Marlborough

by Richard Holmes

  It now seemed evident that the French planned a new war, and French and Austrian troops were fighting in Italy by early summer. English public opinion, not for the last time, was resolutely opposed to a fresh Continental commitment, so much so that William told the Dutch grand pensionary Anthonie Heinsius that this blindness to an obvious danger was a punishment from heaven. On 7 September a Treaty of Grand Alliance bound the Emperor Leopold, the Dutch and the British to support the partition of the Spanish Empire with ‘satisfactory compensation’ for the Hapsburgs, and equally satisfactory arrangements for the maritime powers in the West Indies. Marlborough had negotiated on Britain’s behalf. The Dutch had installed him in the beautiful and exotic Mauritshuis in The Hague, and Marlborough, so familiar with courts, was wholly in his element, charming, flattering, wheedling and cajoling, but always ensuring that he sent drafts of the treaty to Whig and Tory leaders so that there could be no suggestion that he was acting without consultation: the lessons of the last decade had been well learned.

  Thus far Louis XIV had dominated events, but he now proceeded to make an error so serious that we must surmise that it sprang from genuine conviction, not subtle statecraft. James II’s court just outside Paris at St Germain en Laye, with its odour of sanctity and disappointed ambitions, had never been a happy place. In the late 1690s it grew gloomier still. There was never enough money; French neighbours blamed the continuation of the war on Jacobite pressure, and James’s apparent support for the assassination of William (who, whatever his status in England, was indisputably stadholder of the United Provinces) looked rather like an attempt to procure the murder of a Christian prince. Many of his Irish troops were disbanded, and veterans of the Boyne, Aughrim and Limerick became brigands or footpads, risking ‘death on the wheel or life eked out in the galleys’. James became increasingly preoccupied by the need to preserve his immortal soul, and spent retreats at the wintry monastery of La Trappe. When the Archbishop of Rheims saw the old king shuffling down the steps of Notre Dame de Paris, he pointed out a ‘good man’ who had ‘renounced three kingdoms for a mass’.84

  James was hearing mass at St Germain in March 1701 when he collapsed with a heavy nosebleed, and he had a stroke that paralysed his right side a week later. He collapsed again in September, and then lay centre-stage for the finest role he ever played, the resolute confrontation of death in the presence of his family and the comfort of his Church. It was the very public nature of this death, with his magnanimous forgiveness of his three greatest foes – the emperor, the Prince of Orange, and Princess Anne – and the selfless fulfilment of the very highest moral duty of a king that impressed Louis. There, in the antechamber to James’s room, he recognised the Prince of Wales as James’s lawful heir. Men torn between joy and despair cried ‘God save the King’ when James died in the small hours on 16 September.

  English indignation against Louis knew no bounds, and when William dissolved Parliament that month the election produced a House of Commons almost equally divided between Whigs and Tories but united in one thing: support for the war against a perjured king. William did not live long to enjoy the fruition of his life’s work. On 21 February 1702 he was hunting in Richmond Park when his horse stumbled on a molehill and threw William, whose collarbone was broken. The injury should not in itself have proved fatal, but William, at fifty-one, was old and tired, and he died at Kensington Palace on the morning of 8 March. It was ironic that a man who had done so much to frustrate French ambitions should end his life with his last words in French: ‘Je tire vers ma fin,’ ‘I draw near my end.’ Bishop Burnet raced across London to throw himself at Anne’s feet, ‘full of joy and duty’, and tell her that her ‘sunshine day’ had come at last, and she was queen. For Marlborough, already described as her ‘grand vizier’, the sun could scarcely have beamed more brightly.

