[44] Lediard, vol. ii., p. 2.

The ungrateful kinswoman had been early acquainted with adversity, which was the remote cause of her ultimate greatness. "Mrs. Masham," the Duchess tells us, in her succinct narrative, "was the daughter of one Hill, a merchant in the city, by a sister of my father. Our grandfather, Sir John Jenyns, had two-and-twenty children, by which means the estate of the family, which was reputed to be about four thousand pounds a year, came to be divided into small parcels. Mrs. Hill had only L500 to her fortune. Her husband lived very well for many years, as I have been told, until turning projector, he brought ruin on himself and family. But as this was long before I was born, I never knew there were such people in the world till after the Princess Anne was married, and when she lived at the Cockpit; at which time an acquaintance of mine came to me and said, she believed I did not know that I had relations who were in want, and she gave me an account of them. When she had finished her story, I answered, that indeed I had never heard before of any such relations, and immediately gave her out of my purse ten guineas for their present relief, saying I would do what I could for them."

Not contented with conferring important benefits on Abigail's brothers and sister, the Duchess tells us that even the husband of Mrs. Masham had several obligations to her. "It was at my instance," says the indignant benefactress, "that he was first made a page, then an equerry, and afterwards groom of the bedchamber to the Prince; for all which he himself thanked me, as for favours procured by my means."

Towards the Queen, Mrs. Hill displayed a servile, humble, gentle, and pliant manner, in singular contrast with that of the commanding and haughty Duchess. Anne, accustomed to opposition and remonstrance, nay, sometimes rebukes, upon certain points she had at heart, was delighted to find that as regarded both religious opinions and politics, her lowly attendant coincided with her. Mrs. Hill was, or pretended to be to serve her purpose, an enemy to the Hanoverian succession, if not a partizan of the exiled Stuarts—subjects on which the Queen and the Duchess were known to have frequent controversies, which sometimes degenerated into angry disputes. Such was the woman whom the Tories set up to oppose and undermine the influence of the redoubtable Sarah. Mrs. Masham was able to give them, by means of her court-appointment, continual access to the Queen. She had neither the wit nor the intelligence of her rival, but she pleased Anne by the simplicity of her manners and the amenity of her temper. Moreover, two powerful ties, political and religious, though strangely contradictory in their sympathies, attached her to her royal mistress. An ardent Jacobite, she, equally with the Queen, desired the return of the Pretender; like her, too, she was a zealous Protestant.

Carrying out Harley's injunctions, Mrs. Masham strove secretly to sap the power and credit of the Whigs at Court, by daily representing to Queen Anne the disquieting influence of their chief, Marlborough—master, as he was, of the parliament, the army, the ministry, the court,—more sovereign, in fact, than the Queen herself; and she recalled to mind that last dismissal of the Tories, so rudely and imperiously dictated by the Duchess. The Queen, moved even to terror by such advice, drew closer by degrees to her new confidante, and shortly manifested towards her a favour which the Duchess of Marlborough was the first to perceive. But instead of seeking to revive a friendship still endeared to the Queen, the Duchess complained sharply of it being shared. At the same time she heaped every species of contempt, sarcasm, and insult upon Mrs. Masham, spread the vilest calumnies about her, and then, perceiving the inutility of her efforts, directed the current of her wrath against the throne. In the month of August, 1708, during a thanksgiving service at St. Paul's on the occasion of the battle of Oudenarde, Anne found that she had not put on her diamonds, and blamed the Duchess for the omission, it belonging to her duty as Mistress of the Robes. The quondam favourite made her Majesty a haughty reply; and Anne, hurt at it, repeated her reproaches with greater warmth. The Duchess, furious, imposed silence upon her royal mistress. "I don't ask you for an answer," she exclaimed loud enough to be heard by the court and congregation, "don't answer me." The Queen remained silent, dreading further scandal, but she did not forget that day's incident.[45]

[45] The extent of her insolence towards the Queen on this occasion is scarcely conceivable. "The Duchess gave her her gloves to hold," relates Walpole; "and, on taking them back, suddenly turned away her head, as though the breath of her royal mistress had imparted a disagreeable odour."

A year afterwards, during the autumn of 1709, another altercation took place still more deplorable. Anne was in the habit of allowing a bottle of wine to be daily carried to one of her laundrymaids who was ailing, without previously asking leave of the Mistress of the Robes. This coming to the knowledge of the Duchess, she ran after the Queen one day as Anne was proceeding on her charitable errand, reproached her for having usurped her functions, and behaved with such violence that the lackeys at the bottom of the stairs could overhear what she said. Indignant at this, Anne rose to leave the room, but the Duchess prevented her by placing her back against the door, and, during an hour, exhausted herself by launching invectives against her sovereign. Having sufficiently vented her rage, the angry woman ended by saying that doubtless she should never see her again, but she cared very little about that. "I think," calmly replied Anne, "the seldomer the better." The Duchess at length quitted the room, but from that day the links of their hitherto close friendship were rudely broken, their correspondence interrupted, and the Queen gave her entire confidence to Mrs. Masham.

The subtle Abigail was ever on the watch to closely observe the frequent disagreements between her Majesty and the Mistress of the Robes, and did not fail to turn them to skilful account. When the storm had subsided, and the Queen poured into her friendly ear confidential complaints of the absent Duchess, Abigail's sympathy, acquiescence, and responsive condolences, were ever ready, and effected their purpose. The lady-dresser thus gradually wormed herself into the Queen's affections, and as gradually undermined what remained of friendly feeling between her powerful kinswoman and their royal mistress. Every one at court had become aware of the influence of the new favourite before the Duchess herself perceived it; but it was not in the power of the artful relative, nor of her tool, the Queen, much longer to blind the woman whom they had, with true vulgarity of mind, gloried in deceiving.[46]

[46] MSS. Brit. Mus., Coxe Papers, vol. xliv.

From the time of Mrs. Masham's admittance to close attendance on the Queen, the Duchess seemed in a constant state of irritation and annoyance. Her letters to Anne showed the mortification and vexation she endured, and prove the petty and ungrateful conduct of the bedchamber-woman, whose hold on the Queen's regard was sustained by a thousand mean and paltry instances of treachery to her benefactress. That Queen Anne, who had once been really attached to a woman like the Duchess of Marlborough, could condescend to replace her by such a rival is not a little surprising, and shows the true bent of her character to have been such as to render her unworthy of the friendship of an honest and high-minded woman. That the Duchess herself entered into details of petty injuries, and descends to justify herself, cannot be wondered at; for such subjects were forced upon her, and much as it galled her feelings to be obliged to notice what she held in contempt, still she had no other course to pursue.

At length, the Duchess perceived clearly enough that she had been hoodwinked in certain matters by the Queen and Mrs. Masham, and that without any reasonable cause for resorting to mystery or deception. Having discovered that not only was Mrs. Hill's marriage known to the Queen, though she had denied any knowledge of the event, but that her Majesty had been herself at the wedding, and given a large dower to the bride, the Duchess immediately wrote to Mrs. Masham, to desire an explanation of her reasons for concealing so important an occurrence from one whom she had every reason to consider her only friend. The cautious answer which she received to her question was dictated, as she easily perceived, by no other than Harley, whose tool she now saw, too late, her unworthy cousin was; and it became sufficiently plain that her empire over the mind of the weak Queen was gone.

The Duchess was, whatever her faults, upright, honest, truthtelling, and fearless; and she was long before she could suspect the treachery and meanness of a dependent; and still longer in believing that the woman who had for so many years been her pupil, and had been accustomed to her frankness, could condescend to a low cabal, and, displacing her from her councils, solace herself with the society of a person so immeasurably her inferior.

The betrayed Mistress of the Robes could now trace the whole system of deception which had been carried on to her injury for a considerable time; her relative and former dependent being the chief agent—her sovereign the accomplice. She could account for the interest which Harley had now acquired at court by means of this new instrument. She could explain to her astonished and irritated mind certain incidents, which had seemed of little moment when they occurred, but which afforded an unquestionable confirmation of all that she had learned.

When the Duchess could no longer doubt the mortifying truth, she communicated the fact to her friend, Lord Godolphin, and to her husband, then abroad. Marlborough wearied with these, as he considered them, petty dissensions, wrote a somewhat stern letter to his wife. The great soldier was annoyed and distressed at the details of paltry wrongs which he was obliged to hear, and grown impatient, forgot that sometimes,—

"Dire events from little causes spring;"

he did not contemplate his own, his wife's, and his friend's disgrace, from the contemptible quarrels among the women about the court.

