The effect on the Army was immediate. A great many of the returned
exiles, including Charles and James themselves, had served in the
French army, where the system of purchasing commissions had never
been abandoned, and where the abuses which had been shaken off by
the New Model were still in full vigour. The old corrupt traditions
had not been killed in thirteen years, and, reviving under the
general reaction against Puritan restraint, they sprang quickly
into new life. The old military centralisation of Oliver, upheld
for a time by Monk, rapidly perished, and what might have still
been an army sank into a mere aggregate of regiments, the property
of individual colonels, and of troops and companies, the property
of individual captains. Every civilian of the military departments
hastened to make money at the expense of the officers, and every
officer to enrich himself at the cost of the men. The flood-gates
so carefully closed by the Puritans were opened, and the abuses
of three centuries streamed back into their old channel to flow
therein unchecked for two centuries more.

At its first renewal the system of purchase was carried to such
lengths that the very privates paid premiums to the enlisting
officers; but the practice was speedily checked by Monk in 1663. In
March 1684 the system received a kind of royal sanction through the
purchase by the King himself of a commission from one officer for
presentation to another. Then nine months later Charles suddenly
declared that he would permit no further purchase and sale of
military appointments. Whether he would have abolished it if he had
lived may be doubted, but it is certain that the system continued
in full operation under James the Second, gathering strength of
course with each new year of existence.

Let me now attempt briefly to sketch the organised system of
robbery that prevailed in the military service under the two
last of the Stuarts. The study may be unpleasant, but it is less
pathological than historic. First, then, let us treat of the
officer. On purchasing his commission he paid forthwith one fee
to the Secretary at War, and a second, apparently, to one of the
Secretaries of State. After the institution of Chelsea Hospital,
as to which a word shall presently be said, he paid further five
per cent on his purchase money towards its funds, the seller of
the commission contributing a like proportion from the same sum to
the same object. He then became entitled to the pay of his rank,
but this by no means implied that it was regularly paid to him.
In the first place, his pay was divided into two parts, termed
respectively his subsistence and his arrears, or clearings. The
former sum was a proportion of the full pay, which varied according
to the grade of the officer, it being obvious that an ensign, for
instance, could not subsist if any large fraction was deducted
from his daily pittance, whereas a major could be more heavily
mulcted and yet not starve. This subsistence was therefore paid,
or supposed to be issued, in advance from the pay-office and to be
subject to no stoppage. The balance of the full pay, or arrears,
was paid yearly after it became due, and after considerable
deductions had been made from it. First of these deductions came
the poundage, or payment of one shilling in the pound, to the
paymaster-general, and the discharge of one day's full pay to
Chelsea Hospital. These stoppages were more or less legitimate.
Then the commissary-general of the musters stepped in to claim
from the officer, as from every one else in the Army, one day's
pay, a tax which caused much discontent, and was in 1680 reduced
to one-third of a day's pay. Then came a vast number of irregular
exactions. Every commissary of the musters claimed a fee, amounting
sometimes to as much as two guineas for every troop or company
passed at each muster, which, as musters were taken six times a
year, was sufficiently exorbitant. Next the auditors demanded
thirty shillings, or eight times their legal fee, for each troop
and company on passing the accounts of the paymaster-general.
Finally, fees to the exchequer, fees to the treasury, fees for the
issue of pay-warrants, fees, in a word, to every greedy clerk who
could make himself disagreeable, brought the tale of extortion to
an end. Let the reader remember that this system of subsistence
and arrears, with the same legitimate deductions and almost equal
opportunities for irregular pilfering, was still in force when we
began the war of the French Revolution, and let him not wonder that
officers of the Army will still cherish unfriendly feelings towards
the clerks at the War Office.[212]

Now comes the more distressing examinations of the officers'
methods of indemnifying themselves. For this purpose let us study
the pay of a private centinel, as he was called, of the infantry
of the Line. This consisted, as it had been in Queen Mary's time,
and was still to be in King George the Third's, of eightpence a
day, or £12 : 13 : 4 a year. Of this, sixpence a day, or £9 : 2
: 6 a year, was set apart for his subsistence, and was nominally
inviolable. The balance, £3 : 0 : 10 a year, was called the "gross
off-reckonings," which were subject of course to a deduction of
five per cent, or 12s. 2d., for the paymaster-general, and of one
day's pay to Chelsea Hospital, whereby the gross off-reckonings
were reduced to £2 : 8s. This last amount, dignified by the title
of "net off-reckonings," was made over to the colonel for the
clothing of the regiment, an item which included not only the
actual garments, but also the sword and belt, and as time went on
the bayonet and cartridge box. The system, as will be remembered,
dated from the days of Queen Elizabeth, when half a crown a week
was allowed to the men for subsistence and a total of £4 : 2 : 6
deducted for two suits a year. It is sufficiently plain that the
sum now allowed for clothing was insufficient, and that a colonel
who did his duty by his men must inevitably be a loser. Moreover,
this was not his only expense. The clerical work entailed by his
duties demanded assistance, for which he was indeed authorised
to keep a clerk, but supplied with no allowance wherewith to pay
him. This clerk presently became known as the colonel's agent, and
though a civilian and the colonel's private servant, virtually
performed the duties of a regimental paymaster.

The results of such an arrangement may easily be guessed. It
was not in consonance with military tradition, certainly not in
accordance with human nature, that colonels should lose money by
their commands, and it is only too certain that they did not. The
contractor was called in, and the door was opened wide to robbery
at the expense of the soldier. Colonels took commissions or even
open bribes from the contractors; the agent took his fee likewise;
and in at least one recorded case a colonel actually accepted a
bribe from his own agent to give him the contract. It may easily
be imagined how the soldiers fared for clothing. But the mischief
did not end here. The subsistence-money, though in theory subject
to no deduction, was practically at the mercy of the colonel and
his agent, who, under various pretexts, appropriated a greater or
smaller share of the poor soldier's sixpence. As an additional
source of profit, it was not uncommon for colonels to abstain from
reporting the vacancy caused by an officer's death, to continue to
draw the dead man's pay and to put it into his own pocket.

Captains of companies, with such an example before them, were not
slow to imitate it; and from them too the unfortunate soldiers
suffered not a little. But their easiest road to plunder was the
old beaten track of false musters, which was rendered all the
easier by the corruption of the commissaries. Any vacancy in the
ranks after one muster was left unfilled until the day before
the next muster, and the captain drew pay for an imaginary man
during the interval. Or again, the _passe-volant_, old as the days
of Hawkwood, made his reappearance at musters and was passed,
with or without the collusion of the commissaries, as a genuine
soldier. Finally, Charles himself gave countenance after a manner
to this fraud by reviving the practice of allowing officers so
many imaginary men or permanent vacancies in each troop or company
in order to increase their emoluments. And so the _passe-volant_
became naturalised first as a "faggot," and later as a "warrant
man" in the infantry and a "hautbois" in the cavalry, and survived
to a period well within the memory of living men.[213] The
remoter a regiment's quarters from home the grosser were the
abuses that prevailed in it, and in Ireland they seem to have
passed all bounds. Captains calmly appropriated the entire pay of
their companies, and turned the men loose to live by the plunder
of the inhabitants. It was a reversion to the evils rampant in
Queen Elizabeth's army in the Netherlands, and, in justice to the
officers, it must be added that those evils were brought about
in both cases by the same cause. Officers were simply forced
into dishonesty by the withholding of their own pay by civilian
officials in London.

It must not be thought that these scandals passed unnoticed at
headquarters. As early as 1663 orders were issued to put a stop
to fraudulent musters, and two years later the salaries of the
officers of the Ordnance were increased almost threefold to check
the sale of places and to diminish the temptation to accept bribes.
Similar orders were respectively promulgated from time to time,
but with little or no effect; possibly they were issued mainly
as a matter of form, to stop the mouth of criticism. The root of
the evil is to be traced to the civilian paymaster-general, who
from the peculiarity of his position was accountable to no one,
and enjoyed total irresponsibility for full forty years. The King
no doubt flattered himself that the men were regularly paid;
the abuses took some time to attain to their height, and in the
short reign of James the Second it is probable that his attention
to military business did somewhat to improve matters. But while
Charles was on the throne the paymaster-general did as he pleased.
Though wages were nominally paid after each muster, they were often
withheld for months, and even for years. Finally, when payment
was at last made, it was discharged not in cash but in tallies
or debentures which could only be sold at a discount; while the
colonels' agents seized the opportunity to deduct a percentage in
consideration of the trouble to which they had been subjected to
obtain any payment whatever.

So the old foundations of fraud were renovated, and on them was
built during the next century and a half a gigantic superstructure
of rascality and corruption which is not yet wholly demolished. Let
it not be thought that in the seventeenth century such malpractices
were either new or confined to England. They were, as I have
often repeated, as old almost as the art of war, and they were
rampant all over Europe. The excuse of English officers for their
dishonesty was always, "It is so in France," and in France, as the
history of the French Revolution shows, the old evils endured and
throve for another full century. But the sin and shame of England
is, that though she had once put away the accursed thing from her,
she returned to it again as the sow to her wallowing in the mire.
In 1659 English soldiers were proud of their name and calling; in
1666 it had already become a scandal to be a Life Guardsman.[214]
Recruits had been found without difficulty under the Commonwealth
to make the military profession, as was the rule in those days, the
business of their whole life; but after a very few years of the
Stuarts the King was compelled to resort to the press-gang. The
status of the soldier was lowered, and has never recovered itself
to this day.

I turn from this melancholy tale of retrogression to contemplate
the changes made in other departments of the service. Herein it
will be most convenient to begin with the regimental organisation
and equipment. First, then, let us glance at the cavalry, which at
the Restoration appears definitely to have taken precedence as the
senior service. The reader will remember that in the New Model the
fixed strength of a regiment was six troops of one hundred men,
which was reduced in time of peace to an establishment of sixty
men. Setting aside the Life Guards, which were independent troops
of two hundred gentlemen apiece, the regiment which first occupies
our attention is the Blues, which began life with eight troops,
each of sixty men. So far there was practically no change, but in
1680 the strength of the Blues was diminished to fifty men in a
troop; and in 1687 the newly raised regiments were established
at an initial strength of six or seven troops of forty men only.
Finally, as shall presently be seen in the campaigns that lie
before us in Flanders, the establishment of a troop for war sinks
to fifty men, and the establishment for peace to thirty-six.
Here, therefore, is Cromwell's excellent system overthrown. The
troop of cavalry is so far weakened as to be not worth assorting
into three divisions, one to each of the three officers, and the
seeds of enforced idleness are sown, to bear fruit an hundredfold.
Hardly less significant is the appointment, in 1661, of regimental
adjutants to help the majors in the duties which they had hitherto
discharged without assistance.

The equipment of the Horse was likewise altered. The trooper
retained the iron head-piece[215] and cuirass, the pistols and the
sword of the New Model, but he was now further supplied with a
carbine, which was slung at his back, and with a cartridge box for
his ammunition. The new equipment was served out to the household
troops in 1663, and to other regiments of Horse in 1677. It marks a
new birth of the futile practice of firing from the saddle, which
has wasted untold ammunition with infinitesimal results. As regards
horses it was still the rule, which had been little modified during
the Civil War, that the trooper should bring with him his own
horse; if he had none the King supplied him with one, at an average
price, and the money was stopped, if necessary, from the trooper's
pay.

The drill still bore marks of Cromwell's influence, for the men
were drawn up in three ranks only; and though the attack was opened
by the discharge of carbines and pistols, yet it was distinctly
laid down that when the fire-arms were empty, there must be
no thought of reloading, but immediate resort to the sword.
Moreover, although the front was still increased or diminished by
the doubling of ranks or files, there were already signs of the
manœuvre by small divisions that was to displace it.

Passing next to the dragoons, the reader will have noticed that
this arm was not represented in the original Army formed by Charles
the Second. Notwithstanding the high reputation which dragoons
had enjoyed during the Civil War, it was not until 1672 that a
regiment of them was raised, and then only to be disbanded after
a brief existence of two years. The Tangier Horse, now called the
First Royal Dragoons, was converted into a regiment of dragoons
on its return from foreign service in 1684; and four years later
there was added to the establishment a Scotch regiment which bears
a famous name. It was made up in 1681 of three independent troops
that had been raised three years before, and was completed by three
additional troops, under the name of the Royal Regiment of Dragoons
of Scotland. It now ranks as the Second regiment of the Cavalry of
the Line, and is known to all the world as the Scots Greys.

Dragoons still preserved their original character of mounted
infantry. Twelve men of each troop besides the non-commissioned
officers were armed with the halberd and a pair of pistols, while
the remainder were equipped with matchlock muskets, bandoliers,
and, after 1672, with bayonets. In 1687 this equipment was improved
by the substitution of flintlocks for matchlocks, of cartridge
boxes for bandoliers, and of buckets, in addition to the old
slings, for the carriage of muskets. The tactical unit of the
dragoons was still called the company, though at the close of the
Civil War often denominated the troop; but the tendency of dragoons
to assimilate themselves to horse is seen in the substitution
of cornet for ensign as the title of the junior subaltern. This
tendency was perhaps the stranger, since the companies of dragoons,
eighty men strong, must have presented a favourable contrast to the
weak and attenuated troops of horse.

