CHAPTER IX.
I MAKE THE CAMPAIGN OF 1704.
Mr. Esmond rode up to London then, where, if the Dowager had been angryat the abrupt leave of absence he took, she was mightily pleased at hisspeedy return.
He went immediately and paid his court to his new general, GeneralLumley, who received him graciously, having known his father, and also,he was pleased to say, having had the very best accounts of Mr. Esmondfrom the officer whose aide-de-camp he had been at Vigo. During thiswinter Mr. Esmond was gazetted to a lieutenancy in Brigadier Webb'sregiment of Fusileers, then with their colonel in Flanders; but beingnow attached to the suite of Mr. Lumley, Esmond did not join his ownregiment until more than a year afterwards, and after his return fromthe campaign of Blenheim, which was fought the next year. The campaignbegan very early, our troops marching out of their quarters before thewinter was almost over, and investing the city of Bonn, on the Rhine,under the Duke's command. His Grace joined the army in deep grief ofmind, with crape on his sleeve, and his household in mourning; and thevery same packet which brought the Commander-in-Chief over, broughtletters to the forces which preceded him, and one from his dear mistressto Esmond, which interested him 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,to Trinity, with Mr. Tusher as his governor,) had been seized withsmall-pox, and was dead at sixteen years of age, and so poor Frank'sschemes for his sister's advancement were over, and that innocentchildish passion nipped in 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, andour young man took his humble share in the siege, which need not bedescribed here, and had the good luck to escape without a wound of anysort, and to drink his general's health after the surrender. He wasin constant military duty this year, and did not think of asking for aleave of absence, as one or two of his less fortunate friends did, whowere cast away in that tremendous storm which happened towards theclose of November, that "which of late o'er pale Britannia past" (asMr. Addison sang of it), and in which scores of our greatest ships and15,000 of our seamen went down.
They said that our Duke was quite heart-broken by the calamity which hadbefallen his family; but his enemies found that he could subdue them,as well as master his grief. Successful as had been this great General'soperations in the past year, they were far enhanced by the splendor ofhis victory in the ensuing campaign. His Grace the Captain-General wentto England after Bonn, and our army fell back into Holland, where, inApril 1704, his Grace again found the troops, embarking from Harwichand landing at Maesland Sluys: thence his Grace came immediately to theHague, where he received the foreign ministers, general officers, andother people of quality. The greatest honors were paid to his Graceeverywhere--at the Hague, Utrecht, Ruremonde, and Maestricht; the civilauthorities coming to meet his coaches: salvos of cannon saluting him,canopies of state being erected for him where he stopped, and feastsprepared for the numerous gentlemen following in his suite. His Gracereviewed the troops of the States-General between Liege and Maestricht,and afterwards the English forces, under the command of GeneralChurchill, near Bois-le-Duc. Every preparation was made for a longmarch; and the army heard, with no small elation, that it was theCommander-in-Chief's intention to carry the war out of the LowCountries, and to march on the Mozelle. Before leaving our camp atMaestricht, we heard that the French, under the Marshal Villeroy, werealso 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 theElector. All as yet was novelty, festivity, and splendor--a brilliantmarch of a great and glorious army through a friendly country, andsure through some of the most beautiful scenes of nature which I everwitnessed.
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 tohis Highness'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,at Heidelberg; and Esmond had an opportunity of seeing that city andpalace, once so famous and beautiful (though shattered and battered bythe French, under Turenne, in the late war), where his grandsire hadserved the beautiful and unfortunate Electress-Palatine, the first KingCharles's sister.
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,who was 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 ofhis best troops to Count Darcos, who was posted at Schellenberg, nearthat place, where great intrenchments were thrown up, and thousands ofpioneers employed 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 ofBaden, when the enemy could make no head against us: we pursued theminto the trenches, making a terrible slaughter there, and into the veryDanube, where a great part of his troops, following the example of theirgenerals, Count Darcos and the Elector himself, tried to save themselvesby swimming. Our army entered Donauwort, which the Bavarians evacuated;and where 'twas said the Elector purposed to have given us a warmreception, by burning us in our beds; the cellars of the houses, when wetook possession of them, being found stuffed with straw. But though thelinks were there, the link-boys had run away. The townsmen saved theirhouses, and our General took possession of the enemy's ammunition in thearsenals, his stores, and magazines. Five days afterwards a great "TeDeum" was sung in Prince Lewis's army, and a solemn day of thanksgivingheld in our own; the Prince of Savoy's compliments coming to his Gracethe Captain-General during the day's religious ceremony, and concluding,as it were, with an Amen.
