Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges

by William Makepeace Thackeray

All the frequenters of my lady of Chelsea's house were of the Tory and High Church party. Madame Beatrix was as frantic about the king as her elderly kinswoman: she wore his picture on her heart; she had a piece of his hair; she vowed he was the most injured, and gallant, and accomplished, and unfortunate, and beautiful of princes. Steele, who quarrelled with very many of his Tory friends, but never with Esmond, used to tell the colonel that his kinswoman's house was a rendezvous of Tory intrigues; that Gauthier was a spy; that Atterbury was a spy; that letters were constantly going from that house to the queen at St. Germains; on which Esmond, laughing, would reply, that they used to say in the army the Duke of Marlborough was a spy too, and as much in correspondence with that family as any Jesuit. And without entering very eagerly into the controversy, Esmond had frankly taken the side of his family. It seemed to him that King James the Third was undoubtedly King of England by right: and at his sister's death it would be better to have him than a foreigner over us. No man admired King William more; a hero and a conqueror, the bravest, justest, wisest of men—but 'twas by the sword he conquered the country, and held and governed it by the very same right that the great Cromwell held it, who was truly and greatly a sovereign. But that [pg 316] a foreign despotic prince, out of Germany, who happened to be descended from King James the First, should take possession of this empire, seemed to Mr. Esmond a monstrous injustice—at least, every Englishman had a right to protest, and the English prince, the heir-at-law, the first of all. What man of spirit with such a cause would not back it? What man of honour with such a crown to win would not fight for it? But that race was destined. That prince had himself against him, an enemy he could not overcome. He never dared to draw his sword, though he had it. He let his chances slip by as he lay in the lap of opera-girls, or snivelled at the knees of priests asking pardon; and the blood of heroes, and the devotedness of honest hearts, and endurance, courage, fidelity, were all spent for him in vain.

But let us return to my lady of Chelsea, who, when her son Esmond announced to her ladyship that he proposed to make the ensuing campaign, took leave of him with perfect alacrity, and was down to piquet with her gentlewoman before he had well quitted the room on his last visit. “Tierce to a king,” were the last words he ever heard her say: the game of life was pretty nearly over for the good lady, and three months afterwards she took to her bed, where she flickered out without any pain, so the Abbé Gauthier wrote over to Mr. Esmond, then with his general on the frontier of France. The Lady Castlewood was with her at her ending, and had written too, but these letters must have been taken by a privateer in the packet that brought them; for Esmond knew nothing of their contents until his return to England.

My Lady Castlewood had left everything to Colonel Esmond, “as a reparation for the wrong done to him”; 'twas writ in her will. But her fortune was not much, for it never had been large, and the honest viscountess had wisely sunk most of the money she had upon an annuity which terminated with her life. However, there was the house and furniture, plate and pictures at Chelsea, and a sum of money lying at her merchant's, Sir Josiah Child, which altogether would realize a sum of near three hundred pounds per annum, so that Mr. Esmond found himself, if not rich, at least easy for life. Likewise, there were the famous diamonds which had been said to be worth fabulous sums, though the goldsmith pronounced they would fetch no more than four thousand pounds. These diamonds, [pg 317] however, Colonel Esmond reserved, having a special use for them: but the Chelsea house, plate, goods, &c., with the exception of a few articles which he kept back, were sold by his orders; and the sums resulting from the sale invested in the public securities so as to realize the aforesaid annual income of three hundred pounds.

Having now something to leave, he made a will, and dispatched it home. The army was now in presence of the enemy; and a great battle expected every day. 'Twas known that the general-in-chief was in disgrace, and the parties at home strong against him; and there was no stroke this great and resolute player would not venture to recall his fortune when it seemed desperate. Frank Castlewood was with Colonel Esmond; his general having gladly taken the young nobleman on to his staff. His studies of fortifications at Bruxelles were over by this time. The fort he was besieging had yielded, I believe, and my lord had not only marched in with flying colours, but marched out again. He used to tell his boyish wickednesses with admirable humour, and was the most charming young scapegrace in the army.

'Tis needless to say that Colonel Esmond had left every penny of his little fortune to this boy. It was the colonel's firm conviction that the next battle would put an end to him: for he felt aweary of the sun, and quite ready to bid that and the earth farewell. Frank would not listen to his comrade's gloomy forebodings, but swore they would keep his birthday at Castlewood that autumn, after the campaign. He had heard of the engagement at home. “If Prince Eugene goes to London,” says Frank, “and Trix can get hold of him, she'll jilt Ashburnham for his highness. I tell you, she used to make eyes at the Duke of Marlborough, when she was only fourteen and ogling poor little Blandford. I wouldn't marry her, Harry, no not if her eyes were twice as big. I'll take my fun. I'll enjoy for the next three years every possible pleasure. I'll sow my wild oats then, and marry some quiet, steady, modest, sensible viscountess; hunt my harriers; and settle down at Castlewood. Perhaps I'll represent the county—no, damme, you shall represent the county. You have the brains of the family. By the Lord, my dear old Harry, you have the best head and the kindest heart in all the army; and every man says so—and when the queen dies, and the king comes back, why shouldn't [pg 318] you go to the House of Commons and be a minister, and be made a peer, and that sort of thing? You be shot in the next action! I wager a dozen of burgundy you are not touched. Mohun is well of his wound. He is always with Corporal John now. As soon as ever I see his ugly face I'll spit in it. I took lessons of Father—of Captain Holtz at Bruxelles. What a man that is! He knows everything.” Esmond bade Frank have a care; that Father Holt's knowledge was rather dangerous; not, indeed, knowing as yet how far the father had pushed his instructions with his young pupil.

