Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846», sayfa 9

Bred in the school of Turenne, placed, like him, at the head of a force raised with difficulty, maintained with still greater trouble, Marlborough was the greatest general of the methodical or scientific school which modern Europe has produced. No man knew better the importance of deeds which fascinate the minds of men; none could decide quicker, or strike harder, when the proper time for action arrived. None, when the decisive crisis of the struggle approached, could expose his person more fearlessly, or lead his reserves more gallantly into the very hottest of the enemy's fire. To his combined intrepidity and quickness, in thus bringing the reserves, at the decisive moment, into action, all his wonderful victories, in particular Ramilies and Malplaquet, are to be ascribed. But, in the ordinary case, he preferred the bloodless methods of skill and arrangement. Combination was his great forte, and there he was not exceeded by Napoleon himself. To deceive the enemy as to the real point of attack – to perplex him by marches and countermarches – to assume and constantly maintain the initiative – to win by skill what could not be achieved by force, was his great delight; and in that, the highest branch of the military art, he was unrivalled in modern times. He did not despise stratagem. Like Hannibal, he resorted to that arm frequently, and with never-failing success. His campaigns, in that respect, bear a closer resemblance to those of the illustrious Carthaginian than those of any general in modern Europe. Like him, too, his administrative and diplomatic qualities were equal to his military powers. By his address, he retained in unwilling, but still effective union, an alliance, unwieldy from its magnitude, and discordant by its jealousies; and kept, in willing multitudes, around his standards, a colluvies omnium gentium, of various languages, habits, and religions – held in subjection by no other bond but the strong one of admiration for their general, and a desire to share in his triumphs.

Consummate address and never-failing prudence were the great characteristics of the English commander. With such judgment did he measure his strength with those of his adversary – so skilfully did he choose the points of attack, whether in strategy or tactics – so well weighed were all his enterprises, so admirably prepared the means of carrying them into execution, that none of them ever miscarried. It was a common saying at the time, which the preceding narrative amply justifies, that he never fought a battle which he did not gain, nor laid siege to a town which he did not take. This extraordinary and unbroken success extended to all his manœuvres, however trivial; and it has been already noticed, that the first disaster of any moment which occurred to his arms during nine successive and active campaigns, was the destruction of a convoy destined for the siege of St Venant, in October 1710, by one of Villars' detachments.³⁷ It was the admirable powers of arrangement and combination which he brought to bear on all parts of his army, equally from the highest to the lowest parts, which was the cause of this extraordinary and uninterrupted success.

He was often outnumbered by the enemy, always opposed by a homogeneous army, animated by one strong national and military spirit; while he was at the head of a discordant array of many different nations, some of them with little turn for warlike exploit, others lukewarm, or even treacherous in the cause. But notwithstanding this, he never lost the ascendant. From the time when he first began the war on the banks of the Maese in 1702, till his military career was closed in 1711, within the iron barrier of France, by the intrigues of his political opponents at home, he never abandoned the initiative. He was constantly on the offensive. When inferior in force, as he often was, he supplied the defect of military strength by skill and combination; when his position was endangered by the faults or treachery of others, as was still more frequently the case, he waited till a false move on the part of his adversaries enabled him to retrieve his affairs by some brilliant and decisive stroke. It was thus that he restored the war in Germany, after the affairs of the Emperor had been wellnigh ruined, by the brilliant cross march into Bavaria, and splendid victory at Blenheim; and regained Flanders for the Archduke by the stroke at Ramilies, after the imperial cause in that quarter had been all but lost by the treacherous surrender of Ghent and Bruges, in the very centre of his water communications.

