Our Great Military Commanders
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OUE GREAT MILITARY COMMANDERS SKETCHES OF THE LIVES OF DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH, LORD CLIVE, DUKE OF WELLINGTON, SIR CHARLES NAPIER, LORD GOUGH, LORD CLYDE. ' , > J , > > 3 > ' ' • ' ' . , . > >,3 > 03 . ' I • ' >*»• 'v- e \ 'oB* >> ." »> ^-*^3 O J'/ \ C. D. Y^ONOE (late professor of history and ENGLISH LITERATURE, QUEEN'S COLLEGE, BELFAST) AUTHOR OF 'our GREAT NAVAL COMMANDERS,' 'HISTORY OF FRANCE,' ' CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND,' ETC. Lt. C. H. Oriersdnr U S Army. ilontion WARD AND DOWNEY 12 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1892 cct ccc tc NOTE By reason of the death of the Author during the passage of this book through the press, the proofs of the latter part have not received his corrections. fwlti ^0,3 CONTENTS The Duke op Marlborough . THE DUKE OF MARLBOKOUGH B 6c CHAPTER I The founder of our military glory in modern times was John Churchill, son of Sir Winston Churchill, the representative of an ancient knightly family in Devon- shire. His father, like most gentlemen of the western counties, had been a loyal adherent of the King in the rebellion ; and his honourable fidelity to his master had brought on him the vengeance of Cromwell and the confiscation of the greater part of his estate. His mother was a daughter of Sir John Drake of Ashe, a cousin of the famous sailor whose courage and skill had contributed so largely to the defeat of the Armada. Fortunately for his country Sir Winston Churchill had friends among the leading nobles of the royalist party, who, at the restoration, brought him under the notice of the royal family, and procured his son, then ten years old (he had been born in 1650), the appoint- ment of page to the Duke of York. And his services in that post were rewarded, as soon as he was of sufficient age, by an ensign's commission in one of the new regiments of foot -guards. His first years of service were employed at Taugiers, a small fortress on the coast of Northern Africa, which had been part of the dowry of the Portuguese princess, Catharine of Braganza, the queen of Charles the Second. It was Our Great Military Commanders valued at first as securing for our fleets a safe entrance into the Mediterranean, but was presently besieged by the Moors. As an officer of its garrison the young Churchill had the opportunity of acquiring some know- ledge of siege operations ; and he was one on whom no such opportunities were thrown away. He soon had others still more valuable. His regiment was recalled to England to form part of the brigade which in 1672 was sent to Germany to join the French army under the great Turenne, in the war which Louis XIV. was waging with the Empire. And service under that illustrious officer, the greatest general that his country at that time had ever produced, was a school for every variety of military operation,—for caution when on the defensive, for energy in attack, for skill in combination, fertility of resource in every difficulty ; few generals having had such difficulties to encounter as Turenne, since his force was rarely a third of that arrayed against him ; fewer still having been so uniformly successful ; and Turenne's successors learnt to their cost how apt a pupil of their great master Churchill had been. Even in his subordinate rank he found more than one opportunity of distinguishing himself. Turenne on one occasion contrasting his skill and intrepidity with the want of those qualities dis- played by one of his own officers, and on another doing him the unusual honour of publicly thanking him at the head of the army for his brilliant accom- plishment of one enterprise which he had confided to his execution. On the conclusion of the peace of Nimeguen he returned to England, where his merits, and the interest of his original patron, the Duke of York, obtained him rapid promotion. Before the King's death he had risen to the rank of major-general. TJie Duke of Marlborough and had been ennobled by a Scotch peerage as Baron Churchill of Aymouth. It had a not less importance in its influence on his subsequent fortunes that he married Miss Sarah Jennings, who, as one of the ladies of the Duchess of York, had attracted the notice of her second daughter, the Princess Anne ; and the acquaintance thus begun gradually ripened into one of the most extraordinary friendships on record which, when the Princess became Queen, had no slight influence on her husband's fortunes. During the last years of the reign of Charles II. he had no further opportunities of distinguishing him- self. But the accession of James opened one to him, so far as any laurels were to be won by defeating the motley group who formed the army of the unhappy Monmouth. Such as there was, however, it was by him that they were gathered. For the nominal com- mander - in - chief. Lord Feversham, was a man of notorious incapacity ; and the rout of Sedgemoor was universally admitted to be the work of Churchill alone. But he soon found that neither his former connexion with James as his page, nor this his present service, could procure him the continuance of the royal favour. That was only to be won by apostasy from Protestant- ism, and Churchill was unshaken in his religious convictions. This fidelity was proof against the royal indeed, the King was compelled to displeasure ; which, smother in some degree, since he could find no officer of sufficient standing to supersede him in the com- mand of his regiment who w^ould be base enough to purchase it by the required apostasy. Yet it so happened that when circumstances called on him for action it was against the King, and not on his side, that he was compelled to range himself. Sedgemoor Our Great Military Cojumandcrs had filled James with undue confidence ; and, as if the popularity which the defeat of one insane insurrection had awakened in his favour had been so firmly rooted as to be proof against all provocation, he at once began to outrage the judgement and feelings of the whole nation by the most flagrant violation of all the laws to which the people were most strongly attached, sparing not even those judges who refused to disregard their oaths at his bidding, nor the prelates of the Church who refused to obey mandates justified neither by law nor precedent. It was not to be wondered at that such a series of tyrannical measures prompted a body of nobles, jealous for the safety of their religion, and even for their privileges and rights as freemen, to seek the interposi- tion of William, Prince of Orange, himself a member of the royal family as a grandson of Charles I., and having even a closer interest in the welfare of the kingdom as the husband of the Princess Mary, the king's elder daughter ; nor that William should comply with the invitation they presented to him. Accordingly at the end of October 1688 he crossed over to England to aid those who had sought his countenance in procuring redress for the grievances which the kingdom had suffered from the disregard of the established laws, and security against any repeti- tion of such acts as they complained of He brought with him a small force of soldiers, sufficient as a guard to ensure his own safety, but too small to have the appearance of an invading army bent on conquest. For the invitation that had been conveyed to him differed in one material point from the declaration of his views which he published when he reached the English shore. The former had spoken openly of a The Duke of Marlborough change in the Government, the latter, after enumerat- mg the different grievances which afforded the nation just grounds of complaint, disavowed all project or to be con- idea of conquest ; declared William's object fined to the securing of the meeting of a free and legal Parliament, to whose decision the settlement of all questions affecting the administration of the laws and the due maintenance of the constitution should be the objects committed ; and promised that, as soon as thus desired should be attained, the troops whom he had brought with him should be sent back to Holland. Wliether the announcement of a design and object so moderate really expressed the whole of William's purpose may probably be doubted, but James treated his arrival as that of an invading enemy bent on the conquest of the kingdom, and his own deposition with at and expulsion ; and, instead of meeting him least a profession of willingness to enter into an amicable discussion of the matters mentioned in his declaration, at once put himself at the head of his army, reinforced it with regiments from Scotland and from Ireland also,— the latter, as it was taken for granted that they were all papists, being regarded with such disfavour by the whole country that their arrival was a source of weakness rather than of strength,—and prepared for war. William had landed in Torbay on the 5th of November, and after an un- avoidable delay of a few days, had commenced his march towards London. James advanced towards Exeter, as if relying on the superiority of his numbers to crush the invader before he could obtain any assist- ance from those of whose demands he claimed to be Salis- the advocate ; but he did not proceed beyond bury, for by the time he reached that city he not 8 Our Great Military Commanders only learnt that men of rank and influence were flock- ing around William, but that many of the regiments which he had with him could not be trusted to fight for him.