A new description of mounted soldier appeared in 1683,[216] in the
shape of the Horse-grenadier. I shall have more to say presently
of grenadiers, when treating of the infantry, so it is sufficient
to state here that Horse-grenadiers were practically only mounted
men of that particular arm, who as a rule linked their horses for
action and fought on foot like the dragoons. There were in all
three troops of Horse-grenadiers, which were attached to the three
troops of Life Guards. Their peculiarity was that the two junior
officers of each troop were both lieutenants, instead of lieutenant
and cornet.

The infantry, like the cavalry, suffered an alteration in the
regimental establishments after the Restoration. The old strength
of one hundred and twenty to a company was reduced to one hundred,
and in time of peace sank to eighty, sixty, and even fifty men.
The number of companies to a battalion was also altered. The First
Guards began life with twelve companies; and though for a time the
Coldstreamers and newly raised regiments retained the original
number of ten, yet twelve gradually became the usual, and after
the accession of James the Second, the accepted, strength of a
battalion. It must be noted that after 1672 a battalion and a
regiment of foot cease to be synonymous terms, the First Guards
being in that year increased to twenty-four companies and two
battalions, a precedent which was soon extended to sundry other
regiments.

On the accession of James there was added to the twelve companies
of every regiment an additional company of grenadiers. These
were established first in 1678, and took their name from the
grenade,[217] the new weapon with which they were armed. The
hand grenade was simply a small shell of from one to two inches
in diameter, kindled by a fuse and thrown by the hand. Hence
it was entrusted to the tallest and finest men in the regiment,
who might reasonably be expected to throw it farthest. The white
plume, supposed to be symbolic of the white smoke of the fuse,
was not apparently used at first as the distinctive mark of
grenadiers. They, and the fusiliers likewise, wore caps instead
of broad-brimmed hats, to enable them to sling their firelocks
over both shoulders with ease. These caps, which were at first
of fur, were soon made of cloth, and assumed the shape of the
mitre which Hogarth has handed down to us. Another peculiarity
of grenadiers was that they were always armed with firelocks and
with hatchets,[218] and that both of their subaltern officers were
lieutenants.

Another new branch of the infantry was the regiment of Fusiliers,
so called from the fusil or flintlock, as opposed to the matchlock,
with which they were armed. They were, in fact, simply an expansion
of the companies of firelocks which formed part of the New Model
in the department of the Train; they were borne for duty with the
artillery specially, and therefore included one company of miners.
Miner-companies were armed with long carbines and hammer-hatchets
peculiar to themselves, and they had but one subaltern officer, a
lieutenant. Like the grenadiers, the fusiliers did not recognise
the rank of ensign, and their junior subalterns were therefore
called second lieutenants.[219]

It is somewhat remarkable that so much should have been made of
a weapon so familiar as the firelock. Men who, like Gustavus
Adolphus, saw that the whole future of warfare turned on the fire
of musketry, had long accepted its superiority to the matchlock;
and George Monk, on marching into London in 1660, had at once
ordered the Coldstreamers to return their matchlocks into store
and to draw firelocks in their stead. Nor was this preference
confined solely to military reformers, for we find the Assemblies
of Barbados and Jamaica, remote islands in which old fashions might
have been expected to die their hardest, uncompromisingly rejecting
the matchlocks prescribed for them by the English Government
and insisting on arming themselves with "fusees."[220] At home,
however, jobbery and corruption were doubtless at work, for the
Coldstream Guards reverted to the matchlock in 1665. Finally, after
many compromises, the Guards were in 1683 armed exclusively with
firelocks, while the other regiments carried a fixed proportion,
probably not less than one-half, of the superior weapon among their
matchlocks.

Correspondingly we find throughout these reigns a steady diminution
in the use of the pike. In companies of grenadiers and regiments
of fusiliers they were utterly abolished; in other corps the
proportion, which had once been one-half, had already sunk at the
Restoration to one-third, whence it speedily declined to one-fourth
and one-fifth.[221] We find them, however, still in use during the
wars of William the Third, and we shall see that they did not want
advocates even at the close of the Seven Years' War, to say nothing
of the part that they played in the French Revolution.[222] As a
weapon for officers it survived for many generations under the form
of the half-pike or spontoon,[223] even as the halberd prolonged
its life as the peculiar weapon of sergeants. To the officers also
was assigned by a singular coincidence the preservation of the
memory of the armour which had once been worn by all pikemen; and
the gorget survived as a badge of rank on their breasts long after
corslet and tassets had vanished from the world.[224]

None the less the pike had received its death-blow through the
invention of the bayonet. This new and revolutionary weapon had
been invented in 1640, when it consisted of a double-edged blade,
like a pike-head, mounted on two or three inches of wooden haft,
which could be thrust into the barrel of the musket. In this form
the bayonet was issued first to the Tangier regiment[225] alone in
1663, and to all the infantry and dragoons in 1673, but only to
be withdrawn, until in 1686 it was finally reissued to the Foot
Guards. It was not until after the Revolution that bayonets were
served out to the whole of the infantry.

In the matter of drill there was little or no change. The front
was still increased or diminished by the doubling of ranks and of
files, and the file still consisted of six men. The reduction of
the numbers of pikemen, however, greatly increased the homogeneity
of the infantry and contributed not a little to simplify its
movements. Moreover, although the file might consist of six men,
it is not likely, considering how far the musket and bayonet had
superseded the pike, that the formation for action was greater than
three ranks in depth. The platoon is not mentioned in the drill
books, the probable reason being that it was not favoured by the
French School, in which Charles and James had both of them received
their training. But for this, there is every reason to suppose
that the army encamped on Hounslow Heath would not have been found
behind the times in the matter of exercise and equipment if it
could have been transported without change to the field of Blenheim.

Of the artillery there is still little to be said. Until 1682
gunners seem to have enjoyed their original distribution into
small, independent bodies, in charge of the various scattered
garrisons. Even such small organisation as appeared in the New
Model seems to have been lost, and field-guns appear to have been
told off to battalions of infantry, or to have been worked by
such of the escort of fusiliers as had been trained by the few
expert gunners. The artilleryman had long looked upon himself
as a superior mortal,[226] but in 1682 he was brought under the
Ordnance, subjected to military discipline, and regularly exercised
at his duty. The time was not far distant when the organisation of
the gunners was to be improved. Of engineers I can say no more than
the few details already given when describing the Ordnance Office
and the fusiliers.

A word remains to be said of the foundation of Chelsea Hospital.
It has been told that Queen Mary was the first of our sovereigns
who showed any care for old soldiers, and that Elizabeth was
intolerably impatient of such miserable creatures. Two generations,
however, had bred a softer heart in English sovereigns, and when
Charles the Second had been twenty years on the throne, and England
was again thronged with maimed and infirm soldiers who had served
their time in Tangier, in the West Indies, or in the Low Countries,
it was felt to be a reproach that faithful fighting-men should
be left to starve or to beg their bread. Kilmainham Hospital in
Dublin was the first-fruit of this sentiment, and was founded in
1680; Chelsea followed it in the succeeding year. Sir Stephen Fox,
the paymaster-general, was the man who was foremost in the work,
and it is to his credit that, having made so much money out of the
private soldier, he should have chosen this method of repaying
him. The scheme of the hospital was submitted to the King, who was
asked to grant a piece of land for a building. Charles, always
gracious, readily complied, and offered the site of St. James's
College, Chelsea. "But odso!" he added, "I now recollect that I
have already given that land to Mistress Nell here." Whereupon, so
runs the story, whether true or untrue, Nell gracefully forewent
her grant for so good a purpose; and Chelsea Hospital is the
British soldier's to this day. It is painful to have to add that
the officials of the pay-office seem to have begun at once to steal
part of the money contributed by the Army to its maintenance,
though the fact will astonish no reader who has followed me through
this chapter. But the friends of the Army have always been few, and
the best of them in former times, strange conjunction, were a queen
and a harlot. Had they endowed a fund for supplying African negroes
with Bibles, or even with mass-books, much would be forgiven them
in England; but they thought more of saving old soldiers from
want, so Mary Tudor is still Bloody Mary, and Eleanor Gwyn the
unspeakable Nell.

  AUTHORITIES.--The reader will find the fullest of references
  for the details in this chapter in Clifford Walton's _History
  of the British Standing Army_, with an index which will
  enable him to trace them without difficulty. Having myself
  perused the War Office books and papers in the Record Office,
  and the Calendars of the Domestic and Treasury State Papers
  independently, I can answer for the care and accuracy of the
  author in the preparation of this vast store of information, and
  gladly acknowledge my debt to it. The defect of the work is, of
  course, that it begins abruptly at the year 1660. Mr. Dalton's
  _Army Lists and Commission Registers_ are also of great value,
  and claim the gratitude of all workers in the field of English
  military history. Sir Sibbald Scott's _British Army_ is worth
  consulting occasionally for a few details, but is superseded by
  Hewitt's _Ancient Armour_ on one side, and by Colonel Clifford
  Walton on the other. Mackinnon's _Coldstream Guards_ contains a
  very valuable appendix of ancient documents. Sir F. Hamilton's
  _History of the Grenadier Guards_ should be used only with
  extreme caution. The drill and exercise of the period may be
  studied in Venn's _Military Observations_, 1672.

BOOK V

CHAPTER I

Seldom has a man been confronted with such difficulties as those
that beset William of Orange when the Revolution was fairly
accomplished. So long as his success was still uncertain he stood
in his favourite position of a military commander doing his worst
against the power of France, while to the English nation he was a
champion and a deliverer. Once seated on the throne he found that
he had to do with a disorganised administration and a demoralised
people. Forty years of revolution, interrupted by twenty-five of
corrupt government, had done their work; and chaos reigned alike
in the minds of private men and in all departments of the public
service. Finally, as if this were not sufficient, there was a war
in Ireland, a war in Flanders, and the practical certainty of an
insurrection in Scotland.

His first trouble came quickly enough. Amid the general rejoicing
over the overthrow of King James the English Army stood apart,
surly and silent. The regiments felt that they had been fooled.
They had been concentrated to resist foreign invasion, but had been
withdrawn without any attempt to strike a blow. During his advance,
and after his arrival in London, William had detailed the British
regiments in the Dutch service for all duties which, if entrusted
to foreigners, might have offended national sentiment; but his
prudence could not reconcile the Army. The troops felt their
disgrace keenly, and the burden of their dishonour was aggravated
by the taunts of the foreigners. Moreover, the discipline of the
Dutch had been so admirable that English folk had not failed to
draw invidious comparisons between the well-conducted strangers
and their own red-coats. Needless to say, they never reflected
that Parliament, by withholding powers to enforce discipline, was
chiefly responsible for the delinquencies of the English soldier.
Discontent spread fast among the troops, and before the new king
had been proclaimed a month, found vent in open mutiny.

[Sidenote: 1689.]

On the news of William's expedition to England, France had
declared war against the States-General; and England, pursuant to
obligations of treaty, was called upon to furnish her contingent
of troops for their defence. On the 8th of March accordingly
Lieutenant-General Lord Marlborough was ordered to ship four
battalions of Guards and six of the Line[227] for Holland. Among
these battalions was the Royal Scots, to which regiment William,
doubtless with the best intentions, had lately appointed the Duke
of Schomberg to be colonel. Schomberg was by repute one of the
first soldiers in Europe. He had held a marshal's bâton in France
and had sacrificed it to the cause of the Protestant religion. He
had even fought by the side of the Royal Scots in more than one
great action. But he was not a Scotsman, and the Scots had known no
colonel yet but a Mackay, a Hepburn, or a Douglas. Moreover, the
Parliament at Westminster, though not a Scottish Assembly, had,
without consulting the regiment, coolly transferred its allegiance
from James Stuart to William of Nassau.

With much grumbling the Scots marched as far as Ipswich on their
way to their port of embarkation, and then, at a signal from some
Jacobite officers, they broke into mutiny, seized four cannon, and,
turning northward, advanced by forced marches towards Scotland.
The alarm in London was great. "If you let this evil spread," said
Colonel Birch, an old officer of Cromwell's day, "you will have an
army upon you in a few days." William at once detached Ginkell, one
of his best officers, with a large force in pursuit; the mutineers
were overtaken near Sleaford, and, finding resistance hopeless,
laid down their arms. William, selecting a few of the ringleaders
only for punishment, ordered the rest of the regiment to return
to its duty, and the Royal Scots sailed quietly away to the Maas.
There the men deserted by scores, and even by hundreds,[228]
but recruits were found, as good as they, to uphold the ancient
reputation of the regiment.