Lord Chesterfield, who knew him well, said that he was a man of excellent parts, and strong good sense, but of no very shining genius. The uninterrupted success of his campaigns, however, joined to the unexampled address with which he allayed the jealousies and stilled the discords of the confederacy whose armies he led, decisively demonstrates that the polished earl's opinion was not just; and that his partiality for the graces led him to ascribe an undue influence in the great duke's career to the inimitable suavity and courtesy of his manner. His enterprises and stratagems, his devices to deceive the enemy, and counterbalance inferiority of force by superiority of conduct; the eagle eye which, in the decisive moment, he brought to bear on the field of battle, and the rapidity with which in person he struck the final blow from which the enemy never recovered, bespeak the intuitive genius of war. It was the admirable balance of his mental qualities which caused his originality to be under-valued; – no one power stood out in such bold relief as to overshadow all the others, and rivet the eye by the magnitude of its proportions. Thus his consummate judgment made the world overlook his invention; his uniform prudence caused his daring to be forgotten; his incomparable combinations often concealed the capacious mind which had put the whole in motion. He was so uniformly successful, that men forgot how difficult it is always to succeed in war. It was not till he was withdrawn from the conduct of the campaign, and disaster immediately attended the Allied arms, and France resumed the ascendant over the coalition, that Europe became sensible who had been the soul of the war, and how much had been lost when his mighty understanding was no longer at the head of affairs.

A most inadequate opinion would be formed of Marlborough's mental character, if his military exploits alone were taken into consideration. Like all other intellects of the first order, he was equally capable of great achievements in peace as in war, and shone forth with not less lustre in the deliberations of the cabinet, or the correspondence of diplomacy, than in directing columns on the field of battle, or tracing out the line of approaches in the attack of fortified towns. Nothing could exceed the judgment and address with which he reconciled the jarring interests, and smoothed down the rival pretensions, of the coalesced cabinets. The danger was not so pressing as to unite their rival governments, as it afterwards did those of the Grand Alliance in 1813, for the overthrow of Napoleon; and incessant exertions, joined to the highest possible diplomatic address, judgment of conduct, and suavity of manner, were required to prevent the coalition, on various occasions during the course of the war, from falling to pieces. As it was, the intrigues of Bolingbroke and the Tories in England, and the ascendency of Mrs Masham in the Queen's bedchamber councils, at last counterbalanced all his achievements, and led to a peace which abandoned the most important objects of the war, and was fraught, as the event has proved, with serious danger to the independence and even existence of England. His winter campaign at the Allied courts, as he himself said, always equalled in duration, and often exceeded in importance and difficulty, that in summer with the enemy; and nothing is more certain, than that if a man of less capacity had been entrusted with the direction of its diplomatic relations, the coalition would have soon broken up without having accomplished any of the objects for which the war had been undertaken, from the mere selfishness and dissensions of the cabinets by whom it was conducted.

With one blot, for which neither the justice of history, nor the partiality of biography either can or should attempt to make any apology, Marlborough's private character seems to have been unexceptionable, and was evidently distinguished by several noble and amiable qualities. That he was bred a courtier, and owed his first elevation to the favour with which he was regarded by one of the King's mistresses, was not his fault: – It arose, perhaps, necessarily from his situation, and the graces and beauty with which he had been so prodigally endowed by nature. The young officer of the Guards, who in the army of Louis XIV. passed by the name of the "handsome Englishman," could hardly be expected to be free from the consequences of female partiality at the court of Charles II. But in maturer years, his conduct in public, after William had been seated on the throne, was uniformly consistent, straightforward, and honourable. He was a sincere patriot, and ardently attached both to his country and the principles of freedom, at a time when both were wellnigh forgotten in the struggles of party, and the fierce contests for royal or popular favour. Though bred up in a licentious court, and early exposed to the most entrancing of its seductions, he was in mature life strictly correct, both in his conduct and conversation. He resisted every temptation to which his undiminished beauty exposed him after his marriage, and was never known either to utter, or permit to be uttered in his presence, a light or indecent expression. He discouraged to the utmost degree any instances of intemperance or licentiousness in his soldiers, and constantly laboured to impress upon his men a sense of moral duty and Supreme superintendence. Divine service was regularly performed in all his camps, both morning and evening; previous to a battle, prayers were read at the head of every regiment, and the first act, after a victory, was a solemn thanksgiving. "By those means," says a contemporary biographer, who served in his army, "his camp resembled a quiet, well-governed city. Cursing and swearing were seldom heard among the officers; a drunkard was the object of scorn: and even the soldiers, many of them the refuse and dregs of the nation, became, at the close of one or two campaigns, tractable, civil, sensible, and clean, and had an air and spirit above the vulgar."