The gazetteers and writers, both of the French and English side, have given accounts sufficient of that bloody battle of Blarignies or Malplaquet, which was the last and the hardest-earned of the victories of the great Duke of Marlborough. In that tremendous combat, near upon two hundred and fifty thousand men were engaged, more than thirty thousand of whom were slain or wounded (the Allies lost twice as many men as they killed of the French, whom they conquered): and this dreadful slaughter very likely took place because a great general's credit was shaken at home, and he thought to restore it by a victory. If such were the motives which induced the Duke of Marlborough to venture that prodigious stake, and desperately sacrifice thirty thousand brave lives, so that he might figure once more in a Gazette, and hold his places and pensions a little longer, the event defeated the dreadful and selfish design, for the victory was purchased at a cost which no nation, greedy of glory as it may be, would willingly pay for any triumph. The gallantry of the French was as remarkable as the furious bravery of their assailants. We took a few score of their flags, and a few pieces of their artillery; but we left twenty thousand of the bravest soldiers of the world round about the entrenched lines, from which the enemy was driven. He retreated in perfect good order; the panic-spell seemed to be broke, under which the French had laboured ever since the disaster of Hochstedt; and, fighting now on the threshold of their country, they showed an heroic ardour of resistance, such as had never met us in the course of their aggressive war. Had the battle been more successful, the conqueror might have got the price for which he waged it. As it was (and justly, I think), the party adverse to the duke in England were indignant at the lavish [pg 319] extravagance of slaughter, and demanded more eagerly than ever the recall of a chief, whose cupidity and desperation might urge him further still. After this bloody fight of Malplaquet, I can answer for it, that in the Dutch quarters and our own, and amongst the very regiments and commanders, whose gallantry was most conspicuous upon this frightful day of carnage, the general cry was, that there was enough of the war. The French were driven back into their own boundary, and all their conquests and booty of Flanders disgorged. As for the Prince of Savoy, with whom our commander-in-chief, for reasons of his own, consorted more closely than ever, 'twas known that he was animated not merely by a political hatred, but by personal rage against the old French king: the Imperial Generalissimo never forgot the slight put by Lewis upon the Abbé de Savoie; and in the humiliation or ruin of his most Christian Majesty, the Holy Roman Emperor found his account. But what were these quarrels to us, the free citizens of England and Holland? Despot as he was, the French monarch was yet the chief of European civilization, more venerable in his age and misfortunes than at the period of his most splendid successes; whilst his opponent was but a semi-barbarous tyrant, with a pillaging murderous horde of Croats and Pandours, composing a half of his army, filling our camp with their strange figures, bearded like the miscreant Turks their neighbours, and carrying into Christian warfare their native heathen habits of rapine, lust, and murder. Why should the best blood in England and France be shed in order that the Holy Roman and Apostolic master of these ruffians should have his revenge over the Christian king? And it was to this end we were fighting; for this that every village and family in England was deploring the death of beloved sons and fathers. We dared not speak to each other, even at table, of Malplaquet, so frightful were the gaps left in our army by the cannon of that bloody action. 'Twas heartrending, for an officer who had a heart, to look down his line on a parade-day afterwards, and miss hundreds of faces of comrades—humble or of high rank—that had gathered but yesterday full of courage and cheerfulness round the torn and blackened flags. Where were our friends? As the great duke reviewed us, riding along our lines with his fine suite of prancing aides de camp and generals, stopping here and [pg 320] there to thank an officer with those eager smiles and bows of which his grace was always lavish, scarce a huzzah could be got for him, though Cadogan, with an oath, rode up and cried—“D—n you, why don't you cheer?” But the men had no heart for that: not one of them but was thinking, “Where's my comrade?—where's my brother that fought by me, or my dear captain that led me yesterday?” 'Twas the most gloomy pageant I ever looked on; and the Te Deum, sung by our chaplains, the most woful and dreary satire.

