Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges

  Chapter IX. I Make The Campaign Of 1704

  Mr. Esmond rode up to London then, where, if the dowager had been angry atthe abrupt leave of absence he took, she was mightily pleased at hisspeedy return.

  He went immediately and paid his court to his new general, General Lumley,who received him graciously, having known his father, and also, he waspleased to say, having had the very best accounts of Mr. Esmond from theofficer whose aide de camp he had been at Vigo. During this winter Mr.Esmond was gazetted to a lieutenancy in Brigadier Webb's regiment ofFusiliers, then with their colonel in Flanders; but being now attached tothe suite of Mr. Lumley, Esmond did not join his own regiment until morethan a year afterwards, and after his return from the campaign ofBlenheim, which was fought the next year. The campaign began very early,our troops marching out of their quarters before the winter was almostover, and investing the city of Bonn, on the Rhine, under the duke'scommand. His grace joined the army in deep grief of mind, with crape onhis sleeve, and his household in mourning; and the very same packet whichbrought the commander-in-chief over, brought letters to the forces whichpreceded him, and one from his dear mistress to Esmond, which interestedhim not a little.

  The young Marquis of Blandford, his grace's son, who had been entered inKing's College in Cambridge (whither my lord viscount had also gone, toTrinity, with Mr. Tusher as his governor), had been seized with small-pox,and was dead at sixteen years of age, and so poor Frank's schemes for hissister's advancement were over, and that innocent childish passion nippedin the birth.

  Esmond's mistress would have had him return, at least her letters hintedas much; but in the presence of the enemy this was impossible, and ouryoung man took his humble share in the siege, which need not be describedhere, and had the good luck to escape without a wound of any sort, and todrink his general's health after the surrender. He was in constantmilitary duty this year, and did not think of asking for a leave ofabsence, as one or two of his less fortunate friends did, who were castaway in that tremendous storm which happened towards the close ofNovember, that "which of late o'er pale Britannia past" (as Mr. Addisonsang of it), and in which scores of our greatest ships and 15,000 of ourseamen went down.

  They said that our duke was quite heartbroken by the calamity which hadbefallen his family; but his enemies found that he could subdue them, aswell as master his grief. Successful as had been this great general'soperations in the past year, they were far enhanced by the splendour ofhis victory in the ensuing campaign. His grace the captain-general went toEngland after Bonn, and our army fell back into Holland, where, in April,1704, his grace again found the troops embarking from Harwich and landingat Maesland Sluys: thence his grace came immediately to the Hague, wherehe received the foreign ministers, general officers, and other people ofquality. The greatest honours were paid to his grace everywhere--at theHague, Utrecht, Ruremonde, and Maestricht; the civic authorities coming tomeet his coaches: salvos of cannon saluting him, canopies of state beingerected for him where he stopped, and feasts prepared for the numerousgentlemen following in his suite. His grace reviewed the troops of theStates-General between Liege and Maestricht, and afterwards the Englishforces, under the command of General Churchill, near Bois-le-Duc. Everypreparation was made for a long march; and the army heard, with no smallelation, that it was the commander-in-chief's intention to carry the warout of the Low Countries, and to march on the Mozelle. Before leaving ourcamp at Maestricht, we heard that the French, under the Marshal Villeroy,were also bound towards the Mozelle.

  Towards the end of May, the army reached Coblentz; and next day, hisgrace, and the generals accompanying him, went to visit the Elector ofTreves at his Castle of Ehrenbreitstein, the horse and dragoons passingthe Rhine whilst the duke was entertained at a grand feast by the Elector.All as yet was novelty, festivity, and splendour--a brilliant march of agreat and glorious army through a friendly country, and sure through someof the most beautiful scenes of nature which I ever witnessed.

  The foot and artillery, following after the horse as quick as possible,crossed the Rhine under Ehrenbreitstein, and so to Castel, over againstMayntz, in which city his grace, his generals, and his retinue werereceived at the landing-place by the Elector's coaches, carried to hishighness's palace amidst the thunder of cannon, and then once moremagnificently entertained. Gidlingen, in Bavaria, was appointed as thegeneral rendezvous of the army, and thither, by different routes, thewhole forces of English, Dutch, Danes, and German auxiliaries took theirway. The foot and artillery under General Churchill passed the Neckar, atHeidelberg; and Esmond had an opportunity of seeing that city and palace,once so famous and beautiful (though shattered and battered by the French,under Turenne, in the late war), where his grandsire had served thebeautiful and unfortunate Electress-Palatine, the first King Charles'ssister.

