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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 373, November 1846

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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 373, November 1846

Author: Various


        
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Language: English

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BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCLXXIII. NOVEMBER, 1846. VOL. LX.


CONTENTS.

    MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES. 1710-1711,            517

    MOHAN LAL IN AFGHANISTAN,                       539

    ON THE OPERATION OF THE ENGLISH POOR-LAWS,      555

    PRUSSIAN MILITARY MEMOIRS,                      572

    ADVICE TO AN INTENDING SERIALIST,               590

    A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY,                      606

    HONOUR TO THE PLOUGH,                           613

    LUIGIA DE' MEDICI,                              614

    THINGS IN GENERAL,                              625


EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW,
LONDON.

_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.




BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXIII. NOVEMBER, 1846. VOL. LX.




MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES.

1710-1711.

Louis XIV. was one of the most remarkable sovereigns who ever sat upon
the throne of France. Yet there is none of whose character, even at this
comparatively remote period, it is more difficult to form a just
estimate. Beyond measure eulogised by the poets, orators, and annalists
of his own age, who lived on his bounty, or were flattered by his
address, he has been proportionally vilified by the historians, both
foreign and national, of subsequent times. The Roman Catholic writers,
with some truth, represent him as the champion of their faith, the
sovereign who extirpated the demon of heresy in his dominions, and
restored to the church in undivided unity the realm of France. The
Protestant authors, with not less reason, regard him as the deadliest
enemy of their religion, and the cruellest foe of those who had embraced
it; as a faithless tyrant, who scrupled not, at the bidding of bigoted
priests, to violate the national faith plighted by the Edict of Nantes,
and persecute, with unrelenting severity, the unhappy people who, from
conscientious motives, had broken off from the Church of Rome. One set
of writers paint him as a magnanimous monarch, whose mind, set on great
things, and swayed by lofty desires, foreshadowed those vast designs
which Napoleon, armed with the forces of the Revolution, afterwards for
a brief space realised. Another set dwell on the foibles or the vices of
his private character--depict him as alternately swayed by priests, or
influenced by women; selfish in his desires, relentless in his hatred;
and sacrificing the peace of Europe, and endangering the independence of
France, for the gratification of personal vanity, or from the thirst of
unbounded ambition.

It is the fate of all men who have made a great and durable impression
on human affairs, and powerfully affected the interests, or thwarted the
opinion of large bodies of men, to be represented in these opposite
colours to future times. The party, whether in church or state, which
they have elevated, the nation whose power or glory they have augmented,
praise, as much as those whom they have oppressed and injured, whether
at home or abroad, strive to vilify their memory. But in the case of
Louis XIV., this general propensity has been greatly increased by the
opposite, and, at first sight, inconsistent features of his character.
There is almost equal truth in the magniloquent eulogies of his
admirers, as in the impassioned invectives of his enemies. He was not
less great and magnanimous than he is represented by the elegant
flattery of Racine or Corneille, nor less cruel and hard-hearted than he
is painted by the austere justice of Sismondi or D'Aubigne. Like many
other men, but more than most, he was made up of lofty and elevated, and
selfish and frivolous qualities. He could alternately boast, with truth,
that there were no longer any Pyrenees, and rival his youngest
courtiers in frivolous and often heartless gallantry. In his younger
years he was equally assiduous in his application to business, and
engrossed with personal vanity. When he ascended the throne, his first
words were: "I intend that every paper, from a diplomatic dispatch to a
private petition, shall be submitted to me;" and his vast powers of
application enabled him to compass the task. Yet, at the same time, he
deserted his queen for Madame la Valliere, and soon after broke La
Valliere's heart by his desertion of her for Madame de Montespan. In
mature life, his ambition to extend the bounds and enhance the glory of
France, was equalled by his desire to win the admiration or gain the
favour of the fair sex. In his later days, he alternately engaged in
devout austerities with Madame de Maintenon, and, with mournful
resolution, asserted the independence of France against Europe in arms.
Never was evinced a more striking exemplification of the saying, so well
known among men of the world, that no one is a hero to his
valet-de-chambre; nor a more remarkable confirmation of the truth, so
often proclaimed by divines, that characters of imperfect goodness
constitute the great majority of mankind.

