, "neither made, nor created 
 but proceeding." For himself, his affection for the 
 Sovereign did not depend on the accident whether he 
 were or were not in the Crown's actual service. If he 
 was against the Bill, it simply was that he could not 
 vote for a remedy which might cause a worse evil. 
 Fighting on the same side with Addison, he advocated, 
 both with vote and pen. Stanhope's and Sunderland's 
 Peerage Bill, which was introduced on March 5th and 
 dropped on April 14th, 1719. Walpole, who headed the 
 resistance of the dissident Whigs, had printed against 
 the measure Thoughts of a Member of the Lower House ; 
 Peterborough replied with BemarJcs on the Thoughts. 
 His argument was that the measure wisely aimed at the 
 curtailment of the royal prerogative of the creation of 
 peers, in order to prevent the inundation of the Upper 
 House by new lords for some temporary exigency. 
 Whigs, he contended, ought to rejoice in any increase of 
 
 o 
 
194 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 the independence of a branch of the Legislature. He 
 ridiculed the fear that the change might enable the peers 
 to toss the King and Commons in a blanket. The House 
 of Lords, a small body mostly poor, representing nothing 
 but themselves, had not enough inherent force to be for- 
 midable. It was a third estate only in imagination, a 
 purgatory, added to heaven and hell, where the ultimate 
 decrees of Providence were not altered but suspended 
 and delayed. He denounced as accursed Papists in 
 politics opponents who, perceiving the visible mistakes in 
 judicious laws, yet refused to amend them. Towards the 
 end of George the First's reign he assailed, as vehemently 
 as he had defended the Peerage Bill, an endeavour by 
 a clerical peer, Lord Willoughby de Broke, to banish 
 immorality and dissent by penalties for disrespectful 
 observations on the Thirty-Nine Articles. Although he 
 was for a Parliamentary King, he had, he said, no desire 
 for a Parliamentary God, or a Parliamentary religion. 
 If the House declared for such an one, he should go 
 to Rome and endeavour to be chosen a cardinal, for he 
 would rather sit in the conclave than with their lord- 
 ships on such terms. On March 29th, 1724, he spoke in 
 favour of the Bill for the deprivation and banishment of 
 Atterbury, the friend of many of his friends, Dr. John 
 Freind among them, whom, however, he disliked as a 
 Jacobite, and perhaps, too, as a bishop. Once more, in 
 June, 1727, he lifted up his voice for the defence of 
 Hanover. Let our circumstances be what they may, 
 we ought, he argued, to exert ourselves for the honour 
 and dignity of the crown, and defend the just rights of the 
 nation. Though no subsequent speech by him in Parlia- 
 ment is chronicled, he did not cease to attend, and his 
 
IN A PAPAL PRISON 19S 
 
 name is found in the list of peers present at debates as 
 late as May, 1731. 
 
 Politics had their turn in his life, and only their turn. 
 Now and again he amused himself with travel. In the 
 autumn of 1717 he went for his health to Italy, where, 
 according to his wont, he met with a remarkable ad- 
 venture. The Pretender then resided at Urbano, near 
 Bologna in the Papal States. Information had reached 
 Pope Clement the Eleventh of a Protestant plot against 
 the exile's life, and vigilance on his behalf had been strictly 
 enjoined on the Cardinal Legate who governed the 
 Romagna. Either chance or private malevolence directed 
 to Peterborough, on his arrival at or near Bologna, the 
 suspicion of two Irish Papal ofHcers. They arrested him. 
 He was interrogated, his papers were seized, and he was 
 shut up in Fort Urbano. It was a proper though irregular 
 chastisement for his speech of 1713. He had to establish 
 his identity, and his rage did not expedite matters. 
 Nearly a month elapsed before he was freed from restraint. 
 By that time he had forgotten that he was an invalid, and 
 hastened home, burning for revenge. He clamoured with 
 pen and voice for amends ; and when he, whom the Due 
 de St. Simon describes as being, whether "bien ou mal 
 avec le gouvernement," always " craint et menage," had 
 a real grievance it was not to be disregarded. Stanhope 
 was in power, and though the old friendship had long been 
 broken, took up his cause. Satisfaction was demanded. 
 When the Pontifical Government demurred, the Mediter- 
 ranean fleet was ordered to Civita Vecchia. Then the 
 Pope gave way. He sought the mediation of a friendly 
 State, with a confession that the Cardinal Legate had 
 acted violently and unjustly. The legate was instructed 
 
196 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 to pray through the admiral King George's forgiveness 
 for having inconsiderately arrested a peer of Great 
 Britain while travelling, and Great Britain and Peter- 
 borough graciously accepted the apology. 
 
 The accident did not prejudice Peterborough against 
 foreign travel. He was again abroad for some time in 
 1719, and took part in an important political event. 
 The ambition of Philip the Fifth and the ability of 
 his minister. Cardinal Alberoni, threatened alike the 
 Austrian dominions in Italy and the Orleans Regency. 
 Though Byng's great naval victory had frustrated the 
 Spanish designs upon Sicily the cardinal was not at the 
 end of his means. In 1718 Peterborough had been 
 supposed to be concerting some combination with 
 respect to Spanish affairs with the Prince de Cellamare. 
 In 1719, uninvited by Stanhope in England or by Dubois 
 in France, he availed himself of an acquaintance with 
 the Duke of Parma, the Queen of Spain's uncle, to pro- 
 cure the downfall of Alberoni. Travelling to Novi in 
 Piedmont he met an agent of the Duke's and succeeded 
 in convincing him that Alberoni's continuance in office 
 was equally mischievous to Spain and Italy. He informed 
 Stanhope and Dubois in November of all he had done, 
 in his letter to Stanhope inveighing against the Emperor 
 Charles's ingratitude for his Spanish services. The 
 English and French ministers do not seem to have been 
 much more grateful for the very considerable benefit he 
 had now conferred in ridding Europe of Alberoni's 
 schemes. Stanhope had been lately discoursing to 
 Dubois on Peterborough's indiscretions, and Dubois had 
 rejoined with predictions that he could do little good 
 and might do much harm. They did not change their 
 
X AN ASTASIA ROBINSON 197 
 
 note even when Alberoni was an exile. When next year 
 the Earl once more was in France his presence was still 
 unwelcome to Dubois, who wrote to Sir Luke Schaub 
 accusing him of a pernicious habit of depreciating to 
 Frenchmen the resources of England, to the injury of the 
 Anglo-French alliance. Four or five years later he made 
 a yet longer sojourn on the Continent. He passed the 
 larger part of the two years 1725-27 abroad, wandering 
 from place to place. " He can go," said Pope, " to any 
 climate, but can never stay in any." No records of his 
 eccentricities as he ran hither and thither have been 
 preserved ; but it may be doubted if silence imply 
 discretion ; such blank spaces in his biography are not 
 rare. His tumultuous nature required occasional respites 
 from the social Babel of London, as French ladies of the 
 Eegency used to go into retreat. 
 