Esmond's general added one more to the many marks of honour which he had received in the front of a score of battles, and got a wound in the groin, which laid him on his back; and you may be sure he consoled himself by abusing the commander-in-chief, as he lay groaning:—“Corporal John's as fond of me,” he used to say, “as King David was of General Uriah; and so he always gives me the post of danger.” He persisted, to his dying day, in believing that the duke intended he should be beat at Wynendael, and sent him purposely with a small force, hoping that he might be knocked on the head there. Esmond and Frank Castlewood both escaped without hurt, though the division which our general commanded suffered even more than any other, having to sustain not only the fury of the enemy's cannonade, which was very hot and well-served, but the furious and repeated charges of the famous Maison-du-Roy, which we had to receive and beat off again and again, with volleys of shot and hedges of iron, and our four lines of musketeers and pikemen. They said the King of England charged us no less than twelve times that day, along with the French Household. Esmond's late regiment, General Webb's own Fusiliers, served in the division which their colonel commanded. The general was thrice in the centre of the square of the Fusiliers, calling the fire at the French charges; and, after the action, his grace the Duke of Berwick sent his compliments to his old regiment and their colonel for their behaviour on the field.

We drank my Lord Castlewood's health and majority, the 25th of September, the army being then before Mons: and here Colonel Esmond was not so fortunate as he had been in actions much more dangerous, and was hit by a spent ball just above the place where his former wound was, which caused the old wound to open again, fever, spitting [pg 321] of blood, and other ugly symptoms, to ensue; and, in a word, brought him near to death's door. The kind lad, his kinsman, attended his elder comrade with a very praiseworthy affectionateness and care until he was pronounced out of danger by the doctors, when Frank went off, passed the winter at Bruxelles, and besieged, no doubt, some other fortress there. Very few lads would have given up their pleasures so long and so gaily as Frank did; his cheerful prattle soothed many long days of Esmond's pain and languor. Frank was supposed to be still at his kinsman's bedside for a month after he had left it, for letters came from his mother at home full of thanks to the younger gentleman for his care of his elder brother (so it pleased Esmond's mistress now affectionately to style him); nor was Mr. Esmond in a hurry to undeceive her, when the good young fellow was gone for his Christmas holiday. It was as pleasant to Esmond on his couch to watch the young man's pleasure at the idea of being free, as to note his simple efforts to disguise his satisfaction on going away. There are days when a flask of champagne at a cabaret, and a red-cheeked partner to share it, are too strong temptations for any young fellow of spirit. I am not going to play the moralist, and cry “Fie!” For ages past, I know how old men preach, and what young men practise; and that patriarchs have had their weak moments, too, long since Father Noah toppled over after discovering the vine. Frank went off, then, to his pleasures at Bruxelles, in which capital many young fellows of our army declared they found infinitely greater diversion even than in London: and Mr. Henry Esmond remained in his sick-room, where he writ a fine comedy, that his mistress pronounced to be sublime, and that was acted no less than three successive nights in London in the next year.

Here, as he lay nursing himself, ubiquitous Mr. Holtz reappeared, and stopped a whole month at Mons, where he not only won over Colonel Esmond to the king's side in politics (that side being always held by the Esmond family); but where he endeavoured to reopen the controversial question between the Churches once more, and to recall Esmond to that religion in which, in his infancy, he had been baptized. Holtz was a casuist, both dexterous and learned, and presented the case between the English Church and his own in such a way that those who granted his [pg 322] premisses ought certainly to allow his conclusions. He touched on Esmond's delicate state of health, chance of dissolution, and so forth; and enlarged upon the immense benefits that the sick man was likely to forgo—benefits which the Church of England did not deny to those of the Roman communion, as how should she, being derived from that Church, and only an offshoot from it. But Mr. Esmond said that his Church was the church of his country, and to that he chose to remain faithful: other people were welcome to worship and to subscribe any other set of articles, whether at Rome or at Augsburg. But if the good father meant that Esmond should join the Roman communion for fear of consequences, and that all England ran the risk of being damned for heresy, Esmond, for one, was perfectly willing to take his chance of the penalty along with the countless millions of his fellow countrymen, who were bred in the same faith, and along with some of the noblest, the truest, the purest, the wisest, the most pious and learned men and women in the world.

As for the political question, in that Mr. Esmond could agree with the father much more readily, and had come to the same conclusion, though, perhaps, by a different way. The right-divine, about which Dr. Sacheverel and the High Church party in England were just now making a bother, they were welcome to hold as they chose. If Henry Cromwell and his father before him, had been crowned and anointed (and bishops enough would have been found to do it), it seemed to Mr. Esmond that they would have had the right-divine just as much as any Plantagenet, or Tudor, or Stuart. But the desire of the country being unquestionably for an hereditary monarchy, Esmond thought an English king out of St. Germains was better and fitter than a German prince from Herrenhausen, and that if he failed to satisfy the nation, some other Englishman might be found to take his place; and so, though with no frantic enthusiasm, or worship of that monstrous pedigree which the Tories chose to consider divine, he was ready to say, “God save King James!” when Queen Anne went the way of kings and commoners.