  At Mindelsheim, the famous Prince of Savoy came to visit our commander,all of us crowding eagerly to get a sight of that brilliant and intrepidwarrior; and our troops were drawn up in battalia before the prince, whowas pleased to express his admiration of this noble English army. Atlength we came in sight of the enemy between Dillingen and Lawingen, theBrentz lying between the two armies. The Elector, judging that Donauwortwould be the point of his grace's attack, sent a strong detachment of hisbest troops to Count Darcos, who was posted at Schellenberg, near thatplace, where great entrenchments were thrown up, and thousands of pioneersemployed to strengthen the position.

  On the 2nd of July, his grace stormed the post, with what success on ourpart need scarce be told. His grace advanced with six thousand foot,English and Dutch, thirty squadrons and three regiments of Imperialcuirassiers, the duke crossing the river at the head of the cavalry.Although our troops made the attack with unparalleled courage andfury--rushing up to the very guns of the enemy, and being slaughteredbefore their works--we were driven back many times, and should not havecarried them, but that the Imperialists came up under the Prince of Baden,when the enemy could make no head against us: we pursued him into thetrenches, making a terrible slaughter there, and into the very Danube,where a great part of his troops, following the example of their generals,Count Darcos and the Elector himself, tried to save themselves byswimming. Our army entered Donauwort, which the Bavarians evacuated; andwhere 'twas said the Elector purposed to have given us a warm reception,by burning us in our beds; the cellars of the houses, when we tookpossession of them, being found stuffed with straw. But though the linkswere there, the link-boys had run away. The townsmen saved their houses,and our general took possession of the enemy's ammunition in the arsenals,his stores, and magazines. Five days afterwards a great _Te Deum_ was sungin Prince Lewis's army, and a solemn day of thanksgiving held in our own;the Prince of Savoy's compliments coming to his grace the captain-generalduring the day's religious ceremony, and concluding, as it were, with anamen.

  And now, having seen a great military march through a friendly country;the pomps and festivities of more than one German court; the severestruggle of a hotly-contested battle, and the triumph of victory; Mr.Esmond beheld another part of military duty; our troops entering theenemy's territory, and putting all around them to fire and sword; burningfarms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, anddrunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror, andmurder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describingthe valour of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes,so brutal, mean, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part ofthe drama of war? You, gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, andcompliment yourselves in the songs of triumph with which our chieftainsare bepraised--you pretty maidens, that come tumbling down the stairs whenthe fife and drum call you, and huzzah for the British Grenadiers--do youtake account that these items go to make up the amount of the triumph youadmire, and form part of the duties of the heroes you fondle? Our chief,whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshipped almost,had this of the godlike in him, that he was impassible before victory,
before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obstacle or the mosttrivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men drawn in battalia, or apeasant slaughtered at the door of his burning hovel; before a carouse ofdrunken German lords, or a monarch's court, or a cottage-table, where hisplans were laid, or an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death, andstrewing corpses round about him;--he was always cold, calm, resolute, likefate. He performed a treason or a court-bow, he told a falsehood as blackas Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. Hetook a mistress, and left her; he betrayed his benefactor, and supportedhim, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always, and havingno more remorse than Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis whenshe cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the Prince of Savoy'sofficers say, the prince became possessed with a sort of warlike fury; hiseyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither, raging; he shrieked cursesand encouragement, yelling and harking his bloody war-dogs on, and himselfalways at the first of the hunt. Our duke was as calm at the mouth of thecannon as at the door of a drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have beenthe great man he was, had he had a heart either for love or hatred, orpity or fear, or regret, or remorse. He achieved the highest deed ofdaring, or deepest calculation of thought, as he performed the verymeanest action of which a man is capable; told a lie, or cheated a fondwoman, or robbed a poor beggar of a halfpenny, with a like awful serenityand equal capacity of the highest and lowest acts of our nature.