  4

  A Full Gale of Favour

  Marlborough was fifty-one years old when he left London for The Hague on 14 March 1702, blown ‘by a full gale of favour’, to reassure the members of the Grand Alliance that England was steadfast in her commitment. The previous summer William, conscious of his own failing health, had chosen Marlborough to command the twelve battalions sent to the Low Countries and made him ambassador to the Dutch Republic. But if Marlborough was then glad of such important employment, he was now wholly replete with honour and dignity. The queen had made him a Knight of the Garter immediately after her succession, and went on to appoint him captain general of her army and master general of the ordnance. Lord Romney was dispossessed, though the broad arrow from his coat of arms long survived as an emblem of government property. Marlborough was also reappointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the United Provinces, and this post alone was worth £100 a day, with £1,500 to provide for his equipage and £2,500 for the appropriate plate.

  The garter was a particular delight, for he had hoped for it, all those years ago, as a reward for Cork and Kinsale. In those days knights of orders of chivalry wore their insignia most of the time, with braid and tinsel stars sewn to garments like cloaks and overcoats. The practice was not always wise. Berwick says that Schomberg was identified by his garter at the Boyne, and an unlucky French officer, writing home after Blenheim, lamented that his Württemberg decoration had drawn Allied cavalrymen like wasps to a honeypot. Within minutes he had ‘two sword-cuts to the head, a sword-cut which pierced my arm, the contusion of a ball on the leg, and my horse wounded’. A kindly enemy officer took his remaining pistol and said: ‘You are welcome to quarter, follow me, I will get you cared for, and give me your cross.’ The Frenchman added glumly that: ‘I had the weakness to give him the 134 louis d’or I had in a purse; but anyone else would have done the same to make them well disposed and to avoid being massacred.’1 It was some time before Marlborough had quite enough stars. As late as April 1704 he asked Sarah to arrange for Salamander Cutts, due back in Flanders, to bring him some extra insignia: ‘I desire Lord Cutts to bring me two stars, I having none to put on any clothes I shall make, and if it be not too much trouble to him, a little liquorish and rhubarb.’2

  Marlborough already had considerable experience of dealing with the Dutch. They appear in many anglophone accounts as dour and curmudgeonly, always anxious to think of a reason for not fighting and a constant thorn in Marlborough’s side. Their names and titles were a trial in themselves. The field deputy that Marlborough calls ‘Mr Gilder-Malsen’ was in fact Adriaen van Borssele van der Hooghe, Heer van Gueldermalsen.*

  Many of the differences of opinion between Marlborough and the most indispensable of Britain’s allies were rooted deep in that black alluvial soil of the United Provinces. The seven provinces which constituted the Dutch Republic had torn themselves free from Spanish rule by the early seventeenth century, leaving the remaining provinces of the Spanish Netherlands (very roughly modern Belgium and a slice of northern France, which constituted the battleground for most of Marlborough’s campaigns) squeezed uncomfortably between the new republic and the rising power of France.

  Most Dutchmen regarded French incursions into the Spanish Netherlands, a constant feature of Louis XIV’s policy, as fundamentally inimical to the security of their republic, and they were also concerned for the safety of their Dutch-speaking co-religionists in the Spanish provinces of Flanders and Brabant. For just as Huguenots and Catholic Irish were marked by their own deep sense of persecution, so the Duke of Alba’s bloody attempt to burn out Dutch Protestantism (he cheerfully told King Philip that he had taken ‘eight hundred heads’ in Holy Week 1568 alone) left its enduring legacy. Moreover, many Huguenot refugees made their way to the Dutch Republic before setting off

  elsewhere, and their presence helped assure Dutchmen that rope and pyre would accompany French armies.

  The Norman gentleman Isaac Dumont de Bostaquet escaped to Rotterdam by way of Hesdin and Courtrai. There he heard that he had been sentenced to death in his absence: his son-in-law was to go to the galleys for three years, and their womenfol
k were to have their heads shaved and to be put in a convent for life.3 Once a French officer, he now swore an oath to the States-General and happily picked up the pay of 520 livres given to captains who had left the active list. The Dutch did not simply give him religious freedom, but they paid him to exercise it. There was a remarkable degree of religious toleration in the Dutch Republic. Laws against Roman Catholics were not enforced, the established Calvinist Church was on good terms with the francophone Walloon Church, and a variety of Protestant sects flourished. The English Quaker William Penn argued, from his experience of the Dutch, that union of interests and not of opinions brought peace to kingdoms – which seems, in our own age riven by divergent opinion, to be a profound truth.