In political life, during his career after that event, he was consistent and firm; faithful to his party, but more faithful still to his country. He was a generous friend, an attached, perhaps too fond a husband. During the whole of his active career, he retained a constant sense of the superintendence and direction of the Supreme Being, and was ever the first to ascribe the successes which he had gained, to Divine protection; a disposition which appeared with peculiar grace amidst the din of arms, and the flourish of trumpets for his own mighty achievements. Even the one occasion on which, like David, he fell from his high principles, will be regarded by the equitable observer with charitable, if not forgiving eyes. He will recollect, that perfection never yet belonged to a child of Adam; he will measure the dreadful nature of the struggle which awaits an upright and generous mind when loyalty and gratitude impel one way, and religion and patriotism another. Without attempting to justify an officer who employs the power bestowed by one government to elevate another on its ruins, he will yet reflect, that in such a crisis, even the firmest heads and the best hearts may be led astray. If he is wise, he will ascribe the fault – for fault it was – not so much to the individual, as the time in which he lived; and feel a deeper thankfulness that his own lot has been cast in a happier age, when the great moving passions of the human heart act in the same direction, and a public man need not fear that he is wanting in his duty to his sovereign, because he is performing that to his country.

Marlborough was often accused of avarice: but his conduct through life sufficiently demonstrated that in him the natural desire to accumulate a fortune, which belongs to every rational mind, was kept in subjection to more elevated principles. His repeated refusal of the government of the Netherlands, with its magnificent appointment of L.60,000 a-year, was a sufficient proof how much he despised money when it interfered with public duty; his splendid edifices, both in London and Blenheim, attest how little he valued it for any other sake but as it might be applied to noble and worthy objects.³⁸ He possessed the magnanimity in every thing which is the invariable characteristic of real greatness. Envy was unknown, suspicion loathsome, to him. He often suffered by the generous confidence with which he trusted his enemies. He was patient under contradiction; placid and courteous both in his manners and demeanour; and owed great part of his success, both in the field and in the cabinet, to the invariable suavity and charm of his manner. His humanity was uniformly conspicuous. Not only his own soldiers, but his enemies never failed to experience it. Like Wellington, his attention to the health and comforts of his men was incessant; and, with his daring in the field and uniform success in strategy, endeared him in the highest degree to the men. Troops of all nations equally trusted him; and the common saying, when they were in any difficulty, "Never mind – 'Corporal John' will get us out of it," was heard as frequently in the Dutch, Danish, or German, as in the English language. He frequently gave the weary soldiers a place in his carriage, and got out himself to accommodate more; and his first care, after an engagement, invariably was to visit the field of battle, and do his utmost to assuage the sufferings of the wounded, both among his own men and those of the enemy.

The character of this illustrious man has been thus portrayed by two of the greatest writers in the English language, the latter of whom will not be accused of undue partiality to his political enemy. "It is a characteristic," says Adam Smith, "almost peculiar to the great Duke of Marlborough, that ten years of such uninterrupted and such splendid successes as scarce any other general could boast of, never betrayed him into a single rash action, scarce into a single rash word or expression. The same temperate coolness and self-command cannot, I think, be ascribed to any other great warrior of later times – not to Prince Eugene, nor to the late King of Prussia, nor to the great Prince of Condé, not even to Gustavus Adolphus. Turenne seems to have approached the nearest to it: but several actions of his life demonstrate that it was in him by no means so perfect as in the great Duke of Marlborough."³⁹ "By King William's death," says Bolingbroke, "the Duke of Marlborough was raised to the head of the army, and indeed of the confederacy, where he, a private man, a subject, obtained by merit and by management a more decided influence than high birth, confirmed authority, and even the crown of Great Britain, had given to King William. Not only all the parts of that vast machine, the Grand Alliance, were kept more compact and entire, but a more rapid and vigorous motion was given to the whole; and instead of languishing or disastrous campaigns, we saw every scene of the war full of action. All those wherein he appeared, and many of those wherein he was not then an actor, but abettor, however, of their actions, were crowned with the most triumphant success. I take with pleasure this opportunity of doing justice to that great man, whose faults I know, whose virtues I admire, and whose memory, as the greatest general and greatest minister that our country or any other has produced, I honour."⁴⁰