Meanwhile good came out of evil, for the mutiny frightened the
House of Commons not only into paying the expenses of William's
expedition, but into passing the first Mutiny Act. It is true that
the Act was passed for six months only, and that it provided for no
more than the punishment of mutiny and desertion; but it recognised
at least that military crime cannot be adequately checked by civil
law, and it gave the Army more or less of a statutory right to
exist. But readers should be warned once for all against the common
fallacy that the existence of the Army ever depended on the passing
of the annual Mutiny Act. The statute simply empowered the King to
deal with certain military crimes for which the civil law made no
provision. It made a great parade of the statement that the raising
or keeping of a standing army in time of peace is against law, but
the standing army was in existence for nearly thirty years before
the Mutiny Act was passed, and continued to exist, as will be seen,
for two short but distinct periods between 1689 and 1701 without
the help of any Mutiny Act whatever. If, therefore, the keeping of
a standing army in time of peace be against the law, it can only be
said that during those periods Parliament deliberately voted money
for the violation of the law, as indeed it is always prepared to do
when convenient to itself. The Mutiny Act was not a protection to
liberty; Parliament for the present reserved for itself no check
on the military code that might be framed by the King; and the Act
was therefore rather a powerful weapon placed in the hands of the
sovereign. Nevertheless, the passing of the Mutiny Act remains
always an incident of the first importance in the history of the
Army, and the story of its origin is typical of the attitude of
Parliament towards that long-suffering body. Every concession, nay,
every commonest requirement, must be wrung from it by the pressure
of fear.

It might have been thought that the news which came from Ireland a
few days before the mutiny would have stirred the House of Commons
to take some such measure in hand. Tyrconnel had already called
the Irish to arms for King James, and on the 14th of March James
himself, having obtained aid from the French king, had landed at
Cork with some hundreds of officers to organise the Irish levies.
The regular troops in the Irish establishment, already manipulated
by Tyrconnel before the Revolution, were ready to join him. Some
regiments went over to him entire; others split themselves up into
Catholics and Protestants, and ranged themselves on opposite sides.
It was evident that no less a task than the reconquest of Ireland
lay before the English Government; and considering that several
regiments had already been detached to Flanders, it was equally
evident that the Army must be increased. Estimates were therefore
prepared of the cost of six regiments of horse, two of dragoons,
and twenty-five of foot, sixteen of which last were to be newly
raised, for the coming campaign.

Of the new regiments a few lay ready to William's hand. The first
was Lord Forbes's regiment, one of the many Irish corps brought
over to England by King James in 1688, and the only one which,
being made up entirely of Protestants, was not disbanded by William
at his accession. It is still with us as the Eighteenth Royal
Irish. The next three were corps which had been raised for the
support of the Protestant cause at the Revolution. The first of
them was a regiment of horse raised by the Earl of Devonshire among
his tenantry in Derbyshire, which, long known by the name of the
Black Horse, now bears the title of the Seventh Dragoon Guards. The
second was a regiment of foot that had been formed at Exeter to
join the Prince of Orange on his march from Torbay, and is still
known as the Twentieth East Devon; and the third also remains
with us as the Nineteenth of the Line. Three more regiments date
their birth from March 1689--one raised by the Duke of Norfolk,
one enlisted in the Welsh Marches, and a third which was recruited
in Ireland but almost immediately brought over to England. These
are now the Twenty-second, Twenty-third, and Twenty-fourth of the
Line. Six more regiments of infantry which were raised in the same
year, but disbanded at the close of the war, were Drogheda's,
Lisburn's, Kingston's, Ingoldsby's, Roscommon's, and Bolton's. Of
these, curiously enough, no fewer than three were dressed in blue
instead of scarlet coats, possibly in flattering imitation of King
William's famous Blue Guards. Thus, with ten thousand men to be
enlisted, drilled, trained, and equipped, there was no lack of work
for the recruiting officer, or for the Office of Ordnance, in the
spring of

[Sidenote: May 10.]

It was not long before William and Schomberg made the discovery
that the old regiments would require as much watching as the new.
There were significant symptoms of rottenness in the whole military
system; and discontented spirits were already spreading false and
calumnious reports as to the treatment of the English regiments in
Flanders, with the evident design of kindling a mutiny. Moreover,
there were loud complaints from citizens of oppression by the
soldiery, from soldiers of the fraudulent withholding of their pay,
and from every honest officer, not, alas! a very numerous body,
of false musters, embezzlement, fraud, and every description of
abuse. The King lost no time in appointing nine commissioners,
with Schomberg at their head, to make the tour of the quarters
in England, to inquire into the true state of the case, and if
possible to restore order and discipline.[229]

[Sidenote:

         15
  August --.
         25
]

Still more disquieting news came from the Prince of Waldeck, who
commanded the confederate army in Flanders. The English regiments
were far below the strength assigned to them on paper, their
officers were ill-paid, and many of them, even the colonels,
ill-conducted; the men were sickly, listless,[230] undisciplined,
and disorderly; their shoes were bad, their clothing miserable,
their very arms defective. William, whose eyes always rested by
preference on the eastern side of the German Ocean, lost no time
in sending his best officer to Flanders; but even the Earl of
Marlborough had much ado to reduce these unruly elements to order.
Nevertheless he persevered; and in the one serious action wherein
the British were engaged during the campaign, that against Marshal
d'Humières at Walcourt, Marlborough opened the eyes of Waldeck
to the qualities of his men and to his own capacity. This was
Marlborough's first brush with a Marshal of France; and it would
seem that it was never forgotten by William. With this we may
dismiss the campaign in Flanders for 1689.

Meanwhile another soldier of remarkable talent, and an old comrade
of William, had rushed into rebellion in Scotland. The dragoons
with which Dundee had harried the Covenanters and earned the name
of "Bloody Claver'se" were still ready to his hand, and to these,
by fanning the undying flame of tribal feud, he presently added an
array of Highland clans. The flight of Dundee from Edinburgh on his
errand of insurrection warned the city to take speedy measures for
its defence. Lord Leven caused the drums to beat, and within two
hours, it is said, had raised eight hundred men; but the work of
these two hours has lasted for two centuries, for the regiment thus
hastily enlisted is still alive as the Twenty-fifth of the Line.
Shortly after, William sent up three Scotch regiments of the Dutch
service under a veteran officer, Mackay; and the Highland war began
in earnest. Skilful, however, as Mackay might be on the familiar
battle-grounds of Flanders, he was helpless in the Highlands, where
one week with George Monk would have helped him more than all the
campaigns of Turenne. He crawled over the country conscientiously
enough in pursuit of an enemy that he could never overtake, without
further result than to exhaust the strength of both horses and men.
It was not until one stage of a desultory campaign had been ended
and a new one begun, that he at last met his enemy at Killiecrankie.

[Sidenote: July 27.]

There is no need for me to repeat the story told once for all by
Lord Macaulay, of that romantic action; but it is worth while to
glance at some few of its peculiarities. Mackay's force consisted
of five battalions--the three Scottish regiments already mentioned,
Hastings', now the Thirteenth Light Infantry, and the newly raised
Twenty-fifth, together with two troops of horse. Of these the
Scottish battalions, trained in the Dutch School by competent
officers, should unquestionably have been the most efficient; yet
all three of them broke before the charge of the Highlanders,
threw down their arms, and would not be rallied. The two troops of
horse took to their heels and disappeared; the Twenty-fifth broke
like the other Scottish regiments, as was pardonable in such young
soldiers, though they made some effort to rally. The only regiment
that stood firm was the Thirteenth, which kept up a murderous fire
to the end, and retired with perfect coolness and good order.
Yet this was their first action, and Hastings, their colonel,
was one of the most unscrupulous scoundrels, even in those days
of universal robbery, that ever robbed a regiment.[231] Thus the
troops which should have done best did worst, and those that might
have been expected to do worst did best; and the moral would seem
to be that inexperienced troops are sometimes safer than troops
trained in civilised warfare for the rough-and-ready fighting of a
savage campaign.

A still more curious example of the same peculiarity was seen
before the close of the war. At the end of the first stage of
Mackay's campaign it was found necessary to raise fresh troops;
and it was hoped that the Covenanters of Western Scotland, who
of all men had most reason to detest bloody Claverhouse, might
be willing to furnish recruits. But the Covenanters had scruples
about joining the army of King William, wherein they might be set
shoulder to shoulder with the immoral and, even worse, with the
unorthodox. Even Mackay, a man of extreme piety,[232] was suspected
by them. They held a tumultuous meeting, wherein the majority,
little knowing probably how terribly true their words then were
of the British Army, declared that military service was a sinful
association. Nevertheless there was still a minority from which the
Earl of Angus formed a body of infantry, twelve hundred strong,
which, though now numbered Twenty-sixth of the Line, is still
best known by its first name of the Cameronians. Their ideas of
military organisation were peculiar. They desired that each company
should furnish an elder, who with the chaplain should constitute a
court for the suppression of immorality and heresy; and though the
elders were never appointed, and the officers bore the usual titles
of captain, lieutenant, and ensign, yet the chaplain, a noted
hill-preacher, supplied in his own person fanaticism for all. So in
spite of the ravings of the majority a true Puritan regiment once
more donned the red coat, under the youngest colonel--for Angus was
no more than eighteen--that had led such men since Henry Cromwell.

[Sidenote: August 21.]

Within four months they were engaged against four times their
number of Highlanders at Dunkeld. They were still imperfectly
disciplined, still somewhat of a congregation that preferred
elders to officers. They would not be satisfied that their mounted
officers would not gallop away, until the lieutenant-colonel and
major offered to shoot their horses before their eyes. Then they
braced themselves, and fought such a fight as has seldom fallen
to the lot of a regiment of recruits. The battle was fought amid
the roar of a burning town. Angus was not present--short though
his time was to be, it was not yet come--and his place was taken
by Lieutenant-Colonel Cleland. The action was hardly opened before
Cleland fell dead. The major stepped forward to his place, and a
minute after was pierced by three mortal wounds. The men too fell
fast; the musketry crackled round them, and the flames roared
behind them; but still they fought on. Ammunition failed them at
last; everything conspired to make the trial too hard for a young
regiment to endure; but nothing could break the spirit of these
men. At last, after four long hours, the Highlanders rolled back in
disorder. The Cameronians had won their first battle and ended the
Highland war.

But that war brought something more to the British Army even
than two famous Scottish regiments. For Mackay had noticed
that at Killiecrankie his Scotsmen had not had time to fix the
clumsy plug-bayonets into the muzzles of their muskets, and had
consequently been unable to meet the Highland charge. He therefore
ordered bayonets to be made so that they could be screwed on to the
outside of the barrel, thus enabling the men to fire with bayonets
fixed. So finally was accomplished the blending of pike and musket
into a single weapon, a great era in the history of the art of
war.[233]

But while recruiting officers were beating their drums through the
market towns of England, and Mackay was toiling in pursuit of the
Highlanders, Protestant Ireland was standing desperately at bay
against King James at Londonderry and Enniskillen. There is no need
for me to recall the triumph of the unconquerable defenders of
Derry; and it would be pleasanter, were it possible, to pass over
the somewhat discreditable behaviour of the Army in relation to
their relief. Five days, indeed, before the city was invested two
English regiments, the Ninth and Seventeenth Foot, had arrived in
the bay, but had been persuaded by the treacherous governor, Lundy,
to return and to leave Derry to its fate. Colonels Cunningham and
Richards, who commanded these corps, were both of them superseded
on their arrival in England; but no further help came until on the
15th of June General Kirke sailed into Lough Foyle with the Second,
Ninth, and Eleventh Foot. Even then he would not stir for six whole
weeks, when he received positive orders from home to relieve the
city.

[Sidenote: July 31.]

Meanwhile all operations of the Irish Protestants that were not
wholly defensive were directed from Enniskillen, which was filled
with refugees from Munster and Connaught. With extraordinary energy
these Protestants organised a body of horse and another of foot,
with which they kept up an incessant harassing warfare against
the insurgent Irish. On Kirke's arrival they applied to him for
reinforcements. These he refused to give; but he sent them arms and
he sent them officers, one of whom, Colonel Wolseley, equalled at
Newtown Butler Dundee's feat of Killiecrankie, of beating trained
soldiers with raw but enthusiastic levies. After this action the
force of the Enniskilleners was reorganised into two regiments
of dragoons and three of foot, which are represented among us to
this day by the Fifth Royal Irish Dragoons, now Lancers, the Sixth
Enniskillen Dragoons, and the Twenty-seventh Enniskillen regiment
of the infantry of Line.

The time was now come when the great English expedition for
the reconquest of Ireland should set sail. The untrained Irish
Protestant had played his part gallantly, and it was the turn
of the English soldier. For months great preparations had been
going forward; the new regiments had been raised; and on paper
at any rate there were not only horse, foot, and dragoons, but a
respectable train of artillery and of transport. Moreover, the
failure of Cunningham and Richards had led Parliament to inquire
into the conduct of that expedition; and it had been discovered
that the supply of transport-ships had been so insufficient that
the men had not had space even to lie down, while the biscuit
provided for them had been mouldy and uneatable, and the beer so
foul and putrid that they preferred to drink salt water. These
shortcomings had occurred in the dispatch of a couple of battalions
only; it remained to be seen how the military departments could
cope with the transport and maintenance of an entire army. The
total force to be employed in Ireland was close on nineteen
thousand men, of which about one-fourth was already on the spot.

[Sidenote: August 13.]

