It was at the Hague that the Congress of the Grand Alliance had met. Having become King of England, and controlling the forces of a great kingdom, William of Orange remained its chief, notwithstanding princely jealousies and rivalries, by that ascendancy of genius which had carried him to the first rank when he was as yet but the stadtholder of a petty republic. The assembled princes or their envoys were not used to hear such bold language employed against the all-powerful king of France as that of William at the opening of the Diet. "The states of Europe," said the king, "have been too long given up to a spirit of division, indolence, or attention to their private interests. We may rest assured that the interest of each is inseparable from the general interest of all. The King of France's forces are great; he will sweep away everything like a torrent. It will be vain to oppose him with murmurs and protests against injustice. It is not the resolutions of diets, or hopes founded on fanciful rumors, but powerful armies, and a firm union among the allies which can stay the common enemy in his triumphant career and in the effervescence of his power. It is with the sword that we must wrest from his hands the liberties of Europe which he aims at smothering, or we must endure the yoke of slavery forever. For my part I shall spare neither my credit, my forces nor my person, to attain this glorious result, and I shall come in the spring at the head of my troops to conquer or die with my allies."
The spring had not come yet, and Mons had been already invested on the 15th of March by a French army. Louis XIV. arrived there with the Dauphin on the 12th, and, despite the impetuous efforts of William to relieve the place in time, it capitulated almost in sight of the allied army. The vigilance of Marshal de Luxembourg baffled William's maneuvres throughout the campaign.
When he returned to England in October, the advantage was with France everywhere on the Continent. The Duke of Savoy had adhered to the Grand Alliance, but Nice had fallen into the power of Catinat. Opening the session of Parliament, the King spoke complacently of the successful issue of the war in Ireland; at the same time he warned the representatives of the nation that a great effort would be necessary against the King of France, and in order to support the Grand Alliance. The subsidies had been voted without opposition, and the House was engaged with the affairs of the East India Company, when a strange report was spread abroad: the Earl of Malborough, lately at the head of the English contingent to the allied army, while the king of England was absent, had been suddenly stripped of his employment and his dignities. The Princess Anne, who persisted in keeping her favorite with her, had to retire with her to the country. The causes of Malborough's disgrace remained a mystery, which occasioned the most diverse conjectures, and allowed the enemies of William and Mary to attribute unworthy or frivolous motives to them. The cause was grave, and the necessity absolute: the Earl of Marlborough was hatching a new treason. In the Parliament and the army all was ready to attempt a Jacobite restoration.
James II. himself wrote in November, 1692: "Last year my friends formed the design of recalling me by act of Parliament. The method was arranged, and Lord Churchill was to propose in Parliament to expel all foreigners, as well from the army and the council as from the kingdom. If the Prince of Orange had agreed to this measure, they would have had him in their hands; if he had resisted it, they would have made Parliament declare against him, and at the same time Lord Churchill with the army was to declare himself for the Parliament; the fleet was to do the same, and they were to recall me. They had commenced to move in the matter and had gained a large party, when some indiscreet subjects, thinking they were serving me, and that what Lord Churchill was doing was not for me, but for the Princess of Denmark, had the imprudence to discover the whole thing to Bentinck, and thus averted the blow."
Duke And Duchess Of Marlborough.
The original manuscript of Burnet's Memoirs also contains the following: "Marlborough busied himself with decrying the conduct of the king and with depreciating him in all his conversations, seeking to rouse the dislike of the English for the Dutch, who, he said, enjoyed a larger share of the king's confidence and favor than they did. It was a point on which it was easy to excite the English, too much inclined, as they are, to despise all other nations and to esteem themselves immoderately. This was the subject of all the conversations at Marlborough's residence, where English officers met incessantly. The king had told me that he had good reasons for believing also that the earl had made his peace with King James, and had opened a correspondence with France."
William III. had learned clemency in his dealings with English statesmen: the treason of Lord Clarendon and of Lord Dartmouth had been treated with mildness; when Lord Preston's plot had been discovered, and Elliot, one of the accomplices, was multiplying denunciations, the king, who was present, had touched Caermarthen's shoulder. "There is enough of this, my lord," he had said; thus imposing silence upon useless revelations about an impotent discontent against which he did not wish to be severe. Yet he feared the Earl of Marlborough's perfidy: he knew at once his rare abilities and his profound baseness, and wished to secure himself against a treason which threatened his throne and life. Through excessive magnanimity or prudence he persistently concealed the motives of his determination; but Marlborough's disgrace was to be long-lived. The silence of William left a formidable foe to France and a superlatively able head to the coalition against her, who, had the details of his treason been generally known, would have been irrecoverably ruined in the public opinion of England.