More serious consequences followed. The march was troublesome, for the Dutch would not permit the retiring British to pass through their towns, and the troops were consequently obliged to cross every river that barred their way on their own pontoons. Again, all the old contracts for bread had been upset by Harley and his followers through their prosecution of Marlborough: it was nothing to them that an army should be ill-fed, so long as they gained power and place. St. John, it must be noted, was a principal accomplice in this rascality—St. John, who alone of living Englishmen had intellect sufficient to measure the gigantic genius of Marlborough; who, moreover, as Secretary-at-War during the greatest of the Duke's campaigns, had gained some insight into those prosaic details of supplies and transport which are all in all to the organisation of victory. Ormonde, a thoroughly mediocre officer, was not a man to grapple with such difficulties. Bad bread heightened the ill-feeling of the soldiers towards him. Agitators insinuated to the worst characters in the army that they would lose all the arrears of pay that were due to them; and the story found ready and reasonable credence from recollection of the scandals that had followed the Peace of Ryswick. The good soldiers, then as always a great majority, refused to have anything to do with a movement so discreditable, and reported what was going forward to their officers; but either their tale was disbelieved or, as is more likely, apathy and general disorganisation prevented the nipping of the evil in the bud. Finally, three thousand malcontents slipped away from the camp, barricaded themselves in a defensive position, and sent a threatening message to the commander-in-chief demanding good bread and payment of arrears. Then discipline speedily reasserted itself. The mutineers were surrounded and compelled to surrender. A court-martial was held; ten of the ringleaders were executed on the spot and the mutiny was quelled once for all. Fortunate it was that the outbreak took place while the troops were still abroad, or the House of Commons might have learned by a second bitter experience that the patience of the British soldier, though very great, is not inexhaustible.[379]
1713.
March 31
April 11.
The negotiations so infamously begun with King Lewis shortly after found as infamous an end in the Peace of Utrecht, which not only sacrificed every object for which the war had been fought, but branded England with indelible disgrace. Five months earlier Marlborough had left England, to all intent a banished man. Before his departure he had endured incredible insults in the House of Lords, the worst and falsest of them from one of his own officers, the Duke of Argyll. The defection and ingratitude of Argyll, however, only brought out the more strongly the general loyalty of the Army towards its great chief. Marlborough's most prominent officers were of course subjected to the same degradation as himself. Cadogan, for instance, was removed from the Lieutenancy of the Tower to make room for Brigadier Hill; and even the Duke's humble secretary, Adam Cardonnel, was not too small an object for the malignant spite of the House of Commons. But honourable men, such as Lord Stair, the colonel of the Scots Greys, threw up their commissions in disgust; and plain, honest officers, such as Kane and Parker, have left on record the immense contempt wherein Argyll, brave soldier though he was, was held in the Army. The Dutch also rose, though too late, to the occasion. When Marlborough sailed into Ostend at the end of November, 1712, the whole garrison was under arms to receive him, and when he left it, it was under a salute of artillery. At Antwerp, in spite of his protests, his reception was the same; the cannon thundered in his honour, and all ranks of the people turned out to meet him with joyful acclamations. He took the most secluded road to Maestricht, but go whither he would, fresh parties of horse always appeared to escort him. Above all, he was comforted by the unchanging confidence and sympathy of Eugene.
There for the present we must leave him till the time, not far distant, shall come to tell of his restoration. That the welcome given to him by the Dutch may have been a consolation to him we can hardly doubt, and yet he cannot but have felt that these same Dutch had been his undoing. For, despite the shameful perfidy of the English politicians who drove Marlborough from England and concluded the Treaty of Utrecht, the main responsibility for the catastrophe rests not with them but with those unspeakable Dutch deputies who, by wrecking the Duke's earlier campaigns, prolonged beyond the limits of the patience of the House of Commons the War of the Spanish Succession.
Authorities.—The literature of the War of the Spanish Succession is, as may be guessed, not slender. On the English side there are the lives of Marlborough by Lediard and Coxe, as well as the French life, in three volumes, which was written by Napoleon's order. There are also the journals of Archdeacon Hare for the campaign of Blenheim, and a valuable letter from him respecting Oudenarde; the narratives of General Stearne, of Kane, Parker, and Sergeant Millner, all unfortunately of one regiment, the 18th Royal Irish; and, for the campaign of 1708 only, the journal of Private John Deane of the 1st Guards (privately printed 1846). Dumont's Histoire Militaire gives admirable maps and plans. Many curious items are also to be found in Lamberti. I have not failed to study the archives of the War Office preserved at the Record Office, with results that will be seen in the next chapter, and I have been carefully through the contemporary newspapers. Minor authorities, such as Tindal's History and the like, are hardly worth mention. Marlborough's Despatches, though decried by Lord Mahon (Preface to History of England), I have found most valuable. On the French side Quincy remains the chief authority, together with the Archives Militaires in the printed collection. The Mémoires of St. Simon, Villars, Millot, and others have also been consulted, and good and pertinent comment is always to be found in Feuquières.
For the war in Spain see at the [close of Chapter VI].
[CHAPTER XI]
1702-1713