William had chosen Marshal Schomberg to command the expedition.
Though past fourscore, the veteran was still active and fit for
duty; and in reputation there was no better officer in Europe. On
the 13th of August he landed with his army at Bangor and detached
twelve regiments to besiege Carrickfergus. The garrison held out
for a week, and was then permitted to capitulate and to march
away to Newry. But that week was sufficient to open Schomberg's
eyes. The new regiments proved to be mobs of undisciplined
boys. Their officers were ignorant, negligent, and useless. The
arms served out from the Tower were so ill-made, and the men so
careless in the handling of them, that nearly every regiment
required to be re-armed. The officers of artillery were not only
ignorant and lazy, but even cowardly,[234] while their guns were
so defective that a week of easy work had sufficed to render most
of them unserviceable.[235] Senior officers were as deficient
as junior: there was not one qualified to command a brigade;
and the commissary, in spite of reports that he had made all
needful provision, had failed to supply sufficient stores. Lastly,
in spite of the warning given by the experience of Cunningham
and Richards, the transport across St. George's Channel was so
shamefully conducted that one regiment of horse, that now known
as the Queen's Bays, lost every charger and troop-horse in the
passage.[236] The result was that all was confusion, and that every
detail in every department required the personal supervision of the
Commander-in-Chief.

Fortunately James's Irish were so far demoralised by previous
failures that his officer at Belfast thought it prudent to evacuate
that town. Schomberg therefore threw a garrison into it, and
marched with his whole force upon Newry. The Duke of Berwick, who
was guarding the road, fell back on his approach to Drogheda, where
James had collected twenty thousand men; and Schomberg, advancing
through a wasted and deserted country, halted, and entrenched
himself at Dundalk. James struggled forward to within a league of
him to try and tempt him to an action, but Schomberg was not to be
entrapped; and by the second week in September the campaign was
over.

The fact was that a month's service in the field had completely
broken the English Army down. By the time when it reached Dundalk
it was on the brink of starvation. The Commissary-General, one
Shales, was a man of experience, for he had been purveyor to King
James's camp at Hounslow; and he had accumulated stores--bad
stores, it is true, but nevertheless stores--at the base, Belfast.
But he had made no provision for carrying any part of them with
the Army. He had bought up large numbers of horses in Cheshire,
but, instead of transporting them to Ireland, had let them out
to the farmers of the district for the harvest, and pocketed
their hire.[237] Again, the artillery could not be moved because
the Ordnance Department looked to Shales to provide horses,
while Shales declared the artillery to be no business of his.
Moreover, had the horses been on the spot, there was not a shoe
ready for their feet.[238] No measures had been taken, in spite of
Schomberg's representations, to victual the troops by sea, though
Cromwell had shown forty years before, in Scotland, how readily
the work could be done. But indeed the expedition would have been
better managed than it was by following the guidance of so old a
master as King Edward the Third.[239] Never was there a more signal
example of English ignorance, neglect, and sloth in respect of
military administration.

By the 18th of September victuals at Dundalk were at famine price,
and the men began to perish by scores and by hundreds. It was
hardly surprising, for they were not only unfed but unclothed;
there was not so much as a greatcoat in the whole of the English
infantry; the cavalry were without cloaks, boots, and belts, and
almost the entire force wanted shoes. Moreover, the English were
shiftless; when ordered to build themselves huts they could not
be at the pains to obey, even with the example of their Dutch
and Huguenot comrades before them. Sickness spread rapidly among
them, and there was no hospital; and had there been a hospital
there were no medicines. Finally, the behaviour of the officers
was utterly shameful. "The lions in Africa," wrote one who was
on the spot, "are not more barbarous than some of our officers
are to the sick."[240] "I never saw officers more wicked and more
interested," wrote Schomberg almost on the same day.[241] The
Commander-in-Chief did his best to interpose on behalf of the men,
but his hands were already overfull. The colonels were perhaps the
worst of all the officers; they understood pillage better than the
payment of their men, and filled their empty ranks with worthless
Irish recruits, simply because these were more easily cheated
than English.[242] It cost Schomberg a week's work to ensure that
the pay of the soldiers went into their own and not into their
captains' pockets.

Yet on the whole it was not the military officers that were
chiefly to blame. The constant complaint of Schomberg was that he
could get no money; and for this the Treasurer of the Army was
responsible. This functionary, William Harbord, a civilian and a
member of the House of Commons, appears to have been on the whole
the most shameless of all the officials in Ireland. By some jobbery
he had contrived to obtain an independent troop of cavalry, for
which he drew pay as though it were complete, though the troop
in reality consisted of himself, two clerks whom he put down as
officers, and a standard which he kept in his bedroom.[243] This
was the only corps which was regularly paid. The other regiments
he turned equally to his own advantage by sending home false
muster-rolls[244] in order to draw the pay of the vacancies; but
whenever the question of payment of the men was raised, he evaded
it and went to England, pleading the necessity of attending to
his duties in the House of Commons. It was Harbord again who was
responsible for the failure of the hospital. He admitted, indeed,
that if he had known as much about hospitals at the beginning as
at the end of the campaign, he might have saved two-thirds of the
men; but the truth was that he would never at any time supply a
penny for it.[245] By Christmas Schomberg began to relent towards
his officers, for he discovered that they were penniless, not
having received a farthing of pay for four months.[246] Meanwhile
civilians were growing fat. Shales was buying salt at ninepence
a pound and selling it at four shillings;[247] and junior
commissaries were acting as regimental agents and advancing money
to the unhappy officers at exorbitant interest.[248]

[Sidenote: Nov. 5.]

In such a state of affairs Schomberg, rightly or wrongly,
considered himself powerless. William ordered him from time to time
to advance on Dublin; and Harbord, with incredible impertinence,
urged him to march against the enemy.[249] Schomberg answered
William by a plain statement of his condition, and Harbord by a
surly and contemptuous growl. In truth his Dutch and Huguenot
regiments, which alone were well clad and well looked after by
their officers, were the only troops on which he could rely. The
English continued to die like flies. Schomberg wisely endeavoured
to distract their thoughts from their own misery by keeping them
at drill. He found that not one in four had the slightest idea
how to load or fire his musket, while the muskets themselves
fell to pieces in the handling. Pestilence increased, and with
it callousness and insubordination. The men used the corpses of
their comrades to stop the draughts under their tent-walls, and
robbed any man whose appearance promised hope of gain. Nor was this
indiscipline confined to Dundalk. The Enniskilleners, who have
generally been represented as superior to the English, were quite
as fond of plunder, and robbed William Harbord himself, despite
his protestations, in broad daylight.[250] Happily for Schomberg,
James's forces were in as ill condition as his own, so that he
was able to retire into winter quarters from Dundalk without
molestation. Of fourteen thousand men in the camp, upwards of six
thousand had perished.[251]

Gradually and painfully the winter wore away, but without
abatement in the mortality of the troops. Meanwhile the House
of Commons, awaking to the terrible state of things in Ireland,
addressed the King for the arrest of Shales. William replied
that he had already put him under arrest; and the name of Shales
was accordingly constantly before the House in the course of the
next few months, but without any result. He seems to have escaped
scot-free; and indeed there was no lack of men as corrupt as he in
the House of Commons and in all places of trust. William then took
the extraordinary step of asking the House to appoint seven members
to superintend the preparations for the next campaign; but this
it very wisely declined to do. It appointed a Committee, however,
to examine into the expenses of the war,[252] and finally passed
a Mutiny Act with new clauses against false musters and other
abuses--clauses which were as old as King Edward the Sixth, and for
all practical purposes as dead. It was not legislation that was
wanted, but enforcement of existing laws. William, however, appears
early to have abandoned in despair the hope of finding an honest
man in England.

[Sidenote: 1690.]

And now, with the experience of 1689 before them, the King and
Schomberg began to arrange their plans for the campaign of 1690.
In the matter of troops Schomberg was vehement against further
employment of regiments of miserable English and Irish boys;[253]
and it was therefore decided to transport twenty-seven thousand
seasoned men, seventeen thousand of them British and the remainder
Dutch and Danish, from England and Holland. Artillery and small
arms were imported from Holland, since the Office of Ordnance had
been found wanting; and as a daring experiment, which proved to be
a total failure, the King took the clothing of several regiments
out of their colonels' hands into his own.[254] Finally care was
taken for the proper organisation of the transport-service. The
plan of campaign in its broad lines was mapped out by a civilian,
Sir Robert Southwell,[255] the secretary for Ireland. The country,
he said, must be attacked simultaneously from north and south, for
while the ports of Munster were open France could always pour in
reinforcements and supplies. While, therefore, Schomberg advanced
from the north, a descent should be made on the south, and Cork
should be the objective. Finally, Southwell or some other sensible
man did what William should have done the year before, and drew out
a succinct account of the principles followed in Ireland with such
signal success by that forgotten General, Oliver Cromwell.[256]

I shall not dwell further on the Irish campaigns of 1690 and
1691. There is little of importance to the History of the Army to
be found in them; and the reader will more readily follow Lord
Macaulay than myself over this familiar ground. The battle of
the Boyne was won without great credit to William's skill, and
paid for rather dearly by the death of gallant old Schomberg. The
troops learned something of active service, and something, though
not nearly so much as they should have learnt, of discipline. The
lesson of Cromwell was not taken to heart; and the Protestant Irish
were allowed to set an example of plunder which was but too readily
followed by the English. Ginkell's final campaign of 1691 was more
successful, more brilliant, and more satisfactory in every respect,
inasmuch as the Irish fought with distinguished gallantry. For
the rest, the English showed at Aghrim and at Athlone their usual
desperate valour; succeeding, even when experienced commanders,
like St. Ruth, confessed with admiration that they had thought
their success impossible. But in the matter of skill the quiet and
unostentatious captures of Cork and Kinsale in 1690 were far the
most brilliant achievements of the war; and these were the work of
John, Earl of Marlborough.[257]

CHAPTER II

[Sidenote: 1690, October.]

I pass now to Flanders, which is about to become for the second
time the training ground of the British Army. The judicious help
sent by Lewis the Fourteenth to Ireland had practically diverted
the entire strength of William to that quarter for two whole
campaigns; and though, as has been seen, there were English in
Flanders in 1689 and 1690, the contingents which they furnished
were too small and the operations too trifling to warrant
description in detail. After the battle of the Boyne the case was
somewhat altered, for, though a large force was still required
in Ireland for Ginkell's final pacification of 1691, William was
none the less at liberty to take the field in Flanders in person.
Moreover, Parliament with great good-will had voted seventy
thousand men for the ensuing year, of which fully fifty thousand
were British,[258] so that England was about to put forth her
strength in Europe on a scale unknown since the loss of Calais.

But first a short space must be devoted to the theatre of war,
where England was to meet and break down the overweening power
of France. Few studies are more difficult, even to the professed
student, than that of the old campaigns in Flanders, and still
fewer more hopeless of simplification to the ordinary reader.
Nevertheless, however desperate the task, an effort must be made
once for all to give a broad idea of the scene of innumerable great
actions.

Taking his stand on the northern frontier of France and looking
northward, the reader will note three great rivers running through
the country before him in, roughly speaking, three parallel
semicircles, from south-east to north-west. These are, from east to
west, the Moselle, which is merged in the Rhine at Coblentz, the
Meuse, and the Scheldt, all three of which discharge themselves
into the great delta whereof the southern key is Antwerp. But for
the present let the reader narrow the field from the Meuse in the
east to the sea in the west, and let him devote his attention first
to the Meuse. He will see that, a little to the north of the French
frontier, it picks up a large tributary from the south-west, the
Sambre, which runs past Maubeuge and Charleroi and joins the Meuse
at Namur. Thence the united rivers flow on past the fortified towns
of Huy, Liège, and Maestricht to the sea. But let the reader's
northern boundary on the Meuse for the present be Maestricht, and
let him note another river which rises a little to the west of
Maestricht and runs almost due west past Arschot and Mechlin to the
sea at Antwerp. Let this river, the Demer, be his northern, and the
Meuse from Maestricht to Namur his eastern, boundary.

Returning to the south, let him note a river rising immediately
to the west of Charleroi, the Haine, which joins the Scheldt at
Tournay, and let him draw a line from Tournay westward through
Lille and Ypres to the sea at Dunkirk. Let this line from Dunkirk
to Charleroi be carried eastward to Namur; and there is his
southern boundary. His western boundary, is, of course, the sea.
Within this quadrilateral, Antwerp (or more strictly speaking the
mouth of the Scheldt), Dunkirk, Namur, and Maestricht, lies the
most famous fighting-ground of Europe.