MILDRED;

A Tale

Part I. Chap. I

The town of Wimborne, in Dorsetshire, boasts the possession of a very ancient cathedral-like church, dignified with the title of Minster, but, with this exception, is as utterly devoid, we believe, of all interest to the traveller, as any of the numerous country-towns which he rapidly passes through, and so gladly quits, wondering for the moment how it is that any one can possibly consent to be left behind in them. He who has journeyed from Southampton to Poole will remember the town, from the circumstance that he quitted by the same narrow streets by which he entered it, his road not passing directly through, but forming an angle at this point. He will call to mind what appeared an unaccountable turning and twisting about of the coach, whilst the horses were being changed, and a momentary alarm at finding that he was retracing his steps; he will remember the two massive square towers of the old church, peering above the roofs of the houses; and this is all that he will know, or have the least desire to know, of the town of Wimborne.

If, however, the traveller should be set down in this quiet place, and be compelled to wait there half a day for the arrival of some other coach to carry him to his destination, he will probably wile away his time by a visit to its antique and venerable church; and after climbing, by the dark and narrow staircase, to the top of one of its towers, he will be somewhat surprised to find himself – in a library! A small square room is fitted up with shelves, whereon a number of books are deposited, and the centre is occupied by a large reading-desk, and a massive oak table, apparently coeval with the tower itself, and which was probably placed there before the roof was put on, since it never could have been introduced by the stairs or through the window. It is no modern library, be it understood – no vestry reading-room connected with the Sunday school of the place; they are old books, black-letter quartos, illuminated missals, now dark and mouldy, and whose parchment has acquired no pleasant odour from age. By no means is it a circulating library, for some of the books are still chained to the reading-desk; and many more have their rusty iron chain twisted about them, by which they, in their turn, were bound to the desk. If the traveller should not be favoured with that antiquarian taste which finds a charm in decyphering, out of mouldy and black-letter volumes, what would not be worth his perusal in the most luxurious type of modern days, he will at least derive some pleasure from opening the little windows of the tower, and inhaling the fresh breeze that will blow in upon him, and in looking over an extensive prospect of green meadows, with their little river meandering about in them. It must have formed a pleasant retreat at one time to the two or three learned clerks, or minor canons, or neighbouring monks or friars – we may be sure there were never many of such students – who used to climb this turret for their morning or their evening lucubrations.

The only student who had, perhaps for some centuries, frequented it – and she brought her own books with her, and was very unlike either learned clerk, or monk, or friar – was Mildred Willoughby. She used to delight – a taste savouring of extreme youth – to bring the book she was perusing from her own comfortable parlour, to climb up with it to this solitary height, and there read it alone. She had no difficulty in obtaining from the parish-clerk permission to be left in this chosen solitude – to draw the one wooden chair it possessed to the window, and there to sit, and read, or muse, or look upon the landscape, just as long as she pleased. It did not very frequently happen that this functionary was called upon to exhibit the old tower to the curiosity of strangers; but if this occurred whilst she was thus occupied, she would rise from her seat, and for a moment put on the air of a visitor also – walk slowly round the room, looking at the backs of the books, or out of the window at the prospect, as if she saw them for the first time! and when the company had retreated, (and there was little to detain them long,) would quietly return to her chair, her study, or her reverie.

