Killiecrankie was interesting, from the military point of view, for the complete victory of men armed with sword and target over regular troops carrying the musket. In close fight, the latter, for want of an easily fixed bayonet, proved inferior.
See genealogical table of the Stuarts on p. [481].
CHAPTER XXXII.
ANNE.
1702-1714.
Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark.
According to the provisions of the "Act of Settlement," the English crown passed, on the death of William III., to his sister-in-law, the Princess Anne, the second daughter of James II. The new sovereign was a worthy, pious woman, of simple domestic tastes, without a spark of intelligence or ambition. She was by far the most insignificant personage who had ever yet sat upon the throne of England. Her husband, Prince George of Denmark, was a fit match for her; he was reckoned the most harmless and the most stupid man within the four seas. "I have tried him drunk," said the shrewd Charles II., "and I have tried him sober, and there is nothing in him." He was the best of husbands, and always acted as his wife's humble attendant and admirer. He and his good-natured, placid, lymphatic spouse might possibly have managed a farm; it seemed almost ludicrous to see them set to manage three kingdoms.
Ascendency of Lady Churchill.
The worthy Anne was inevitably doomed to fall under the dominion of some mind stronger than her own. It was notorious to every one that for the last twenty years she had been managed and governed by her chief lady-in-waiting, Sarah, Lady Churchill, the wife of the intriguing general who had betrayed James II. in 1688, and William III. in 1692. They had been friends and companions from their girlhood, and the imperious Sarah had always had the mastery over the yielding Anne. The princess saw with her favourite's eyes, and spoke with her favourite's words. Any faint symptoms of independence on her part were promptly crushed by the hectoring tongue of Lady Churchill, who had acquired such an ascendency over her mistress that she permitted herself the strangest licence, and cowed and deafened her by her angry and voluble reproaches. It is only fair to say that she exercised almost as great a tyranny over her own husband. The suave and shifty general looked upon his wife with doting admiration, and yielded a respectful obedience to her caprices.