That he was a great man, as well as a successful sovereign, is
decisively demonstrated by the mighty changes which he effected in his
own realm, as well as in the neighbouring states of Europe. When he
ascended the throne, France, though it contained the elements of
greatness, had never yet become great. It had been alternately wasted by
the ravages of the English, and torn by the fury of the religious wars.
The insurrection of the Fronde had shortly before involved the capital
in all the horrors of civil conflict;--barricades had been erected in
its streets; alternate victory and defeat had by turns elevated and
depressed the rival faction. Turenne and Conde had displayed their
consummate talents in miniature warfare within sight of Notre-Dame.
Never had the monarchy been depressed to a greater pitch of weakness
than during the reign of Louis XIII. and the minority of Louis XIV. But
from the time the latter sovereign ascended the throne, order seemed to
arise out of chaos. The ascendancy of a great mind made itself felt in
every department. Civil war ceased; the rival faction disappeared; even
the bitterness of religious hatred seemed for a time to be stilled by
the influence of patriotic feeling. The energies of France, drawn forth
during the agonies of civil conflict, were turned to public objects and
the career of national aggrandisement--as those of England had been
after the conclusion of the Great Rebellion, by the firm hand and
magnanimous mind of Cromwell. From a pitiable state of anarchy, France
at once appeared on the theatre of Europe, great, powerful, and united.
It is no common capacity which can thus seize the helm and right the
ship when it is reeling most violently, and the fury of contending
elements has all but torn it in pieces. It is the highest proof of
political capacity to discern the bent of the public mind, when most
violently exerted, and, by falling in with the prevailing desire of the
majority, convert the desolating vehemence of social conflict into the
steady passion for national advancement. Napoleon did this with the
political aspirations of the eighteenth, Louis XIV. with the religious
fervour of the seventeenth century.

It was because his character and turn of mind coincided with the
national desires at the moment of his ascending the throne, that this
great monarch was enabled to achieve this marvellous transformation. If
Napoleon was the incarnation of the Revolution, with not less truth it
may be said that Louis XIV. was the incarnation of the monarchy. The
feudal spirit, modified but not destroyed by the changes of time,
appeared to be concentrated, with its highest lustre, in his person. He
was still the head of the Franks--the lustre of the historic families
yet surrounded his throne; but he was the head of the Franks only--that
is, of a hundred thousand conquering warriors. Twenty million of
conquered Gauls were neither regarded nor considered in his
administration, except in so far as they augmented the national
strength, or added to the national resources. But this distinction was
then neither perceived nor regarded. Worn out with civil dissension,
torn to pieces by religious passions, the fervent minds and restless
ambition of the French longed for a _national_ field for exertion--an
arena in which social dissensions might be forgotten. Louis XIV. gave
them this field: he opened this arena. He ascended the throne at the
time when this desire had become so strong and general, as in a manner
to concentrate the national will. His character, equally in all its
parts, was adapted to the general want. He took the lead alike in the
greatness and the foibles of his subjects. Were they ambitious? so was
he:--were they desirous of renown? so was he:--were they set on national
aggrandisement? so was he:--were they desirous of protection to
industry? so was he:--were they prone to gallantry? so was he. His
figure and countenance tall and majestic; his manner stately and
commanding; his conversation dignified, but enlightened; his spirit
ardent, but patriotic--qualified him to take the lead and preserve his
ascendancy among a proud body of ancient nobles, whom the disasters of
preceding reigns, and the astute policy of Cardinal Richelieu, had
driven into the antechambers of Paris, but who preserved in their ideas
and habits the pride and recollections of the conquerors who followed
the banners of Clovis. And the great body of the people, proud of their
sovereign, proud of his victories, proud of his magnificence, proud of
his fame, proud of his national spirit, proud of the literary glory
which environed his throne, in secret proud of his gallantries, joyfully
followed their nobles in the brilliant career which his ambition opened,
and submitted with as much docility to his government as they ranged
themselves round the banners of their respective chiefs on the day of
battle.