 Society had no right to be surprised that he deserted 
 it in 1725. By this time he had a second and young 
 wife. He left her as deliberately as he had left the first, 
 and with less excuse of public duties. Since his loss of 
 official employment, and perhaps from the conclusion of 
 his mission to Frankfort, he had been paying assidu- 
 ous court to the famous singer, Anastasia Eobinson. 
 Her father, Thomas Eobinson, was a portrait painter, 
 of a good Leicestershire family, who had settled in Italy 
 to study his art. His wife died, leaving him an only 
 child Anastasia, and he then married a Eoman Catholic 
 widow named Lane, by whom he had another 
 daughter. Both children were brought up Catholics, 
 and received a musical training. After a long residence 
 abroad the family returned to England about the 
 commencement of 1713, by which time it had been 
 
198 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 determined that Anastasia should adopt music as a pro- 
 fession. Her father, himself an accomplished musical 
 amateur, had been forced by a disorder in the eyes 
 which ended in blindness, to abandon portraiture. At 
 first she confined herself to concerts at York Buildings, 
 where she accompanied herself on the harpsichord. Her 
 first appearance on the stage was on January 27th, 1714, 
 in the opera of Creso. After her second appearance, as 
 Ismina in Arminio, on March 4th, her position as prima 
 donna was secured. Mrs. Delany had a long intimacy 
 with her. As early as July, 1722, describing a water 
 party, she regrets the absence of "Mrs. Robinson " from 
 the entertainment, which " otherwise had been complete." 
 Sixty-five years later she dictated some reminiscences of 
 her charming friend to Dr. Burney, who printed them in 
 his History of Music. According to her Anastasia pos- 
 sessed not beauty but elegance in figure and a winning 
 softness of expression heightened by large blue eyes. She 
 had good sense, amiability, and delicate sentiments, and 
 her mind, without brilliancy of wit, was well balanced 
 and cultivated. She spoke Italian with ease, and was 
 versed in Italian literature. Kindly and modest, a 
 devout though tolerant Catholic, the publicity of the 
 stage and the importunities of gallants were hateful 
 to her. 
 
 Her salary at the King's Theatre was £1000 for the 
 season, and she derived about as much more from 
 benefits and presents. Such an income was for those 
 days very large. Her father was enabled to hire a 
 house in Golden Square, where Bolingbroke had lived 
 while Secretary of State, and to hold weekly musical 
 assemblies there. Anastasia had many wooers, and 
 
A PRIVATE MARRIAGE 199 
 
 among them Peterborough, whose respectful courtesy, 
 humour, and celebrity delighted her. Unlike some, he 
 had never offended her by hinting at other relations, 
 though for long he could not prevail on himself to marry 
 a public singer. Finally conquered, the tradition runs, 
 by her as Griselda in Buononcini's opera, he offered his 
 hand in the spring of 1722. She accepted it, as the 
 almost perfect Griselda she was, with his condition 
 that their marriage should not be divulged till it 
 was a more convenient time for him to make it known. 
 The sole witness to the wedding is stated to have been 
 the wife of Lord Harley, afterwards Countess of Oxford, 
 the daughter-in-law of the ex -Lord Treasurer. The 
 motives for the mystery can only be conjectured. 
 Lord Halifax is said, though Sir David Brewster 
 doubts it, to have married, and concealed his marriage 
 with, Catherine Barton, the niece of Newton, in 
 circumstances somewhat similar. Peterborough may 
 have feared ridicule for the disparity of rank ; of the 
 disparity of age he would hardly be conscious. His 
 principal reason for the concealment of the true nature 
 of his new tie, though after the experience of his former 
 union he need scarcely have been afraid of the restraints 
 of recognised wedded life, is more likely to have been a 
 desire to retain the full liberty of a bachelor. There 
 was a fashion of treating marriage as a counsel of 
 despair, according to Peterborough's own threat, in a 
 letter from Hanover in 1711, that, if the political pro- 
 spect went on darkening, he should marry in a rage and 
 become the hero of the October club. For a year or 
 more the lady even continued on the stage. In 1723 the 
 opera company was performing at Bath during the 
 
20O PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 season, when the Italian singer, Senesino, a public 
 favourite from 1721 to 1735, insulted her at a morning 
 rehearsal. She appealed to Peterborough, who was 
 near at hand. Boiling with rage at the affront to his 
 unacknowledged wife he publicly caned the offender, 
 who understood his station too well to struggle with a 
 lord, and was compelled to beg Anastasia's pardon 
 on his knees. Senesino never had too much courage ; 
 it is recorded that a piece of machinery having 
 tumbled upon the stage in this same year, as he 
 happened to be boasting, in the character of Julius 
 Caesar, that he never knew what fear was, he lost his 
 voice from the fright and fell to crying. The present 
 affair became the town talk, and Philip Stanhope, after- 
 wards better known as Earl of Chesterfield, being 
 reported to have jested on Peterborough as an old Don 
 Quixote, received forthwith a challenge. A duel was 
 averted by the arrest of both, who were bound over to 
 keep the peace. To guiltless Anastasia the consequences 
 were more serious. Scurrilous tongues were loosened. 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who possessed one of the 
 most merciless, wrote to her sister, Lady Mar : " Would 
 any one believe that Miss Robinson is at the same time a 
 prude and a kept mistress?" The innuendoes were wholly 
 false; but they were not on that account less eagerly 
 circulated, or less cruelly painful to their subject. Her 
 operatic supremacy seems to have been already threatened 
 by the arrival in England of the Italian Cuzzoni, and the 
 affair with Senesino decided her. She quitted the stage. 
 Shortly afterwards her father, for whose sake she had per- 
 sisted in following her profession, died, and her half-sister, 
 Margaret, who, with yet finer musical gifts and a yet 
 
MRS. HOWARD 
 
 more unconquerable shyness, had been also trained for 
 a professional singer by Buononcini, was married to a 
 brother of Dr. Arbuthnot. Mrs. Robinson and Anastasia 
 now moved to Fulham to be near Peterborough, but 
 unless Sir John Hawkins, whose statement is opposed to 
 the better information of Dr. Burney, be right, they never 
 were inmates of the mansion at Parson's Green. They 
 resided in a house of their own, with a son of Mrs. 
 Robinson by her previous marriage, Mr. Lane, a Catholic 
 priest, to act as their chaplain. Anastasia frequented 
 Peterborough House, but rather as a guest than as its 
 mistress. Her husband permitted her to hold there her 
 musical parties, — her musical academy, according to 
 the expression of Sir John Hawkins, — at which she 
 was assisted by Buononcini, Martini, Tosi, and 
 Greene. Only for the Earl's very intimate friends 
 was she his wife. For the world he was so abso- 
 lutely disengaged that his obligations to her never 
 seem to have occurred either to Mrs. Howard or to him, 
 as lending an additional zest or calling for an apology 
 in the extraordinary correspondence between him and 
 that lady. 
 