Glancing at it on the map, the reader will see that this
quadrilateral is cut by a number of rivers running parallel to each
other from south to north, and flowing into the main streams of
the Demer and the Scheldt. The first of these, beginning from the
east, are the Great and Little Geete, which become one before they
join the main stream. It is worth while to pause for a moment over
this little slip of land between the Geete and the Meuse. We shall
see much of Namur, Huy, Liège, and Maestricht, which command the
navigation of the greater river, but we shall see still more of
the Geete, and of two smaller streams, the Jaar and the Mehaigne,
which rise almost in the same table-land with it. On the Lower
Jaar, close to Maestricht, stands the village of Lauffeld, which
shall be better known to us fifty years hence. On the Little Geete,
just above its junction with its greater namesake, are the villages
of Neerwinden and Landen. In the small space between the heads of
the Geete and the Mehaigne lies the village of Ramillies. For this
network of streams is the protection against an enemy that would
threaten the navigation of the Meuse from the north and west, and
the barrier of Spanish Flanders against invasion from the east; and
the ground is rich with the corpses and fat with the blood of men.

The next stream to westward is the Dyle, which flows past Louvain
to the Demer, and gives its name, after the junction, to that
river. The next in order is the Senne, which flows past Park and
Hal and Brussels to the same main stream. At the head of the Senne
stands the village of Steenkirk; midway between the Dyle and Senne
are the forest of Soignies and the field of Waterloo.

Here the tributaries of the Demer come to an end, but the row of
parallel streams is continued by the tributaries of another system,
that of the Scheldt. Easternmost of these, and next in order to
the Senne, is the Dender, which rises near Leuse and flows past
Ath and Alost to the Scheldt at Dendermond. Next comes the Scheldt
itself, with the Scarpe and the Haine, its tributaries, which it
carries past Tournay and Oudenarde to Ghent, and to the sea at
Antwerp. Westernmost of all, the Lys runs past St. Venant, where
in Cromwell's time we saw Sir Thomas Morgan and his immortal six
thousand, past Menin and Courtrai, and is merged in the Scheldt at
Ghent.

The whole extent of the quadrilateral is about one hundred miles
long by fifty broad, with a great waterway to the west, a second to
the east, and a third, whereof the key is Ghent, roughly speaking
midway between them. The earth, fruitful by nature and enriched by
art, bears food for man and beast, the waterways provide transport
for stores and ammunition. It was a country where men could kill
each other without being starved, and hence for centuries the
cockpit of Europe.

A glance at any old map of Flanders shows how thickly studded was
this country with walled towns of less or greater strength, and
explains why a war in Flanders should generally have been a war
of sieges. Every one of these little towns, of course, had its
garrison; and the manœuvres of contending forces were governed very
greatly by the effort on one side to release these garrisons for
active service in the field, and on the other to keep them confined
within their walls for as long as possible. Hence it is obvious
that an invading army necessarily enjoyed a great advantage,
since it menaced the fortresses of the enemy while its own were
unthreatened. Thus ten thousand men on the Upper Lys could paralyse
thrice their number in Ghent and Bruges and the adjacent towns. On
the other hand, if an invading general contemplated the siege of
an important town, he manœuvred to entice the garrison into the
field before he laid siege in form. Still, once set down to a great
siege, an army was stationary, and the bare fact was sufficient to
liberate hostile garrisons all over the country; and hence arose
the necessity of a second army to cover the besieging force. The
skill and subtlety manifested by great generals to compass these
different ends is unfortunately only to be apprehended by closer
study than can be expected of any but the military student.

A second cause contributed not a little to increase the taste for
a war of sieges, namely the example of France, then the first
military nation in Europe.[259] The Court of Versailles was
particularly fond of a siege, since it could attend the ceremony
in state and take nominal charge of the operations with much glory
and little discomfort or danger. The French passion for rule and
formula also found a happy outlet in the conduct of a siege,
for while there is no nation more brilliant or more original,
particularly in military affairs, there is also none that is more
conceited or pedantic. The craving for sieges among the French
was so great that the King took pains, by the grant of extra pay
and rations, to render this species of warfare popular with his
soldiers.[260]

Again, it must be remembered that the object of a campaign in
those days was not necessarily to seek out an enemy and beat him.
There were two alternatives prescribed by the best authorities,
namely, to fight at an advantage or to subsist comfortably.[261]
Comfortable subsistence meant at its best subsistence at an
enemy's expense. A campaign wherein an army lived on the enemy's
country and destroyed all that it could not consume was eminently
successful, even though not a shot was fired. To force an enemy
to consume his own supplies was much, to compel him to supply his
opponent was more, to take up winter-quarters in his territory
was very much more. Thus to enter an enemy's borders and keep him
marching backwards and forwards for weeks without giving him a
chance of striking a blow, was in itself no small success, and
success of a kind which galled inferior generals, such as William
of Orange, to desperation and so to disaster. The tendency to these
negative campaigns was heightened once more by French example. The
French ministry of war interfered with its generals to an extent
that was always dangerous, and eventually proved calamitous.
Nominally the marshal commanding-in-chief in the field was
supreme; but the intendant or head of the administrative service,
though he received his orders from the marshal, was instructed by
the King to forward those orders at once by special messenger to
Louvois, and not to execute them without the royal authority. Great
commanders such as Luxemburg had the strength from time to time to
kick themselves free from this bondage, but the rest, embarrassed
by the surveillance of an inferior officer, preferred to live as
long as possible in an enemy's country without risking a general
action. It was left to Marlborough to advance triumphant in one
magnificent campaign from the Meuse to the sea.

Next, a glance must be thrown at the contending parties. The
defenders of the Spanish Netherlands, for they cannot be called
the assailants of France, were confederate allies from a number of
independent states--England, Holland, Spain, the Empire, sundry
states of Germany, and Denmark, all somewhat selfish, few very
efficient, and none, except the first, very punctual. From such
a heterogeneous collection swift, secret, and united action was
not to be expected. King William held the command-in-chief, and,
from his position as the soul of the alliance, was undoubtedly
the fittest for the post. But though he had carefully studied
the art of war, and though his phlegmatic temperament found its
only genuine pleasure in the excitement of the battlefield, he
was not a great general. He could form good plans, and up to a
certain point could execute them, but up to a certain point only.
It would seem that his physical weakness debarred him from steady
and sustained effort. He was strangely incapable of conducting a
campaign with equal ability throughout; he would manœuvre admirably
for weeks, and forfeit all the advantage that he had gained by the
carelessness of a single day. In a general action, of which he
was fonder than most commanders of his day, he never shone except
in virtue of conspicuous personal bravery. He lacked tactical
instinct, and above all he lacked patience; in a word, to use a
modern phrase, he was a very clever amateur.

France, on the other hand, possessed the finest and strongest
army in Europe,--well equipped, well trained, well organised, and
inured to work by countless campaigns. She had a single man in
supreme control of affairs, King Lewis the Fourteenth; a great
war-minister, Louvois; one really great general, Luxemburg; and
one with flashes of genius, Boufflers. Moreover she possessed a
line of posts in Spanish Flanders extending from Dunkirk to the
Meuse. On the Lys she had Aire and Menin; on the Scarpe, Douay; on
the Upper Scheldt, Cambray, Bouchain, Valenciennes, and Condé; on
the Sambre, Maubeuge; between Sambre and Meuse, Philippeville and
Marienburg; and on the Meuse, Dinant. Further, in the one space
where the frontier was not covered by a friendly river, between the
sea and the Scheldt, the French had constructed fortified lines
from the sea to Menin and from thence to the Scheldt at Espierre.
Thus with their frontier covered, with a place of arms on every
river, with secrecy and with unity of purpose, the French enjoyed
the approximate certainty of being able to take the field in every
campaign before the Allies could be collected to oppose them.

[Sidenote: 1691.]

The campaign of 1691 happily typifies the relative positions of the
combatants in almost every respect. The French concentrated ten
thousand men on the Lys. This was sufficient to paralyse all the
garrisons of the Allies on and about the river. They posted another
corps on the Moselle, which threatened the territory of Cleves. Now
Cleves was the property of the Elector of Brandenburg, and it was
not to be expected that he should allow his contingent of troops
to join King William at the general rendezvous at Brussels, and
suffer the French to play havoc among his possessions. Thus the
Prussian contingent likewise was paralysed. So while William was
still ordering his troops to concentrate at Brussels, Boufflers,
who had been making preparations all the winter, suddenly marched
up from Maubeuge and, before William was aware that he was in
motion, had besieged Mons. The fortress presently surrendered
after a feeble resistance, and the line of the Allies' frontier
between the Scheldt and Sambre was broken. William moved down from
Brussels across the Sambre in the hope of recovering the lost town,
outmanœuvred Luxemburg, who was opposed to him, and for three days
held the recapture of Mons in the hollow of his hand. He wasted
those three days in an aimless halt; Luxemburg recovered himself
by an extraordinary march; and William, finding that there was
no alternative before him but to retire to Brussels and remain
inactive, handed over the command to an incompetent officer and
returned to England. Luxemburg then closed the campaign by a
brilliant action of cavalry, which scattered the horse of the
Allies to the four winds. As no British troops except the Life
Guards were present, and as they at any rate did not disgrace
themselves, it is unnecessary to say more of the combat of Leuse.
It, had however, one remarkable effect: it increased William's
dread of the French cavalry, already morbidly strong, to such a
pitch as to lead him subsequently to a disastrous military blunder.

The campaign of 1691 was therefore decidedly unfavourable to the
Allies, but there was ground for hope that all might be set right
in 1692. The Treasurer, Godolphin, was nervously apprehensive that
Parliament might be unwilling to vote money for an English army in
Flanders; but the Commons cheerfully voted a total of sixty-six
thousand men, British and foreign; which, after deduction of
garrisons for the safety of the British Isles, left forty thousand
free to cross the German Ocean.

[Sidenote: 1692.]

Of these, twenty-three thousand were British, the most important
force that England had sent to the Continent since the days of
King Henry the Eighth. The organisation was remarkably like that
of the New Model. William was, of course, commander-in-chief, and
under him a general of horse and a general of foot, with a due
allowance of lieutenant-generals, major-generals, and brigadiers.
There is, however, no sign of an officer in command of artillery or
engineers, nor any of a commissary in charge of the transport.[262]
The one strangely conspicuous functionary is the Secretary-at-War,
who in this and the following campaigns for the last time
accompanied the Commander-in-Chief on active service. But the most
significant feature in the list of the staff is the omission of the
name of Marlborough. Originally included among the generals for
Flanders, he had been struck off the roll, and dismissed from all
public employment, in disgrace, before the opening of the campaign.
Though this dismissal did not want justification, it was perhaps of
all William's blunders the greatest.

[Sidenote: May.]

[Sidenote:

      10
  May --.
      20
]

[Sidenote:

      13
  May --.
      23
]

[Sidenote:

      16
  May --.
      26
]

As usual, the French were beforehand with the Allies in opening
the campaign. They had already broken the line of the defending
fortresses by the capture of Mons; they now designed to make the
breach still wider. All through the winter a vast siege-train was
collecting on the Scheldt and Meuse, with Vauban, first of living
engineers, in charge of it. In May all was ready. Marshal Joyeuse,
with one corps, was on the Moselle, as in the previous year, to
hold the Brandenburgers in check. Boufflers, with eighteen thousand
men, lay on the right bank of the Meuse, near Dinant; Luxemburg,
with one hundred and fifteen thousand more, stood in rear of the
river Haine. On the 20th of May, King Lewis in person reviewed
the grand army; on the 23rd it marched for Namur; and on the 26th
it had wound itself round two sides of the town, while Boufflers,
moving up from Dinant, completed the circuit on the third side.
Thus Namur was completely invested; unless William could save it,
the line of the Sambre and one of the most important fortresses on
the Meuse were lost to the Allies.

[Sidenote:

  May 26
  June 5.
]

William, to do him justice, had strained every nerve to spur his
indolent allies to be first in the field. The contingents, awaked
by the sudden stroke at Namur, came in fast to Brussels; but it
was too late. The French had destroyed all forage and supplies on
the direct route to Namur, and William's only way to the city lay
across the Mehaigne. Behind the Mehaigne lay Luxemburg, the ablest
of the French generals. The best of luck was essential to William's
success, and instead of the best came the worst. Heavy rain swelled
the narrow stream into a broad flood, and the building of bridges
became impossible. There was beautiful fencing, skilful feint,
and more skilful parry, between the two generals, but William
could not get under Luxemburg's guard. On the 5th of June, after a
discreditably short defence, Namur fell, almost before William's
eyes, into the hands of the French.

[Sidenote:

  July 23
  -------
  August 2.
]

Then Luxemburg thought it time to draw the enemy away from the
vicinity of the captured city; so recrossing the Sambre, and
keeping Boufflers always between himself and that river, he marched
for the Senne as if to threaten Brussels. William followed, as in
duty bound; and French and Allies pursued a parallel course to the
Senne, William on the north and Luxemburg on the south. The 2nd of
August found both armies across the Senne, William at Hal, facing
west with the river in his rear, and Luxemburg some five miles
south of him with his right at Steenkirk, and his centre between
Hoves and Enghien, while Boufflers lay at Manny St. Jean, seven
miles in his rear.

