Now this is all true except perhaps the glass of water. It is true that a quarrel with the duchess did determine Anne to abandon Marlborough and the Whigs and go over to Bolingbroke and the Tories. Marlborough was recalled from his command, and the allies left to shift for themselves, with the aid however of the English and Dutch contingents which remained to them under the Duke of Albemarle who, in the absence of Eugene, was in chief command. Albemarle was an Englishman that William had made out of a Dutchman named Yost Van Keppel. William himself had taught him the art of war and he was a bad general; Villars who commanded the French, was a good one, and the battle of Denain ended in accordance with those conditions.
It was the last of the war. The peace of Utrecht was signed to which England acceded, abandoning all she had fought for.
The queen of Spain died, and as there was no fighting for Berwick to do, Louis sent him with a message of condolence for Philip. But peaceful embassies were not for the like of him: he never reached Madrid. An envoy from Philip stopped him on the way and informed him that Barcelona had revolted, and that it was for him to go there and restore order. He flew thither and laid siege to the town. Discovering that the citizens were receiving aid from Majorca he ordered the Spanish fleet to blockade the port, and having made a breach with his cannon he led his men to the assault. They had fought their way to the middle of the town when the garrison offered to surrender. The point then was to save the town from pillage and from those awful scenes which occur when a city is taken by storm. He directed the commander of the garrison not to let his surrender be known, and still to man the barricades. He then ordered a retreat, on the pretence that it was night-fall, and that they must prepare for a more vigorous attack on the morrow. The next morning Barcelona was peacefully theirs. He says it was the first town taken by assault that ever escaped pillage, and in his pious way he attributes it to the grace of God, and says that human skill alone could not have compassed it.
During the siege Philip to lose no time, had wooed and won another bride, Elizabeth Farnese daughter of the duke of Parma; and Berwick received one day an order from the king to send the fleet to Genoa to fetch the new queen. He replied that the blockade of the port was essential to the capture of the place, and that not a ship could be spared. The great, lank devil of an Englishman had not improved, and Philip and Elizabeth had to wait.
The name Farnese brings up another family which stands out in relief in the tableau of history. You have all been to Rome. You remember in the church of Saint Peter, near the chair in which Peter himself sat when he was pope, a sepulchral monument the finest in the church. It is that of Alexander Farnese, Paul III. Near the banks of the Tiber you remember that vast edifice the Palace Farnese, and on the other side of the river the Farnesina, or little Farnese. You remember the Farnese gardens where they have dug out the foundations of the palace of the Caesars. All these demesnes, except the monument, belonged till recently to the kings of Naples descendants of Philip and Elizabeth.
It was the princess of Orsini herself who had chosen a scion of that famous race for Philip’s second wife; and the princess did not fail to repent of it. She had been deceived by one of the greatest scamps in Europe, the Cardinal Alberoni who had assured her that Elizabeth Farnese was a placid little maiden who would show her all the deference the late queen had shown.
Kings, you know, don’t get married like common folks: they don’t do their own courting nor even their own marrying: they send. A deputy woos the maiden by power of attorney. He puts the ring on her finger; the priest pronounces them man and wife; and then she is the spouse not of that man but of another one whom she has never seen. Etiquette then requires not that the bridegroom go forth to meet the bride, but that she come to him. But mark the often result:—Henry VIII. married Anne of Cleves on the faith of a portrait by Holbein which flattered her. She was brought to England. When Henry came to lay eyes on her he swore they had sent him a big Flanders mare. George IV. while Regent married Caroline of Brunswick. He sent Harris Earl of Malmsbury to stand in his place at the altar, and to bring her to England. Malmsbury in his memoirs, says he foresaw trouble from the beginning. The princess was good looking and good tempered, but her want of personal neatness was beyond belief. When he presented her to the Regent she kneeled. He raised her up and kissed her; and then turning to Malmsbury, whispered: Harris for God’s sake get me some brandy!
Barcelona taken, Berwick sent the fleet to Genoa, and Elizabeth was brought to Spain. As she approached Madrid, Philip and the Princess of Orsini went out together to meet her. She greeted her husband with marks of affection, but looked askance at his companion. Not long after, the Princess was suddenly seized, thrown into a carriage, and conveyed to the French frontier and dismissed with the injunction never again to set foot in Spain. Louis XIV. was incensed at this treatment of his faithful agent; but that Farnese girl was no subject of his, and she snapped her fingers at him.
Philip and Elizabeth managed to live together; but whenever he desired to say his soul was his own, he took care to say it privately to his confessor. Alberoni was rewarded by being made prime minister of Spain.
In 1715 Louis XIV. died after the longest reign in history. He was king at five and died at seventy-seven. He outlived his oldest son and his oldest grandson and was succeeded by his great-grandson Louis XV. another boy of five.