 He had diversified his first and open trial of wedded 
 life with frequent and violent amours, unless, as is quite 
 possible, he be grievously calumniated by himself. He re- 
 lieved his second and morganatic marriage with a genteel 
 gallant comedy, which lasted for years, was scarcely 
 interrupted by the distractions of foreign travel — one 
 elaborate epistle is from Amsterdam — and was indisput- 
 ably and solemnly decorous to the end. The precise 
 date of the commencement of the correspondence is un- 
 known. In the August of 1723 Mrs. Howard wrote to 
 
202 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Gay to ask his assistance in corresponding with " a man 
 of wit," of whom she owned herself afraid. She enclosed 
 a letter she had received. At the same time she inti- 
 mated a wish that Gay would conceal his help, as her 
 friend might be wrathful if he learnt it. Perhaps 
 Peterborough suspected. He may have hinted his know- 
 ledge with some irony in his eulogy upon a fair lady 
 who makes use of her own admirable understanding, not 
 ladylike giving up her reason and poorly submitting 
 her judgment to those guides who commonly manage 
 their pretensions with as much self-interest and as little 
 honesty as South Sea directors. How far . Gay really 
 helped cannot be traced. Of Mrs. Howard's letters 
 rough draughts in her hand are extant ; nothing in the 
 hand of Gay has been found. Thackeray, who for effect 
 adds several years to Peterborough's real age when he 
 speaks of him as an indomitable youth of seventy, 
 has characterised the courtship as a combination of bows, 
 vows, sighs, and ogles, etiquette and raptures. It was 
 also interspersed with verses. Peterborough's father had 
 versified sixty years before ; and Pepys, no bad judge, 
 remarked of lines by him, — " Lord ! they are sorry 
 things; only, a lord made them." Peterborough had 
 tried, without much more success, if the Muse de Cava- 
 lier, attributed also to Lord Cutts, and Verses on the 
 Duchess of Marlborough, addressed to Mr. Harley after 
 his removal from Court, be his. A poem in his corre- 
 spondence with Mrs. Howard panegyrising the 
 
 " Wonderful creature ! a woman of reason ! 
 Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season," 
 
 stands on a different level. Thackeray extols it for its 
 
LOVE BY A PERSON OF QUALITY 203 
 
 truth as well as grace. It has a facility and vigour 
 which entitle it to a better fate than to be described in 
 anthologies as a Song by a Person of Quality. 
 
 The prose in the correspondence is less supportable. 
 The present age has lost the faculty of taking interest 
 in the contrasts of beauteous female rakes with the 
 Amorets capable of inspiring "a true respectful ten- 
 derness, and a kind of awe, which has the effect of 
 opium in moderating passion ; " of Englishwomen, 
 whom a declaration offends, with Spanish ladies who, 
 " from the queen down to the maid of honour, all accept 
 of a profession of love with a decent gratitude, never 
 pretending to scorn or reprove, but refusing with 
 thanks;" and of "fair devils" who haunt and torment 
 the lover wherever he goes, with the ugly whom, as 
 Peterborough with perfect honesty assures his repre- 
 sentative of the beauteous type, he can easily forget. 
 But critics of the forty voluminous letters have no busi- 
 ness to declaim against them for their tediousness. They 
 were not invited to read them. Peterborough, though 
 very possibly he did not expect to be obeyed, had em- 
 phatically cautioned Mrs. Howard not to show them, 
 and she had promised to observe the injunction 
 sacredly. He had his own motive for worrying his 
 fancy during all these years ; he was keeping his hand 
 in. Lord Macaulay would in his declining age set 
 his memory tremendous tests to assure himself that 
 it kept its tenacity. Peterborough by an analogous 
 instinct desired at sixty or seventy to ascertain that he 
 had not lost his amatory cunning. He wished to prove 
 to himself, much more than to Mrs. Howard, — whose 
 duty, whether to her husband or to her royal lover, 
 
204 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 if indeed she ever had a royal lover, he never thought 
 of undermining, — that he was as irresistible as in the 
 days when he entered Valencia in triumph amidst 
 languishing beauties. He was pleased to think him- 
 self so dangerous that he had to plot for a moment's 
 audience with a lady he affected to love, and possessed 
 of feelings still so ardent as to "tremble when I 
 approach your door." It answered Mrs. Howard's pur- 
 pose at thirty-nine to be the mark he aimed at. Her 
 vanity was gratified, as she demonstrated by the pre- 
 servation of the correspondence she had intimated she 
 would suppress : her own wits were not too severely 
 taxed, with Gay to prompt her effusions ; and she felt 
 entirely secure in the uninflammable temper of her own 
 heart. Probably she was able to borrow for use in 
 Leicester Square and at Kew from " the experiences of 
 one not wholly ignorant of nature," who had studied 
 it among the dames of Paris, readier to share bottles 
 of champagne than hearts, who had explored its 
 varieties in idle engagements at Venice and among 
 the complaisant damsels of Valencia and Catalonia, 
 and of whose manifold errant loves she heard the con- 
 fessions with a pleased if rather incredulous horror. 
 Of the intrinsic literary merits of the correspondence 
 it is hard to judge dispassionately, chiefly because it 
 is impossible for us to endure discussions on love in 
 which there is no heart. To this age all without dis- 
 tinction seems the silliest superannuated philandering. 
 From the modern point of view it is as much a waste 
 of energy to censure one letter as wearisome, a second 
 as dull, a third or a thirtieth as both dull and pro- 
 fane, and all as not very creditable, as to damn with 
 
X PLAYFUL DISCREETNESS 205 
 
 faint praise one as long-winded but half satirical and 
 amusing, and another as the least stupid of the 
 series. For the latter end of the nineteenth century 
 there can be no real difference of degrees in tedious- 
 ness between Peterborough's profound bows and the 
 lady's responsive curtsies, in some of which civil 
 commentators have detected a playful discreetness 
 and even brilliancy. In Peterborough's elderly days 
 dissertations on love were the common material of 
 polite conversation. They had nothing to do with 
 real love, whether refined or gross, any more than 
 scholastic theology in its later stages had to do with 
 the art of life and death. The fine gentleman learnt 
 the system as he learnt in boyhood to write Latin verse 
 at Westminster, as a youth to manoeuvre with Ald- 
 richian logic at Oxford, as a courtier to thrust and 
 parry at the fencing -school. It was an accomplish- 
 ment like the rest. A gentleman and lady of quality 
 could not meet for half an hour in a drawing-room 
 without falling to amoebsean coquetry, hammer and 
 tongs. For their contemporaries, Peterborough's and 
 Chloe Howard's 
 
 " Wit, so genteel, without art, without care," 
 
 must have been a model of delicate vivacity. Doubtless, 
 without prejudice to the heroine's sacred observation of 
 his lordship's equally sincere caution of concealment, 
 it provoked the periodical admiration, envy, and jealousy 
 of whole parloursful of dames and cavaliers. 
 