The terrible state of the roads owing to heavy rain had induced
Luxemburg to leave most of his artillery at Mons, and as he
had designed merely to tempt the Allies away from Namur, the
principal object left to him was to take up a strong position
wherein his worn and harassed army could watch the enemy without
fear of attack. Such a position he thought that he had found at
Steenkirk.[263] The country at this point is more broken and
rugged than is usual in Belgium. The camp lay on high ground,
with its right resting on the river Sennette and its right front
covered by a ravine, which gradually fades away northward into a
high plateau of about a mile in extent. Beyond the ravine was a
network of wooded defiles, through which Luxemburg seems to have
hoped that no enemy could fall upon him in force unawares. It so
happened, however, that one of his most useful spies was detected,
in his true character, in William's camp at Hal; and this was an
opportunity not to be lost. A pistol was held at the spy's head,
and he was ordered to write a letter to Luxemburg, announcing that
large bodies of the enemy would be in motion next morning, but that
nothing more serious was contemplated than a foraging expedition.
This done, William laid his plans to surprise his enemy on the
morrow.

[Sidenote:

  July 23
  --------
  August 3.
]

An hour before daybreak the advanced guard of William's army
fell silently into its ranks, together with a strong force of
pioneers to clear the way for a march through the woods. This force
consisted of the First Guards, the Royal Scots, the Twenty-first,
Fitzpatrick's regiment of Fusiliers, and two Danish regiments
of great reputation, the whole under the command of the Duke of
Würtemberg. Presently they moved away, and as the sun rose the
whole army followed them in two columns, without sound of drum or
trumpet, towards Steenkirk. French patrols scouring the country in
the direction of Tubise saw the two long lines of scarlet and white
and blue wind away into the woods, and reported what they had seen
at headquarters; but Luxemburg, sickly of constitution, and, in
spite of his occasional energy, indolent of temperament, rejoiced
to think that, as his spy had told him, it was no more than a
foraging party. Another patrol presently sent in another message
that a large force of cavalry was advancing towards the Sennette.
Once more Luxemburg lulled himself into security with the same
comfort.

Meanwhile the allied army was trailing through narrow defiles and
cramped close ground, till at last it emerged from the stifling
woods into an open space. Here it halted, as the straitness of the
ground demanded, in dense, heavy masses. But the advanced guard
moved on steadily till it reached the woods over against Steenkirk,
where Würtemberg disposed it for the coming attack. On his left
the Bois de Feuilly covered a spur of the same plateau as that
occupied by the French right, and there he stationed the English
Guards and the two battalions of Danes. To the right of these, but
separated from them by a ravine, he placed the three remaining
British battalions in the Bois de Zoulmont. His guns he posted,
some between the two woods, and the remainder on the right of his
division. These dispositions complete, the advanced party awaited
orders to open the attack.

It was now eleven o'clock. Luxemburg had left his bed and had
ridden out to a commanding height on his extreme right, when a
third message was brought to him that the Allies were certainly
advancing in force. He read it, and looking to his front, saw the
red coats of the Guards moving through the wood before him, while
beyond them he caught a glimpse of the dense masses of the main
body. Instantly he saw the danger, and divined that William's
attack was designed against his right. His own camp was formed,
according to rule, with the cavalry on the wings; and there was
nothing in position to check the Allies but a single brigade of
infantry, famous under the name of Bourbonnois, which was quartered
in advance of the cavalry's camp on his extreme right. Moreover,
nothing was ready, not a horse was bridled, not a man standing to
his arms. He despatched a messenger to summon Boufflers to his
aid, and in a few minutes was flying through the camp with his
staff, energetic but perfectly self-possessed, to set his force
in order of battle. The two battalions of Bourbonnois fell in
hastily before their camp, with a battery of six guns before them.
The dragoons of the right wing dismounted and hastened to seal up
the space between Bourbonnois and the Sennette. The horse of the
right was collected, and some of it sent off in hot speed to the
left to bring the infantry up behind them on their horses' croups.
All along the line the alarm was given, drums were beating, men
snatching hastily at their arms and falling into their ranks ready
to file away to the right. Such was the haste, that there was no
time to think of regimental precedence, a very serious matter in
the French army, and each successive brigade hurried into the place
where it was most needed as it happened to come up.

Meanwhile Würtemberg's batteries had opened fire, and a cunning
officer of the Royal Scots was laying his guns with admirable
precision. French batteries hastened into position to reply to
them with as deadly an aim, and for an hour and a half the rival
guns thundered against each other unceasingly. All this time the
French battalions kept massing themselves thicker and thicker on
Luxemburg's right, and the front line was working with desperate
haste, felling trees, making breastworks, and lining the hedges
and copses while yet they might. But still Würtemberg's division
remained unsupported, and the precious minutes flew fast. William,
or his staff for him, had made a serious blunder. Intent though he
was on fighting a battle with his infantry only, he had put all
the cavalry of one wing of his army before them on the march, so
that there was no room for the infantry to pass. Fortunately six
battalions had been intermixed with the squadrons of this wing, and
these were now with some difficulty disentangled and sent forward.
Cutts's, Mackay's, Lauder's, and the Twenty-sixth formed up on
Würtemberg's right, with the Sixth and Twenty-fifth in support; and
at last, at half-past twelve, Würtemberg gave the order to attack.

His little force shook itself up and pressed forward with
eagerness. The Guards and Danes on the extreme left, being on the
same ridge with the enemy, were the first that came into action.
Pushing on under a terrible fire at point-blank range from the
French batteries, they fell upon Bourbonnois and the dragoons, beat
them back, captured their guns, and turned them against themselves.
On their right the Royal Scots, Twenty-first, and Fitzpatrick's
plunged down into the ravine into closer and more difficult ground,
past copses and hedges and thickets, until a single thick fence
alone divided them from the enemy. Through this they fired at each
other furiously for a time, till the Scots burst through the fence
with their Colonel at their head and swept the French before them.
Still further to the right, the remaining regiments came also into
action; muzzle met muzzle among the branches, and the slaughter was
terrible. Young Angus, still not yet of age, dropped dead at the
head of the Cameronians, and the veteran Mackay found the death
which he had missed at Killiecrankie. He had before the attack sent
word to General Count Solmes, that the contemplated assault could
lead only to waste of life, and had been answered with the order to
advance. "God's will be done," he said calmly, and he was among the
first that fell.

Still the British, in spite of all losses, pressed furiously on;
and famous French regiments, spoiled children of victory, wavered
and gave way before them. Bourbonnois, unable to face the Guards
and Danes, doubled its left battalion in rear of its right;
Chartres, which stood next to them, also gave way and doubled
itself in rear of its neighbour Orleans. A wide gap was thus torn
in the first French line, but not a regiment of the second line
would step into it. The colonel of the brigade in rear of it
ordered, entreated, implored his men to come forward, but they
would not follow him into that terrible fire. Suddenly the wild
voice ceased, and the gesticulating figure fell in a heap to the
ground: the colonel had been shot dead, and the gap was still
unfilled.

The first French line was broken; the second and third were
dismayed and paralysed: a little more and the British would carry
the French camp. Luxemburg perceived that this was a moment when
only his best troops could save him. In the fourth line stood the
flower of his infantry, the seven battalions of French and Swiss
Guards. These were now ordered forward to the gap; the princes
of the blood placed themselves at their head, and without firing
a shot they charged down the slope upon the British and Danes.
The English Guards, thinned to half their numbers, faced the huge
columns of the Swiss and stood up to them undaunted, till by sheer
weight they were slowly rolled back. On their right the Royal Scots
also were forced back, fighting desperately from hedge to hedge
and contesting every inch of ground. Once, the French made a dash
through a fence and carried off one of their colours. The Colonel,
Sir Robert Douglas, instantly turned back alone through the fence,
recaptured the colour, and was returning with it when he was struck
by a bullet. He flung the flag over to his men and fell to the
ground dead.

Slowly the twelve battalions retired, still fighting furiously
at every step. So fierce had been their onslaught that five
lines of infantry backed by two more of cavalry[264] had hardly
sufficed to stop them, and with but a little support they might
have won the day. But that support was not forthcoming. Message
after message had been sent to the Dutch general, Count Solmes,
for reinforcements, but there came not a man. The main body, as
has been told, was all clubbed together a mile and a half from
the scene of action, with the infantry in the rear; and Solmes,
with almost criminal folly, instead of endeavouring to extricate
the foot, had ordered forward the horse. William rectified the
error as soon as he could, but the correction led to further delay
and to the increased confusion which is the inevitable result
of contradictory orders. The English infantry in rear, mad with
impatience to rescue their comrades, ran forward in disorder,
probably with loud curses on the Dutchman who had kept them back
so long; and some time was lost before they could be re-formed.
Discipline was evidently a little at fault. Solmes lost both his
head and his temper. "Damn the English," he growled; "if they are
so fond of fighting, let them have a bellyful"; and he sent forward
not a man. Fortunately junior officers took matters into their
own hands; and it was time, for Boufflers had now arrived on the
field to throw additional weight into the French scale. The English
Horse-grenadiers, the Fourth Dragoons, and a regiment of Dutch
dragoons rode forward and, dismounting, covered the retreat of the
Guards and Danes by a brilliant counter-attack. The Buffs and Tenth
advanced farther to the right, and holding their fire till within
point-blank range, poured in a volley which gave time for the rest
of Würtemberg's division to withdraw. A demonstration against the
French left made a further diversion, and the shattered fragments
of the attacking force, grimed with sweat and smoke, fell back to
the open ground in rear of the woods, repulsed but unbeaten, and
furious with rage.

William, it is said, could not repress a cry of anguish when he
saw them; but there was no time for emotion. Some Dutch and Danish
infantry was sent forward to check further advance of the enemy,
and preparations were made for immediate retreat. Once again the
hardest of the work was entrusted to the British; and when the
columns were formed, the grenadiers of the British regiments
brought up the rear, halting and turning about continually, until
failing light put an end to what was at worst but a half-hearted
pursuit. The retreat was conducted with admirable order; but it
was not until the chill, dead hour that precedes the dawn that
the Allies regained their camp, worn out with the fatigue of
four-and-twenty hours.

[Illustration: STEENKIRK

  July 23^{rd}
  ------------ 1692
  Aug. 3^{rd}

  _To face page 366_
]

The action was set down at the time as the severest ever
fought by infantry, and the losses on both sides were very heavy.
The Allies lost about three thousand killed and the same number
wounded, besides thirteen hundred prisoners, nearly all of whom
were wounded. Ten guns were abandoned, the horses being too weary
to draw them; the English battalions lost two colours, and the
foreign three or four more. The British, having borne the brunt of
the action, suffered most heavily of all, the Guards, Cutts's, and
the Sixth being terribly punished. The total French loss was about
equal to that of the Allies, but the list of the officers that
fell tells a more significant tale. On the side of the Allies four
hundred and fifty officers were killed and wounded, no fewer than
seventy lieutenants in the ten battalions of Churchill's British
brigade being killed outright. The French on their side lost no
less than six hundred and twenty officers killed and wounded,
a noble testimony to their self-sacrifice, but sad evidence of
their difficulty in making their men stand. In truth, with proper
management William must have won a brilliant victory; but he was a
general by book and not by instinct. Würtemberg's advanced guard
could almost have done the work by itself but for the mistake of a
long preliminary cannonade; his attack could have been supported
earlier but for the pedantry that gave the horse precedence of the
foot in the march to the field; the foot could have pierced the
French position in a dozen different columns but for the pedantry
which caused it to be first deployed. Finally, William's knowledge
of the ground was imperfect, and Solmes, his general of foot,
was incompetent. The plan was admirably designed and abominably
executed. Nevertheless, British troops have never fought a finer
action than Steenkirk. Luxemburg thought himself lucky to have
escaped destruction; his troops were much shaken; and he crossed
the Scheldt and marched away to his winter-quarters as quietly as
possible. So ended the campaign of 1692.

[Sidenote: 1692, November.]

In November the English Parliament met, heartened indeed by the
naval victory of La Hogue, but not a little grieved over the
failure of Steenkirk. Again, the financial aspect was extremely
discouraging; and Sir Stephen Fox announced that there was not
another day's subsistence for the Army in the treasury. The
prevailing discontent found vent in furious denunciations of Count
Solmes, and a cry that English soldiers ought to be commanded by
English officers. The debate rose high. The hardest of hard words
were used about the Dutch generals, and a vast deal of nonsense was
talked about military matters. There were, however, a great number
of officers in the House of Commons, many of whom had been present
at the action. With great modesty and good sense they refused
to join in the outcry against the Dutch, and contrived so to
compose matters that the House committed itself to no very foolish
resolution. The votes for the Army were passed; and no difficulty
was made over the preparations for the next campaign. Finally, two
new regiments of cavalry were raised--Lord Macclesfield's Horse,
which was disbanded twenty years later; and Conyngham's Irish
Dragoons, which still abides with us as the Eighth (King's Royal
Irish) Hussars.

[Sidenote: 1693.]