It was the peculiarity of the government of Louis XIV., arising from
this fortuitous, but to him fortunate combination of circumstances, that
it united the distinctions of rank, family attachments, and ancient
ideas of feudal times, with the vigour and efficiency of monarchical
government, and the lustre and brilliancy of literary glory. Such a
combination could not, in the nature of things, last long; it must soon
work out its own destruction. In truth, it was sensibly weakened during
the course of the latter part of the half century that he sat upon the
throne. But while it endured, it produced a most formidable union; it
engendered an extraordinary and hitherto unprecedented phalanx of
talent. The feudal ideas still lingering in the hearts of the nation,
produced subordination; the national spirit, excited by the genius of
the sovereign, induced unanimity; the development of talent, elicited by
his discernment, conferred power; the literary celebrity, encouraged by
his munificence, diffused fame. The peculiar character of Louis, in
which great talent was united with great pride, and unbounded ambition
with heroic magnanimity, qualified him to turn to the best account this
singular combination of circumstances, and to unite in France, for a
brief period, the lofty aspirations and dignified manners of chivalry,
with the energy of rising talent and the lustre of literary renown.

Louis XIV. was essentially monarchical. That was the secret of his
success; it was because he first gave the powers of _unity_ to the
monarchy, that he rendered France so brilliant and powerful. All his
changes, and they were many, from the dress of soldiers to the
instructions to ambassadors, breathed the same spirit. He first
introduced a _uniform_ in the army. Before his time, the soldiers merely
wore a banderole over their steel breast-plates and ordinary dresses.
That was a great and symptomatic improvement; it at once induced an
_esprit de corps_ and a sense of responsibility. He first made the
troops march with a measured step, and caused large bodies of men to
move with the precision of a single company. The artillery and engineer
service, under his auspices, made astonishing progress. His discerning
eye selected the genius of Vauban, which invented, as it were, the
modern system of fortification, and wellnigh brought it to its greatest
elevation--and raised to the highest command that of Turenne, which
carried the military art to the most consummate perfection. Skilfully
turning the martial and enterprising genius of the Franks into the
career of conquest, he multiplied tenfold their power, by conferring on
them the inestimable advantages of skilled discipline and unity of
action. He gathered the feudal array around his banner; he roused the
ancient barons from their chateaux, the old retainers from their
villages; but he arranged them in disciplined battalions of regular
troops, who received the pay and obeyed the orders of government, and
never left their banners. When he summoned the array of France to
undertake the conquest of the Low Countries, he appeared at the head of
a hundred and twenty thousand men, all regular and disciplined troops,
with a hundred pieces of cannon. Modern Europe had never seen such an
array. It was irresistible, and speedily brought the monarch to the
gates of Amsterdam.

The same unity which the genius of Louis and his ministers communicated
to the military power of France, he gave also to its naval forces and
internal strength. To such a pitch of greatness did he raise the marine
of the monarchy, that it all but outnumbered that of England; and the
battle of La Hogue in 1792 alone determined, as Trafalgar did a century
after, to which of these rival powers the dominion of the seas was to
belong. He reduced the government of the interior to that regular and
methodical system of governors of provinces, mayors of cities, and other
subordinate authorities, all receiving their instructions from the
Tuileries, which, under no subsequent change of government, imperial or
royal, has been abandoned, and which has, in every succeeding age,
formed the main source of its strength. He concentrated around the
monarchy the rays of genius from all parts of the country, and threw
around its head a lustre of literary renown, which, more even than the
exploits of his armies, dazzled and fascinated the minds of men. He
arrayed the scholars, philosophers, and poets of his dominions like his
soldiers and sailors; the whole academies of France, which have since
become so famous, were of his institution; he sought to give discipline
to thought, as he had done to his fleets and armies, and rewarded
distinction in literary efforts, not less than warlike achievement. No
monarch ever knew better the magical influence of intellectual strength
on general thought, or felt more strongly the expedience of enlisting it
on the side of authority. Not less than Hildebrand or Napoleon, he aimed
at drawing, not over his own country alone, but the whole of Europe, the
meshes of regulated and centralised opinion; and more durably than
either he attained his object. The religious persecution, which
constitutes the great blot on his reign, and caused its brilliant career
to close in mourning, arose from the same cause. He was fain to give the
same unity to the church which he had done to the army, navy, and civil
strength of the monarchy. He saw no reason why the Huguenots should not,
at the royal command, face about like one of Turenne's battalions.
Schism in the church was viewed by him in exactly the same light as
rebellion in the state. No efforts were spared by inducements, good
deeds, and fair promises, to make proselytes; and when twelve hundred
thousand Protestants resisted his seductions, the sword, the fagot, and
the wheel were resorted to without mercy for their destruction.