 Peterborough, who at sixty-five was at least as juvenile 
 as Mrs. Howard at thirty-nine, did not choose to let an 
 accident like his threescore years forbid him the pleasure 
 
2o6 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 of the exercise of his mental gymnastics. If it pleased 
 him to forget his age, it is very officious of strangers like 
 posterity to insist upon remembering it in and out of 
 season. In general he loved to vanquish obstacles, age 
 included. He loved to be talked of, and he loved a 
 diversity of experiences and objects. He mocked at 
 social laws, and he was eager to have society on his side. 
 When it is considered how largely he was permitted to 
 indulge his caprices, it is surprising he was not more 
 unbearable and insolent than he seems to have been. 
 Many of the stories told of him are probably fables. We 
 are not, for example, obliged to believe the monstrous 
 narrative of a quarrel between him and Voltaire, which 
 was first printed in the Gentleman^ s Magazine in 1797. 
 Voltaire admired the famous Earl, whom, a quarter of a 
 century after the date of the imaginary occurrence, he 
 compares with the paladins of romance, in his Siede de 
 Louis XIV. He lauds his heroism and his generosity, 
 and had experienced the latter quality during a long visit, 
 about 1728, to Parson's Green. At the time the Earl, 
 according to this foolish story, had engaged him to write 
 some work, vaguely described as important, and understood 
 that all had been arranged by him for its publication. 
 He supplied funds from time to time to defray the cost 
 of printing. The publisher received from Voltaire an 
 instalment of £10, and part of the work was put in type ; 
 but when the latter tried to induce the man to proceed 
 by the assurance that Peterborough refused any further 
 payment till the whole was printed, the suspicious or 
 impecunious publisher stopped the press. Finally, 
 arriving at Parson's Green after dinner, he saw in the 
 garden Peterborough, who learnt how both had been 
 
X VOLTAIRE, AND THE DANCING- MASTER 207 
 
 defrauded. At the instant of the disclosure Voltaire 
 appeared at the end of a long avenue. In a fit of boiling 
 rage Peterborough drew upon him, and would have 
 run him through had not he fled and hidden himself in 
 the village. Next day he hurried to London, and thence, 
 leaving behind him hat, portmanteau, and papers, he 
 almost immediately returned to the Continent. The 
 whole tale clearly is an invention designed to establish 
 the necessary connection between the scepticism of 
 "odious devils" like Voltaire and knavery in business. 
 The sole fragment of truth in it is the circumstance 
 that Voltaire, at a period when he was in poor circum- 
 stances, was befriended by Peterborough. 
 
 The story of the persecution of the dancing-master or 
 actor is scarcely more credible. Everybody has heard 
 how Peterborough, as he was driving along the Strand 
 on a wet day, saw an actor or, as one version of the 
 story has it, a dancing-master, picking his way in gay 
 dress and pearl-coloured silk stockings through the deep 
 mud. In a freak of mad malicious humour out he 
 dashed, sword in hand, at the frightened pedestrian, 
 whose flight he directed among the miriest puddles. 
 When he was tired of the chase he quietly returned to 
 his chariot and resumed his course as if nothing had 
 happened. If the tale were not merely invented as a 
 pendant to the Senesino anecdote its date is much more 
 likely to have been the reign of Charles the Second than 
 of George the First ; but the popular license for extra- 
 vagant behaviour to which it points had accompanied 
 Peterborough throughout his career. He used it to the 
 utmost in age as in youth. He who had once been 
 the finest of fine gentlemen, disdaining the edicts of 
 
2o8 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 fashion, wore boots in the Pump room, to the amuse- 
 ment rather than the anger of Bath. He would do 
 his own marketing. Lady Hervey, once " sweet Molly 
 Lepel," wrote to Mrs. Howard from Bath in June, 1725 : 
 "Lord Peterborough has been here some time, though 
 by his dress one would believe he had not designed to 
 make any stay, for he wears boots all day, and, as I 
 hear, must do so, having brought no shoes with him. 
 It is a comical sight to see him with his blue ribbon and 
 star and a cabbage under each arm, or a chicken in his 
 hand, which, after he himself has purchased at market, he 
 carries home for his dinner." At Peterborough House 
 he was wont, according to Sir John Hawkins and other 
 authorities, to preside in the kitchen as well as act the 
 host. He had learnt the master art in Spain, where 
 he used to say he had often wanted for food, and oftener 
 for a cook to dress it. An hour before dinner he would 
 quit his guests for the kitchen, slip on a tavern cook's 
 dress, and as the dishes were being brought in resume 
 his proper place. The foundation of the Beefsteak Club 
 is attributed to this propensity of his to escape from the 
 trammels of his station. His hearty enjoyment of a 
 steak cooked on a gridiron for the dinner of George 
 Lambert, the landscape and scene-painter, as he went on 
 Avith his work in the painting-room of Covent Garden 
 Theatre, is alleged to have suggested its establishment. 
 As, however, the theatre was not built till 1732, he can 
 hardly have been an habitual frequenter, apart from the 
 troublesome circumstance that Lambert was not appointed 
 scene-painter to the theatre till 1736, when Peterborough 
 had been dead a year. 
 
 His nature was to court and afifront public opinion. 
 
X MULTIFARIOUSNESS 209 
 
 Swift quotes or imagines a set of characters of con- 
 spicuous courtiers of Queen Anne, drawn in conformity 
 with popular report, that from behind the shield of the 
 anonymous scribe he may less invidiously shoot his own 
 sharp comments. In the group is a sketch of Peter- 
 borough, for which he vouches as for the most part 
 true : " He affects popularity ; loves to preach in coffee- 
 houses and public places, and is an open enemy of 
 revealed religion; is brave in his person, has a good 
 estate, and does not seem expensive, yet is always in 
 debt and very poor." The "well -shaped thin man, 
 with a very brisk look," was seen everywhere. Now he 
 was flitting about the Continent. Then he was in 
 Norfolk, contrasting the prodigies of Houghton with 
 his cottage which had put the public to no expense. 
 At another time he was visiting Lord Cobham and 
 admiring his stately Sacharissa, as he denominates the 
 palace and gardens of Stowe. He had listened to Penn 
 preaching Quakerism, for it was his habit, he said, to be 
 polite to all religions, though he did not wish to believe 
 in the dogmas of one. The impression produced upon 
 him by a visit to F6n6lon at Cambrai had a little 
 agitated his indifference ; and he wrote to Locke that he 
 feared, if he stayed longer in so pious an atmosphere, 
 he might grow pious too. He exchanged theological 
 doubts with Voltaire, but was courteous to the Church 
 of England in deference to the Dean of St. Patrick's. 
 He knew that George the First did not understand, 
 and did not admire, his bird-witted character, but he 
 paid his homage periodically at the palace. Any cold- 
 ness with which he was received was compensated at 
 the rival court of the Prince of Wales in Leicester House. 
 
 p 
 
2IO PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 There he was so famihar that he could speak of hours 
 of conversation with the Princess, and of discretionary 
 access to her private apartment. On the Prince's acces- 
 sion as George the Second he remained a favourite. 
 His influence, such as it was, would scarcely be affected 
 injuriously by the new King's reconciliation with Wal- 
 pole, for he and Walpole had fallen into a habit of some 
 degree of intimacy. When Swift was passing part of the 
 spring and summer of 1726 in London, Peterborough was 
 able, as a common friend, to arrange for an interview, on 
 April 27th, between him and the minister on the griev- 
 ances of Irishmen, or rather of the English colony in Ire- 
 land. Swift drew up next morning an account of the 
 conversation in the shape of a letter to Peterborough, to 
 be given by him to Walpole. Apparently in the course of 
 the summer a second conference, to as little effect, was 
 held between Swift and Walpole, again through Peter- 
 borough's mediation. When the Dean came over in 
 1727, at the commencement of the new reign, Peter- 
 borough once more intervened to bring him and Walpole 
 together. Peterborough indeed had long patched up a 
 decorous measure of amity -svith the Whig junto, though 
 he never returned to its ranks. For instance, the 
 Government was in May, 1722, willing to grant him, and 
 he was willing to accept from it, promotion from the 
 rank he had attained in 1707 of General of Marines, 
 to that of General of all the Marine Forces of Great 
 Britain, and the commission was renewed on the accession 
 of George the Second. He had been left undisturbed 
 in his command of the Roj^^al Regiment of Horse 
 Guards, conferred upon him by Queen Anne. In both 
 characters of general and colonel he performed his 
 
PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENTS 
 
 duties as a servant of the new dynasty loyally and 
 scrupulously. Letters are preserved which show how 
 carefully he attended to points of regimental discipline. 
 