"If you have good reasons," he writes, "for what you write of the kindness and esteem the Queen has for Mrs. Masham and Mr. Harley, my opinion should be, that my Lord Treasurer and I should tell her Majesty what is good for herself; and if that will not prevail, to be quiet, and to let Mr. Harley and Mrs. Masham do what they please; for I own I am quite tired, and if the Queen can be safe I shall be glad. I hope the Lord Treasurer will be of my mind; and then we shall be much happier than by being in a perpetual struggle."

At length the mask of affected humility assumed by Mrs. Masham was thrown off entirely; and, confident in the support of her royal mistress, the upstart favourite exhibited all the scorn and insolence which was in her nature. The Duchess expatiates with feminine pertinacity upon the stinging impertinences and insulting condescensions she had to endure from her lately exalted cousin. One instance she dwells on with bitter recollection, for it was the first time the minion of the Queen had dared to show her how little she regarded her.

When having with difficulty obtained an interview with Mrs. Masham, the Duchess upbraided her with her treachery, and observed, that she was certain no good intentions towards herself could have influenced her actions, Abigail replied:—

"... very gravely, that she was sure the Queen, who had always loved me extremely, would always be very kind to me. I was some minutes before I could recover from the surprise with which so extraordinary an answer struck me. To see a woman whom I had raised out of the dust put on such a superior air, and to hear her assure me, by way of consolation, that the Queen would always be very kind to me!—I was stunned to hear her say so strange a thing!"

The Duchess of Marlborough was now, therefore, at open variance with her cousin. Towards her Majesty she stood in a predicament the most curious and unprecedented that perhaps ever existed between sovereign and subject. The amused and astonished court beheld Anne cautiously creeping out of that subjection in which the Duchess had, according to her enemies, long held the timid sovereign.

A confidential friend of the Duchess, Mr. Mainwaring, remarks of her, in one of his letters, that she was totally deficient in that "part of craft which Mr. Hobbes very prettily calls crooked wisdom."[47] Apt, as she herself expresses it, "to tumble out her mind," her openness and honesty were appreciated, when at an advanced age, and after she had run the career of five courts—by that experienced judge, the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who often presumed upon the venerable Duchess's candour in telling her unpalatable truths, which none but the honest could have borne to hear. It was this uprightness and singleness of mind which rendered the Duchess unwilling to believe in the duplicity and the influence of her cousin. Warned of it by Mr. Mainwaring, it was not until she found in the Queen a defender of Mrs. Masham's secret marriage, that the Duchess was roused into suspicion. It was then that she communicated her conviction to Lord Godolphin and to Marlborough, and besought their advice and assistance.

[47] Private Correspondence, vol. i., p. 105.

The Duke had just then prepared measures for carrying on the war, and had completed every arrangement for his voyage into Holland; the only thing which detained him in England was, says Cunningham, "the quarrel among the women about the court." He desired his often-offended Duchess "to put an end to those controversies, and to avoid all occasions of suspicion and disgust; and not to suffer herself to grow insolent upon the favour of fortune; "otherwise," said he, "I shall hardly be able hereafter to excuse your fault, or to justify my own actions, however meritorious." To which the Duchess replied, "I will take care of those things, so that you need not be in any fear about me; but whoever shall think to remove me out of the Queen's favour, let them take care lest they remove themselves."

It was not long before Marlborough perceived that the Duchess was not mistaken in her apprehensions; nor before he became painfully aware of the fact, that services of the greatest magnitude are often not to be weighed against slights and petty provocations.

Queen Anne, however, had some pangs of conscience, in spite of her joy at being emancipated from the thraldom of her haughty Mistress of the Robes, in ill-treating the great general who had filled her reign with glory; but the uninterrupted gossip which she delighted now to indulge in with her waiting-woman compensated for all.

Soon after Marlborough had won the sanguinary battle of Malplaquet, the celebrated trial of the noted Doctor Sacheverell took place; on which occasion an incident occurred which completed the downfall of the Duchess. The prosecution of Sacheverell had been advised by the Duke, lest he should preach him and his party out of the kingdom.



CHAPTER III.

SUCCESS OF THE CABAL, ETC.

THE result of the trial of Sacheverell made Harley and the favourite sure of the temper of the nation, and they resolved to hesitate no longer. The cabal had succeeded, and the Queen, a tool in the hands of others, by degrees gave up every appearance of regard for the Duchess, or of gratitude to the Duke. Though still fighting his country's battles and gaining immortal honours, the cabal sought to overwhelm him with unkindness and mortification at home. On the death of Lord Essex, the Queen was urged to give the Duke's regiment to Major Hill, Mrs. Masham's brother. Marlborough, highly indignant, insisted on Abigail being dismissed, or else he would resign; but the efforts of Godolphin and other friends accommodated the matter, and he was contented with the disposal of the regiment being left with him. To prove, as it were, the influence of the favourite, the Queen soon after gave Hill a pension of L1,000 a year; and she made the Duke consent to raise him to the rank of brigadier.

It was Harley's plan to overthrow the Ministry by degrees; and when Lord Godolphin was dismissed from office, the triumph of the adverse party was complete. Thus fell the most able, and perhaps the most patriotic administration that England had possessed since the days of Elizabeth. It fell by disunion in itself, by the imprudent impeachment of a contemptible divine, and by the intrigues of the bedchamber, where a weak woman, whom the constitution had invested with power, was domineered over by one attendant and wheedled and flattered by another.

It was thus that, after seven-and-twenty years' service and professed friendship, Anne emancipated herself from all obligations, and shook off the yoke which pressed too heavily on her mind, regardless of the confusion into which her weak compliance with interested persons cast the country.

It was now that all the malice which had been long repressed burst out, and poured forth its vengeance on the disgraced favourite. Among other libellers in the service of the new Ministry Swift employed his great talents to cover her with ridicule and obloquy. In the celebrated journal called "The Examiner," his unjust insinuations must have been even more galling than his abuse. He represents the Duke and Duchess as extortioners and dissipators of the public money, insatiable in their avarice, and greedily swallowing all that they could get into their power, disposing of places, and seizing on rewards in a manner the most odious. "Even the Duke's courage," says Smollet, "was called in question, and this consummate general was represented as the lowest of mankind." Yet he did not resign; for Godolphin and the Whigs, the Emperor, and all the allies implored him to retain the command of the army, as otherwise all their hopes would be gone.

The clamour raised by Dr. Sacheverell's affair, not less than the acrimonious temper of the Duchess, contributed to ruin the Whigs in the Queen's favour, who was present incognita during every debate. During the course of Sacheverell's trial, the government advocate, in order to establish the true Whig doctrine, calumniated by the Doctor, uttered words which seemed revolutionary to the royal ears. It will be readily understood that the theory of absolute obedience, preached by Sacheverell and adopted by certain Tories, was more consonant with the Queen's taste than the maxims of the Whigs, who asserted the dogma of the sovereignty of nations and recognised their right of insurrection against royalty. Anne was a zealous Protestant, and sincerely attached to the Anglican Church, of which she was the head. She blamed the tolerance of the Whigs, and thought with Sacheverell that it was necessary to defend the Church both against Popery and indifferentism.

The Tories fomented these dissensions in an underhand way, turning them dexterously against their enemies. The negotiations then set on foot in Holland occurred still more favourably to advance their projects. Anne had a horror of bloodshed: since her accession she had not permitted a single political execution. She sighed deeply on hearing of the continual levies for the war, and shed tears on receiving the long lists of dead and wounded from the Low Countries. One day, having to sign certain papers relative to the army, her tears were seen to blot the paper, as she exclaimed, "Great God! when will this horrible effusion of blood cease?" The Tories, who, like herself, wished for peace with all their hearts, adroitly fostered her grief. With her, they deplored the butchery of Malplaquet, the increase of taxation, the misery entailed by the interminable campaigns, and repeated that it was time to put an end to the sufferings of the people. Such hideous carnage seemed at last to cry aloud to Heaven for cessation. Pity and conscience, so long stifled and tyrannised over, claimed at length to be heard. Weighing well also a consideration no less potent over the Queen's heart, they represented that the Whigs were her brother's most implacable enemies—that they had set a price upon his head—that they (the Whigs) would never recognise, as her successor, any other king than the Elector of Hanover; that they (the Tories), on the contrary, felt neither repulsion nor hatred for the Pretender, and that if the good of the country demanded it, they would willingly favour his return. Finally they dwelt upon the odious tyranny of the Duchess of Marlborough,[48] especially in the scenes enacted at St. Paul's and Windsor, and promised the Queen to deliver her from a woman whom she had ceased to love, and who had begun to terrify her.