Napoleon, it is well known, had the highest admiration of Louis XIV. Nor
is this surprising: their principles of government and leading objects
of ambition were the same. "L'etat _c'est moi_," was the principle of
this grandson of Henry IV.: "Your first duty is _to me_, your second to
France," said the Emperor to his nephew Prince Louis Napoleon. In
different words, the idea was the same. To concentrate Europe in France,
France in Paris, Paris in the government, and the government in himself,
was the ruling idea of each. But it was no concentration for selfish or
unworthy purposes which was then desired; it was for great and lofty
objects that this undivided power was desired. It was neither to gratify
the desire of an Eastern seraglio, nor exercise the tyranny of a Roman
emperor, that either coveted unbounded authority. It was to exalt the
nation of which they formed the head, to augment its power, extend its
dominion, enhance its fame, magnify its resources, that they both deemed
themselves sent into the world. It was the general sense that this was
the object of their administration which constituted the strength of
both. Equally with the popular party in the present day, they regarded
society as a pyramid, of which the multitude formed the base, and the
monarch the head. Equally with the most ardent democrat, they desired
the augmentation of the national resources, the increase of public
felicity. But they both thought that these blessings must descend from
the sovereign to his subject, not ascend from the subjects to their
sovereign. "Every thing _for_ the people, nothing _by_ them," which
Napoleon described as the secret of good government, was not less the
maxim of the imperious despot of the Bourbon race.

The identity of their ideas, the similarity of their objects of
ambition, appears in the monuments which both have left at Paris. Great
as was the desire of the Emperor to add to its embellishment,
magnificent as were his ideas in the attempt, he has yet been unable to
equal the noble structures of the Bourbon dynasty. The splendid pile of
Versailles, the glittering dome of the Invalides, still, after the lapse
of a century and a half, overshadow all the other monuments in the
metropolis; though the confiscations of the Revolution, and the
victories of the Emperor, gave succeeding governments the resources of
the half of Europe for their construction. The inscription on the arch
of Louis, "Ludovico Magno," still seems to embody the gratitude of the
citizens to the greatest benefactor of the capital; and it is not
generally known that the two edifices which have added most since his
time to the embellishment of the metropolis, and of which the revolution
and the empire are fain to take the credit--the Pantheon and the
Madeleine--were begun in 1764 by Louis XV., and owe their origin to the
magnificent ideas which Louis XIV. transmitted to his, in other
respects, unworthy descendant.[1]

Had one dark and atrocious transaction not taken place, the annalist
might have stopped here, and painted the French monarch, with a few
foibles and weaknesses, the common bequest of mortality, still as, upon
the whole, a noble and magnanimous ruler. His ambition, great as it was,
and desolating as it proved, both to the adjoining states, and in the
end his own subjects, was the "last infirmity of noble minds." He shared
it with Caesar and Alexander, with Charlemagne and Napoleon. Even his
cruel and unnecessary ravaging of the Palatinate, though attended with
dreadful private suffering, has too many parallels in the annals of
military cruelty. His personal vanities and weaknesses, his love of
show, his passion for women, his extravagant expenses, were common to
him with his grandfather Henry IV.; they seemed inherent in the Bourbon
race, and are the frailties to which heroic minds in every age have been
most subject. But, for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the
heartrending cruelties with which it was carried into execution, no such
apology can be found. It admits neither of palliation nor excuse. But
for the massacre of St Bartholomew, and the expulsion of the Morescoes
from Spain, it would stand foremost in the annals of the world for
kingly perfidy and priestly cruelty. The expulsion of five hundred
thousand innocent human beings from their country, for no other cause
but difference of religious opinion--the destruction, it is said, of
nearly an hundred thousand by the frightful tortures of the wheel and
the stake--the wholesale desolation of provinces and destruction of
cities for conscience sake, never will and never should be forgotten. It
is the eternal disgrace of the Roman Catholic religion--a disgrace to
which the "execrations of ages have not yet affixed an adequate
censure"--that all these infamous state crimes took their origin in the
bigoted zeal, or sanguinary ambition of the Church of Rome. Nor have
any of them passed without their just reward. The expulsion of the
Moors, the most industrious and valuable inhabitants of the Peninsula,
has entailed a weakness upon the Spanish monarchy, which the subsequent
lapse of two centuries has been unable to repair. The reaction against
the Romish atrocities produced the great league of which William III.
was the head; it sharpened the swords of Eugene and Marlborough; it
closed in mourning the reign of Louis XV. Nor did the national
punishment stop here. The massacre of St Bartholomew, and revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, were the remote, but certain cause of the French
Revolution, and all the unutterable miseries which it brought both upon
the Bourbon race and the professors of the Romish faith. Nations have no
immortality; their punishment is inflicted in this world; it is visited
with unerring certainty on the third and fourth generations. Providence
has a certain way of dealing with the political sins of men--which is,
to leave them to the consequences of their own actions.