 The offices were probably lucrative, but they did not 
 set him above financial worries. Throughout his career 
 he was, as Swift intimates, constantly involved in debt. 
 He was in difficulties after the Fenwick incident cost 
 him his places. By his OAvn account he added to them 
 by supplying the wants of his troops in Spain out of his 
 own resources ; and Marlborough believed he was very ill 
 off when he quitted Spain. He could save nothing out 
 of the allowances for the embassies to which Oxford and 
 Bolingbroke appointed him. King George's Treasury 
 kept him waiting for sums due on their account. 
 His contingent charges, £700, were not paid before 
 August, 1715, and £1579, for extraordinary disburse- 
 ments and table money, not till July, 1717, Probably 
 he had long previously anticipated the receipt of these 
 arrears. He was a bad manager of his private means, 
 and could be pillaged with impunity. Though the 
 allusion is not to be accepted as literally historical, 
 there must have been a foundation for Swift's ironical 
 advice to stewards to imitate Lord Peterborough's, who 
 pulled down his master's house, sold the materials, and 
 then charged him with the repairs. His chief share in 
 the great Mordaunt inheritance, when his uncle's death 
 left him head of the family, was a burdensome litigation. 
 His uncle devised the Northamptonshire property of 
 Drayton and all else at his disposal to his only child, 
 Mary, Duchess of Norfolk. In 1700, after Peter- 
 borough's imprisonment, the Duke had obtained a divorce 
 without opposition from him. In 1701 the Duke died. 
 
212 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 and Lady Mary, since her father's death Baroness 
 Beauchamp and Mordaunt, was married to Sir John 
 Germaine. During her life Peterborough sued for the 
 family estates. Only a fragment, with an income much 
 less, it may be presumed, than the £4000 a year at 
 which Luttrell puts it, had descended to him with the 
 earldom. A jury in the Queen's Bench brought in a 
 verdict in November, 1702, adverse to his main claim, 
 though it admitted his right to some lay impro- 
 priations. He appealed, and his cousin's title was con- 
 firmed by the House of Lords in 1703. She died in 
 November, 1705, and Peterborough became fourteenth 
 Baron Beauchamp and eighth Baron Mordaunt. His 
 invariable belief was that all the lands of Drayton, 
 valued at £70,000, should have come to him as heir-at- 
 law. She devised them to her husband. Sir John, a 
 debauched gambler. So ignorant and devoid of taste 
 was he that, according to Lady Suffolk, when he was 
 erecting a colonnade he originally had the pillars placed 
 upside down in the belief that the capitals were 
 pedestals. It was the more irritating that the ancestral 
 home of the Mordaunts, described by Horace Walpole 
 at intervals of twenty years as a venerable heap of 
 ugliness with many curious bits, and as the most 
 grotesquely charming mansion in England, should have 
 been thrown away on such a creature. With renewed 
 energy Peterborough resumed proceedings. The House 
 of Lords again decided against him on February 24th, 
 1710. Shifting his attack to a part of the property 
 which had not been touched by this action, he continued 
 his useless contest^ and desisted only on Sir John's 
 death in 1718. He had declared that if Germaine 
 
MOUNT BEVIS 213 
 
 left the estate to his second wife, Lady Betty, 
 daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, he would abandon the 
 struggle. The event came to pass. As Lady Betty, 
 Horace Walpole's "divine old mistress of the dear old 
 place," wrote to Swift, "he kept his word like an 
 honourable man." 
 
 Peterborough's favourite residence in his later years 
 was a house near Southampton on the mound called 
 Bevis or Bevois Mount, or Mount Bevis, which the 
 legend says Sir Bevis threw up to stop the Danes from 
 crossing the Itchen. It was, as he describes it, a wild 
 romantic cottage overlooking Itchen Ferry. He hired 
 it on lease at £14 a year. Though the house was pulled 
 down some seventy years ago, the grounds, till the 
 speculative builder lately pounced upon them and 
 turned the spot into Bevois Town, preserved consider- 
 able natural charms. They were at their best at high 
 water, when the tide forms a bay at the foot of the 
 mound. So proud was Peterborough of the effect that 
 he would not suffer strangers to look over the pretty 
 wilderness he had adorned with shrubs and trees unless 
 the river were at its height. He adorned his "Blenheim" 
 by hanging over the garden gates, as Pope has sung, old 
 flags and guns, which, he boasted, were his only Spanish 
 spoils. Both there and at Parson's Green he gathered 
 round him friends and admirers. He had lost many, 
 and some he only remembered, or was remembered by, 
 to the increase of reciprocal ill-will. There was Duchess 
 Sarah, with whom, as perhaps with her husband also, he 
 had preserved a semblance of familiarity, though he had 
 sneered at and declaimed against him, and had versified 
 against her. When the Duke died in 1722 Peterborough 
 
214 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 was one of the ten peers who acted as assistants to the 
 three chief mourners at the magnificent obsequies. He 
 went on visiting the Duchess notwithstanding the con- 
 troversy of 1711. She did not decline his visits or his 
 compliments, requiting herself for her enforced civilities 
 by an endorsement on an old high-flown letter from 
 him : " This lord since the Queen's death comes to 
 me and talks as if he had always been in our interest 
 and of our opinion." There was Stanhope, whom as 
 a general he had severely criticised and condemned. 
 There was the Harley-St. John combination of states- 
 men, with whom he had been temporarily allied on 
 terms of common hostility to others : " I love them " — 
 which may be doubted — " and I hate their enemies," as 
 he said very sincerely. Between them and him there 
 was no surviving link after the Queen's death had 
 ruined them as a party. The connection had on neither 
 side been extremely cordial while it lasted, notwithstand- 
 ing the efforts of the two leaders to give their alliance 
 with Peterborough, as with all their associates, the 
 character of a family compact. Pope speaks of Boling- 
 broke, in particular, and Peterborough as wholly unlike ; 
 but rather their mental resemblance may have been some- 
 what too close for mutual amiability. They felt their 
 wits pitted against one another. A boisterous goodwill 
 and affected admiration covered something of jealousy 
 as well as contemptuousness on the one side, and of 
 wrath at being held in a leash on the other. For Peter- 
 borough the dissolution of one political league did not 
 mean the formation of another. After the accession of 
 George the First he mingled only casually in party 
 feuds, and belonged to no party even intermittingly. 
 
THE FRIEND OF SWIFT 215 
 
 But he had never been wholly dependent either for 
 happiness or for occupation on political connections and 
 the importance they gave. When they failed him he 
 was able to fall back upon the representatives of other 
 and less capricious interests. In their company he 
 has come down to posterity with a brilliancy scarcely 
 inferior to that with which he shone in his own day. 
 
