CHAPTER XXXVIII THE END OF THE STUART DYNASTY. ANNE (1702-1714) The Character of Anne. Anne was thirty-seven years old when she succeeded William, 8 March, 1702. Naturally meek and sluggish and of a limited understanding, she was incapable of dealing independently with the great problems at home and abroad which confronted her. She had warm affections and strong prejudices, she allowed her friends to mold her as wax, and, like her father, obstinately regarded those who disagreed with her as unworthy of all confidence. She could hardly have been more unfortunate in her closest associates. Sarah Jennings, wife of John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, with whom as a girl she had contracted the most intimate of friendships, gained a complete ascendancy over her which lasted well into the new reign. Waiving the formalities of royalty, the favorite, under the name of Mrs. Freeman, addressed her nominal mistress as Mrs. Morley. Utterly without scruple, her interests were thoroughly bound up with those of her husband, though she often quarreled with him, as she did with every one who came within range of her shrewish tongue. Yet, while she embittered all Anne's family relationships. and fomented party strife, her efforts to advance her family contributed greatly to the triumph which England achieved in the war about to open. Anne abhorred faction; Her Relation to Parties and to her People. but she was passionately devoted to the Church and she hated the Whigs, whom she regarded as hostile alike to the Establishment and to the prerogative. This led her to meddle busily in the administration of public affairs, whereby she came into sharp conflict with the growing tendency toward party government. All in all, however, she was personally popular. More important still, she represented the cause of Protestantism against the Pretender; moreover, she supported the Continental war until the zeal of her subjects was spent, until they began to grumble over the expense and to ask themselves what they were getting in return for all they had done for the Allies. - In spite The Parties. Their Composition and Aims. The Tories. of Anne's prejudices, worked upon by "court intrigues and faction," the two great parties came to exercise a steadily increasing influence. The Tories, composed largely of the most conservative element in the realm the squirearchy and the country parsons- set themselves obstinately against the changes which followed in the wake of the Revolution. They were opposed bitterly to toleration for Dissenters as a serious menace to true religion; to the National Debt and the Bank, which tended to enhance the power of the moneyed classes over the landed; and to a standing army employed against the Monarch who sheltered their true King. The great Whig lords were abominable in their eyes, since many of them were new men, not a few sprung from trading and Dissenting stock, and most of them allied with that class. The Whig bishops and Low Churchmen they classed as freethinkers or Presbyterians, hating them in consequence. Although the majority were stanch supporters of the existing Sovereign against the Pretender, they were seriously handicapped from the fact that, in prínciple, they still adhered to their anti-Revolutionary doctrines, a fact which caused their loyalty to Anne and the Hanoverian succession to be seriously doubted. The Whigs. The Whigs, made up of the great lords, the bulk of bishops and town clergy, the Nonconformists, the army men, the merchants, the financiers, and the small freeholders, were, in generalalthough their practice did not always accord with their principles the party of progress, of popular as distinct from class interests, favoring the growth of commerce and toleration and the limitation of the prerogative. Also, it was they who advocated a vigorous prosecution of the war against France. The Resources of France and the Allies at the Opening of the War. -On 4 May, 1702, the Allies at London, the Hague, and Vienna all declared war on France, while the Imperial General had already begun fighting in Italy during the previous year. In many respects Louis XIV seemed to have even greater advantages than in the previous struggle. Not only was he fighting on inside lines, but his flanks were guarded by Spain on the south and by the fortresses in the Netherlands on the north, while his alliance with the Elector of Bavaria thrust a wedge between the Dutch and the Austrians. He had an army of 400,000 men well disciplined and full of confidence, a fair-sized fleet and a considerable revenue. On the other hand, the tremendous strain due to the expenses of his magnificent Court and his constant wars had begun to tell. His debts were so enormous that he could only borrow money at 15 to 20 per cent, and it took half his annual revenue to pay the interest. Of the Allies, Holland had a small army but a strong fleet and extensive public credit, while the Emperor, who could furnish large contingents, had no money to pay them. The burden of the war fell more and more on the English. When it opened their fleet already greatly outnumbered the French, and while their standing army consisted of only 7,000 troops in England and 12,000 in Ireland, adequate forces were soon equipped and sent into the field. More than a third of their total debt was funded, money could be borrowed at 6 per cent, and, though the annual revenue was far from adequate, it was speedily swelled by extraordinary supplies. On the other hand, though the Tories at first supported the war, party strife soon became acute, while the Allies, who had nothing in common but the desire to crush France, were torn by conflicting interests. General Features of the War. There were four main theaters of war: the Dutch border; the valley of the Danube, which commanded the road to Vienna; the Po valley, the key to southern France; and Spain, where Philip V had been set up as King. In the course of the struggle the Allies succeeded in driving the French out of Germany (1704); out of Italy (1706); and out of the Netherlands (1706-1708); indeed they were baffled nowhere except in Spain. This was due to their two remarkable leaders, Marlborough and the commander of the Imperial forces, Prince Eugene; to the invaluable lessons which the Allied troops had learned from their defeats under William; and to the diminished French resources, resulting from Louis' dazzling but costly conquests. Marlborough. In spite of Marlborough's attempted