  The Dutch state was a confederacy, each of its provinces governed by an elected provincial estate headed by a paid official known as the pensionary. The provincial estates sent delegates to the States-General, where each province had a single vote regardless of the number of delegates it contributed. The pensionary of Holland, the largest and richest of the provinces, was known as the grand pensionary, and he was as near as the republic came to having a chief executive. The very term confused most Englishmen, and even Marlborough, who worked closely with him, habitually translated the word as ‘pensioner’, which gives quite the wrong impression.

  The grand pensionary was in day-to-day charge of foreign affairs, and presided over the Council of State, whose greffier functioned almost as a cabinet secretary. Each province had a stadholder, and the House of Orange had long provided the stadholder for the United Provinces: William’s death had left a gap that could not be filled. Few of the estates even tried to elect a successor, and the Dutch were to fight this war without the unifying direction, personal and political, provided by William in the last. Elections in 1702 had left the anti-Orange, republican and traditionally anti-war party in power, but concern about French activities in the Spanish Netherlands, French restrictions on Dutch trade and early evidence that a Spain which toed the French line would exclude the Dutch from trade with its dominions overseas, meant that even anti-Orangists were, in that very Dutch way, not at all keen on the war but determined to prosecute it to a successful conclusion.

  The structure of their state, however, made this difficult. There was always tension between the demands of the sea power on which this maritime nation relied, and the armies necessary to seize and retain a barrier between the republic and France. This inevitably played itself out in friction with the British, who complained that the Dutch did not commit sufficient ships to convoy protection, placing an unreasonable burden on the Royal Navy. The Dutch collegiate system of government made even the England of Queen Anne look slick and centralised. There were five independent admiralty boards, whose deputies met to discuss the composition and funding of fleets. The States-General nominated the naval commander-in-chief, but the provincial boards all selected their own admirals. It was not a recipe for clear command and decisive action.

  Each provincial estate elected deputies to accompany Dutch armies in the field. Although they were technically civilians, like any sensible gentleman on his travels they carried sword and pistols, and Sicco van Goslinga, the best-known of them, argued that, as direct representatives of the Dutch state, they held residual command authority. Army commanders habitually put major decisions to the vote of a council of war consisting of their senior generals. Even this was rarely a simple process, but Dutch generals could only fight if their field deputies (numbering from six in 1703 to three in 1704 and collectively called ‘the deputation’) concurred, quite regardless of what an Allied commander-in-chief might wish. Field deputies were not necessarily idle or obstructive, but there would be times when their view of what was best for Zealand or Friesland would not mesh comfortably with a British commander’s desire to attack the French that very morning.

  Richard Kane of the Royal Regiment of Foot of Ireland believed that in 1702 Marlborough’s lack of experience of command on such a scale naturally made the Dutch a little concerned.

  My Lord Marlborough knew that the eyes of all the Confederates were upon him, he never having had the like command before, but especially the States General, who purely to oblige the Queen of England, not only placed him at the head of their army, but even the safety of their country in a great measure depended on his conduct. However, as it had always been the practice of that state, even in the King’s time, to send two of their Council of State with generals into the field, who always acted in concert, they sent with my Lord two of the most experienced men among them as their Field Deputies, which my Lord could not take ill, since it had been their constant practice, though as he ever did, watched all opportunities to give a bold stroke at his first setting out to fix a reputation.4

  At precisely the same time Marlborough’s private secretary, Adam de Cardonnel, told secretary Blathwayt that bold strokes would be some time in coming.

  You will wonder, after what I wrote the last post, to find us on this side of the Meuse; it was then resolved to pass over, but the Dutch are so timorous that they will not venture their army out of sight while the French are so near, and the King of Prussia is of the same opinion, for fear of exposing what is left in the country of Cleve.5

  Soon afterwards Marlborough admitted to Godolphin that he was finding coalition command harder than he had expected.