  His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there were partiesof all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but there existedsuch a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain of the world, andsuch a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius and fortune, that thevery men whom he notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he usedand injured--(for he used all men, great and small, that came near him, ashis instruments alike, and took something of theirs, either some qualityor some property--the blood of a soldier, it might be, or a jewelled hat,or a hundred thousand crowns from a king, or a portion out of a starvingsentinel's three farthings; or (when he was young) a kiss from a woman,and the gold chain off her neck, taking all he could from woman or man,and having, as I have said, this of the godlike in him, that he could seea hero perish or a sparrow fall, with the same amount of sympathy foreither. Not that he had no tears; he could always order up this reserve atthe proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, andwhenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to ashoeblack, as he would flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty, behumble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you whenever hesaw occasion)--But yet those of the army, who knew him best and hadsuffered most from him, admired him most of all: and as he rode along thelines to battle or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reelingfrom before the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men and officers gotnew courage as they saw the splendid calm of his face, and felt that hiswill made them irresistible.

  After the great victory of Blenheim the enthusiasm of the army for theduke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted to a sort ofrage--nay, the very officers who cursed him in their hearts, were among themost frantic to cheer him. Who could refuse his meed of admiration to sucha victory and such a victor? Not he who writes: a man may profess to beever so much a philosopher; but he who fought on that day must feel athrill of pride as he recalls it.

  The French right was posted near to the village of Blenheim, on theDanube, where the Marshal Tallard's quarters were; their line extendingthrough, it may be a league and a half, before Lutzingen and up to a woodyhill, round the base of which, and acting against the Prince of Savoy,were forty of his squadrons. Here was a village that the Frenchmen hadburned, the wood being, in fact, a better shelter and easier of guard thanany village.

  Before these two villages and the French lines ran a little stream, notmore than two foot broad, through a marsh (that was mostly dried up fromthe heats of the weather), and this stream was the only separation betweenthe two armies--ours coming up and ranging themselves in line of battlebefore the French, at six o'clock in the morning; so that our line wasquite visible to theirs; and the whole of this great plain was black andswarming with troops for hours before the cannonading began.

  On one side and the other this cannonading lasted many hours. The Frenchguns being in position in front of their line, and doing severe damageamong our horse especially, and on our right wing of Imperialists underthe Prince of Savoy, who could neither advance his artillery nor hislines, the ground before him being cut up by ditches, morasses, and verydifficult of passage for the guns.

  It was past midday when the attack began on our left, where Lord Cuttscommanded, the bravest and most beloved officer in the English army. Andnow, as if to make his experience in war complete, our young aide de camphaving seen two great armies facing each other in line of battle, and hadthe honour of riding with orders from one end to other of the line, camein for a not uncommon accompaniment of military glory, and was knocked onthe head, along with many hundred of brave fellows, almost at the verycommencement of this famous day of Blenheim. A little after noon, thedisposition for attack being completed with much delay and difficulty, andunder a severe fire from the enemy's guns, that were better posted andmore numerous than ours, a body of English and Hessians, withMajor-General Wilkes commanding at the extreme left of our line, marchedupon Blenheim, advancing with great gallantry, the major-general on foot,with his officers, at the head of the column, and marching, with his hatoff, intrepidly in the face of the enemy, who was pouring in a tremendousfire from his guns and musketry, to which our people were instructed notto reply, except with pike and bayonet when they reached the Frenchpalisades. To these Wilkes walked intrepidly, and struck the woodwork withhis sword before our people charged it. He was shot down at the instant,with his colonel, major, and several officers; and our troops cheering andhuzzaing, and coming on, as they did, with immense resolution andgallantry, were nevertheless stopped by the murderous fire from behind theenemy's defences, and then attacked in flank by a furious charge of Frenchhorse which swept out of Blenheim, and cut down our men in great numbers.Three fierce and desperate assaults of our foot were made and repulsed bythe enemy; so that our columns of foot were quite shattered, and fellback, scrambling over the little rivulet, which we had crossed soresolutely an hour before, and pursued by the French cavalry, slaughteringus and cutting us down.

