Political Women Volume II Part 12

Just at this moment, the d.u.c.h.ess thought herself obliged to appear at Court "on account of some new clothes which, as Groom of the Stole, she had by her mistress's orders bought for her;" but the Queen charged the only friend her Grace had there to advise her, as from himself, not to come. It was scarcely possible, after this to think of retaining her office; and it appears that the d.u.c.h.ess, of her own accord, sent in her resignation. Lord Dartmouth, however, gives another version of the matter, as follows:--

Emboldened and urged by her Ministers, Anne requested Marlborough to demand the return of the golden Keys which were the symbols of her office. The Duke, who dreaded the consequences of such a step, entreated the Queen to wait till the end of the campaign, promising that he would then retire with his wife. But Anne was driven to extremity by calumnies that reddened her cheek with shame, and she demanded the immediate return of the Keys. Marlborough threw himself on his knees, and entreated her to give him at least ten days' respite. Anne consented to three days, and that interval having expired, renewed her commands. The Duke hastened to the palace, and demanded to be ushered into the presence. But Anne refused to receive him until she received back her gold Keys from the d.u.c.h.ess, and Marlborough at length resigned himself to encounter his wife's anger. On reaching home, he told the Mistress of the Robes that she must give up the golden insignia of office, which she at first refused; but on his persistently intimating the necessity of her resignation, she threw her gold Key on the floor, and told him to do what he liked with it; and that then Marlborough caught it up and carried it to the Queen.[52]

[52] The d.u.c.h.ess herself says, "When, after a very successful campaign, the Duke of Marlborough was returned to London, the Queen most readily accepted the resignation that _he_ carried _from me_ of my offices."--_Account._

About one point there is no doubt--Anne accepted the resignation with eagerness and joyfulness, and divided the d.u.c.h.ess's Court places between Lady Masham and the d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset. It astonished most people to see the Duke consent to serve when his wife was dismissed--to see him continue to hold command of the troops under the Ministry which had sprung out of a bed-chamber squabble, and which was sure to thwart him in all his measures. His enemies have generally accounted for this by a.s.suming that the Duke's avarice was at the bottom of it; but his lady a.s.signs very different reasons. "The Duke of Marlborough," she says, "notwithstanding an infinite variety of mortifications, by which it was endeavoured to _make_ him resign his commission, that there might be a pretence to raise an outcry against him, as having quitted his Queen's and his country's service merely because he could not govern in the cabinet as well as in the field, continued to serve yet another campaign. All his friends here, moved by a true concern for the public welfare, pressed him to it, the confederates called him with the utmost importunity, and Prince Eugene entreated him to come with all the earnestness and pa.s.sion that could be expressed." These were certainly powerful inducements, and they may have mingled (together with that pa.s.sionate fondness for a fine army which every good general must contract) with Marlborough's love of money.

Mr. Hallam says, with strong and proper feeling, "It seems rather a humiliating proof of the sway which the feeblest prince enjoys even in a limited monarchy, that the fortunes of Europe should have been changed by nothing more n.o.ble than the insolence of one waiting woman and the cunning of another. It is true that this was effected by throwing the weight of the crown into the scale of a powerful _faction_; yet the House of Bourbon would probably not have reigned beyond the Pyrenees but for Sarah and Abigail at Queen Anne's toilette."[53]

[53] Hallam--Const.i.tutional History.

The Queen, altogether unmindful of her former warm attachment to her Mistress of the Robes, overjoyed to find herself free, wrote, with her own hand, the dismissal of the d.u.c.h.ess, and gave herself up to her enemies.

The d.u.c.h.ess, quite beside herself with chagrin and fury, only thought of some means or other of revenge. As a first step she demanded payment of the arrears of her pension--a boon she had with great high-mindedness refused on Anne's accession. But that was not all. When she was about to quit the sphere of her palace triumphs, she gave directions for the removal of the locks from the doors and the marble chimney-pieces she had put up at her own cost in her apartments. "It is all very well,"

remarked the Queen to her Secretary of State, "but tell the d.u.c.h.ess if she demolishes the fittings-up of my palace, she may depend upon it that I will not build hers at Woodstock." The d.u.c.h.ess consented to abandon the chimney-pieces, and withdrew at once to her country seat, near St.