One reason she might have given, beside the romantic and pensive mood it inspired, for her choice of this retreat – the charm of being alone. Nothing could be more quiet – to look at the exterior – than the house she called her home. It stood at the extremity of the town, protected from the road by its own neat inclosure of turf and gravel-walk – surely as remote from every species of disturbance or excitement as the most devoted student could desire. We question even whether a barrel-organ or a hurdy-gurdy was ever known to commit an outrage upon its tranquillity; and for its interior, were not Mr and Miss Bloomfield (they were brother and sister, uncle and aunt of Mildred) the most staid, orderly, methodical persons in the world? Did not the bachelor uncle cover every part of the house, and the kitchen stairs in particular, with thick carpet, in order that the footsteps of John and the maid should not disquiet him? The very appearance of the garden, both before and behind the house, was sufficient to show how orderly a genius presided over it. Could box be cut more neatly? or gravel-walks be kept cleaner? You saw a tall lance-like instrument standing by the steps of the back-door, its constant place. With this Mr Bloomfield frequently made the circuit of his garden, but with no hostile purpose: he merely transfixed with it the dry leaves or the splinters of wood that had strayed upon his gravel, carrying them off in triumph to a neat wooden receptacle, where they were both imprisoned and preserved. And Miss Bloomfield, she also was one of the most amiable of women, and as attached to a quiet and orderly house as her brother. Neither could any two persons be more kind, or more fond of their niece, than they were. But it was from this very kindness, this very fondness, that Mildred found it so pleasant at times to escape. Her aunt, especially, was willing to grant her any indulgence but that of being alone. This her love for her niece, and her love of talking, would rarely permit. Neither could Mildred very graciously petition for this unsocial privilege. In youth, nothing is so delightful as solitude, especially when it is procured by stealth, by some subtle contrivance, some fiction or pretence; and many a time did her aunt find it necessary to pursue Mildred to her own chamber, and many a time did she bring her down into the parlour, repeating, with unfeigned surprise, and a tone of gentle complaint, the always unanswerable question – what she could be doing so long in her own room? Therefore it was that she was fain to steal out alone – take her walk through the churchyard, ascend the tower, enter its little library, and plant herself in its old arm-chair for an hour of solitary reading or thinking.

Mildred Willoughby was born in India, and her parents (the greatest misery attendant upon a residence in that climate) were compelled to send her to England to be reared, as well as educated. She had been placed under the care of her uncle and aunt. These had always continued to live together – bachelor and spinster. As their united incomes enabled them to surround themselves with every comfort and personal luxury, and as they were now of a very mature age, it was no longer considered to be in the chapter of probabilities that either of them would change their condition. Miss Bloomfield, in her youth, was accounted a beauty – the belle of Wimborne; and we may be sure that personal charms, a very amiable disposition, and a considerable fortune, could not fail to bring her numerous admirers and suitors. But her extreme placidity of temper no passion seems ever to have ruffled; and it did so happen, that though her hand had often been solicited, no opportunity of marriage had been offered to her which would not have put in jeopardy some of those comforts and indulgences to which she was habituated. She was pleased with the attentions of gentlemen, and was studious to attract them; but there was nothing in that word love which could have compensated for the loss of her favourite attendants, or of that pretty little carriage that drew her about the country.

As for Mr Bloomfield, it was generally supposed that he had suffered from more than one tender disappointment, having always had the misfortune to fix his affections just where they could not be returned. But those who knew him well would say, that Josiah Bloomfield was, in fact, too timid and irresolute a man ever to have married – that being himself conscious of this, yet courting, at the same time, the excitement of a tender passion, he invariably made love where he was sure to be rejected. Many a fascinating girl came before him, whom he might have won, from whose society, for this very reason, he quietly withdrew, to carry his sighs to some quarter where a previous engagement, or some other obstacle, was sure to procure him a denial. He thus had all the pleasing pains of wooing, and earned the credit for great sensibility, whilst he hugged himself in the safe felicity of a single life. By this time, a more confirmed or obdurate bachelor did not exist; yet he was pleased to be thought to wear the willow, and would, from time to time, endeavour to extort compassion by remote hints at the sufferings he had endured from unreturned affection.