  And now the conquerors were met by a furious charge of English horse underEsmond's general, General Lumley, behind whose squadrons the flying footfound refuge, and formed again, whilst Lumley drove back the French horse,charging up to the village of Blenheim and the palisades where Wilkes, andmany hundred more gallant Englishmen, lay in slaughtered heaps. Beyondthis moment, and of this famous victory, Mr. Esmond knows nothing; for ashot brought down his horse and our young gentleman on it, who fellcrushed and stunned under the animal; and came to his senses he knows nothow long after, only to lose them again from pain and loss of blood. A dimsense, as of people groaning round about him, a wild incoherent thought ortwo for her who occupied so much of his heart now, and that here hiscareer, and his hopes, and misfortunes were ended, he remembers in thecourse of these hours. When he woke up it was with a pang of extreme pain,his breast-plate was taken off, his servant was holding his head up, thegood and faithful lad of Hampshire(9) was blubbering over his master, whomhe found and had thought dead, and a surgeon was probing a wound in theshoulder, which he must have got at the same moment when his horse wasshot and fell over him. The battle was over at this end of the field, bythis time: the village was in possession of the English, its bravedefenders prisoners, or fled, or drowned, many of them, in theneighbouring waters of the Donau. But for honest Lockwood's faithfulsearch after his master, there had no doubt been an end of Esmond here,and of this his story. The marauders were out rifling the bodies as theylay on the field, and Jack had brained one of these gentry with theclub-end of his musket, who had eased Es
mond of his hat and periwig, hispurse, and fine silver-mounted pistols which the dowager gave him, and wasfumbling in his pockets for further treasure, when Jack Lockwood came upand put an end to the scoundrel's triumph.

  Hospitals for our wounded were established at Blenheim, and here forseveral weeks Esmond lay in very great danger of his life; the wound wasnot very great from which he suffered, and the ball extracted by thesurgeon on the spot where our young gentleman received it; but a fever setin next day, as he was lying in hospital, and that almost carried himaway. Jack Lockwood said he talked in the wildest manner during hisdelirium; that he called himself the Marquis of Esmond, and seizing one ofthe surgeon's assistants who came to dress his wounds, swore that he wasMadam Beatrix, and that he would make her a duchess if she would but sayyes. He was passing the days in these crazy fancies, and _vana somnia_,whilst the army was singing _Te Deum_ for the victory, and those famousfestivities were taking place at which our duke, now made a Prince of theEmpire, was entertained by the King of the Romans and his nobility. Hisgrace went home by Berlin and Hanover, and Esmond lost the festivitieswhich took place at those cities, and which his general shared in companyof the other general officers who travelled with our great captain. Whenhe could move it was by the Duke of Wirtemburg's city of Stuttgard that hemade his way homewards, revisiting Heidelberg again, whence he went toManheim, and hence had a tedious but easy water journey down the river ofRhine, which he had thought a delightful and beautiful voyage indeed, butthat his heart was longing for home, and something far more beautiful anddelightful.

  As bright and welcome as the eyes almost of his mistress shone the lightsof Harwich, as the packet came in from Holland. It was not many hours erehe, Esmond, was in London, of that you may be sure, and received with openarms by the old dowager of Chelsea, who vowed, in her jargon of French andEnglish, that he had the _air noble_, that his pallor embellished him,that he was an Amadis and deserved a Gloriana; and, O flames and darts!what was his joy at hearing that his mistress was come into waiting, andwas now with her Majesty at Kensington! Although Mr. Esmond had told JackLockwood to get horses and they would ride for Winchester that night; whenhe heard this news he countermanded the horses at once; his business layno longer in Hants; all his hope and desire lay within a couple of milesof him in Kensington Park wall. Poor Harry had never looked in the glassbefore so eagerly to see whether he had the _bel air_, and his palenessreally did become him; he never took such pains about the curl of hisperiwig, and the taste of his embroidery and point-lace, as now, beforeMr. Amadis presented himself to Madam Gloriana. Was the fire of the Frenchlines half so murderous as the killing glances from her ladyship's eyes? Odarts and raptures, how beautiful were they!

  And as, before the blazing sun of morning, the moon fades away in the skyalmost invisible; Esmond thought, with a blush perhaps, of another sweetpale face, sad and faint, and fading out of sight, with its sweet fondgaze of affection; such a last look it seemed to cast as Eurydice mighthave given, yearning after her lover, when Fate and Pluto summoned her,and she passed away into the shades.