Alban's, where she lived in a style of great magnificence.

In the retirement of private life, Marlborough, worn out with the hara.s.s attendant upon such a lengthened succession of arduous campaigns, and wearied with political intrigue, now hoped to enjoy that which he had for years longed for--the society of those so dear to him, from whom he had been so many years separated. But it was not to be. Quiet happiness in the evening of his eventful life was not destined to be his lot. His wife, for whom he had ever shown such strong and unalterable affection, was a woman thwarted in all her designs--outraged, injured, mortified, and disgusted with the court and with the world. She was no longer young, nor possessed of the great attractions which had formerly thrown a veil over the deformities of her temper, which, always violent, had now become soured by adversity. She had no indulgence left for others.

Dissatisfied with her friends, her children, and everything about her, she was disposed to wrangle and dispute on the slightest provocation.

Next came a great affliction--more deeply felt by both, perhaps, than either the fickleness of the Queen or the virulence of their political enemies--the death under their own roof at St. Alban's of their long-tried, attached, and amiable friend, Lord G.o.dolphin. This sad event determined Marlborough to reside abroad until happier days dawned--their ungrateful country no longer offering any charms for them. His long-cherished desire for rural leisure, retirement, and the quiet enjoyments of private life had ended in disappointment. The master of wealth and great possessions, palatial edifices rising around him, and rank, glory, and well-earned honour his own; yet was he the mark of envy, hatred, and jealousy. Not even could he and the d.u.c.h.ess enjoy and return the ordinary courtesies of society without incurring observation and provoking suspicion. His enemies had triumphed, his Queen was cold and unjust, and now his dearly-loved friend, his adviser and confidant, the sharer of his sorrows, his consoler and encourager, was no more. A blight had fallen upon his existence.

Marlborough sailed from Dover to Ostend in October, 1712, and his wife followed him in a few months afterwards, she having remained behind to arrange his or her own affairs. The Duke was furnished with a pa.s.sport, it is said, by the instrumentality of his early favourite and secret friend Bolingbroke. His request to see the Queen before his departure from her dominions was refused; and the apathetic Anne never again saw her great general, or the woman for whom she once professed so strong an attachment. When it was told her that both he and the d.u.c.h.ess had left England, she coolly remarked to the d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton--"the Duke of Marlborough has done wisely to go abroad."

Thus was the ill.u.s.trious soldier, then sixty-two years of age, and the d.u.c.h.ess in her fifty-second year, driven from their country by the machinations of a party too strong for them to resist without the especial favour of the Queen.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRINCESS DES URSINS--HER DELICATE AND PERILOUS POSITION.

MADAME DES URSINS had long continued fearlessly to face the storm that growled all around her, and by degrees the horizon showed signs of clearing. As it often happens in the course of human affairs, the occupation of the capital by the enemy had an effect contrary to that which it was very natural to expect. The allies, who had entered Madrid as conquerors, found within that city none of the elements necessary for the definitive establishment of the Archduke who was proclaimed amidst a chilling silence. If the grandees almost to a man evinced their sympathy for the House of Austria, if the staff of the administration and the personal machinery of all the public departments, remained at their posts at the price of an oath which did not seem to cost more in those days than at present, the populace of Madrid showed an aversion to the foreigners which soon manifested itself in numerous a.s.sa.s.sinations. How could it be otherwise than that the ancient soil of Castile should heave on finding itself trampled on by the partisans of a loyalty hailed with acclamation at Saragossa and Barcelona; on witnessing those outbursts of insolent triumph on the part of the Portuguese, who, in the eyes of every Spaniard, were still rebels; and the contemptuous phlegm of Lord Galloway's army, commanded, as it was, by a heretic _condottiere_?