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;burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons andfathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst oftears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, thatdelights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest,leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean, and degrading, that yet form byfar the greater part of the drama of war? You, gentlemen of England, wholive at home at ease, and compliment yourselves in the songs of triumphwith which our chieftains are bepraised--you pretty maidens, that cometumbling down the stairs when the fife and drum call you, and huzzah forthe British Grenadiers--do you take account that these items go to makeup the amount of the triumph you admire, and form part of the duties ofthe heroes you fondle? Our chief, whom England and all Europe, savingonly 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 most trivial ceremony; before ahundred thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at thedoor of his burning hovel; before a carouse of drunken German lords, ora monarch's court or a cottage table, where his plans were laid, or anenemy's battery, vomiting flame and death, and strewing corpses roundabout him;--he was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He performeda treason or a court-bow, he told a falsehood as black as Styx, aseasily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He took amistress, and left her; he betrayed his benefactor, and supported him,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;his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither, raging; he shriekedcurses and encouragement, yelling and harking his bloody war-dogs on,and himself always at the first of the hunt. Our duke was as calm at themouth of the cannon as at the door of a drawing-room. Perhaps he couldnot have been the great man he was, had he had a heart either forlove or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or remorse. He achievedthe highest deed of daring, or deepest calculation of thought, as heperformed the very meanest action of which a man is capable; told a lie,or cheated a fond woman, or robbed a poor beggar of a halfpenny, with alike awful serenity and equal capacity of the highest and lowest acts ofour nature.
His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there wereparties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but thereexisted such a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain of theworld, and such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius andfortune, that the very men whom he notoriously cheated of their pay, thechiefs whom he used and injured--(for he used all men, great and small,that came near him, as his instruments alike, and took something oftheirs, either some quality or some property)--the blood of a soldier, itmight be, or a jewelled hat, or a hundred thousand crowns from a king,or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three-farthings; or (when hewas young) a kiss from a woman, and the gold chain off her neck, takingall he could from woman or man, and having, as I have said, this of thegodlike in him, that he could see a hero perish or a sparrow fall, withthe same amount of sympathy for either. Not that he had no tears; hecould always order up this reserve at the proper moment to battle; hecould draw upon tears or smiles alike, and whenever need was for usingthis cheap coin. He would cringe to a shoeblack, as he would flatter aminister or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep,grasp your hand, (or stab you whenever he saw occasion)--but yet thoseof the army, who knew him best and had suffered most from him, admiredhim most of all: and as he rode along the lines to battle or gallopedup in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from before the enemy'scharge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as theysaw the splendid calm of his face, and felt that his will made themirresistible.
After the great victory of Blenheim the enthusiasm of the army for theDuke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted to a sortof rage--nay, the very officers who cursed him in their hearts wereamong the most frantic to cheer him. Who could refuse his meed ofadmiration to such a victory and such a victor? Not he who writes: a manmay profess to be ever so much a philosopher; but he who fought on thatday must feel a thrill 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 awoody hill, round the base of which, and acting against the Prince ofSavoy, were forty of his squadrons.
Here was a village that the Frenchmen had burned, the wood being, infact, a better shelter and easier of guard than any 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 upfrom the heats of the weather), and this stream was the only separationbetween the two armies--ours coming up and ranging themselves in lineof battle before the French, at six o'clock in the morning; so that ourline was quite visible to theirs; and the whole of this great plain wasblack and swarming 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 mid-day when the attack began on our left, where Lord Cuttscommanded, the bravest and most beloved officer in the English army.And now, as if to make his experience in war complete, our youngaide-de-camp having seen two great armies facing each other in line ofbattle, and had the honor of riding with orders from one end to otherof the line, came in for a not uncommon accompaniment of military glory,and was knocked on the head, along with many hundred of brave fellows,almost at the very commencement of this famous day of Blenheim. A littleafter noon, the disposition for attack being completed with much delayand difficulty, and under a severe fire from the enemy's guns, thatwere better posted and more numerous than ours, a body of English andHessians, with Major-General Wilkes commanding at the extreme left ofour line, marched upon Blenheim, advancing with great gallantry, theMajor-General on foot, with his officers, at the head of the column, andmarching, with his hat off, intrepidly in the face of the enemy, who waspouring in a tremendous fire from his guns and musketry, to which ourpeople were instructed not to reply, except with pike and bayonet whenthey reached the French palisades. To these Wilkes walked intrepidly,and struck the woodwork with his sword before our people charged it.He was shot down at the instant, with his colonel, major, and severalofficers; and our troops cheering and huzzaing, and coming on, as theydid, with immense resolution and gallantry, were nevertheless stopped bythe murderous fire from behind the enemy's defences, and then attackedin flank by a furious charge of French horse which swept out ofBlenheim, and cut down our men in great numbers. Three fierce anddesperate assaults of our foot were made and repulsed by the enemy; sothat our columns of foot were quite shattered, and fell back, scramblingover the little rivulet, which we had crossed so resolutely an hourbefore, and pursued by the French cavalry, slaughtering us and cuttingus down.