If ever the characters of two important actors on the theatre of human
affairs stood forth in striking and emphatic contrast to each other,
they were those of Louis XIV. and William III. They were, in truth, the
representatives of the principles for which they respectively so long
contended; their characters embodied the doctrines, and were
distinguished by the features, of the causes for which they fought
through life. As much as the character--stately, magnanimous, and
ambitious, but bigoted and unscrupulous--of Louis XIV. personified the
Romish, did the firm and simple, but persevering and unconquerable mind
of William, embody the principles of the Protestant faith. The positions
they respectively held through life, the stations they occupied, the
resources, moral and political, which they wielded, were not less
characteristic of the causes of which they were severally the heads.
Louis led on the feudal resources of the French monarchy. Inured to
rigid discipline, directed by consummate talent, supported by immense
resources, his armies, uniting the courage of feudal to the organisation
of civilised times, like those of Caesar, had at first only to appear to
conquer. From his gorgeous palaces at Paris, he seemed able, like the
Church of Rome from the halls of the Quirinal, to give law to the whole
Christian world. William began the contest under very different
circumstances. Sunk in obscure marshes, cooped up in a narrow territory,
driven into a corner of Europe, the forces at his command appeared as
nothing before the stupendous array of his adversary. He was the emblem
of the Protestant faith, arising from small beginnings, springing from
the energy of the middle classes, but destined to grow with ceaseless
vigour, until it reached the gigantic strength of its awful antagonist.

The result soon proved the prodigious difference in the early resources
of the parties. Down went tower and town before the apparition of Louis
in his strength. The iron barriers of Flanders yielded almost without a
struggle to his arms. The genius of Turenne and Vauban, the presence of
Louis, proved for the time irresistible. The Rhine was crossed; a
hundred thousand men appeared before the gates of Amsterdam. Dissension
had paralysed its strength, terror all but mastered its resolution.
England, influenced by French mistresses, or bought by French gold, held
back, and ere long openly joined the oppressor, alike of its liberties
and its religion. All seemed lost alike for the liberties of Europe and
the Protestant faith. But William was not dismayed. He had a certain
resource against subjugation left. In his own words, "he could die in
the last ditch." He communicated his unconquerable spirit to his
fainting fellow-citizens; he inspired them with the noble resolution to
abandon their country rather than submit to the invaders, and "seek in a
new hemisphere that liberty of which Europe had become unworthy." The
generous effort was not made in vain. The Dutch rallied round a leader
who was not wanting to himself in such a crisis. The dikes were cut; the
labour of centuries was lost; the ocean resumed its sway over the fields
reft from its domain. But the cause of freedom of religion was gained.
The French armies recoiled from the watery waste, as those of Napoleon
afterwards did from the flames of Moscow. Amsterdam was the limit of the
conquests of Louis XIV. He there found the power which said, "Hitherto
shalt thou come, and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be
staid." Long, and often doubtful, was the contest; it was bequeathed to
a succeeding generation and another reign. But from the invasion of
Holland, the French arms and Romish domination permanently receded; and
but for the desertion of the alliance by England, at the peace of
Utrecht, they would have given law in the palace of the Grand Monarque,
bridled the tyranny of Bossuet and Tellier, and permanently established
the Protestant faith in nearly the half of Europe.