Outside the official spheres, the isolation was therefore complete, and during that three months' crisis the errant royalty of Philip V., represented by his courageous consort, struck indestructible roots in the hearts of his subjects. The northern sh.o.r.es and the great province of Andalusia, joining to those divers motives the hatred with which England inspired the maritime population, resolutely declared for the House of Bourbon, to such an extent that, beyond the territories of the ancient realm of Arragon, the moral conquest of the kingdom was very nearly consummated, despite the foreign occupation, and through the effect of that very same occupation. The position of the foreigners at Madrid had never been anything else than provisory; and it was with transports of joy that the Anglo-Portuguese troops were seen to hastily evacuate the capital on the approach of another French army, which advanced through Navarre under the command of the Duke of Berwick.[54]

Philip V. was soon able to re-enter Madrid as a liberator, and a galleon from Mexico brought him most opportunely a million of crowns. On the 25th of April, 1707, Berwick completely defeated the allies near Almanza, and the Duke of Orleans covered himself with glory by the capture of Lerida, which had previously resisted the great Conde.

[54] Natural son of James II. of England, by Arabella Churchill, sister of the Duke of Marlborough.

The influence of Madame des Ursins became greatly enhanced after these unhoped-for successes, and both Philip V. and the cabinet of Versailles equally testified their grat.i.tude to her. She had manifested an inflexible devotedness in the midst of reverses, and adversity had taken its full measure of her. Never, throughout the course of her chequered career, had Madame des Ursins shown more activity than during the six months which intervened between the return of the Court to Madrid and the battle of Almanza. Her position was as delicate as it was perilous.

It was necessary to stigmatise flagrant defections, but without driving anyone altogether to desperation. She profited by the confidence she had won to bring about happily an important reform. Spain, composed of divers kingdoms successively annexed, had not yet attained unity. More than ever, after the experiences of 1706, was seen the necessity of a centralisation which should re-unite in the hands of the new dynasty the entire strength of the government, which should extinguish injurious rivalries between province and province, which should facilitate administrative relations, and allow of an equal action in the different parts of the monarchy. Each kingdom hitherto had had its laws, its customs, its const.i.tution (_fueros_). Already in 1705 certain restrictions had been imposed by Castile upon Arragon: no more dared be attempted. The battle of Almanza and the successes of 1707 inspired still further energy. In the council, the party of Madame des Ursins, leaning on the a.s.sent of Berwick, overcame the opposition of Montellano and the friends of the old system; and the pragmatic sanction, or const.i.tution of Castile, became the sole law of Spain.

The victory of Almanza was, in fact, the last service rendered to Philip V. by his native country. From that day forward, France, menaced upon its frontiers, constrained to appropriate all its resources to its own safety, became an obstacle and a permanent peril to Spain. The former compromised the Spanish monarchy by its military operations, and far more gravely still by its diplomatic negotiations. In this new phase, signalised by the almost constant antagonism of the two courts, the position of Madame des Ursins was one of the most critical nature; but we are about to see her, with her habitual rect.i.tude of judgment, take unhesitatingly the part alike dictated by honour as by sound policy.

It was at this juncture that the gravity of events determined Louis XIV.

upon being represented in Spain by his nephew, the Duke of Orleans. That prince, in two campaigns, had subdued the kingdom of Valentia and the greatest part of Arragon, after taking fortresses in Catalonia hitherto deemed impregnable. Inspired by the ambition of the chief of his race, he had made his military services subservient to the extension of monarchical authority, and had solemnly abolished, in the name of Philip V. in Arragon, the anarchical privileges which weakened the royal power without efficaciously strengthening the liberties of Spain. Distrusted by those he came ostensibly to defend, and, from the first, an object of suspicion to Madame des Ursins, still the correspondence of the Princess with Madame de Maintenon and the Marechale de Noailles from April, 1707, to November, 1708, the date of the duke's departure, shows that the relations of the latter with the _camerara-mayor_ were for a long time maintained on the best footing, the dissolute habits of the Duke of Orleans proving less disgusting to Madame des Ursins than the accuracy of his insight into public affairs appears to have charmed her. The rupture of this good understanding, which, however, took place silently, was one among other results greatly to be regretted of the dark intrigue into which certain obscure agents momentarily led astray the ambition of Anne of Austria's grandson--a machination the more disastrous to the prince, whose honour it impugned, than to the King of Spain, who received no injury from it during the Duke of Orleans' sojourn within his territories; the movements of Flotte and Renault, his emissaries, having only a.s.sumed some small degree of importance after his departure.

