Читать книгу Marlborough and the War of the Spanish Succession - G. W. L. Nicholson - Страница 7

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The man whom William made Commander-in-Chief of the English contingent and appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United Provinces was John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. Although the King was but fifty years of age, he had been for some time in indifferent health, and in selecting to succeed him, both in command and diplomacy, one who had for much of the past decade been out of the royal favour, he showed a shrewd recognition of the problems which were likely to face the next wearer of the English crown and an appreciation of Marlborough's ability to cope with them.

To these important posts John Churchill came well fitted by experience and temperament. He was born in 1650, the same year as his royal master, the son of a country squire who had been on the King's side in the Civil War. At the age of seventeen he was commissioned in what later became the Grenadier Guards, and as an ensign saw garrison service in Tangier. In the Franco-Dutch War of 1672-8, in which England supported Louis XIV, young Churchill distinguished himself as a Captain at the sieges of Nijmegen and Maastricht. His promotion was rapid. By 1674 he was commanding a British infantry regiment in the French service, during which employment he earned the commendation of the renowned Marshal Turenne, and "learned to speak and write bad French with fluency and confidence". This first active phase of his military career ended in 1675, when he returned to England to resume his place in the household of the King's brother, James, Duke of York. In 1678 he married Sarah Jennings, Maid of Honour to the Duchess of York, and in the following year, when public opinion compelled Charles II to banish James as a papist, Colonel Churchill and his wife accompanied the Duke to Brussels.

During the next four years he was employed upon a number of important missions between the royal brothers, the successful completion of which owed much to his shrewdness and tact, coupled with his great personal charm, and helped to establish his reputation as a skilled diplomat. James was able to return to the London Court in 1682, and shortly afterwards Churchill was rewarded by being raised to the Scottish peerage and made Colonel of the King's Own Royal Regiment of Dragoons (an appointment which entitled him to make what profit he could out of the annual clothing of the regiment). Three years later, on the death of Charles, his patron ascended the throne as James II. Almost immediately Churchill, in the rank of Brigadier-General, was called on to play a major part in the suppression of the Duke of Monmouth's ill-fated rebellion (although he had no hand in the atrocities which followed). His promotion to Major-General (with no increase of pay) came just before the decisive Battle of Sedgemoor.

The year 1688 saw Lord Churchill taking the critical step which has been termed by his illustrious descendant "the most poignant and challengeable action of his life."[5] For the past three years James II, having successfully survived the Monmouth revolt, had been moving steadily in the direction of absolute government and a return of England to the Church of Rome. Firm in his Protestant upbringing and sure in his judgment of what was best for England, Churchill did not hesitate to issue the plainest of warnings to his royal master. These went unheeded, yet apparently unresented; James knew that "Churchill loathed his policy, but fondly believed he loved his person more." But early in 1688 the Princess Anne, whose childhood acquaintance with Sarah Churchill had ripened into a warm and intimate friendship, was to write of John Churchill to her elder sister, Queen Mary, "though he will always obey the King in all things that are consistent with religion—yet, rather than change that, I daresay he will lose all his places and all that he has." That summer Churchill joined in the invitation to William of Orange to come to England. For nineteen days after the landing Churchill remained with James, before slipping away to William's camp. His unexpected defection, which was copied by the other leading officers of the Army, convinced James of the hopelessness of his cause and hastened his departure to France. Years later, when giving her instructions "to the Gentlemen that are to write the Duke of Marlborough's History", the widowed Duchess was to set down: "When he left King James, [it] was with the greatest Regret imaginable, but he saw it was plain that King James could not be prevented any other way from establishing Popery and arbitrary Power to the Ruin of England." This justification of Churchill's actions might be more convincing had he remained firm in his break with James and given his unswerving loyalty to his new sovereign.

Churchill's first task under William III was to rebuild the Army, which James had disbanded in chaos when he saw that all was lost. He tackled the job energetically, bringing to it the wealth of his organizational ability and military experience. He was confirmed in the rank of Lieutenant-General, and at the coronation of William and Mary in April 1689 he was advanced to the Earldom of Marlborough. The War of the Augsburg League had broken out and during the next two years the new Earl fought with William in the Low Countries and in Ireland, adding to his military repute in both campaigns. But his attitude towards the King was becoming openly hostile. He was dissatisfied with his rewards (an expected Order of the Garter and the lucrative post of Master General of the Ordnance had been bestowed elsewhere), and he complained to William about the preferred treatment given to the King's Dutch favourites. The break came early in 1692, when William discovered that Marlborough had sought and obtained the forgiveness of the exiled James, and had allowed his name to be associated with several suspected Jacobite plots. (That Marlborough planned to recall James to the English throne seems less likely than that he hoped to depose William in favour of his niece Anne.) The King stripped Marlborough of all his civil and military offices, banished him from Court, and even confined him for a few weeks in the Tower of London. The remainder of the war was fought without the services of Marlborough, William commanding the Allied troops in the Low Countries with no conspicuous success. The process of restoration to favour began in 1698, when Marlborough was appointed Governor to the young Duke of Gloucester, Anne's only surviving son; later in the same year he was readmitted to the Privy Council and was selected as one of the nine Lord Justices to rule England during the King's absence in Holland. Although Marlborough wrote in May 1700, "The King's coldness to me still continues",[6] by the middle of 1701, as we have seen, he had risen once more to the important post of Commander-in-Chief, and was in addition enjoying extensive diplomatic powers.