treason, William, recognizing his remarkable military and diplomatic ability, had employed him in the negotiations leading up to the Grand Alliance. Now, owing to the influence of his wife, he was made Captain-General of the English forces; while the Dutch made him Commanderin-Chief of their army as well. He fought nobly for England in court. and camp; but he was so consumed with ambition and so sordid in his love of money that one is bound to believe that with him personal consideration counted more than love of country. But if he was a base, he was a splendid figure; his beauty, his charm of manner, his tact and patience made him irresistible. As a commander, in planning campaigns and in conducting battles and sieges, he showed a courage and energy, a boldness tempered with caution, and gained a degree of success which no English general has ever equaled. In his diplomacy, brilliant as it was, he made the ultimate mistake of pressing Louis too far, possibly because he wanted to continue the war for his own glory, possibly because he honestly felt that there could be no safety for Europe until his opponent was absolutely crushed. His Relation to Parties. He started as a moderate Tory, but as that party cooled in its warlike zeal and lost control of the Commons,1 he threw himself on the support of the Whigs. This brought him into conflict with Anne; and the violence of Mrs. Freeman, who became a furious Whig partisan, only widened the breach. It was a period of transition from Ministers who were individually servants of the Crown to the system under which they became a united body, collectively responsible to Parliament. Marlborough originally wanted to carry on the Government with the aid of the moderate men of both parties; later, when his Whig supporters were forced out, he sought to hold on regardless of that fact. Thus he made the mistake of going too far against the old system without going far enough in the direction of the new. It was only his great victories and the division among his opponents that enabled him to remain in control as long as he did. The Campaigns of 1702 and 1703. When he took command in the Netherlands in 1702, he was so hampered by the Dutch field deputies that he was unable to bring on a pitched battle during this or the following year. His efforts, however, during the years 1702 and 1703 were not wasted, for he succeeded in forcing the French back along the roads in the Spanish Netherlands and the Rhine country by which they might strike at the Dutch from the southeast and east. In the following year, as a result of a successful English raid on Vigo Bay, Portugal joined the Grand Alliance, thus furnishing a basis of operations against Spain. In the campaign of 1703 the interest centered in an attempt of the French, in conjunction with Bavarians, to make a dash on Vienna. Although it miscarried, owing to the supineness of the Elector, the danger remained critical, for the French generals gained decided successes in western Germany, while the Emperor had to face a disquieting rising of the Hungarian Protestants. During the winter, the Elector aroused himself sufficiently to capture Passau on the Danube. The Empire seemed lost to the Allies unless a decisive blow could be struck. Marlborough's Campaign of 1704.-In the face of the crisis, Marlborough framed and executed a daring plan which marked the turning point in the war. This was to march down to the Danube and relieve the Imperial capital by defeating the combined French and Bavarian armies. Realizing that the Dutch would never consent to leave their frontier thus exposed and that Louis would forestall him if the secret 1 Of the five Parliaments elected during the reign three were Tory: 1702-5; 1710-13; 1713-14; and two were Whig: 1705-8; 1708-10. leaked out, he took no one into his confidence, except the Queen and the Lord Treasurer,1 and gave out to the Grand Pensionary that he was going to operate along the Moselle. Leaving a portion of his forces to guard the Netherlands, he marched rapidly up the Rhine, followed by the incompetent French commander Villeroy, who was completely in the dark as to his movements. Passing the Moselle he struck southeast into Würtemberg, where late in June he held a conference with Prince Eugene, whom he left to hold the Rhine against Villeroy, who was halting uncertainly on the left bank, and joined forces with the Margrave of Baden. Thence he proceeded to cross the Danube at Donauwörth, while the Elector, after a vain attempt to dispute his passage, retreated to Augsburg, where he was later joined by a large French contingent under Tallard. Marlborough was now between the enemy and Vienna with Bavaria at his mercy. He at once began to ravage and burn, though, as he wrote his wife, it was so contrary to his disposition that nothing but absolute necessity could bring him to consent to it. The Battle of Blenheim (13 August, 1704). However, in danger of being cut off from his communications and his bases of supply, he soon saw that the time had come to risk a battle. So he quietly recrossed to the northern bank of the Danube, effecting a junction with Prince Eugene, who had dropped back from the Rhine. Meantime, the Elector and Tallard, thinking that they had only Eugene to deal with, left their strong position and crossed the river in their turn with the design of destroying the magazines of the Allies. Near the village of Blenheim 2 on the north bank of the Danube, they were attacked by Marlborough and Eugene, 13 August, Tallard's forces were cut off and surrounded by Marlborough, and Tallard himself was taken prisoner, though the Elector, who faced Eugene, managed to escape with a considerable portion of his forces. The Allies, at a cost of 12,000 men, destroyed 14,000 of the enemy and took 11,000 prisoners. It was, as Marlborough wrote his wife in the gathering darkness, "a glorious victory." The spell which had so long seemed to render the French arms irresistible had at last been broken. As a more immediate result the Empire had been saved. Though Marlborough was not in condition to run down and crush the fugitives, Villeroy, who came to their aid, was obliged obliged to recross the Rhine, and, before the close of November, the Elector had agreed to a treaty by which Bavaria was made subject to Imperial authority. It is possible, however, that he took Prince Eugene into his confidence as early as the winter of 1703-4. 2 Hochstädt, after which the French name the battle, lies farther to the west. 2 G |