It is a knotty point of history altogether; but the fact is clear that the Duke was the centre of the faction opposed to the Princess, and that around him were banded those with whom she had either clashed or whom she had overcome. The moment was badly chosen for intriguing; to save the state should have been the sole aim of the Duke of Orleans. The allies, for an instant discouraged after Almanza, had not lost all hope.

Their successes in Italy and in Germany soon consoled them for that reverse, and their armies became once more menacing. It was then that the Duke of Orleans, it is said, conceived the hope, if not of governing all Spain, at least of obtaining the kingdoms of Murcia, Valentia, and Navarre. He himself avowed later to the Duke de Saint-Simon that, seeing Philip V. tottering, "he had allowed himself to indulge the hope of being put in his place;" hence his double-faced conduct and strange manoeuvres. He might not have been willing, doubtless, to pull down the King of Spain with his own hand, but he did not, of course, steadfastly desire a triumph which marred his own fortunes. That which, however, may be affirmed with certainty is, that he maintained with different foreign generals, among others with the Earl of Stanhope, very suspicious negotiations; that he designedly did all he could to impede the progress of the Spanish Government, and seemed, in all he did, solely concerned in not overstepping that loosely-defined line at which treason begins.

However that might be, Madame des Ursins, strenuously opposed to the policy which the Duke of Orleans desired to see prevail, and moreover scarcely able to endure the hostile att.i.tude of that Prince, demanded his recall and obtained it.

After his departure she pursued him in the persons of his two agents, Renault and Flotte, whom she had arrested. As for his friend, Marshal de Bezons, whose hasty retreat upon the banks of the Segra excited the indignation of the Spanish court, he lost his command. She even denounced the Duke of Orleans to his royal uncle, and the erring nephew had very great difficulty in escaping a scandalous trial. He was forced, therefore, to renounce his ambitious hopes with regard to Spain, if ever he had seriously nourished them. Such an exposure, rendered his return to the Peninsula impossible. His faction was speedily dispersed. One of the n.o.blemen with whom he had had very intimate relations, the Duke of Medina-Coeli, minister for foreign affairs and head of the grandee party, was suddenly arrested and taken to the Castle of Segovia.

Whether, as Saint Simon intimates, it was that "weary of the yoke of Madame des Ursins, he desired _pointer de son chef_," whether that, favourable to the Duke of Orleans, perhaps even to the allies, he had voluntarily caused the failure of the expedition which the Spanish government meditated against Sardinia, or whether he had dreamed of an anti-French reaction, he ended his days in a state prison.

Whilst the government of Philip V., was working its way very laboriously through that maze of conspiracies and intrigues, the allies regained the ground which Almanza had lost them. "Despite all the efforts of Madame des Ursins," wrote the Chevalier du Bourk, her agent, at Versailles, "matters are going badly at Madrid." France, discouraged and weighed down, moreover by its own reverses, seemed no longer able to defend Philip V.; Louis XIV., whatever might have been his secret intentions, was not willing to appear to support his grandson; the Austrians thoroughly defeated Philip at Saragossa. The severe winter of 1709 had brought the general distress to a climax; and the Archduke Charles made his entrance into Madrid. The court of Versailles became terror-stricken. Madame de Maintenon, outwearied with this everlasting strife, changed the tone of her letters to a cold and sometimes ironic vein. She went so far as to say to the Princess, "It is not agreeable to us here that women should busy themselves with state affairs."[55] Louis XIV., himself, advised his grandson to abandon Spain in order to keep Italy.

[55] Recueil de M. Geffroy, p. 395.

Madame des Ursins had thus to choose between the French policy, imposed upon Louis XIV. by cruel necessity, and the Spanish policy, for which Philip V. was resolved to die. On one hand, the young mother, who had just confided to her care an infant son she had conceived in anguish, appealed most touchingly to her attachment and courage; on the other, Madame de Maintenon, whose sole solicitude was to insure repose to Louis XIV., by plucking out one after another all the thorns from his crown, reminded her that she was born a Frenchwoman, and that she owed too much to the Great King to arrogate to herself the right of contradicting him.