[48] Bolingbroke says so in express terms: "The true cause (of the change of Ministry) was her discontent," &c.—Secret Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke, p. 18.

Lending a willing ear to such arguments, Anne gave herself up entirely to Mrs. Masham, and the misunderstanding between the Queen and the Duchess had become public, when a fresh outbreak of violence on the part of the latter precipitated her disgrace.

On the occasion of a christening, at which Marlborough was to stand godfather, the Duchess vowed that she would never consent to it if the child were to bear the name of Anne, and she made use of an epithet which neither a queen nor a woman could ever pardon. The word was duly reported at St. James's. Anne heard it with the deepest indignation, and so gross an outrage extinguished any latent spark of tenderness left in her heart. The downfall of the Duchess and the Whigs was resolved upon.

Recognising her error when too late, the Duchess requested an audience of the Queen, in the hope of exculpating herself. Anne, who dreaded her furious violence, replied that she could justify herself by letter, and to avoid the chance of an interview, left London for Kensington Palace.

Explicit, however, as was this step, it did not stop the Duchess. She despatched a letter to the Queen, in which she excused herself, on the score of the impossibility of writing such a justification, and requested an interview—a proposition the most alarming conceivable to the poor Queen, on account of the advantage which her antagonist possessed in powers of tongue. She therefore parried it as long as possible, and would evidently have not assented at all, had not the Duchess extorted the permission by stratagem. Unfortunately, however, for her success, she had told the Queen, in a letter which preceded it, that she only desired to be seen and be heard by her Majesty. There was no necessity, she said, for the Queen to answer. The Queen, in fact, had answered so many of her tormentor's letters in the negative, that the Duchess, not foreseeing what would be the consequence of this general preclusion of response in her Majesty's favour, was resolved to prevent further epistolary acknowledgment by following up her last letter in person. She says, in the foolish "Account" which she gave to the world of her "Conduct," and which had the reverse effect of what she intended (which is the usual case with violent relaters of their own story):—

"I followed this letter to Kensington, and by that means prevented the Queen's writing again to me, as she was preparing to do. The page who went in to acquaint the Queen that I was come to wait upon her stayed longer than usual; long enough, it is to be supposed, to give time to deliberate whether the favour of admission should be granted, and to settle the measure of behaviour if I were admitted. But, at last, he came out and told me I might go in."

The Queen was alone, engaged in writing. "I did not open your letter till just now," she said, "and I was going to write to you."

"Was there anything in it, Madam, that you had a mind to answer?"

"I think," continued poor Anne, who even now endeavoured to stop the coming torrent of words, "I think there is nothing you can have to say but you may write it."

But as this was the very thing over which the Duchess thought she had triumphed, she must have heard the proposal with contemptuous delight; and she proceeded accordingly to pour forth her complaints.

"I cannot write such things," exclaimed the haughty Sarah, alluding to the grossness of the language attributed to her, adding, "Won't your Majesty give me leave to tell it you?"

"Whatever you have to say, you may write it," was the royal answer.

"I believe your Majesty never did so hard a thing to anybody as to refuse to hear them speak—even the meanest person that ever desired it."

"Yes," said the Queen, "I do bid people put what they have to say in writing, when I have a mind to it."

"I have nothing to say, Madam," replied the Duchess, "upon the subject that is so uneasy to you. That person (Lady Masham) is not, that I know of, at all concerned in the account that I would give you."

"You can put it into writing," reiterated the Queen, who, desirous at any cost of avoiding a quarrel, which, from the temper of her quondam favourite, seemed inevitable, repeated the same words several times, purposely interrupting the Duchess, who was already beginning to defend herself.

In spite of the Queen's injunctions, Sarah continued to affirm that she was no more capable of making such disrespectful mention of her Majesty than she was of killing her own children, to which Anne coolly remarked, "There are, doubtless, many lies told on 'both sides.'"

During a whole hour, nevertheless, the Duchess strove to establish her innocence by protestations or prayers. But the Queen's heart was irrevocably closed. Desirous of terminating an interview that grew more and more embarrassing, and remembering the scene in St. Paul's, when her Mistress of the Robes had told her to be silent and make no answer, and that lately, in writing to her, the Duchess had said that she required no answer, or that she would not trouble the Queen to give her one, Anne said, "You did not require an answer from me, and I will give you none." This frigid resistance exasperated the Duchess, who, astounded to find herself caught in her own trap, and taken at her word, declared, of course, that the phrase was not intended to imply what it did; but the Queen, she says, repeated it again and again, "without ever receding."

The Duchess protesting that her only design was to clear herself, the Queen repeated over and over again, "You desired no answer, and shall have none."

The angry but still politic Sarah next passed from prayers to reproaches. "I will leave the room," said Anne, with dignity.

"I then begged to know if her Majesty would tell me some other time."

"You desired no answer, and you shall have none."

On hearing these words, which left no further hope, the Duchess burst into tears; then, as though ashamed of her weakness, she withdrew into the gallery to suppress her passionate fit of weeping. Returning after the lapse of a few minutes, she tried a last and decisive application:

"I have been thinking," said the Duchess, "whilst I sat there, that if your Majesty came to the Castle at Windsor, where I heard you were soon expected, it would not be easy to see me in public now, I am afraid. I will therefore take care to avoid being at the Lodge at the same time, to prevent any unreasonable clamour or stories that might originate in my being so near your Majesty without waiting on you."

"Oh," said the Queen, promptly, "you may come to me at the Castle: it will not make me uneasy."

The Duchess, however, still persevered. "I then appealed to her Majesty again, if she did not herself know, &c. And whether she did not know me to be of a temper incapable of, &c."

"You desired no answer, and you shall have none."

Finding Anne thus inflexible, the Duchess rose up in a towering rage at having vainly humiliated herself, and gave vent to her passion in a storm of recrimination.

"This usage," concludes the Duchess, "was so severe, and these words, so often repeated, were so shocking, &c, that I could not conquer myself, but said the most disrespectful thing I ever spoke to the Queen in my life; and that was, that I was confident her Majesty would suffer for such an instance of inhumanity."

She quitted the presence, in fact, exclaiming, "God will punish you, Madam, for your inhumanity."

"That only concerns myself," drily answered the Queen.

"And thus ended," says the Duchess, "this remarkable conversation, the last I ever had with her Majesty." (April 6th, 1710.)

Such, too, was the end of a thirty years' friendship, and the last interview between Anne and her once-cherished favourite.[49] The Duchess remained in the household for a short time afterwards, but never saw her royal mistress save on public occasions; and from that day the Queen never spoke to her again.

[49] Private Correspondence of the Duchess of Marlborough, vol. 1, p. 301.



CHAPTER IV.

THE DISGRACE OF THE DUCHESS.

THE disgrace of the Duchess involved the fall of the Whigs. A few days after the scene at Kensington, Anne named two Tories to court appointments, and next dismissed successively all the Whigs from the Ministry—Boyle, Russell, Godolphin, and Walpole. They were replaced by Bolingbroke, Harley, the Earl of Jersey, and the Dukes of Ormonde and Shrewsbury. Anne spared only the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough—not from compassion but through fear. The irate Mistress of the Robes drove about London daily in her splendid equipage, and repeated at every visit she made that she would publish the Queen's letters, and that some day the infamous motives which had brought about her disgrace would be disclosed. Whilst the timid Anne grew terrified at these menaces, the formidable Sarah remained at St. James's, holding her head aloft and dealing out bitter denunciations against her enemies the victorious Tories.

When the Duke of Marlborough came back from Flanders, during the Christmas holidays, he met with the coldest reception possible. The usual motion of thanks to him had been dropped by his friends for fear of its being negatived by the Tory majority. The new ministers, however, waited upon him, promising that he should have all his present military commands, and also the nomination of the generals who were to serve under him. His wife had never ceased making efforts at court, by means of "one person" there, who happened to be in good favour with the Queen, and to whom the Duchess wrote long accounts of the past, justifying herself, and exposing the ingratitude, as well as malice, of her enemies. All these accounts that gentleman read to Anne; but he might as well have read them to a stock or stone. According to her Grace, the Queen never offered a word, good or ill, except on one particular point. Lady Masham and Harley had employed Swift and other writers to accuse the Duchess of having grossly cheated her royal mistress of vast sums of money; and on that occasion her Majesty was pleased to say, "Everybody knows cheating is not the Duchess of Marlborough's crime." Where there was so much received in what was deemed an honourable as well as regular way,[50] there was no great temptation to embezzle and cheat; and the Duchess was in all respects a higher-minded person than her husband, in whom love of money became at last the ruling passion to such a degree as to make him stoop to all kinds of mean and paltry actions. The Duchess, as Mistress of the Robes, boasts that she had dressed the Queen for nine years for thirty-two thousand and some odd hundred pounds; and she asks if ever Queen of England had spent so little in robes! "It evidently appears," says her Grace, "that, by my economy in the nine years I served her Majesty, I saved her near ninety thousand pounds[51] in clothes alone. Notwithstanding this," continues the Duchess, "my Lord-Treasurer (Harley) has thought fit to order the Examiner (Swift) to represent me in print as a pick-pocket all over England; and for that honest service, and some others, her Majesty has lately made him a Dean."

