In one man's fortune, mark and scorn them all.
The "ancient story" was a pretence which Pope inserted when he turned the invective against the Duke of Marlborough into a general satire upon a class.
[1537] Mr. Croker asks "who was happy to ruin and betray?—the favourite or the sovereign?" The language is confused, but "their" in the next line refers to those who "ruin" and "betray," and shows that the favourites were meant. They were happy to ruin those—the kings, to betray these—the queens. The couplet made part of the attack upon the Duke of Marlborough, and the words of ver. 290 were borrowed from Burnet, who said in his defence of the Duke, "that he was in no contrivance to ruin or betray" James II. While, however, he was a trusted officer in the army of James he entered into a secret league with the Prince of Orange, and deserted to him on his landing. The accusation of lying in the arms of a queen, and afterwards betraying her, alludes, says Wakefield, to Marlborough's youthful intrigue with the Duchess of Cleveland, the mistress of Charles II., and we need not reject the interpretation because the mistress of a king is not a queen, or because there is no ground for believing that Marlborough betrayed her. Pope constantly sacrificed accuracy of language to glitter of style, and historic truth to satirical venom.
[1538] In the MS. "great * * grows," that is, great Churchill or Marlbro'.—Croker.
[1539] MS.:
One equal course how guilt and greatness ran.
[1540] This couplet and the next have a view to his supposed peculation as commander-in-chief, and his prolongation of the war on this account.—Wakefield.
The charges were the calumnies of an infuriated faction. His military career while he was commander-in-chief was free from reproach. He was never known to sanction an act of wanton harshness, or to exceed the recognised usages of war. The pretence that he prolonged the contest for the sake of gain does not require a refutation, for his accusers could never produce a fragment of colourable evidence in support of the allegation. The Duke of Wellington ridiculed the notion, and said that however much Marlborough might have loved money he must have loved his military reputation more. The poet, who denounced him as a man "stained with blood," and "infamous for plundered provinces," could, at ver. 100, call Turenne "god-like," though he gave the atrocious command to pillage and burn the Palatinate, and turned it into a smouldering desert. "Habit," says Sismondi, "had rendered him insensible to the sufferings of the people, and he subjected them to the most cruel inflictions."
[1541] MS.:
Let gathered nations next their chief behold,
How blessed with conquest, yet more blessed with gold:
Go then, and steep thy age in wealth and ease,
Stretched on the spoils of plundered provinces.