Meanwhile the French military system had suffered an irreparable
loss in the death of Louvois, the source of woes unnumbered to
France in the years that were soon to come. Nevertheless, the
traditions of his rule were strong, and the French once more were
first in the field, with, as usual, a vast siege-train massed on
the Meuse and on the Scheldt. But a late spring and incessant rain
delayed the beginning of operations till the beginning of May,
when Luxemburg assembled seventy thousand men in rear of the Haine
by Mons, and Boufflers forty-eight thousand more on the Scheldt
at Tournay. The French king was with the troops in person; and
the original design was, as usual, to carry on a war of sieges
on the Meuse, Boufflers reducing the fortresses while Luxemburg
shielded him with a covering army. Lewis, however, finding that
the towns which he had intended to invest were likely to make an
inconveniently stubborn defence, presently returned home, and after
detaching thirty thousand men to the war in Germany, left Luxemburg
to do as he would. It had been better for William if the Grand
Monarch had remained in Flanders.

The English king, on his side, assembled sixty thousand men at
Brussels as soon as the French began to move, and led them with
desperate haste to the Senne, where he took up an impregnable
position at Park. Luxemburg marched up to a position over against
him, and then came one of those deadlocks which were so common in
those old campaigns. The two armies stood looking at each other for
a whole month, neither venturing to move, neither daring to attack,
both ill-supplied, both discontented, and as a natural consequence
both losing scores, hundreds, and even thousands of men through
desertion.

[Sidenote:

  June 26
  -------
  July 6.
]

[Sidenote: July.]

At last the position became insupportable, and on the 6th of
July Luxemburg moved eastward as if to resume the original plan
of operations on the Meuse. William thereupon resolved to create
a diversion by detaching a force to attack the French lines of
the Scheldt and Lys, a project which was brilliantly executed
by Würtemberg, thanks not a little to three British regiments,
the Tenth, Argyll's, and Castleton's, which formed part of his
division. But meanwhile Luxemburg, quite ignorant of the diversion,
advanced to the Meuse and laid siege to Huy, in the hope of
forcing William to come to its relief. He judged rightly. William
left his impregnable camp at Park and hurried to the rescue. But he
came too late, and Huy fell after a trifling resistance. Luxemburg
then made great seeming preparations for the siege of Liège, and
William, trembling for the safety of that city and of Maestricht,
detached eight thousand men to reinforce those garrisons, and then
withdrew to the line of the Geete. Luxemburg watched the whole
proceeding with grim delight. Würtemberg's success was no doubt
annoying, but William had weakened his army by detaching this force
to the Lys, and had been beguiled into weakening it still further
by reinforcing the garrisons on the Meuse, which was exactly what
he wanted. If he could bring the Allies to action forthwith he
could reasonably hope for success.

The ground occupied by William was a triangular space enclosed
between the Little Geete and a stream called the Landen Beck,
which joins it at Leuw. The position was not without features of
strength. The camp, which faced almost due south, was pitched on
a gentle ridge rising out of a vast plain.[265] This ridge runs
parallel to the Little Geete and has that river in its rear. The
left flank was protected by marshy ground and by the Landen Beck
itself, while the villages of Neerlanden and Rumsdorp, one on
either side of the beck and the latter well forward on the plain,
offered the further security of advanced posts. The right rested on
a little stream which runs at right angles to the Geete and joins
it at Elixheim, and on the villages of Laer and Neerwinden, which
stand on its banks. From Neerlanden on the left to Neerwinden on
the right the position measured close on four miles; and to guard
this front, to say nothing of strong garrisons for the villages,
William had little more than fifty thousand men. Here then was
one signal defect: the front was too long to permit troops to be
readily moved from flank to flank, or to be withdrawn, without
serious risk, from the centre. But this was not all. The depth of
the position was less than half of its frontage, and thus allowed
no space for the action of cavalry. This William ignored: he
was afraid of the French horse, and was anxious that the action
should be fought by infantry only. Finally, retreat was barred by
the Geete, which was unfordable and insufficiently bridged, and
therefore the forcing of the allied right must inevitably drive
the whole army into a pinfold, as Leslie's had been driven at the
battle of Dunbar.

[Sidenote:

       18
  July --.
       28
]

Luxemburg, who knew every inch of the ground, was now anxious only
lest William should retire before he could catch him. On the 28th
of July, by a great effort and a magnificent march, he brought
the whole of his army, eighty thousand strong, before William's
position. He was now sure of his game, but he need not have been
anxious, for William, charmed with the notion of excluding the
French cavalry from all share in the action, was resolved to stand
his ground. Many officers urged him to cross the Geete while yet
he might, but he would not listen. Fifteen hundred men were told
off to entrench the open ground between Neerwinden and Neerlanden.
The hedges, mud-walls, and natural defences of Neerwinden and Laer
were improved to the uttermost, and the ditches surrounding them
were enlarged. Till late into the night the King rode backward
and forward, ordering matters under his own eyes, and after a
few hours' rest began very early in the morning to make his
dispositions.

The key of the position was the village of Neerwinden with the
adjoining hamlet of Laer, and here accordingly he stationed
the best of his troops. The defence of Laer was entrusted to
Brigadier Ramsey with the Scots Brigade, namely, the Twenty-first,
Twenty-fifth, Twenty-sixth, Mackay's and Lauder's regiments,
reinforced by the Buffs and the Fourth Foot. Between Laer and
Neerwinden stood six battalions of Brandenburgers, troops already
of great and deserved reputation, of whom we shall see more in
the years before us. Neerwinden itself was committed to the
Hanoverians, the Dutch Guards, a battalion of the First and a
battalion of the Scots Guards. Immediately to the north or left
of the village the entrenchment was lined by the two remaining
battalions of the First and Scots Guards, the Coldstream Guards,
a battalion of the Royal Scots, and the Seventh Fusiliers. On
the extreme left of the position Neerlanden was held by the
other battalion of the Royal Scots, the Second Queen's, and two
Danish regiments, while Rumsdorp was occupied by the Fourteenth,
Sixteenth, Nineteenth, and Collingwood's regiments. In a word,
every important post was committed to the British. The remainder
of the infantry, with one hundred guns, was ranged along the
entrenchment, and in rear of them stood the cavalry, powerless to
act outside the trench, and too much cramped for space to manœuvre
within it.

Luxemburg also was early astir, and was amazed to find how far
the front of the position had been strengthened during the night.
His centre he formed in eight lines over against the Allies'
entrenchments between Oberwinden and Landen, every line except
the second and fourth being composed of cavalry. For the attack
on Neerlanden and Rumsdorp he detailed fifteen thousand foot and
two thousand five hundred dismounted dragoons. For the principal
assault on Neerwinden he told off eighteen thousand foot supported
by a reserve of two thousand more and by eight thousand cavalry;
while seventy guns were brought into position to answer the
artillery of the Allies.

[Sidenote:

       19
  July --.
       29
]

Shortly after sunrise William's cannon opened fire against the
heavy masses of the French centre; and at eight o'clock Luxemburg
moved the whole of his left to the attack of Neerwinden. Six
battalions, backed by dragoons and cavalry, were directed against
Laer, and three columns, counting in all seven brigades, were
launched against Neerwinden. The centre column, under the Duke
of Berwick, was the first to come into action. Withholding their
fire till they reached the village, the French carried the
outer defences with a rush, and then meeting the Hanoverians
and the First Guards, they began the fight in earnest. It was
hedge-fighting, as at Steenkirk, muzzle to muzzle and hand to
hand. Every step was contested; the combat swayed backwards and
forwards within the village; and the carnage was frightful. The
remaining French columns came up, met with the like resistance, and
made little way. Fresh regiments were poured by the French into
the fight, and at last the First Guards, completely broken by its
losses, gave way. But it was only for a moment. They rallied on
the Scots Guards; the Dutch and Hanoverians rallied behind them,
and though the French had been again reinforced, they resumed the
unequal fight, nine battalions against twenty-six, with unshaken
tenacity. At Laer, on the extreme right, the fight was equally
sharp. Ramsey for a time was driven out of the village, and the
French cavalry actually forced its way into the Allies' position.
There, however, it was charged in flank by the Elector of Bavaria,
and driven out with great slaughter. Ramsey seized the moment to
rally his brigade. The French columns, despite their success, still
remained isolated and detached, and presented no united front. The
King placed himself at the head of the Guards and Hanoverians, and
with one charge British, Dutch, and Germans fell upon the Frenchmen
and swept them out of both villages.

The first attack on Neerwinden had failed, and a similar attack on
the allied left had been little more successful. At Neerlanden the
First and Second Foot had successfully held their own against four
French battalions until reinforcements enabled them to drive them
back. At Rumsdorp the British, being but three thousand against
thirteen thousand, were pushed out of the village, but being
reinforced, recovered a part of it and stood successfully at bay.
Luxemburg, however, was not easily discouraged. The broken troops
in the left were rallied, fresh regiments were brought forward,
and a second effort was made to carry Neerwinden. Again French
impetuosity bore all before it, and again the British and Germans,
weakened and weary though they were, rallied when all seemed lost,
and hurled the enemy back not merely repulsed but in confused and
disorderly retreat.

On the failure of the second attack the majority of the French
officers urged Luxemburg to retire; but the marshal was not to
be turned from his purpose. The fourteen thousand men of the
Allies in Laer and Neerwinden had lost more than a third of their
numbers, while he himself had still a considerable force of
infantry interlined with the cavalry in the centre. Twelve thousand
of them, including the French and Swiss Guards, were now drawn
off to the left for a third attack. When they were clear of the
cavalry, the whole six lines of horse, which had stood heroically
for hours motionless under a heavy fire, moved forward at a trot
to the edge of the entrenchments;[266] but the demonstration,
for such it seems to have been, cost them dear, for they were
very roughly handled and compelled to retire. But now the French
reinforcements supported by the defeated battalions drew near,
and a third attack was delivered on Neerwinden. British and Dutch
still made a gallant fight, but the odds against their weakened
battalions were too great, and ammunition began to fail. They
fought on indomitably till the last cartridge was expended before
they gave way, but they were forced back, and Neerwinden was lost.
Five French brigades then assailed the central entrenchment at its
junction with Neerwinden, where stood the Coldstream Guards and
the Seventh Fusiliers. Wholly unmoved by the overwhelming numbers
in their front and the fire from Neerwinden on their flank, the
two regiments stood firm and drove their assailants back over the
breastwork. Even when the French Household Cavalry came spurring
through Neerwinden and fell upon their flank they fought on
undismayed, and the Coldstreamers not only repelled the charge but
captured a colour.

Such fighting, however, could not continue for long. William, on
observing Luxemburg's preparations for the final assault, had
ordered nine battalions from his left to reinforce his right.
These never reached their destination. The Marquis of Feuquières,
an officer even more celebrated for his acuteness as a military
critic than for skill in the field, watched them as they moved
and suddenly led his cavalry forward to the weakest point of the
entrenchment. The battalions hesitated, halted, and then turned
about to meet this new danger, but too late to save the forcing of
the entrenchment. The battle was now virtually over. Neerwinden was
carried, Ramsey after a superb defence had been driven out of Laer,
the Brandenburgers had perforce retreated with him, the infantry
that lined the centre of the entrenchment had forsaken it, and
the French cavalry was pouring in and cutting down the fugitives
by scores. William, who had galloped away in desperation to the
left, now returned at headlong speed with six regiments of English
cavalry,[267] which delivered charge after charge with splendid
gallantry, to cover the retreat of the foot. On the left Tolmach
and Bellasys by great exertion brought off their infantry in good
order, but on the right the confusion was terrible. The rout was
complete, the few bridges were choked by a heaving mass of guns,
waggons, pack-animals, and men, and thousands of fugitives were cut
down, drowned, or trampled to death. William did all that a gallant
man could do to save the day, but in vain. His troops had done
heroic things to redeem his bad generalship; and against any living
man but Marlborough or Luxemburg they would probably have held
their own. It was the general not the soldiers that failed.

The losses on both sides were very severe. That of the French
was about eight thousand men; that of the Allies about twelve
thousand, killed, wounded, and prisoners, and among the dead was
Count Solmes, the hated Solmes of Steenkirk. The nineteen British
battalions present lost one hundred and thirty-five officers
killed, wounded, and taken. The French captured eighty guns and a
vast quantity of colours, but the Allies, although beaten, could
also show fifty-six French flags. And, indeed, though Luxemburg
won, and deserved to win, a great victory, yet the action was not
such as to make the allied troops afraid to meet the French. They
had stood up, fifty thousand against eighty thousand, and if they
were beaten they had at any rate dismayed every Frenchman on the
field but Luxemburg. In another ten years their turn was to come,
and they were to take a part of their revenge on the very ground
over which many of them had fled.

The campaign closed with the surrender of Charleroi, and the gain
by the French of the whole line of the Sambre. William came home
to meet the House of Commons and recommend an augmentation of the
Army by eight regiments of horse, four of dragoons, and twenty-five
of foot. The House reduced this list by the whole of the regiments
of horse, and fifteen of foot, but even so it brought the total
establishment up to eighty-three thousand men. There is, however,
but one new regiment of which note need be taken in the campaign
of 1694, namely the Seventh Dragoons, now known as the Seventh
Hussars, which, raised in 1689-90 in Scotland, now for the first
time took its place on the English establishment and its turn of
service in the war of Flanders.

[Illustration: LANDEN

       19^{th}
  July ------- 1693
       29^{th}

  _To face page 376_
]

[Sidenote: 1694.]