[50] The Marlborough family were said to be in the receipt of L90,000 a year, including all their places and pensions.

[51] Anne's sister, Queen Mary, had been charged L12,600 for her dresses one year, and L11,000 another year.

Just at this moment, the Duchess thought herself obliged to appear at Court "on account of some new clothes which, as Groom of the Stole, she had by her mistress's orders bought for her;" but the Queen charged the only friend her Grace had there to advise her, as from himself, not to come. It was scarcely possible, after this to think of retaining her office; and it appears that the Duchess, of her own accord, sent in her resignation. Lord Dartmouth, however, gives another version of the matter, as follows:—

Emboldened and urged by her Ministers, Anne requested Marlborough to demand the return of the golden Keys which were the symbols of her office. The Duke, who dreaded the consequences of such a step, entreated the Queen to wait till the end of the campaign, promising that he would then retire with his wife. But Anne was driven to extremity by calumnies that reddened her cheek with shame, and she demanded the immediate return of the Keys. Marlborough threw himself on his knees, and entreated her to give him at least ten days' respite. Anne consented to three days, and that interval having expired, renewed her commands. The Duke hastened to the palace, and demanded to be ushered into the presence. But Anne refused to receive him until she received back her gold Keys from the Duchess, and Marlborough at length resigned himself to encounter his wife's anger. On reaching home, he told the Mistress of the Robes that she must give up the golden insignia of office, which she at first refused; but on his persistently intimating the necessity of her resignation, she threw her gold Key on the floor, and told him to do what he liked with it; and that then Marlborough caught it up and carried it to the Queen.[52]

[52] The Duchess herself says, "When, after a very successful campaign, the Duke of Marlborough was returned to London, the Queen most readily accepted the resignation that he carried from me of my offices."—Account.

About one point there is no doubt—Anne accepted the resignation with eagerness and joyfulness, and divided the Duchess's Court places between Lady Masham and the Duchess of Somerset. It astonished most people to see the Duke consent to serve when his wife was dismissed—to see him continue to hold command of the troops under the Ministry which had sprung out of a bed-chamber squabble, and which was sure to thwart him in all his measures. His enemies have generally accounted for this by assuming that the Duke's avarice was at the bottom of it; but his lady assigns very different reasons. "The Duke of Marlborough," she says, "notwithstanding an infinite variety of mortifications, by which it was endeavoured to make him resign his commission, that there might be a pretence to raise an outcry against him, as having quitted his Queen's and his country's service merely because he could not govern in the cabinet as well as in the field, continued to serve yet another campaign. All his friends here, moved by a true concern for the public welfare, pressed him to it, the confederates called him with the utmost importunity, and Prince Eugene entreated him to come with all the earnestness and passion that could be expressed." These were certainly powerful inducements, and they may have mingled (together with that passionate fondness for a fine army which every good general must contract) with Marlborough's love of money.

Mr. Hallam says, with strong and proper feeling, "It seems rather a humiliating proof of the sway which the feeblest prince enjoys even in a limited monarchy, that the fortunes of Europe should have been changed by nothing more noble than the insolence of one waiting woman and the cunning of another. It is true that this was effected by throwing the weight of the crown into the scale of a powerful faction; yet the House of Bourbon would probably not have reigned beyond the Pyrenees but for Sarah and Abigail at Queen Anne's toilette."[53]

[53] Hallam—Constitutional History.

The Queen, altogether unmindful of her former warm attachment to her Mistress of the Robes, overjoyed to find herself free, wrote, with her own hand, the dismissal of the Duchess, and gave herself up to her enemies.

The Duchess, quite beside herself with chagrin and fury, only thought of some means or other of revenge. As a first step she demanded payment of the arrears of her pension—a boon she had with great high-mindedness refused on Anne's accession. But that was not all. When she was about to quit the sphere of her palace triumphs, she gave directions for the removal of the locks from the doors and the marble chimney-pieces she had put up at her own cost in her apartments. "It is all very well," remarked the Queen to her Secretary of State, "but tell the Duchess if she demolishes the fittings-up of my palace, she may depend upon it that I will not build hers at Woodstock." The Duchess consented to abandon the chimney-pieces, and withdrew at once to her country seat, near St. Alban's, where she lived in a style of great magnificence.

In the retirement of private life, Marlborough, worn out with the harass attendant upon such a lengthened succession of arduous campaigns, and wearied with political intrigue, now hoped to enjoy that which he had for years longed for—the society of those so dear to him, from whom he had been so many years separated. But it was not to be. Quiet happiness in the evening of his eventful life was not destined to be his lot. His wife, for whom he had ever shown such strong and unalterable affection, was a woman thwarted in all her designs—outraged, injured, mortified, and disgusted with the court and with the world. She was no longer young, nor possessed of the great attractions which had formerly thrown a veil over the deformities of her temper, which, always violent, had now become soured by adversity. She had no indulgence left for others. Dissatisfied with her friends, her children, and everything about her, she was disposed to wrangle and dispute on the slightest provocation.

Next came a great affliction—more deeply felt by both, perhaps, than either the fickleness of the Queen or the virulence of their political enemies—the death under their own roof at St. Alban's of their long-tried, attached, and amiable friend, Lord Godolphin. This sad event determined Marlborough to reside abroad until happier days dawned—their ungrateful country no longer offering any charms for them. His long-cherished desire for rural leisure, retirement, and the quiet enjoyments of private life had ended in disappointment. The master of wealth and great possessions, palatial edifices rising around him, and rank, glory, and well-earned honour his own; yet was he the mark of envy, hatred, and jealousy. Not even could he and the Duchess enjoy and return the ordinary courtesies of society without incurring observation and provoking suspicion. His enemies had triumphed, his Queen was cold and unjust, and now his dearly-loved friend, his adviser and confidant, the sharer of his sorrows, his consoler and encourager, was no more. A blight had fallen upon his existence.

Marlborough sailed from Dover to Ostend in October, 1712, and his wife followed him in a few months afterwards, she having remained behind to arrange his or her own affairs. The Duke was furnished with a passport, it is said, by the instrumentality of his early favourite and secret friend Bolingbroke. His request to see the Queen before his departure from her dominions was refused; and the apathetic Anne never again saw her great general, or the woman for whom she once professed so strong an attachment. When it was told her that both he and the Duchess had left England, she coolly remarked to the Duchess of Hamilton—"the Duke of Marlborough has done wisely to go abroad."

Thus was the illustrious soldier, then sixty-two years of age, and the Duchess in her fifty-second year, driven from their country by the machinations of a party too strong for them to resist without the especial favour of the Queen.



BOOK III.



CHAPTER I.

THE PRINCESS DES URSINS—HER DELICATE AND PERILOUS POSITION.

MADAME DES URSINS had long continued fearlessly to face the storm that growled all around her, and by degrees the horizon showed signs of clearing. As it often happens in the course of human affairs, the occupation of the capital by the enemy had an effect contrary to that which it was very natural to expect. The allies, who had entered Madrid as conquerors, found within that city none of the elements necessary for the definitive establishment of the Archduke who was proclaimed amidst a chilling silence. If the grandees almost to a man evinced their sympathy for the House of Austria, if the staff of the administration and the personal machinery of all the public departments, remained at their posts at the price of an oath which did not seem to cost more in those days than at present, the populace of Madrid showed an aversion to the foreigners which soon manifested itself in numerous assassinations. How could it be otherwise than that the ancient soil of Castile should heave on finding itself trampled on by the partisans of a loyalty hailed with acclamation at Saragossa and Barcelona; on witnessing those outbursts of insolent triumph on the part of the Portuguese, who, in the eyes of every Spaniard, were still rebels; and the contemptuous phlegm of Lord Galloway's army, commanded, as it was, by a heretic condottiere? Outside the official spheres, the isolation was therefore complete, and during that three months' crisis the errant royalty of Philip V., represented by his courageous consort, struck indestructible roots in the hearts of his subjects. The northern shores and the great province of Andalusia, joining to those divers motives the hatred with which England inspired the maritime population, resolutely declared for the House of Bourbon, to such an extent that, beyond the territories of the ancient realm of Arragon, the moral conquest of the kingdom was very nearly consummated, despite the foreign occupation, and through the effect of that very same occupation. The position of the foreigners at Madrid had never been anything else than provisory; and it was with transports of joy that the Anglo-Portuguese troops were seen to hastily evacuate the capital on the approach of another French army, which advanced through Navarre under the command of the Duke of Berwick.[54] Philip V. was soon able to re-enter Madrid as a liberator, and a galleon from Mexico brought him most opportunely a million of crowns. On the 25th of April, 1707, Berwick completely defeated the allies near Almanza, and the Duke of Orleans covered himself with glory by the capture of Lerida, which had previously resisted the great Conde.