 He had always been a patron of letters, as Dryden's 
 gratitude testifies. He had the good taste to value his 
 nobility and estate for the admittance they gave him 
 among the wits. Sensible as he was of the advantages 
 of birth and position, he used them in his relations 
 with men of high intelligence only for the flattering 
 purpose of rendering himself acceptable. To them 
 he was faithful, if he were false to statesmen, kings, 
 mistresses, and conquerors. He was on familiar terms 
 with the literary companionship in general, from the 
 illustrious Dryden to Mrs. Manley, the notorious 
 authoress of the New Atalantis. But Swift and, in 
 later years, Pope were his warm friends. He had 
 known Swift before he went to Spain. His apology for 
 his resistance to the Occasional Conformity Bill in 1703 
 shows how he then valued his respect. Swift has 
 recorded that they renewed their acquaintance at Harley's 
 house in October, 1710, when the Earl grew mightily 
 fond of him. The liking was cemented at a supper 
 given in the following November by Peterborough to 
 Prior, Lewis, Freind, and Swift, who pronounced his host 
 the ramblingest lying rogue on earth ; but that, as when 
 he spoke of him as a hangdog whom he loved dearly, 
 was his fashion of evincing admiration. He notes how 
 Peterborough truly predicted two months before 
 
2i6 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 Brihuega that Stanhope would lose Spain. In July, 
 1711, he dilates on the great things he verily believes 
 Peterborough had done diplomatically in Savoy and at 
 Vienna, though the success of his negotiations militated 
 against the peace which he violently opposed and Swift 
 desired. He was alarmed at the rumours of Peter- 
 borough's death, and the certainty of his illness, at 
 Frankfort, in October, 1711, and exclaims that "we love 
 one another mightily." Long afterwards he gratefully 
 wrote that the Earl always remembered to do kindnesses, 
 and never gave him time to ask a favour. He asks 
 in 1732 for a letter that he may have the pleasure in 
 his scoundrel country of going about and showing his 
 depending parsons a letter from the Earl of Peter- 
 borough. 
 
 With Pope Peterborough's intimacy was constant 
 during the later years of his life. He admired the genius 
 of the poet, though "a respectable intelligencer, who 
 had it from Lord Peterborough," told Mr. Tyers that 
 Peterborough did not think his friend Pope so good nor 
 so great a poet as Dryden. He liked the man. Parson's 
 Green and Twickenham are not very far apart, and the 
 poet often was Peterborough's guest at Fulham, as 
 weU as sometimes in Bolton Street. They wrote to one 
 another when they were separated. Peterborough's 
 share in the correspondence shows his prose to greater 
 advantage, at all events according to the taste of the 
 nineteenth century, than in the Howard correspondence. 
 Letter-writing is the single form of composition in which 
 literary taste in an amateur need not fear competition 
 on equal terms with the same quality in the pro- 
 fessional author, and Peterborough certainly had the art. 
 
OF POPE 217 
 
 To Pope's taste his letters were rather too gay and 
 wandering for a statesman; but as we read them we 
 can understand that they would put the poet on his 
 mettle, and his replies are among the most carefully 
 polished in his correspondence. They were carefully 
 kept, and after the Earl's death they seem to have been 
 collected and deposited at Dodsley's shop in Pall Mall. 
 The Duchess of Portland referred in 1737 to an order 
 which Lady Peterborough had given to Mr. Dodsley to 
 deliver to her, for perusal by Mrs. Delany, "the book 
 of letters in quarto, or large folio, as she pleases. A. 
 Pope. All in his own hand." The friendship was 
 proof against two tempers, each explosive. Pope was 
 tolerant if his senior uttered a sharp word, and Peter- 
 borough could gracefully ask grains of allowance for a 
 gloomy or rainy day. He was not the less content with 
 Pope's affection that he knew it was shared with men 
 who, he thought, had played him false, like Bolingbroke, 
 or whose projects he hated, like those of Atterbury. 
 He drilled the vines and quincunx in the grounds of the 
 Twickenham villa as energetically as if he had been 
 marshalling legions for the conquest of Spain. He even 
 mediated, and with temporary success, between the poet 
 and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Their relations were 
 so cordial that for Pope Anastasia bore her rightful title 
 of Lady Peterborough long before the world gave it her, 
 and he could invite himself to be of the company on the 
 occasion of a naval review at Portsmouth in that year. 
 This may have been the expedition, when, as he told 
 Swift some years after, he went with Peterborough two 
 leagues out to sea, to try if he could sail without sick- 
 ness, and nearly died of the experiment. When in 
 
2i8 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 1732 Pope was appointed an examiner at Winchester 
 School, or, according to another account, joined Peter- 
 borough in offering prizes for English verse, he set as the 
 subject " The Campaign of Valencia." He was Peter- 
 borough's guest at Bevis Mount, and together they went 
 to the prize distribution. In the following year he was 
 at Bevis Mount for three weeks in the autumn, and again 
 in the following summer. He was the depositary of Peter- 
 borough's murmurs at the inconclusiveness of an inverte- 
 brate career in which, "whenever he had been fool 
 enough to take pains, he had always met with some will 
 able to undo his labours." To him was communicated 
 the very superfluous confession that, notwithstanding the 
 study of Barclay's Apology far the Quakers, he found, after 
 a stroke given on the left, he could not offer the right 
 cheek for another blow. Peterborough cared sufficiently for 
 Pope's favourable judgment, and relied sufiiciently upon 
 it, to endeavour to persuade him that he himself was a 
 rural philosopher, rejoicing to write to the poet upon the 
 side of a wheelbarrow, while the farmeress at Bevis cor- 
 responded from the haycock; that for him, as he was 
 situated, it was a virtue to be a loiterer, a worshipper of 
 the goddess Laziness ; and that, if he no longer laboured 
 to reform national vices and wrongs, it was simply 
 because he had toiled so long and strenuously at the task 
 as to have proved that the endeavour was unavailing. 
 
 Had he been less indomitably juvenile in temper he 
 might have pleaded physical infirmities as a perfect excuse 
 for standing aside. His constitution had been seriously 
 injured by the carriage accident in 1711. He had 
 travelled in the summer of 1717 in quest of health, and his 
 absence on the Continent between 1725 and 1727 prob- 
 
X THE COUNTESS OF PETERBOROUGH 219 
 
 ably had the same motive. His sufferings became more 
 acute, from stone in the bladder, with advancing age. 
 From an allusion in a letter of 1730, when he had been 
 exceedingly ill, it may be inferred that he neglected to 
 apply remedies. In 1732 he was for several days in ex- 
 tremities, and in the next year Pope wrote to Swift that 
 he had narrowly escaped death. Early in 1735 he was 
 advised that an operation offered the only chance of life, 
 after which he must, they said, winter in the south of 
 Europe. The crisis had a happy result in one way. He 
 had long been dependent on his wife for the sunshine of 
 domestic existence, though to the world she had never 
 yet been introduced under her rightful title. He esteemed 
 it a concession that, to obtain her attendance as his sick 
 nurse when he was lying racked with pain at Mount 
 Bevis, without subjecting her presence in his house to 
 odious misconstructions, he had permitted her to wear 
 her wedding-ring; but still she had not been allowed 
 by him to use his name. She had not travelled with 
 him, and she could not now accompany him abroad 
 unless as his wife. As the recognition had to be, he had 
 the grace to determine that it should be made at once. 
 He would not leave her fair fame to the dubious chance 
 of his escape with life from the surgeon's knife. In spite 
 of the uncontrollable temper and high opinion of his own 
 actions, which rendered him, in Mrs. Delany's opinion, 
 " a very awful husband," he loved Anastasia tenderly, 
 and sincerely admired her purity, dignity, and devotion. 
 He formed his resolution in the spring of 1735, and 
 carried it out in conformity with his general view that 
 everything affecting him was matter of historical interest. 
 Mr. Stephen Pointz, tutor to Prince William, the future 
 