And now the conquerors were met by a furious charge of English horseunder Esmond's general, General Lumley, behind whose squadrons theflying foot found refuge, and formed again, whilst Lumley drove back theFrench horse, charging up to the village of Blenheim and the palisadeswhere Wilkes, and many hundred more gallant Englishmen, lay inslaughtered heaps. Beyond this moment, and of this famous victory, Mr.Esmond knows nothing; for a shot brought down his horse and our younggentleman on it, who fell crushed and stunned under the animal, and cameto his senses he knows not how long after, only to lose them again frompain and loss of blood. A dim sense, as of people groaning round abouthim, a wild incoherent thought or two for her who occupied so much ofhis heart now, and that here his career, and his hopes, and misfortuneswere ended, he remembers in the course of these hours. When he woke up,it was with a pang of extreme pain, his breastplate was taken off, hisservant was holding his head up, the good and faithful lad of Hampshire*was blubbering over his master, whom he found and had thought dead, anda surgeon was probing a wound in the shoulder, which he must have gotat the same moment when his horse was shot and fell over him. The battlewas over at this end of the field, by this time: the village was inpossession of the English, its brave defenders prisoners, or fled,or drowned, many of them, in the neighboring waters of Donau. But forhonest Lockwood's faithful search after his master, there had no doubtbeen an end of Esmond here, and of this his story. The marauders wereout riffling the bodies as they lay on the field, and Jack had brainedone of these gentry with the club-end of hi
s musket, who had easedEsmond of his hat and periwig, his purse, and fine silver-mountedpistols which the Dowager gave him, and was fumbling in his pocketsfor further treasure, when Jack Lockwood came up and put an end to thescoundrel's triumph.
* My mistress, before I went this campaign, sent me John Lockwood out of Walcote, who hath ever since remained with me.--H. E.
Hospitals for our wounded were established at Blenheim, and here forseveral weeks Esmond lay in very great danger of his life; the woundwas not very great from which he suffered, and the ball extracted by thesurgeon on the spot where our young gentleman received it; but a feverset in next day, as he was lying in hospital, and that almost carriedhim away. Jack Lockwood said he talked in the wildest manner during hisdelirium; that he called himself the Marquis of Esmond, and seizing oneof the surgeon's assistants who came to dress his wounds, swore that hewas Madam Beatrix, and that he would make her a duchess if she wouldbut say yes. He was passing the days in these crazy fancies, and vanasomnia, whilst the army was singing "Te Deum" for the victory, andthose famous festivities were taking place at which our Duke, now made aPrince of the Empire, was entertained by the King of the Romans and hisnobility. His Grace went home by Berlin and Hanover, and Esmond lostthe festivities which took place at those cities, and which his generalshared in company of the other general officers who travelled with ourgreat captain. When he could move, it was by the Duke of Wurtemberg'scity of Stuttgard that he made his way homewards, revisiting Heidelbergagain, whence he went to Manheim, and hence had a tedious but easy waterjourney down the river of Rhine, which he had thought a delightful andbeautiful voyage indeed, but that his heart was longing for home, andsomething far more beautiful and delightful.
As bright and welcome as the eyes almost of his mistress shone thelights of Harwich, as the packet came in from Holland. It was notmany hours ere he, Esmond, was in London, of that you may be sure, andreceived with open arms by the old Dowager of Chelsey, who vowed, in herjargon of French and English, that he had the air noble, that his pallorembellished him, that he was an Amadis and deserved a Gloriana; and oh!flames and darts! what was his joy at hearing that his mistress was comeinto waiting, and was now with her Majesty at Kensington! Although Mr.Esmond had told Jack Lockwood to get horses and they would ride forWinchester that night, when he heard this news he countermanded thehorses at once; his business lay no longer in Hants; all his hope anddesire lay within a couple of miles of him in Kensington Park wall. PoorHarry had never looked in the glass before so eagerly to see whether hehad the bel air, and his paleness really did become him; he nevertook such pains about the curl of his periwig, and the taste of hisembroidery and point-lace, as now, before Mr. Amadis presented himselfto Madam Gloriana. Was the fire of the French lines half so murderousas the killing glances from her ladyship's eyes? Oh! darts and raptures,how beautiful were they!
And as, before the blazing sun of morning, the moon fades away in thesky almost invisible, Esmond thought, with a blush perhaps, of anothersweet pale face, sad and faint, and fading out of sight, with its sweetfond gaze of affection; such a last look it seemed to cast as Eurydicemight have given, yearning after her lover, when Fate and Pluto summonedher, and she passed away into the shades.
The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne Page 26