[54] Natural son of James II. of England, by Arabella Churchill, sister of the Duke of Marlborough.

The influence of Madame des Ursins became greatly enhanced after these unhoped-for successes, and both Philip V. and the cabinet of Versailles equally testified their gratitude to her. She had manifested an inflexible devotedness in the midst of reverses, and adversity had taken its full measure of her. Never, throughout the course of her chequered career, had Madame des Ursins shown more activity than during the six months which intervened between the return of the Court to Madrid and the battle of Almanza. Her position was as delicate as it was perilous. It was necessary to stigmatise flagrant defections, but without driving anyone altogether to desperation. She profited by the confidence she had won to bring about happily an important reform. Spain, composed of divers kingdoms successively annexed, had not yet attained unity. More than ever, after the experiences of 1706, was seen the necessity of a centralisation which should re-unite in the hands of the new dynasty the entire strength of the government, which should extinguish injurious rivalries between province and province, which should facilitate administrative relations, and allow of an equal action in the different parts of the monarchy. Each kingdom hitherto had had its laws, its customs, its constitution (fueros). Already in 1705 certain restrictions had been imposed by Castile upon Arragon: no more dared be attempted. The battle of Almanza and the successes of 1707 inspired still further energy. In the council, the party of Madame des Ursins, leaning on the assent of Berwick, overcame the opposition of Montellano and the friends of the old system; and the pragmatic sanction, or constitution of Castile, became the sole law of Spain.

The victory of Almanza was, in fact, the last service rendered to Philip V. by his native country. From that day forward, France, menaced upon its frontiers, constrained to appropriate all its resources to its own safety, became an obstacle and a permanent peril to Spain. The former compromised the Spanish monarchy by its military operations, and far more gravely still by its diplomatic negotiations. In this new phase, signalised by the almost constant antagonism of the two courts, the position of Madame des Ursins was one of the most critical nature; but we are about to see her, with her habitual rectitude of judgment, take unhesitatingly the part alike dictated by honour as by sound policy.

It was at this juncture that the gravity of events determined Louis XIV. upon being represented in Spain by his nephew, the Duke of Orleans. That prince, in two campaigns, had subdued the kingdom of Valentia and the greatest part of Arragon, after taking fortresses in Catalonia hitherto deemed impregnable. Inspired by the ambition of the chief of his race, he had made his military services subservient to the extension of monarchical authority, and had solemnly abolished, in the name of Philip V. in Arragon, the anarchical privileges which weakened the royal power without efficaciously strengthening the liberties of Spain. Distrusted by those he came ostensibly to defend, and, from the first, an object of suspicion to Madame des Ursins, still the correspondence of the Princess with Madame de Maintenon and the Marechale de Noailles from April, 1707, to November, 1708, the date of the duke's departure, shows that the relations of the latter with the camerara-mayor were for a long time maintained on the best footing, the dissolute habits of the Duke of Orleans proving less disgusting to Madame des Ursins than the accuracy of his insight into public affairs appears to have charmed her. The rupture of this good understanding, which, however, took place silently, was one among other results greatly to be regretted of the dark intrigue into which certain obscure agents momentarily led astray the ambition of Anne of Austria's grandson—a machination the more disastrous to the prince, whose honour it impugned, than to the King of Spain, who received no injury from it during the Duke of Orleans' sojourn within his territories; the movements of Flotte and Renault, his emissaries, having only assumed some small degree of importance after his departure.

It is a knotty point of history altogether; but the fact is clear that the Duke was the centre of the faction opposed to the Princess, and that around him were banded those with whom she had either clashed or whom she had overcome. The moment was badly chosen for intriguing; to save the state should have been the sole aim of the Duke of Orleans. The allies, for an instant discouraged after Almanza, had not lost all hope. Their successes in Italy and in Germany soon consoled them for that reverse, and their armies became once more menacing. It was then that the Duke of Orleans, it is said, conceived the hope, if not of governing all Spain, at least of obtaining the kingdoms of Murcia, Valentia, and Navarre. He himself avowed later to the Duke de Saint-Simon that, seeing Philip V. tottering, "he had allowed himself to indulge the hope of being put in his place;" hence his double-faced conduct and strange manoeuvres. He might not have been willing, doubtless, to pull down the King of Spain with his own hand, but he did not, of course, steadfastly desire a triumph which marred his own fortunes. That which, however, may be affirmed with certainty is, that he maintained with different foreign generals, among others with the Earl of Stanhope, very suspicious negotiations; that he designedly did all he could to impede the progress of the Spanish Government, and seemed, in all he did, solely concerned in not overstepping that loosely-defined line at which treason begins. However that might be, Madame des Ursins, strenuously opposed to the policy which the Duke of Orleans desired to see prevail, and moreover scarcely able to endure the hostile attitude of that Prince, demanded his recall and obtained it.

After his departure she pursued him in the persons of his two agents, Renault and Flotte, whom she had arrested. As for his friend, Marshal de Bezons, whose hasty retreat upon the banks of the Segra excited the indignation of the Spanish court, he lost his command. She even denounced the Duke of Orleans to his royal uncle, and the erring nephew had very great difficulty in escaping a scandalous trial. He was forced, therefore, to renounce his ambitious hopes with regard to Spain, if ever he had seriously nourished them. Such an exposure, rendered his return to the Peninsula impossible. His faction was speedily dispersed. One of the noblemen with whom he had had very intimate relations, the Duke of Medina-Coeli, minister for foreign affairs and head of the grandee party, was suddenly arrested and taken to the Castle of Segovia. Whether, as Saint Simon intimates, it was that "weary of the yoke of Madame des Ursins, he desired pointer de son chef," whether that, favourable to the Duke of Orleans, perhaps even to the allies, he had voluntarily caused the failure of the expedition which the Spanish government meditated against Sardinia, or whether he had dreamed of an anti-French reaction, he ended his days in a state prison.

Whilst the government of Philip V., was working its way very laboriously through that maze of conspiracies and intrigues, the allies regained the ground which Almanza had lost them. "Despite all the efforts of Madame des Ursins," wrote the Chevalier du Bourk, her agent, at Versailles, "matters are going badly at Madrid." France, discouraged and weighed down, moreover by its own reverses, seemed no longer able to defend Philip V.; Louis XIV., whatever might have been his secret intentions, was not willing to appear to support his grandson; the Austrians thoroughly defeated Philip at Saragossa. The severe winter of 1709 had brought the general distress to a climax; and the Archduke Charles made his entrance into Madrid. The court of Versailles became terror-stricken. Madame de Maintenon, outwearied with this everlasting strife, changed the tone of her letters to a cold and sometimes ironic vein. She went so far as to say to the Princess, "It is not agreeable to us here that women should busy themselves with state affairs."[55] Louis XIV., himself, advised his grandson to abandon Spain in order to keep Italy.

[55] Recueil de M. Geffroy, p. 395.

Madame des Ursins had thus to choose between the French policy, imposed upon Louis XIV. by cruel necessity, and the Spanish policy, for which Philip V. was resolved to die. On one hand, the young mother, who had just confided to her care an infant son she had conceived in anguish, appealed most touchingly to her attachment and courage; on the other, Madame de Maintenon, whose sole solicitude was to insure repose to Louis XIV., by plucking out one after another all the thorns from his crown, reminded her that she was born a Frenchwoman, and that she owed too much to the Great King to arrogate to herself the right of contradicting him. A subject of Louis XIV., did she dare combat at Madrid the plans decided upon at Versailles? The governess of the heir to the crown of Spain, could she concur by her advice in despoiling the infant whose first caresses she was receiving? Madame des Ursins could only escape by a prompt departure from the difficulties of such an alternative. Incontestable facts prove that she so understood her position, and that she was fully determined to quit Spain towards the close of 1709; but the despair of the Queen, the state of whose health at that time gave but too serious grounds for alarm, alone hindered her from following out a project which promised more flattering results than any other in the deep depression into which the resolves of France had plunged her.