A subject of Louis XIV., did she dare combat at Madrid the plans decided upon at Versailles? The governess of the heir to the crown of Spain, could she concur by her advice in despoiling the infant whose first caresses she was receiving? Madame des Ursins could only escape by a prompt departure from the difficulties of such an alternative.

Incontestable facts prove that she so understood her position, and that she was fully determined to quit Spain towards the close of 1709; but the despair of the Queen, the state of whose health at that time gave but too serious grounds for alarm, alone hindered her from following out a project which promised more flattering results than any other in the deep depression into which the resolves of France had plunged her.

Madame des Ursins had no sooner taken the resolution of remaining upon the theatre of events, and of sustaining the King of Spain in the n.o.ble career to which his conscience and the national will alike bound him, than she threw herself headlong into the _melee_, caring nothing more for the Versailles policy, and burning her s.h.i.+ps with a boldness of which her gentleness of character seemed to have rendered her incapable.

Her epistolary style undergoes also a marked change, and rises with the loftiness of her part and character. In reproaching Madame de Maintenon for preferring the King's ease to that of his honour, she launches shafts against her which, though tipped with elegance, are none the less sharp-pointed, sometimes in the shape of studied reproaches, but more frequently still with the spontaneous overflowings of a towering wrath.

The writer then reveals herself from beneath the guise of the woman of the world, and it is clearly seen that in that encompa.s.sed life the heart has for a moment triumphed over the intelligence.

Madame des Ursins alone, however, remained unshaken. She might well have, it is true, some moments of misgiving; such as when she wrote to Madame de Noailles, "I have foreseen, for a long time, the precipice over which they would hurl us, and to the brink of which we ourselves are hurrying, and I know not, by Heaven, who can save us from it." With admirable eloquence she encouraged Madame de Maintenon, who appeared to despair of the divine protection; and she inspired Philip V. with an energy truly worthy of the throne, shown in that n.o.ble letter in which the King of Spain declared to his grandfather "that, in spite of the misfortune which confronted him, he would never abandon his subjects."

Madame des Ursins in all probability dictated the phraseology, and all the glory of it resulted from her firmness.

She thoroughly comprehended that it became sovereigns worthy of their position to speak loftily, were it from the depth of an abyss, and that that supreme courage is itself the first indication of a return of good fortune. She soon found that it was so; for from the moment that the King's cause seemed to be lost, the animosities of the grandees gave way before their patriotism. Whether they were at length inspired by so much energy, whether the expulsion of the French from every post throughout the state, decreed by Philip V. under the advice of Madame des Ursins, had well disposed their minds, "almost all, by a sudden awakening of chivalrous fidelity," submitted to the House of Bourbon. The Archduke awaited in vain their homage and their oaths. At the moment of his entrance into the capital, curiosity itself failed to attract any one to cross his path; a solitude and sullen gloom pervaded all the public places. He did not even proceed so far as the royal palace, but went out by the Alcala gate, muttering, "It is a deserted city."

Without hesitation, therefore, Madame des Ursins placed herself at the head of the national movement, seeking to pluck the safety of Spain from the very abandonment in which France had left that monarchy. Without breaking off confidential relations with her usual correspondents at Versailles, she enveloped them in the thickest possible veil, her sole idea being to stimulate Castilian patriotism, appearing to adopt everything Spanish from its popular costumes, even to its hatreds and its prejudices. By the aid of a _sombrero_ and a _gollil_[56] Don Luis d'Aubigny had become a perfect _caballero_; the like transformation being effected throughout the entire staff of the palace household, and shortly afterwards a very decided step characterised the novel att.i.tude a.s.sumed by Philip and his court. Madame des Ursins, who reckoned her chief enemies amongst the monarch's French household, decided that prince upon the dismissal in ma.s.s of all his non-Spanish domestics--an unexpected resolve which produced an immense sensation on both sides of the Pyrenees; because, whilst subserving a personal vengeance skilfully dissimulated, it gave sanction to a policy the harshness of which was pushed even to ingrat.i.tude.

