The bill was again, by a large majority, rejected, and the Queen and Prince George became, in consequence, extremely unpopular with the high church party, for the coolness with which they had abstained from using their influence on this second occasion.[[39]]
But the triumph of the Whig party was now fast approaching. Marlborough, after passing the winter in military preparations proportioned to the public danger, had, as we have seen, embarked for Holland; “but few,” says Cunningham, “perceived that England was about to unite her forces to those of Germany.”
The progress of the great general through the territories of Cologne to Colburg, where he left a camp; his march up the Rhine, on which he carried his sick and wearied in boats between the two armies, marching on either side of the “abounding river;” his encampment on a vast plain, beyond Andernach, and his rapid progress to the Danube, are events which demand almost a separate and distinct history, to relate them as they merit. It was in this campaign that the gallant Eugene passed high compliments on the spirit and deportment of the British army, and requested to serve under the illustrious Marlborough as a volunteer. It was here that the mutual partiality of these two brave men began, and that a friendship was contracted between them, which proved no less delightful to themselves than important to the interests of the war.
The march of the allied troops to Schellenberg, and the encampment around its church, on a hill, commanding a plain, bounded by the Danube, followed this memorable meeting. The battle of Blenheim, which annihilated the ascendency of France, was the glorious climax of a series of less important, yet brilliant engagements. It destroyed, at the same time, the influence of that party in our own country, who had prophesied, not many weeks before the important victory, that all would end fatally for Holland and for England. Sir Edward Seymour, the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, inveighed against Marlborough, before the decisive action, and whilst he lay before Schellenberg, in the bitterest terms, and even threatened the Duke with a severe censure of Parliament for marching his army to the Danube.
Nor was the arrogant but able Seymour a solitary railer against the great deliverer of his country. There was a host of malcontents who accused Marlborough of exceeding his commission, and of consulting his private interests in the steps which he had taken; and a clamour was raised, that the British army was led away to slaughter, in order to serve the purposes of a single individual.
The Duchess, in her narrative, refers to the battle of Blenheim in one short paragraph only, and that in reference to its effect upon the state of politics in England.
“The church, in the meanwhile, it must be confessed,” she writes, “was in a deplorable condition,—the Earls of Rochester, Jersey, and Nottingham, and the Whigs, coming into favour.” Great were the exertions used to reanimate the party, and also to resume the great measure against non-conformists. “But it happened,” says the Duchess, “that my Lord Marlborough, in the summer before the Parliament met, gained the battle of Blenheim. This was an unfortunate accident; and, by the visible dissatisfaction of some people on the news of it, one would have imagined that, instead of beating the French, he had beat the church.”
It might be supposed that, from this cool and almost flippant mention of an event in which her warmest affections ought to have been interested, the Duchess was an indifferent witness of those stirring and important scenes in which John Duke of Marlborough played a conspicuous part, and in which all Europe, figuratively speaking, participated. But, whatever were her failings, the unpardonable fault of not appreciating him; of not sharing in his lofty hopes nor suffering in his anxieties; of not prizing his safety, of not being elevated with an honest pride at his success,—so great a deficiency in all that is healthy in moral or intellectual condition, could not be imputed to this haughty and capricious, but not heartless, woman. Yet, notwithstanding this vindication of the Duchess’s character, she had parted from her husband (will it be believed?) in anger. Amid the dangers and difficulties to which Marlborough was exposed, he carried with him the remembrance of other annoyances, which, whilst it neither abated his ardour nor weakened his exertions for the great cause, added to the pressure of a mind overcharged, and of faculties overtasked, a sense of chagrin which must have aggravated every other care.
The stings which domestic quarrels always inflict, and which sometimes can never, by any gentle arts, be removed, were still poignant when the Duke quitted England for the Hague. Repentance in violent but generous tempers quickly succeeds the indulgence of the angry taunt, or bitter sarcasm; and when absence had cooled down those ebullitions of irritability, which wanted, perhaps, the accustomed object to vent themselves upon, the Duchess appears to have suffered her better feelings to prevail, and to have experienced sincere regret that she had parted unkindly, and perhaps for ever, from him whose life was now exposed to every possible risk, whilst she sat at home in safety. Her restless, but not callous mind began to be possessed with nobler resolutions than, as it seems from his reply, the Duke ever anticipated from his wife. Soon after his departure, she wrote to offer to join him, to share in the anxieties, and even in the dangers, to which he was exposed. To accede to the request was impracticable; but it gratified the warm and generous heart of Marlborough to know that the Duchess, of whose affection he seems never to have been fully assured, should wish to resign for him the attractions of ease and safety, and the luxuries of home. His letter to her, in reply to this offer, is too beautiful to be abridged.[[40]]
“Hague, April 24–May 5.