Two such persons, it will be supposed, were at first somewhat alarmed at the idea of taking into their establishment a little girl about four or five years old. Indeed, they had, in the first instance, only so far agreed to take charge of her as to find her a fit school – to receive her at the holidays – and, in this distant manner, superintend her education. But Mildred proved so quiet, so tractable, and withal so cheerful a child, that they soon resolved to depart from this plan. She had not been long in the house before it would have been a great distress to both of them to have parted with her. It was determined that she should reside perpetually with them, and that the remittances received from India should be employed in obtaining the very best masters that could be procured from Bath or Exeter. Mr Bloomfield found, in the superintendence of Mildred's education, an employment which made the day half as short as it had ever been before. He was himself a man fond of reading; and if he had not a very large store of thoughts, he had at least an excellent library, into which Mildred, who had now arrived at the age of fifteen, had already begun to penetrate.

And books – her music – &c., a few friends, more distinguished by good-breeding and good-nature than by any vivacity of mind, were all the world of Mildred Willoughby, and it was a world that there seemed little probability of her getting beyond. It had been expected that about this time she would have returned to India to her parents; but her mother had died, and her father had expressed no wish that she should be sent out to him. On the contrary, beyond certain pecuniary remittances, and these came through an agent's hands, there was nothing to testify that he bore any remembrance of his daughter. Of her father, very contradictory reports had reached her; some said that he had married again, and had formed an engagement of which he was not very proud; others that he had quitted the service, and was now travelling, no one knew where, about the world. At all events, he appeared to have forgotten that he had a daughter in England; and Mildred was almost justified in considering herself – as she did in her more melancholy moments – as in fact an orphan, thrown upon the care of an uncle and aunt, and dependent almost entirely upon them.

One fine summer's day, as she was enjoying her lofty solitude in the minster tower, a visitor had been allowed to grope up his way unattended into its antique library. On entering, he was not a little startled to see before him in this depository of mouldering literature a blooming girl in all the freshness and beauty of extreme youth. He hesitated a moment whether to approach and disturb so charming a vision. But, indeed, the vision was very soon disturbed. For Mildred, on her side, was still more startled at this entrance, alone and suddenly, of a very handsome young man – for such the stranger was – and blushed deeply as she rose from her chair and attempted to play as usual the part of casual visitor. He bowed – what could he less? – and made some apology for his having startled her by his abrupt entrance.

The stranger's manner was so quiet and unpresuming, that the timidity of Mildred soon disappeared, and before she had time to think what was most proper to do, she found herself in a very interesting conversation with one who evidently was as intelligent as he was well-bred and good-looking. She had let fall her book in her hurry to rise. He picked it up, and as he held the elegantly bound volume in his hand, which ludicrously contrasted with the mouldy and black-letter quartos that surrounded them, he asked with a smile, on which shelf he was to deposit it. "This fruit," said he, "came from another orchard." And seeing the title at the back, he added, "Italian I might have expected to find in a young lady's hand, but I should have looked for a Tasso, not an Alfieri."

"Yes," she replied gaily, "a damsel discovered reading in this old turret ought to have book of chivalry in her hand. I have read Tasso, but I do not prefer him. Alfieri presents me quite as much as Tasso with a new world to live in, and it is a more real world. I seem to be learning from him the real feelings of men."

The stranger was manifestly struck by this kind of observation from one so young, and still more by the simple and unpretending manner in which it was uttered. Mildred had not the remotest idea of talking criticism, she was merely expressing her own unaffected partialities. He would have been happy to prolong the conversation, but the clerk, or verger, who had missed his visitor – as well he might, for his visitor had purposely given him the slip, as all wise men invariably do to all cicerones of whatever description – had at length tracked his fugitive up the tower, and into the library. His entrance interrupted their dialogue, and compelled the stranger very soon afterwards to retreat. He made his bow to the fair lady of the tower and descended.