[56] A sort of collar.

To throw Philip V. into the arms of the Spaniards, was to flatter alike the democracy and the grandees. To the populace Madame des Ursins presented, amidst the most fervent benediction, the Prince of Asturias; to the grandees, of whom she had long been the declared enemy, she caused to be given a striking proof of the royal confidence. The Duke de Bedmar, appointed to the ministry of war, was charged with the organization of the new levies, and the direction of the troops in all parts of the kingdom. To transform the grandson of Louis XIV. into a peninsula king was to furnish the best argument to the partisans of peace, already numerous in the British parliament. On the other hand, that same policy could not very seriously disquiet the cabinet of Versailles. The King knew that he might count upon every sacrifice from the respectful attachment of his grandson, save that of the throne; and although he had adhered officially to the principle of the dispossessing of Philip V., he could not regret, either as sovereign or as grandsire, the obstacles which the more resolute att.i.tude of Spain then opposed to the enemies of the two crowns. Louis XIV. therefore continued, notwithstanding his diplomatic engagements, to secretly a.s.sist in the Peninsula what might be called the party of _fara da se_. Madame des Ursins had recovered her influence at Versailles from the moment at which it was found necessary to depend, in order to prolong the struggle, rather upon the military resources of Spain than upon those of France at bay. To impart more gravity to the national movement, to which she gave the impulse in order to remain the moderatrix, she had required the recall of Amelot, who had long a.s.sumed at Madrid the att.i.tude of a prime minister rather than that of an amba.s.sador; and Louis XIV., deferring to that wish, had replaced that experienced agent by a simple _charge d'affaires_. Orry was in like manner sacrificed, despite his invaluable services; but, at the same time that she gave satisfaction by the withdrawal of her friends in deference to the popular susceptibilities, the Princess earnestly implored that the Duke de Vendome might be sent to take command of the Spanish forces; and Louis XIV., on his part, at the moment that he was compelled to withdraw from Spain the last French soldier, despatched thither the general who was destined to save his grandson's crown.

Arriving in Spain sometime during the summer of 1710, Vendome displayed an activity which did not seem to comport with his habits, in order to reunite and arm the volunteers, who, from the summit of the Sierras, descended in swarms upon the plains of the two Castiles at the summons of a monarch become the personification of a patriot. He speedily transformed into a powerful and well-trained army the undisciplined _guerillas_ whose bravery had hitherto been useless; in a few months, the Anglo-Austrian army, at the head of which the prince who called himself Charles III. had been able to show himself for a few hours in the deserted capital, was confronted by disciplined troops prepared to retake territories which until then had not been seriously disputed.

Under the irresistible impulse of a n.o.ble patriotism which had at last recovered itself, the English force of Lord Stanhope capitulated at Brihuega after a terrible carnage, and Stahrenberg, crushed in his turn at Villaviciosa, carried away by his flight the last hopes of the House of Austria.

By the victory of Villaviciosa the House of Bourbon was definitively seated on the throne of Charles the Fifth. Philip V. slept that night (10th December, 1710) upon a couch of standards taken from the enemy: the Austrian cause was lost; and Madame des Ursins, who, in spite of Europe coalesced, in spite of Louis XIV. hesitating and disquieted, in spite of so many disasters, had never trembled, received the t.i.tle of HIGHNESS, and saw her steadfast policy at length crowned by accomplished facts.

Spain had thus solved by her own efforts solely the great question which had kept Europe so long in arms. At the commencement of 1711, Philip V.

had acquired for his throne a security that Louis XIV. had not yet obtained for the integrity of his own frontiers, and without mistaking the influence of the victory of Denain, so wonderfully opportune, it is just, we think, to allow a far larger share than is customary to the thoroughly Spanish victory of Villaviciosa in the unhoped-for conditions obtained by France at the peace of Utrecht.

CHAPTER II.

THE PRINCESS'S SHARE IN THE TREATY OF UTRECHT.