Madame des Ursins had no sooner taken the resolution of remaining upon the theatre of events, and of sustaining the King of Spain in the noble career to which his conscience and the national will alike bound him, than she threw herself headlong into the melee, caring nothing more for the Versailles policy, and burning her ships with a boldness of which her gentleness of character seemed to have rendered her incapable. Her epistolary style undergoes also a marked change, and rises with the loftiness of her part and character. In reproaching Madame de Maintenon for preferring the King's ease to that of his honour, she launches shafts against her which, though tipped with elegance, are none the less sharp-pointed, sometimes in the shape of studied reproaches, but more frequently still with the spontaneous overflowings of a towering wrath. The writer then reveals herself from beneath the guise of the woman of the world, and it is clearly seen that in that encompassed life the heart has for a moment triumphed over the intelligence.

Madame des Ursins alone, however, remained unshaken. She might well have, it is true, some moments of misgiving; such as when she wrote to Madame de Noailles, "I have foreseen, for a long time, the precipice over which they would hurl us, and to the brink of which we ourselves are hurrying, and I know not, by Heaven, who can save us from it." With admirable eloquence she encouraged Madame de Maintenon, who appeared to despair of the divine protection; and she inspired Philip V. with an energy truly worthy of the throne, shown in that noble letter in which the King of Spain declared to his grandfather "that, in spite of the misfortune which confronted him, he would never abandon his subjects." Madame des Ursins in all probability dictated the phraseology, and all the glory of it resulted from her firmness.

She thoroughly comprehended that it became sovereigns worthy of their position to speak loftily, were it from the depth of an abyss, and that that supreme courage is itself the first indication of a return of good fortune. She soon found that it was so; for from the moment that the King's cause seemed to be lost, the animosities of the grandees gave way before their patriotism. Whether they were at length inspired by so much energy, whether the expulsion of the French from every post throughout the state, decreed by Philip V. under the advice of Madame des Ursins, had well disposed their minds, "almost all, by a sudden awakening of chivalrous fidelity," submitted to the House of Bourbon. The Archduke awaited in vain their homage and their oaths. At the moment of his entrance into the capital, curiosity itself failed to attract any one to cross his path; a solitude and sullen gloom pervaded all the public places. He did not even proceed so far as the royal palace, but went out by the Alcala gate, muttering, "It is a deserted city."

Without hesitation, therefore, Madame des Ursins placed herself at the head of the national movement, seeking to pluck the safety of Spain from the very abandonment in which France had left that monarchy. Without breaking off confidential relations with her usual correspondents at Versailles, she enveloped them in the thickest possible veil, her sole idea being to stimulate Castilian patriotism, appearing to adopt everything Spanish from its popular costumes, even to its hatreds and its prejudices. By the aid of a sombrero and a gollil[56] Don Luis d'Aubigny had become a perfect caballero; the like transformation being effected throughout the entire staff of the palace household, and shortly afterwards a very decided step characterised the novel attitude assumed by Philip and his court. Madame des Ursins, who reckoned her chief enemies amongst the monarch's French household, decided that prince upon the dismissal in mass of all his non-Spanish domestics—an unexpected resolve which produced an immense sensation on both sides of the Pyrenees; because, whilst subserving a personal vengeance skilfully dissimulated, it gave sanction to a policy the harshness of which was pushed even to ingratitude.

[56] A sort of collar.

To throw Philip V. into the arms of the Spaniards, was to flatter alike the democracy and the grandees. To the populace Madame des Ursins presented, amidst the most fervent benediction, the Prince of Asturias; to the grandees, of whom she had long been the declared enemy, she caused to be given a striking proof of the royal confidence. The Duke de Bedmar, appointed to the ministry of war, was charged with the organization of the new levies, and the direction of the troops in all parts of the kingdom. To transform the grandson of Louis XIV. into a peninsula king was to furnish the best argument to the partisans of peace, already numerous in the British parliament. On the other hand, that same policy could not very seriously disquiet the cabinet of Versailles. The King knew that he might count upon every sacrifice from the respectful attachment of his grandson, save that of the throne; and although he had adhered officially to the principle of the dispossessing of Philip V., he could not regret, either as sovereign or as grandsire, the obstacles which the more resolute attitude of Spain then opposed to the enemies of the two crowns. Louis XIV. therefore continued, notwithstanding his diplomatic engagements, to secretly assist in the Peninsula what might be called the party of fara da se. Madame des Ursins had recovered her influence at Versailles from the moment at which it was found necessary to depend, in order to prolong the struggle, rather upon the military resources of Spain than upon those of France at bay. To impart more gravity to the national movement, to which she gave the impulse in order to remain the moderatrix, she had required the recall of Amelot, who had long assumed at Madrid the attitude of a prime minister rather than that of an ambassador; and Louis XIV., deferring to that wish, had replaced that experienced agent by a simple charge d'affaires. Orry was in like manner sacrificed, despite his invaluable services; but, at the same time that she gave satisfaction by the withdrawal of her friends in deference to the popular susceptibilities, the Princess earnestly implored that the Duke de Vendome might be sent to take command of the Spanish forces; and Louis XIV., on his part, at the moment that he was compelled to withdraw from Spain the last French soldier, despatched thither the general who was destined to save his grandson's crown.

Arriving in Spain sometime during the summer of 1710, Vendome displayed an activity which did not seem to comport with his habits, in order to reunite and arm the volunteers, who, from the summit of the Sierras, descended in swarms upon the plains of the two Castiles at the summons of a monarch become the personification of a patriot. He speedily transformed into a powerful and well-trained army the undisciplined guerillas whose bravery had hitherto been useless; in a few months, the Anglo-Austrian army, at the head of which the prince who called himself Charles III. had been able to show himself for a few hours in the deserted capital, was confronted by disciplined troops prepared to retake territories which until then had not been seriously disputed. Under the irresistible impulse of a noble patriotism which had at last recovered itself, the English force of Lord Stanhope capitulated at Brihuega after a terrible carnage, and Stahrenberg, crushed in his turn at Villaviciosa, carried away by his flight the last hopes of the House of Austria.

By the victory of Villaviciosa the House of Bourbon was definitively seated on the throne of Charles the Fifth. Philip V. slept that night (10th December, 1710) upon a couch of standards taken from the enemy: the Austrian cause was lost; and Madame des Ursins, who, in spite of Europe coalesced, in spite of Louis XIV. hesitating and disquieted, in spite of so many disasters, had never trembled, received the title of HIGHNESS, and saw her steadfast policy at length crowned by accomplished facts.

Spain had thus solved by her own efforts solely the great question which had kept Europe so long in arms. At the commencement of 1711, Philip V. had acquired for his throne a security that Louis XIV. had not yet obtained for the integrity of his own frontiers, and without mistaking the influence of the victory of Denain, so wonderfully opportune, it is just, we think, to allow a far larger share than is customary to the thoroughly Spanish victory of Villaviciosa in the unhoped-for conditions obtained by France at the peace of Utrecht.



CHAPTER II.

THE PRINCESS'S SHARE IN THE TREATY OF UTRECHT.

IF the new ministry of Queen Anne succeeded in inducing the English nation to support the treaty of Utrecht, that was nothing less than to prove undeniably, without fear of contradiction, that the establishment of the French dynasty in the Peninsula had there acquired the authority of a fact irrevocably accomplished. The resuscitation of the Spanish nation had, therefore, a decisive effect upon European affairs; and whilst, by leaving France almost intact, the treaties of Utrecht had parcelled out the monarchy of the catholic kings, the authors of the great popular movement crowned by the victory of Villaviciosa might consider without prejudice their country as sacrificed, notwithstanding the weight which it had flung into the scales.

In this work Madame des Ursins had had certainly a very considerable share, and it was with a very legitimate pride that through it she was enabled to prevail at Versailles as at Madrid. A perseverance unexampled both in idea and conduct, a rare suppleness in the means, had made her the principal instrument of an enterprise in which a virile ambition, united to a deep devotedness, sustained her. Undismayed by reverses, never intoxicated by success, she tempered by her equanimity the at times imprudent ardour of the young Queen, and reanimated by her firmness the frequent retrocessions of her morose consort. She rejoiced, therefore, with a scarcely veiled pride in that security for the future which Spain had conquered before France, and in her correspondence with Madame de Maintenon her letters began to assume a somewhat protective tone. It was at this culminating point of her greatness that fate was preparing to inflict upon her the humiliating catastrophe which again obscured the remembrance of her services and even the honour of her name.

