[Footnote 12: Barner, who commanded the troops of Holstein, being two battalions and eight squadrons, and Walef or Waless, who commanded the dragoons of Liège, both followed Ormonde. [S.]
[Footnote 13: At Bouchain, the British officers were told at the gates, that the commandant had positive orders to let no Englishman into the town; and at Douay, where the English had large stores and magazines, the same thing happened with considerable aggravation. Indeed, it was with difficulty and precaution that the commandant of the latter town would permit the body of an English colonel to be interred there. The same difficulties occurred at Tournay, Oudenarde, and Lille; and the Duke of Ormonde having sent an officer express to England on the 17th, he was stopped and interrupted at Haspre, misguided at Courtray, and refused admission at Bruges. (See "The Conduct of his Grace the Duke of Ormonde, in the Campagne of 1712," 1715, pp. 46-50.) [S.]
Upon these provocations, he laid aside all thoughts of returning to Dunkirk, and began to consider how he might perform, in so difficult a conjuncture, something important to the Queen, and at the same time find a secure retreat for his forces. He formed his plan without communicating it to any person whatsoever; and the disposition of the army being to march towards Warneton, in the way to Dunkirk, he gave sudden orders to Lieutenant-General Cadogan to change his route, according to the military phrase, and move towards Orchies, a town leading directly to Ghent.
When Prince Eugene and the States deputies received news of the Duke's motions, they were alarmed to the utmost degree, and sent Count Nassau, of Woudenbourg, to the general's camp near Orchies, to excuse what had been done, and to assure his grace, that those commandants, who had refused passage to his officers, had acted wholly without orders. Count Hompesch, one of the Dutch generals, came likewise to the Duke with the same story; but all this made little impression on the general, who held on his march, and on the twenty-third of July, N.S., entered Ghent, where he was received with great submission by the inhabitants, and took possession of the town, as he likewise did of Bruges, a few days after.
The Duke of Ormonde thought, that considering the present disposition of the States towards Britain, it might be necessary for the Queen to have some pledge from that republic in her hands, as well as from France, by which means Her Majesty would be empowered to act the part that best became her, of being mediator at least; and that while Ghent was in the Queen's hands, no provisions could pass the Scheldt or the Lys without her permission, by which he had it in his power to starve their army. The possession of these towns might likewise teach the Dutch and Imperialists, to preserve a degree of decency and civility to Her Majesty, which both of them were upon some occasions too apt to forget: and besides, there was already in the town of Ghent, a battalion of British troops and a detachment of five hundred men in the citadel, together with a great quantity of ammunition stores for the service of the war, which would certainly have been seized or embezzled; so that no service could be more seasonable or useful in the present juncture than this, which the Queen highly approved, and left the Duke a discretionary power to act as he thought fit on any future emergency.
I have a little interrupted the order of time, in relating the Duke of Ormonde's proceedings, who, after having placed a garrison at Bruges, and sent a supply of men and ammunition to Dunkirk, retired to Ghent, where he continued some months, till he had leave to return to England.
Upon the arrival of Colonel Disney[14] at court, with an account that Mr. Hill had taken possession of Dunkirk, an universal joy spread over the kingdom, this event being looked on as the certain forerunner of a peace: besides, the French faith was in so ill a reputation among us, that many persons, otherwise sanguine enough, could never bring themselves to believe, that the town would be delivered, till certain intelligence came that it was actually in our hands. Neither were the ministers themselves altogether at ease, or free from suspicion, whatever countenance they made; for they knew very well, that the French King had many plausible reasons to elude his promise, if he found cause to repent it. One condition of surrendering Dunkirk, being a general armistice of all the troops in the British pay, which Her Majesty was not able to perform; and upon this failure, the Maréchal de Villars (as we have before related) endeavoured to dissuade his court from accepting the conditions: and in the very interval, while those difficulties were adjusting, the Maréchal d'Uxelles, one of the French plenipotentiaries at Utrecht (whose inclinations, as well as those of his colleague Mons. Mesnager, led him to favour the States more than Britain) assured the lord privy seal, that the Dutch were then pressing to enter into separate measures with his master: and his lordship, in a visit to the Abbé de Polignac, observing a person to withdraw as he entered the abbé's chamber, was told by this minister, that the person he saw was one Molo, of Amsterdam, mentioned before, a famous agent for the States with France, who had been entertaining him (the abbé) upon the same subject, but that he had refused to treat with Molo, without the privity of England.
[Footnote 14: Colonel Disney or Desnée, called "Duke" Disney, was one of the members of the Brothers Club, a boon companion of Bolingbroke, and, as Swift says, "not an old man, but an old rake." From various sources we gather that he was a high liver, and not very nice in his ways of high living. In spite, however, of his undoubted profligacy, he must have been a man of good nature and a kindly heart, since he received affectionate record from Gay, Pope, and Swift. Mr. Walter Sichel quotes from "an unfinished sketch of a larger poem," by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in which Disney's worst characteristics are held up to ridicule. ("Bolingbroke and his Times," pp. 288-290). Swift often refers to him in his "Journal." [T.S.]
Mr. Harley, whom we mentioned above to have been sent early in the spring to Utrecht, continued longer in Holland than was at first expected; but having received Her Majesty's farther instructions, was about this time arrived at Hanover. It was the misfortune of his Electoral Highness, to be very ill served by Mons. Bothmar, his envoy here, who assisted at all the factious meetings of the discontented party, and deceived his master by a false representation of the kingdom, drawn from the opinion of those to whom he confined his conversation. There was likewise at the Elector's court a little Frenchman, without any merit or consequence, called Robethon,[15] who, by the assistance and encouragement of the last ministry, had insinuated himself into some degree of that prince's favour, which he used in giving his master the worst impressions he was able, of those whom the Queen employed in her service; insinuating, that the present ministers were not in the interest of his Highness's family; that their views were towards the Pretender; that they were making an unsecure and dishonourable peace; that the weight of the nation was against them; and that it was impossible for them to preserve much longer their credit or power.
[Footnote 15: One of the Elector's privy councillors. See note, vol. v., p. 468. "As little a fellow as Robethon is," wrote Bolingbroke to Thomas Harley, "I have reason to believe that most of the ill impressions which have been given at that court have chiefly come from him; and as I know him to be mercenary, I doubt not but he has found his account in this his management." (Bol., "Correspondence," vol. ii., p. 385). [T.S.]