I shall not dwell on the campaign of 1694, which is memorable only
for a marvellous march by which Luxemburg upset William's entire
plan of campaign. Nor shall I speak at length of the abortive
descent on Brest, which is remembered mainly for the indelible
stain which it has left on the memory of Marlborough. It is only
necessary to say that the French, by Marlborough's information,
though not on Marlborough's information only, had full warning
of an expedition which had been planned as a surprise, and that
Tolmach,[268] who was in command, unfortunately though most
pardonably lacked the moral courage to abandon an attack which,
unless executed as a surprise, was hopeless of success. He was
repulsed with heavy loss, and died of wounds received in the
action, a hard fate for a good soldier and a gallant man. But it is
unjust to lay his death at Marlborough's door. For the failure of
the expedition Marlborough was undoubtedly responsible, and that is
quite bad enough; but Tolmach alone was to blame for attempting an
enterprise which he knew to be hopeless. Marlborough cannot have
calculated that he would deliberately essay to do impossibilities
and perish in the effort, so cannot be held guilty of poor
Tolmach's blunders.

[Sidenote: 1695.]

[Sidenote: January.]

Before the new campaign could be opened there had come changes
of vital importance to France. The vast expense of the war had
told heavily on the country, and the King's ministers were at
their wit's end to raise money. Moreover, the War Department had
deteriorated rapidly since the death of Louvois; and to this
misfortune was now added the death of Luxemburg, a loss which was
absolutely irreparable. Lastly, with the object of maintaining the
position which they had won on the Sambre, the French had extended
their system of fortified lines from Namur to the sea. Works so
important could not be left unguarded, so that a considerable force
was locked up behind these entrenchments, and was for all offensive
purposes useless. We shall see before long how a really great
commander could laugh at these lines, and how in consequence it
became an open question whether they were not rather an encumbrance
than an advantage. The subject is one which is still of interest;
and it is remarkable that the French still seem to cling to their
old principles in the works which they have constructed for defence
against a German invasion.

His enemy being practically restricted to the defensive, William
did not neglect the opportunity of initiating aggressive
operations. Masking his design by a series of feints, he marched
swiftly to the Meuse and invested Namur. This fortress, more famous
through its connection with the immortal Uncle Toby even than as
the masterpiece of Cohorn carried to yet higher perfection by
Vauban, stands at the junction of the Sambre and the Meuse, the
citadel lying in the angle between the two rivers, and the town
with its defences on the left bank of the Meuse. To the northward
of the town outworks had been thrown up on the heights of Bouge by
both of these famous engineers; and it was against these outworks
that William directed his first attack.

[Illustration: NAMUR

  June 26^{th}
  ------------ 1695
  July 6^{th}

  _To face page 378_
]

[Sidenote:

  June 23
  -------
  July 3.
]

[Sidenote:

  June 26
  -------
  July 6.
]

Ground was broken on the 3rd of July, and three days later an
assault was delivered on the lines of Bouge. As usual, the hardest
of the work was given to the British, and the post of greatest
danger was made over, as their high reputation demanded, to the
Brigade of Guards. On this occasion the Guards surpassed themselves
alike by the coolness of their valour and by the fire of their
attack. They marched under a heavy fire up to the French palisades,
thrust their muskets between them, poured in one terrible volley,
the first shot that they had yet fired, and charged forthwith.
In spite of a stout resistance, they swept the French out of the
first work, pursued them to the second, swept them out of that,
and gathering impetus with success, drove them from stronghold to
stronghold, far beyond the original design of the engineers, and
actually to the gates of the town. In another quarter the Royal
Scots and the Seventh Fusiliers gained not less brilliant success;
and in fact it was the most creditable action that William had
fought during the whole war. It cost the Allies two thousand men
killed and wounded, the three battalions of Guards alone losing
thirty-two officers. The British were to fight many such bloody
combats during the next twenty years--combats forgotten since they
were merely incidents in the history of a siege, and so frequent
that they were hardly chronicled and are not to be restored to
memory now. I mention this, the first of such actions, only as a
type of many more to come.

The outworks captured, the trenches were opened against the town
itself, and the next assault was directed against the counterguard
of St. Nicholas gate. This again was carried by the British, with
a loss of eight hundred men. Then came the famous attack on the
counterscarp before the gate itself, where Captain Shandy received
his memorable wound. This gave William the possession of the town.
Then came the siege of the citadel, wherein the British had the
honour of marching to the assault over half a mile of open ground,
a trial which proved too much even for them. Nevertheless, it was
they who eventually stormed a breach from which another of the
assaulting columns had been repulsed, and ensured the surrender of
the citadel a few days later. For their service on this occasion
the Eighteenth Foot were made the Royal Irish; and a Latin
inscription on their colours still records that this was the reward
of their valour at Namur.

[Sidenote: 1697.]

Thus William on his return to England could for the first time
show his Parliament a solid success due to the British red-coats;
and the House of Commons gladly voted once more a total force
of eighty-seven thousand men. But the war need be followed no
further. The campaign of 1696 was interrupted by a futile attempt
of the French to invade England, and in 1697 France, reduced to
utter exhaustion, gladly concluded the Peace of Ryswick. So ended,
not without honour, the first stage of the great conflict with
King Lewis the Fourteenth. The position of the two protagonists,
England and France, was not wholly unlike that which they occupied
a century later at the Peace of Amiens. The British, though they
had not reaped great victories, had made their presence felt,
and terribly felt, on the battlefield; and as the French in the
Peninsula remembered that the British had fought them with a
tenacity which they had not found in other nations, not only in
Egypt but even earlier at Tournay and Lincelles, so, too, after
Blenheim and Ramillies they looked back to the furious attack at
Steenkirk and the indomitable defence of Neerwinden. "Without the
concurrence of the valour and power of England," said William to
the Parliament at the close of 1695, "it were impossible to put a
stop to the ambition and greatness of France." So it was then, so
it was a century later, and so it will be again, for though none
know better the superlative qualities of the French as a fighting
people, yet the English are the one nation that has never been
afraid to meet them. With the Peace of Ryswick the 'prentice years
of the standing Army are ended, and within five years the old
spirit, which has carried it through the bitter schooling under
King William, will break forth with overwhelming power under the
guiding genius of Marlborough.

  AUTHORITIES.--The leading authority for William's campaigns
  on the English side is D'Auvergne, and on the French side the
  compilation, with its superb series of maps, by Beaurain.
  Supplementary on one side are Tindal's History, Carleton's
  Memoirs, and Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_; and on the other the
  _Mémoires_ of Berwick and St. Simon, Quincy's _Histoire Militaire
  de Louis XIV._, and in particular the _Mémoires_ of Feuquières.
  Many details as to Steenkirk, in particular as to the casualties,
  are drawn from _Present State of Europe, or Monthly Mercury_,
  August 1692; and as to Landen from the official relation of the
  battle, published by authority, 1693. Beautiful plans of both
  actions are in Beaurain, rougher plans in Quincy and Feuquières.
  All details as to the establishment voted are from the Journals
  of the House of Commons. Very elaborate details of the operations
  are given in Colonel Clifford Walton's _History of the British
  Standing Army_.

CHAPTER IV

[Sidenote: 1697.]

Peace having been signed, there arose the momentous question,
what should be done with the Army. To understand aright the
attitude of Parliament towards it, a brief sketch must be given
of its relations therewith apart from the mere question of voting
supplies. It has been seen that the scandals of Schomberg's first
campaign had opened the eyes of Parliament to the iniquities that
were then going forward; but, though a scape-goat had been made
of the Commissary-General, the matter had not been sifted to the
bottom.

The primary and principal difficulty was, of course, lack of money.
In the case of the Irish war this had been overcome by grants of
the Irish estates which had been forfeited after the conquest, the
mere expectation and hope of which had sufficed to set the minds
of many creditors at rest. For the war in Flanders, however, there
was no such resource. The treasury was empty, and the funds voted
by Parliament were so remote that they could only be assigned to
creditors in security for payment at some future time. Many of
these creditors, however, were tradesmen who could not afford to
wait until tallies should be issued in course of payment, and were
therefore compelled to dispose of these securities at a ruinous
discount. The mischief naturally did not end there. Capitalists
soon discovered that to buy tallies at huge discount was a much
more profitable business than to lend money direct to the State
at the rate of seven per cent, and accordingly devoted all their
money to it. Thus the "tally-traffic," as it was called, grew
so formidable that the Lord Treasurer, Godolphin, was obliged
secretly to offer larger interest for loans than was authorised by
Parliament.[269]

The result of this financial confusion was that the close of every
campaign found the Army in Flanders in a miserable state, owing to
the exhaustion of its money and its credit. When it is remembered
that a large proportion of the pay of officers and men was kept
on principle one year in arrear, that they had to pay discount
for anticipation of its payment at the best of times, and that to
this charge was now added the further discount on the tallies of
the State, it will be seen that their loss became very serious.
The incessant difficulties of all ranks from want of their pay and
arrears gave rise to much discontent and frequently hampered active
operations. Officers were obliged to sell the horses, which they
had bought for purposes of transport, before the campaign opened,
and were very often driven to supply not only themselves but their
men out of their own pockets.

Of all this it is probable that the House of Commons knew little,
and as in 1691 it had appointed Commissioners to inquire into
the public accounts, it doubtless awaited their report before
taking any active step. In 1694, however, the House was rudely
surprised by certain revelations respecting a notorious crimp
of London, named Tooley, who went so far in his zeal to procure
recruits that he not only forced the King's shilling on them when
they were drunk--a practice which was common in France and has
not long been extinct in England--but resorted to kidnapping pure
and simple.[270] Here was one gross infringement of the liberty
of the subject; and this scandal was quickly followed by another.
At the end of 1694 there came a petition from the inhabitants
of Royston, complaining that the troops quartered there were
exacting subsistence from the townsfolk on a fixed scale. Inquiry
proved the truth of the allegation: the troops were unpaid, and
had taken their own measures to save themselves from starvation.
Almost simultaneously the Commissioners of Public Accounts
reported that their inquiries had been baffled by the refusal of
several regimental agents to show their books; and they gave at
the same time an unvarnished relation of the shameful extortion
practised by agents towards officers and men, and of one case of
glaring misconduct on the part of a colonel. The House brought the
recalcitrant agents to their senses by committing them to custody,
and addressed the King with an earnest prayer that he would put a
stop to these iniquities.[271] The King accordingly cashiered the
colonel[272] and promised amendment, which promise was discharged
so far as orders could fulfil it. But the case demanded not new
orders but execution of existing regulations.

There, however, the matter rested for the time, the Commons being
occupied with the task of purging corruption from their own body,
which was very inadequately performed by the expulsion of the
Speaker. Nevertheless, to the end of the war fresh petitions
continued to come in from towns, from widows of officers, and from
private soldiers, all complaining of the dishonesty of officers
and of agents; and the House thus established itself as in some
sort a mediator between officers and men. Such a mediator, it must
be confessed, was but too sadly needed, but in the interests of
discipline it was a misfortune that the House should ever have
accepted the position. The immediate result was to overwhelm the
Commons with a vast amount of business which they were incompetent
to transact, and to suggest an easy remedy for soldiers' grievances
in the abolition of all soldiers.

[Sidenote: Dec. 11.]

William was not unaware of the danger, and had taken measures to
meet it. Before meeting Parliament in December 1697, he had already
disbanded ten regiments, and having thrown this sop to English
prejudice, he delivered it as his opinion in his speech from the
throne that England could not be safe without a land-force. But
agitators and pamphleteers had been before him. The old howl of
"No Standing Army" had been raised, and reams of puerile and
pedantic nonsense had been written to prove that the militia was
amply sufficient for England's needs. The arguments on the other
side were stated with consummate ability by Lord Somers; but the
old cry was far too pleasant in the ears of the House to be easily
silenced. Another reason which may well have swayed the House was
that, though his English soldiers had fought for William as no
other troops in the world, he had never succeeded in winning a
victory. Be that as it may, within eight days the House, on the
motion of Robert Harley, resolved that all forces raised since
September 1680 should be disbanded.

[Sidenote: Dec. 13.]

[Sidenote: 1698.]

The resolution, in the existing condition of European affairs,
was a piece of malignant folly; but the accounts submitted two
days later by the Paymaster-General probably did much to confirm
it. The arrears of pay due to the Army since April 1692 amounted
to twelve hundred thousand pounds, and the arrears of subsistence
to a million more, while yet another hundred thousand was due
to regiments on their transfer from the Irish to the English
establishment.[273] To meet this debt there was eighty thousand
pounds in tallies which no one would discount at any price, while
to make matters worse, taxation voted by the House to produce
three millions and a half had brought no more than two millions
into the treasury. Attempts were made in January 1698 to rescind
the resolution, but in vain. The Government yielded, and after
struggling hard to obtain four hundred thousand pounds, was fain
to accept fifty thousand pounds less than that sum for the service
of the Army in the ensuing year.

[Sidenote: May 28.]

The effect of the vote was immediate. The enemies of the Army
were exultant, and heaped abuse and insult on the soldiers who
for five years had spent their blood and their strength for a
people that had not paid them so much as their just wages. All