220 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 hero or butcher of Culloden, had rooms over the gateway 
 of St. James's Palace. He had married Peterborough's 
 niece, and Peterborough borrowed the apartment. To it 
 he summoned all his near relatives, who found there 
 Anastasia. When they were assembled he addressed 
 them in a set discourse. He described an ideal woman, 
 a charming companion, a guardian angel in sickness. 
 Long years since it had been his happiness to win, and 
 he had ever rejoiced in winning, such a woman for his 
 wife. His shame was to have omitted, from unpardonable 
 vanity, to acknowledge her. Then turning to her, all 
 unconscious as she had been of the meaning of the 
 gathering, he took her by the hand and presented her 
 to his kinsfolk as the Countess of Peterborough. Over- 
 whelmed with the tardy announcement she fainted, and 
 was borne inanimate from the room. 
 
 Soon after this scene they were formally remarried 
 at Bristol. He had executed a will securing her the 
 enjoyment of the Parson's Green house and Be vis 
 Mount. But want of evidence of the first marriage 
 threatened difficulties. The clergjnnan who had read 
 the service was dead, as also was Lady Oxford, the 
 sole witness. He may have been unable to give a life 
 interest in the Parson's Green property unless under 
 a power in the family settlement to endow a wife ; the 
 surest outlet from the perplexity was to go through the 
 rite again. Apparently they had gone to Bristol in reli- 
 ance on the skill of a local surgeon, St. Andre, for the 
 performance of an operation which, with the indifferent 
 instruments and uncertain dexterity of the period, was a 
 hundredfold more perilous than at present. Tradition 
 has embellished the narrative with a recital of the 
 
WINDING UP LIFE 
 
 patient's scornful rejection of the offer of the surgeon to 
 fasten him down — to bind a Mordaunt ! — from dread of 
 his struggles under the terrible pain. With his usual 
 restlessness the next day he drove, in defiance of his 
 doctors, to Bath. If the story be true of the manner 
 in which he published his marriage to Bath society by 
 calling aloud in the Rooms for the Countess of Peter- 
 borough's chair, he must have made the acknowledg- 
 ment on his way either from or to Bristol. From 
 Bath he returned to Bevis Mount, in haste to conclude 
 the arrangement of his affairs, and to prepare 
 for his continental journey. His original intention 
 had been to go to France, to Lyons at least, if not 
 beyond. He had provided himself with a yacht, in 
 which he meant to sail across the Channel, and he had 
 been diligently annotating Burnet's Histoi^y. In France, 
 besides health, he hoped to collect information which 
 might enable him to correct the bishop's scandalous mis- 
 representations, as he accounted them — mere coffee-house 
 gossip, as they appeared to Swift. He wished in par- 
 ticular, he said, to justify Queen Anne from the imputa- 
 tion of intending to bring in the Pretender. This, he 
 told Pope, to his knowledge neither her ministers, Ox- 
 ford and Bolingbroke, nor she had ever designed. In the 
 meantime he was busy enough at Bevis Mount with 
 other things besides political controversies. He had much 
 legal business to transact. He was solicitous to finish the 
 buildings and gardens at the Mount for her, to whom, 
 he admitted, he had obligation beyond words, to enjoy 
 after him. He desired above all things to impress 
 the circle he was about to quit with a due sense of the 
 lustre and force of the luminary it was about to lose. 
 
222 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 With Mrs. Howard, now Lady Suffolk, our fair shep- 
 herdess,' as he called her, he had never ceased to main- 
 tain a correspondence, still tender, though its warmth 
 had gradually been somewhat mitigated. He saw no 
 cause in his avowal of the legal claims of his wife to 
 abjure literary devotion to her, nor do the two 
 ladies seem to have seen any. He wrote to her in 
 July, from Bevis Mount, in high praise of a life he 
 had been reading of Julian the Apostate, by the Abb6 
 de la Bl^terie, which had appeared in 1735. "With 
 what majesty does the Emperor meet his fate ! Showing 
 how a soldier, how a philosopher, how a friend of 
 Lady Suffolk's, ought, only with juster notions of the 
 Deity, to die. The lady, the book, or both together, 
 have brought me almost into a raving way ; I want to 
 make an appointment with you, Mr. Pope, and a few 
 friends more, to meet upon the summit of my Bevis 
 Hill ; and thence, after a speech and a tender farewell, I 
 shall take my leap towards the clouds, as Julian expresses 
 it, to mix amongst the stars ; but I make my bargain for 
 a very fine day, that you may see my last amusements 
 to advantage." 
 
 Pope stayed twice in 1735 at Bevis Mount. The 
 first visit was paid before the operation. He arrived 
 at dusk, and was delighted by Peterborough's vivacity, 
 which seemed to prove a renewal of health ; but when 
 candles were brought in he started to find him looking 
 more like a ghost than a living creature. The second 
 visit was at the latter end of August, when he was 
 vividly impressed by the same contrast between a body, 
 than which none could be more wasted, and a soul, 
 than which none could be more alive. He dilated 
 
X WRESTLING WITH PAIN 223 
 
 upon it in a letter of August 25th to Miss Martha 
 Blount. Peterborough talked, though in a weak 
 voice, with such spirit and warmth of his plans for the 
 woman he loved, and for the vindication of historical 
 accuracy from perversions like Burnet's, that he might 
 have been supposed to be much recovered. He had 
 with him day after day not only all his relations, but 
 every creature of the town of Southampton who 
 pleased to come. Pope, however, occupied the next 
 bedroom at night, and heard him cry hourly for help. 
 In the morning he fainted twice in the garden; yet 
 he sat at dinner with ten people, the gayest of them 
 all. A quarter of an hour's agony followed. Then he 
 was carried again into the garden, where he declaimed 
 against existing ministers and great men, and the decay 
 of public spirit and honour. Pope pitied the poor woman 
 who had to share in all he suffered, and who could in no 
 one thing persuade him to spare himself. He may not 
 have altogether disagreed with Mrs. Delany's verdict 
 upon Peterborough, considered matrimonially ; but he 
 admired the genius, the fire, the courage. "It is im- 
 possible to conceive how much his heart is above his 
 condition. He is dying every hour, and obstinate to do 
 whatever he has a mind to ; a man never bom to die 
 like other men, any more than to live like them." He 
 was aware that he was dying, and believed that he was 
 bidding farewell for ever to the friends who gathered 
 around him. To Pope, at his departure, he gave the 
 watch which Victor Amadeus, of Savoy, Sicily, Sardinia, 
 had bestowed upon him. His friend would now, he said, 
 have something to put him every day in mind of him. 
 He had abandoned the project of a journey through 
 
224 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 France, and, hesitating between Lisbon and Naples, 
 consulted Spence, the travelled compiler of the 
 Anecdotes. He was then at Kensington, and though 
 he appeared to have no more than half a dozen days 
 of life left in him, he rose from bed to dine with 
 Spence and others. Shortly after he made up his mind 
 for Portugal, and his wife and he drove again to Bristol, 
 to take ship. Pope hesitated whether he should not 
 make the voyage with them to help to nurse his friend ; 
 but the two went alone. They reached Lisbon, and 
 there, where the career by which he is remembered in 
 history began, on October 25th, six days after his arrival, 
 Peterborough died. 
 