  I have but too much reason to complain that the ten thousand men upon our right did not march as soon as I sent the orders, which if they had I believe we should have had a very easy victory, for their whole left was in disorder. However, I have thought it very much for her Majesty’s service to take no [formal] notice of it, as you will see by my letter to the States. But my Lord Rivers and almost all the general officers of my right were with me when I sent the orders, so that notwithstanding the care I take to hinder it, they do talk.6

  Anthonie Heinsius, who had become grand pensionary in 1689, had served as Dutch envoy to Versailles after the Peace of Nijmegen. He had no success whatever in persuading the French to relinquish William’s principality of Orange, and emerged as an inveterate opponent of French expansionism. He was at first anti-Orangist, but had worked increasingly closely with William, who had persuaded him to become grand pensionary. One historian suggests that after William became king of England Heinsius was effectively his alter ego, aware of his deepest thoughts and acting as his most important personal link with the United Provinces. In William’s reign the English and Dutch diplomatic services had worked almost as one, though the links unravelled after William’s death.

  The personal relationship between Marlborough and Heinsius, already well established by 1702, was fundamental to the success of the Grand Alliance. They were very different. Heinsius, born in 1641, was a bachelor of simple tastes, whose crushing workload left him little time for any other interests. Although he was widely respected by his countrymen he could never command the loyalty which had attached to William, and as divergent elements welled up within the United Provinces he drew closer to Marlborough. When Marlborough’s grasp on power was fatally weakened in 1711 and the British government was actively considering making a separate peace, it avoided his outright dismissal until the very end of the year because his long friendship with Heinsius helped cloak a policy which would leave the Dutch exposed in the peace negotiations at Utrecht. One of the many anguishes of Marlborough’s fall was having to watch, from the sidelines, the shabby treatment of someone who had become an old comrade.

  In the spring of 1702, however, the States-General could not have been more supportive. They at once approved Marlborough’s demand for the inclusion of ‘the expulsion of the pretended Prince of Wales from France’ among the articles of the Grand Alliance, and went on to appoint him deputy captain general of their army. The emperor was uneasy about having the Prince of Wales, son of an anointed king, described as ‘pretended’, but Marlborough made it clear to his ambassador that the clause was fundamental to keeping England in the alliance. Leopold speedily
concluded, after speaking to his confessor, that the word could as well mean ‘claimant’ as ‘impostor’, and his emissary Count Goes duly signed the article.

  The original treaty, duly modified by this new clause, had subsidiary treaties in which members of the alliance contracted to provide specified forces. The Prussians, for instance, agreed to provide two regiments of cavalry at 874 men apiece and five regiments of infantry, each of twelve companies apiece, or 4,255 men in all. The contingent would be paid for half by the English and half by ‘their High Mightinesses’ of the States-General, and pay was to start immediately the contingent entered Dutch territory. There was a recall clause:

  If the King of Prussia comes to be attacked in his own territory, far away from the Rhine, and should be obliged to demand the return of the said troops, they will be sent back to him immediately, without dispute.7

  The original document was, naturally enough, in French.

  Similar agreements governed the military contributions made to the Grand Alliance by other small states, and it is important to recognise from the outset just how important they were. It was Danish dragoons who began the crumbling of the French position at Ramillies by taking the village of Taviers, and Hanoverian cavalry who pushed the French back across the Norken stream at Oudenarde: the British element in Marlborough’s armies was almost always outnumbered by its non-British component. Agreements with Allied contributors required negotiation and re-negotiation, with arrangements for pay and victualling requiring careful attention, for irregularly-paid men often took to looting regardless of whether or not they were on friendly territory. Discipline was a national responsibility, and arrangements would often specify where disciplinary authority ultimately lay. When a British staff officer with a small cavalry escort saw some Danes, accompanied by two officers, engaged in large-scale looting he was wise enough to take no action until British reinforcements arrived. When he handed over the miscreants to a Danish general the officers were at once put in irons, and he was assured that they would be shot forthwith.