It is unnecessary to recapitulate the means by which peace was re-established, how the fall of the Whig ministry and the elevation of the Archduke to the imperial throne after the death of Joseph I. brought England and the other allied powers into the treaties which confirmed Philip V. in the peaceable possession of the Spanish monarchy. We will not dwell upon these details, nor upon divers acts of interior policy which followed upon the victory of Villaviciosa. Let us confine our attention solely to those in which the Princess des Ursins took an active part. The first was the pursuance of the administrative centralisation of which we have spoken; the abolition of the council exclusively called the Council of Castile, for which she caused to be substituted a council of state, the members of which should be chosen from every part of Spain, and which became the centre of the government. The second was a reform in the finance department; Orry being in these measures the Princess's instrument, and he justified the long-continued esteem with which she had honoured his talents. It was thus that after having successively saved the monarchy from a policy exclusively French, and from the factious pretensions of the grandees, after having contributed to the defeat of Austria, Madame des Ursins sought to consolidate on firm bases the power of Philip V. and prepare a happier future for Spain.

She was not destined, however, to long enjoy the fruits of her triumph. It was a symptomatic sign of this new phase of her life, the universally unfavourable interpretation given to an affair which should rather be looked upon in the light of a check than of a fault. It is well known that Philip, desirous of recognising the devotedness of his son's governess, and of assuring to that noble lady an independent position which should not be below her birth, had stipulated, at the time of the preliminaries of peace, for the reservation of a territory in the Spanish low countries ceded to Austria, which he destined to form into a sovereignty for Marie Anne de la Tremouille. This negotiation, which bore successively upon the county of Limbourg and the small seigniory of La Roche-en-Ardennes, had been received at first at Versailles with the most entire approbation, for the reproach of "playing the queen" only occurred as an after-thought. The gratitude of their Catholic Majesties was found to be quite natural, and was warmly praised, especially by Madame de Maintenon. It is not at all to be wondered at, consequently, if Madame des Ursins should blandly contemplate such a prospect, especially in anticipation of the approaching demise of her well-beloved protectress, who could not fail to be soon replaced in the confidence and couch of her consort. The Court of France did not change its opinion until that affair of La Roche, very annoyingly taken by the Dutch, had become the occasion of a delay in the signing of the general peace. Then Madame des Ursins was overwhelmed by reproaches on all sides, and those which came from Saint Cyr were of a peculiarly acrimonious character, which we must not join the Duke de Saint Simon in attributing to a jealousy of which there exists no trace, but which is explained by Madame de Maintenon's desire to secure repose to Louis XIV. at any cost. These reproaches, moreover, were without foundation, for the accusers of the Princess should have considered that, if France had the right to await with lively impatience the signature of a treaty which secured to her almost all her conquests, it was quite otherwise with Spain, called upon by that same treaty to pay alone the costs of the pacification. The measures of 1713, the conclusion of which was in fact retarded for a few months by the interest and intervention of Madame des Ursins, had been received with a very natural indignation in the monarchy of Charles V., from which they tore away the Milanese, the Two Sicilies, Sardinia, the Low Countries, Port Mahon, and Gibraltar. So France can now easily decide whether it had been in 1815 an unpardonable crime in her eyes to cause by a dilatory question the adjournment of the signing of the treaties of Vienna.

That check was the first in a series of misfortunes which death alone was henceforward destined to bring to a close. Early in 1714 died very suddenly, at the age of twenty-six, Marie Louise of Savoy, her delicate frame worn out by an ardent temperament, which had sustained it whilst the storm raged, and which declined when the breath of the hurricane had ceased to kindle it further. The remains of the young Queen had scarcely descended into the vaults of the Escurial ere the nation demanded to know who was to be the new queen-consort; and the same question was addressed to Madame des Ursins by the Court of Versailles, so well were known there both the requirements and the austerity of the King of Spain. What passed during the eight months of that widowhood so painfully borne? What mysteries did the Medina Coeli palace witness, in which Madame des Ursins shut up closely Philip V. from the gaze of every prying eye? Such questions can never now be answered with certainty, for the reports put into circulation in France by Saint Simon and Duclos, in Italy by Poggiali, and in England by Fitz-Maurice, had their common source in the conversations of Alberoni, one of the least scrupulous actors in the drama of the Quadruple Alliance. Did the elderly camerara mayor, already three-score and ten, dare to spread alluring snares wherein to entrap an amorous prince of thirty? And did such tentative, more strange than audacious, succeed to the extent of binding Philip's conscience in some way? History will never answer the question. Instead, therefore, of hazarding conjectures, it will be well to confine our attention to the well-authenticated political acts of the Princess at this, to her, serious conjuncture.

In losing her royal mistress, the powerful favourite lost along with her the greatest portion of her strength. It was the remote signal which heralded her fall. At the same time it did not appear that her energy had become diminished, or her intelligence clouded, but that her ordinary prudence had abandoned her. Perhaps, having attained such an elevation, she dreaded no further reverse, and believed herself secure enough, in the universal esteem and admiration in which she was held, to venture upon anything. However that might be, as though her brain had grown dizzy, she destroyed with her own hands, not her skilfully raised political edifice, but the structure of her individual fortunes.

Her first imprudence was to attack the Spanish Inquisition. Spain was not then ripe for that reform accomplished only a century later. Much less, as it appears to us, should Madame des Ursins, under the influence of a preconceived religious opinion, with the object of strengthening the royal authority, have attempted its sudden suppression. Far be it from us, certainly, to think of defending the Spanish Inquisition. But it cannot be denied that that institution had vigorously defended Philip V., and in the eyes of the people was part and parcel, as it were, of Spain itself. It seemed as though French ideas alone demanded such a reform, and hence popular suspicion was excited. The Princess failed in her attempt; but she had voluntarily created for herself a host of enemies, who from that moment laboured to effect her ruin.

We have already said that, cherishing the hope of obtaining for herself an independent sovereignty, the difficulties arising from her pretensions had delayed the conclusion of the treaty of peace. Louis XIV. was indignant at finding his negotiations fettered and himself involved in an unavoidable opposition to the wishes of his grandson. As for Madame de Maintenon, whether the interests of France, compromised by these delays, had alone provoked her resistance, or whether, as Saint Simon declares, that that independent sovereignty which she herself felt was so little beyond her reach offended her pride by making her feel the distance between their several ranks and births, she opposed the desire of her old friend, and peace was concluded by the authority of Louis XIV. But the King had a grudge against the Princess for having driven him to such extremity. Besides, just then his own dynasty had been fatally stricken. The Duke of Burgundy and his eldest son, the Duke of Brittany, had died. The heir to the throne was an infant only three years old. The Court foresaw the Regency of the Duke of Orleans, a personal enemy of Madame des Ursins, and it was dangerous, by leaving her at the head of affairs in Spain, to prepare, probably, for the future a disastrous rivalry.

The storm thus darkened thickly over the head of this imperious woman, who, supported against her enemies so long as she had been useful, was subject to the common law of favourites, and began to totter when she appeared no longer so. One resource remained to her—to remarry Philip V. She was anxious to find a consort who could replace in her interests Marie Louise, and restore her waning influence. Her incertitude was great: she felt truly that in spite of past services her future fate depended upon her choice. At length she cast her eyes upon Elizabeth Farnese, daughter of the last Duke of Parma, and niece of the then existent Duke, and thought that gratitude for such an extraordinary turn of fortune would for ever secure the attachment of a princess who, without her influence, could never have had pretensions to such an union. But she was anxious to ascertain whether Elizabeth Farnese was one of those who would submit to be ruled, and she opened her mind upon the subject to a man then obscure but afterwards celebrated—Alberoni, who had been sent as consular agent from Parma to Madrid. He had frequent conversations with the great favourite, and readily succeeded in insinuating himself into her good graces. He described the Princess of Parma as simple minded, religious, ignorant of the world from which she had always lived secluded—in short, perfectly fitting to forward the design of the Princess. In making such statements he reckoned at the same time upon pleasing his own Court, and bringing about the fall of Madame des Ursins; for he knew well that Elizabeth, whose character was very different from that which he had represented, would not submit to be governed by any one. Dazzled, therefore, with the smiling vista which chance had so unexpectedly opened to him, and understanding all the importance which he might derive from the negotiation of such marriage, and finding, moreover, Madame des Ursins well disposed beforehand towards him, and, by a singular blindness, inclined to put implicit confidence in one whose interest it was to conceal the truth, he secretly set off for Parma on his delicate mission. By this first move the Princess's game was lost.