 His best friend watched by his pillow, almost sac- 
 rificing her life to his. She came back to England 
 with her husband's body, which lies buried, without a 
 memorial, in the Mordaunt vault under the chancel 
 of Turvey church. The rest of her eighty-eight years 
 were spent chiefly at Bevis Mount, diversified only by 
 the exchange of occasional visits with Lady Oxford's 
 daughter, the Duchess of Portland, at Bulstrode. That 
 her right to the entire esteem of the class she had 
 entered by marriage was never disputed is apparent 
 from the correspondence of the duchess, who writes of 
 her to others as "a very dear friend, which is Lady 
 Peterborow." It is as evident from the emphatic testi- 
 mony of Mrs. Delany. Her husband's grandson and 
 successor in his peerages named his daughter after 
 her. The only act she ever committed for which any 
 will be disposed to blame her is the suppression of her 
 husband's memoirs. Mrs. Delany told Dr. Bumey he 
 had in his youth kept a journal in which he narrated 
 
THE SUPPRESSED CONFESSIONS 225 
 
 minutely his eccentricities of thought and behaviour, 
 and this he incorporated in three manuscript volumes of 
 autobiographical notes compiled by him in his later 
 years. The collection, according to Mrs. Delany, in- 
 cluded confessions so compromising to the writer's 
 reputation that Lady Peterborough burned it. An 
 annotator of Bumey's History of Music quotes a state- 
 ment by a Lady B., who says she had seen the work, 
 to the effect that in it Peterborough boasted he had 
 committed three capital crimes before he was twenty. 
 The boast is very likely; it was his way, for his 
 romances no more spared himself than his foes. Mrs. 
 Howard, who also had read the reminiscences in manu- 
 script, had learnt to allow for a lively imagination, 
 and does not seem to have been as appalled by them as 
 Lady B., or even Lady Peterborough. Perhaps Peter- 
 borough included among his capital offences his pursuit 
 of a dancing-master with drawn sword, and the breaking 
 into a landlady's bar to steal a tame canary. At all 
 events, in the judgment of amiable Mrs. Delany, the 
 holocaust "contributed to complete the excellence of the 
 widow's principles." She allows at the same time that 
 it did not fail to give offence to the curious inquirers 
 after anecdotes of so remarkable a character. 
 
 The lost memoirs would have been amusing, though 
 they might not have been edifying. They could scarcely 
 have cleared up many of the doubts as to Peterborough 
 or his acts. There are men who enter the region of legend 
 while they are yet living, and he was one of them. Acts 
 and intentions, as they issued from the red-hot cauldron 
 of his career or of his fancy, turned into vapour. The 
 
 Q 
 
226 PETERBOROUGH chap. 
 
 world has long made up its mind that all connected 
 with him must be licensed as romance, and nobody has 
 ever dared or cared to treat him and his achievements 
 as entirely serious. He has been measured by a special 
 standard applicable to heroes of historical novels. There 
 has been no alternative ; for his biography was and 
 remains sown throughout with debatable performances 
 and debatable motives. Posterity and his contem- 
 poraries have been equally at a loss to decide which of 
 a hundred circumstantial particulars told of him are 
 facts and which are fictions. Was he a profligate of 
 the dye of Rochester and Buckingham, or a kind and 
 faithful husband? Did he forge the letters to M. 
 Coutenay % Did he perjure himself at Fenwick's trial % 
 Was his object to tear a veil from the eyes of his 
 deceived sovereign or to trip up inconvenient rivals? 
 Did he conceive the capture of Montjuich or, cuckoo-like, 
 steal into a manoeuvre another had devised? Did he 
 play the game of war with chessmen or with dice % Was 
 he a greedy peculator, or did he fight his country's 
 battles half at his own cost? Was he the conqueror of 
 Valencia, or did others do the work and he wear the 
 laurels % Did he lie to Mahoni, or did he lie when he 
 said he lied? Did he or Leake relieve Barcelona by 
 sea? Did he or Cifuentes and Prince Henry guard it 
 by land and rout the besiegers? Did he, or did he 
 not, provide for King Charles a safe and short road 
 to Madrid, with a certain crown at its end? Were 
 the Campilio tragedy and his vengeance inventions? 
 AVere the Charing Cross canary, the fair lady of Huete, 
 the truant nuns of Valencia, the bevies of adoring 
 dames, Parisians, Spaniards, and Venetians, all creatures 
 
WHO, AND WHAT? 
 
 227 
 
 of imagination ? Was he ever robbed by highwaymen ? 
 Did he scatter five guineas among a mob? Did he 
 chase a dancing-master through the Strand at the point 
 of a drawn sword 'I Was he pillaged by Voltaire, and 
 would he have retaliated by quenching the light of 
 eigliteenth century scepticism 1 Did he officiate as cook 
 at his own dinner parties'? Did he wed Anastasia 
 Robinson first in 1722 or in 1735? Was he ever in 
 love with Mrs. Howard ? What was Galway's, Swift's, 
 Pope's, St. John's, Harley's, his two wives', sincere 
 opinion of him, and his own of himself % 
 
 Biographers endeavour in vain to return conclusive 
 answers on a multitude of disputed points, some 
 relatively vital, many absolutely trivial, in this zigzag 
 and motley career. Without help or hindrance from 
 them Peterborough will continue, as statesman, soldier, 
 courtier, lover, to occupy his old place on the borderland 
 of fable. But a life of him will have missed its mark 
 if it do not convey an impression of a most accomplished 
 egotist ; the determined king of his company ; an 
 inexhaustible spring of views and impulses ; a brain so 
 fruitful in combinations that they jostled and thrust 
 one another out; a wit and enterprise eagle-eyed and 
 eagle -taloned, equal to every opportunity or emer- 
 gency in war and politics, in society and gallantry ; 
 an electric force which could never let things be ; a 
 bom rebel against the right divine of circumstances, 
 irrepressibly elastic under the most crushing defeats ; a 
 nature delightful to jest and masquerade with, less 
 admirable to mate or work with ; easier to like, even to 
 love, than to approve ; equally hard to have to do with, 
 and to do without; a player at the game of life, for 
 
228 PETERBOROUGH chap, x 
 
 whom thrones, armies, senates, hearts, honour, were 
 pawns to be moved hither and thither for sport; a 
 streak of phosphoric light trailing, full of illusions and 
 full of charm, across fifty years of English annals ; one 
 of the most fantastically bright spirits that ever gaily 
 dug holes for history to fill up. 
 
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