CHAPTER III.

THE PRINCESS FRIENDLESS IN SPAIN.

IT was the peculiar misfortune of Madame des Ursins to scarcely meet with a single sincere friend in Spain: she was submitted to there, rather than accepted. She had been sought after through interest or fear rather than through sympathy; but especially since the Queen's decease, since no one save herself was seen by the King's side, and that the strokes of her power were dealt without any apparent intermediator, she was no longer tolerated, save with infinite difficulty. Neither can it be concealed that, at this period, she had not acted in a way to diminish the number of her enemies, or to conciliate them. She was of opinion that the Duke of Berwick had not sufficiently defended her at Versailles against their machinations: she broke with him in 1714, before he returned from Catalonia. She did her utmost to have Tesse chosen to replace him, whom she pronounced quite capable of taking Barcelona; and, on learning that Berwick was nevertheless appointed, she hastened to banish Ronquillo, for something he had uttered against the Government, but in reality because he was the intimate friend of that general.[57] Two nobles were also imprisoned at this time—Don Manuel de Sylva, commandant of the galleys of Sicily, already temporarily exiled in 1709 for having (so said the sentence) "spoken ill of her," and Don Valerio d'Aspetia, Lieutenant-General. Both were declared enemies of Madame des Ursins, and the first had moreover the fault of being closely connected with the Duke d'Uzeda. Valerio d'Aspetia died in prison, at the age of seventy, and after fifty years of service, a lamentable loss, and which involved that of his still young and lovely wife, whose days were cut short through grief and poverty. Besides all this, must be noticed a suspicious jealousy of domination over Philip V., which was fearfully developed when that prince found himself a widower, and which betrayed itself in very disagreeable actions.

[57] Memoirs of Saint Philippe, tom. iii., p. 88.

Saint Simon tells us that, after the death of Marie Louise of Savoy, Madame des Ursins usually supped with the King, and had him transferred from the palace of the Buen-Retiro, in which the Queen had died, to that of Medina Coeli. There she caused a corridor to be constructed, leading from the King's cabinet to the apartments of the young princes, wherein she was lodged; and it was not, as may be imagined, to facilitate communications between a bereaved father and his children, who had become doubly dear to him, but, according to our authority, in order that it might never be known whether the King was alone or with her. She was in such haste to see this secret passage completed, that, to the great scandal of Catholic Spain, she had the work carried on during Sundays and saints' days as well as upon ordinary days. This was pushed to such an extent, that a great number of pious persons no less than thrice asked Father Robinet, the most exemplary of the confessors Philip V. ever had, if he were not aware of such unlawful labour, and when it was that he intended it should cease. To which the subtle Jesuit, who was unwilling to be accused of laxity in morals, replied that the King had not spoken to him upon the subject, alluding to his relations with Philip as his Confessor, in which relation alone he wished it to be understood that he was to be considered—always adding, for their satisfaction, that if he had been consulted in the matter, he would not have failed to say that, to complete that criminal corridor, work should never have been so permitted, but that to effect its destruction, the labourers might have worked at it even on Easter Day.[58]

[58] Memoires de Saint Simon, tom. xx., p. 171, 172.

This statement of Saint Simon, quite insupportable as it is, would nevertheless leave subsisting, in the melancholy position of the children and their father, a means of justification to Madame des Ursins, did not Duclos deprive her of it; and who, less charitable than the authority whom he generally cites when treating of this celebrated woman, tells us purely and simply that she desired to facilitate the communication of her own apartments with those of the King, which leaves ample room for slander and suspicion. He goes still further. Improving upon Saint Simon, and showing himself better acquainted with the particulars than the Duke, he mentions a very aggravating fact, which was, that, in order to construct that very suspicious means of communication, it was necessary to demolish a monastery of Capuchins, and that in consequence "dead bodies were disinterred, the Holy Sacrament dislodged from the church, the monks quitting it in procession, amidst exclamations of "Oh, sacrilege! Oh, profanation!" from all Madrid."[59]

[59] Memoirs of Duclos (Petitot's Collection), tom. i., p. 230.

Happily, Duclos is merely in this the servile copyist of a Spanish author, whose contradictions and bad feeling it would be very easy to expose. He has reproduced word for word the version to be found in the Memoires sur l'Espagne, printed as a sequel to the letters of Fitz-Maurice. What! to make a simple corridor from one apartment to another, nothing less was required than to demolish an entire monastery, large as they were, in Spain especially, with its church and everything devoted to its religious purposes, and the dwellings of the monks? And Saint Simon knew nothing of all this? For, had he known it, most assuredly he would not have failed to fling it in the face of Madame des Ursins. That the Marquis de Saint Philippe, who was upon the spot, a man so religious, and who could not endure Madame des Ursins, should say not one word, without fear of derogating from his customary gravity, of that impious scandal, of such a Vandalism as had revolted all Madrid! We think that if M. Duclos had better informed himself upon the point and of the source whence he derived it, he, too, would have complained of exaggeration, and would not have given it out as a fact.

The part played by Madame des Ursins would assuredly have been grander if she had herself renounced the regal boon proffered by Philip V., as soon as it promised to be an obstacle to the pacification of Europe; if she had preferred the general good to her own particular advantage, and sustained her lofty character to the end, she would have preserved by so doing the prestige of grandeur and disinterestedness which had constantly surrounded her. A love of power would have been pardoned in her, always foreign to considerations of personal advantage; and, as ambition, like other human passions, may become a source of crime, though it is not itself a crime, in her case it would have been praised, because she would have unceasingly shunned the vanity which lessens it, the self-interest which debases it, and that continual recurrence to egotism which travesties it in intrigue. But she failed to crown her career by that true glory. Seeing the King and Queen of Spain very much offended at the retrograde step of Louis XIV., she further irritated them by her peevish attitude and marked discontent. The Marquis de Brancas, sent by Louis into Spain, proceeded to represent the articles of the Treaty of Utrecht to Philip V. in such wise as the Emperor and his allies wished them to stand; Philip replied that he would not sign them, unless there was a special clause added in favour of Madame des Ursins. That ambassador returned furious, crying out against the Spanish Government, and especially against Madame des Ursins, who directed everything, he said, and who had played at cross-purposes in order to cause his mission to miscarry. He succeeded in drawing down upon the Court of Madrid the heavy rebuke of Louis XIV. This, however, proved altogether useless; for Philip persisted in his resolution, and contented himself with sending the Cardinal del Guidice to his grandfather, whilst Madame des Ursins employed with the same monarch the customary influence of Madame de Maintenon. The latter, in fact, so the Marquis de Saint Philippe tells us, made excuses for Madame des Ursins to Louis XIV., and the other advocate of the Court of Madrid obtained the order for the march of the troops destined for the siege of Barcelona, whose success, looked upon as certain, ought likewise to render the Austrians more disposed to treat upon the question of her principality.

But that was not the only expedient employed by Madame des Ursins. The English ambassador, Lord Lexington, besides Gibraltar and Port Mahon, relied upon obtaining for the English a free trade in the brandies of Tarragon; this the Princess conceded to him. He desired also that they might be allowed to construct, upon the River de la Plata, a fort for their protection, and as a depot for negroes, in order that in future they might alone supply the Spanish colonies with slaves: this monopoly was also accorded. In return, Lord Lexington signed a convention with her, in which Queen Anne "engaged to secure her a sovereignty."[60] At such price the adhesion of England seemed secured. She reckoned also on obtaining that of Holland by analogous commercial advantages, and, in fact, she obtained them. But how to win back Louis XIV. was the question! For that she had a secret project, which, as she thought, ought to rehabilitate her in that monarch's eyes, in representing her as guided by a love of France more than by vanity. Louis XIV. was not to derive any territorial advantage from the Treaty of Utrecht. But Madame des Ursins was desirous so soon as the cession was made of the said principality of giving it up immediately to that King, in exchange for an equivalent life-interest in Touraine, within French territory. With that view she had a clause inserted in the letters-patent of Philip V., empowering her to alienate during her lifetime that principality in whatever way she chose. Such was her design; and that it had evidently been divined by the sagacious Madame de Maintenon would appear from the following passage in a letter of about that date addressed to the Princess: "Side by side with all your merits, you have a concealed project, which, if I guess aright, has got the uppermost of all those qualities."[61]