Like many other men who are called on to play an important part in the
affairs of the world, William seemed formed by nature for the duties he
was destined to perform. Had his mind been stamped by a different die,
his character cast in a different mould, he would have failed in his
mission. He was not a monarch of the most brilliant, nor a general of
the most daring kind. Had he been either the one or the other, he would
have been shattered against the colossal strength of Louis XIV., and
crushed in the very outset of his career. But he possessed in the
highest perfection that great quality without which, in the hour of
trial, all others prove of no avail--moral courage, and invincible
determination. His enterprises, often designed with ability and executed
with daring, were yet all based, like those of Wellington afterwards in
Portugal, on a just sense of the necessity of husbanding his resources
from the constant inferiority of his forces and means to those of the
enemy. He was perseverance itself. Nothing could shake his resolution,
nothing divert his purpose. With equal energy he laboured in the cabinet
to construct and keep together the vast alliance necessary to restrain
the ambition of the French monarch, and toiled in the field to baffle
the enterprises of his able generals. With a force generally inferior in
number, always less powerful than that of his adversaries in discipline,
composition, and resources, he nevertheless contrived to sustain the
contest, and gradually wrested from his powerful enemy the more
important fortresses, which, in the first tumult of invasion, had
submitted to his arms. If the treaties of Nimeguen and Ryswick were less
detrimental to the French power than that of Utrecht afterwards proved,
they were more glorious to the arms of the Dutch commonwealth and the
guidance of William; for they were the result of efforts in which the
weight of the conflict generally fell on Holland alone; and its honours
were not to be shared with those won by the wisdom of a Marlborough, or
the daring of a Eugene.

In private life, William was distinguished by the same qualities which
marked his public career. He had not the chivalrous ardour which bespoke
the nobles of France, nor the stately magnificence of their haughty
sovereign. His manners and habits were such as arose from, and suited,
the austere and laborious people among whom his life was passed. Without
being insensible to the softer passions, he never permitted them to
influence his conduct, or incroach upon his time. He was patient,
laborious, and indefatigable. To courtiers accustomed to the polished
elegance of Paris, or the profligate gallantry of St James's, his
manners appeared cold and unbending. It was easy to see he had not been
bred in the saloons of Versailles or the _soirees_ of Charles II. But he
was steady and unwavering in his resolutions; his desires were set on
great objects; and his external demeanour was correct, and often
dignified. He was reproached by the English, not without reason, with
being unduly partial, after his accession to the British throne, to his
Dutch subjects; and he was influenced through life by a love of money,
which, though at first arising from a bitter sense of its necessity in
his long and arduous conflicts, degenerated in his older years into an
avaricious turn. The national debt of England has been improperly
ascribed to his policy. It arose unavoidably from the Revolution, and is
the price which every nation pays for a lasting change, how necessary
soever, in its ruling dynasty. When the sovereign can no longer depend
on the unbought loyalty of his subjects, he has no resource but in their
interested attachment. Louis Philippe's government has done the same,
under the influence of the same necessity. Yet William was not a perfect
character; more than one dark transaction has left a lasting stain on
his memory; and the massacre of Glencoe, in particular, if it did not
equal the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the wide-spread misery
with which it was attended, rivalled it in the perfidy in which it was
conceived, and the cruelty with which it was executed.

On his arrival in Holland on the 18th March 1710, Marlborough again
found himself practically involved in the still pending negotiations for
peace, over which, on the decline of his influence at court, he had
ceased to have any real control. Still exposed to the blasting
imputation of seeking to prolong the war for his own private purposes,
he was in reality doing his utmost to terminate hostilities. As the
negotiation with the ostensible plenipotentiaries of the different
courts was at an end, but Louis still continued to make private
overtures to the Dutch, in the hope of detaching them from the
confederacy, Marlborough took advantage of this circumstance to
endeavour to effect an accommodation. At his request, the Dutch agent,
Petcum, had again repaired to Paris in the end of 1709, to resume the
negotiation; and the _Marlborough Papers_ contain numerous letters from
him to the Duke, detailing the progress of the overtures.[2] On the very
day after Marlborough's arrival at the Hague, the plenipotentiaries made
their report of the issue of the negotiation; but the views of the
parties were still so much at variance, that it was evident no hopes of
peace could be entertained. Louis was not yet sufficiently humbled to
submit to the arrogant demands of the Allies, which went to strip him of
nearly all his conquests; and the different powers of the confederacy
were each set upon turning the general success of the alliance to their
own private advantage.

Zenzindorf, on the part of Austria, insisted that not the smallest
portion of the Spanish territories in Italy should be ceded to a prince
of the house of Bourbon, and declared the resolution of his imperial
master to perish with arms in his hands, rather than submit to a
partition which would lead to his inevitable ruin. King Charles
expressed the same determination, and insisted further for the cession
of Roussillon, which had been wrested from Spain since the treaty of the
Pyrenees. The Duke of Savoy, who aimed at the acquisition of Sicily from
the spoils of the fallen monarch, was equally obstinate for the
prosecution of the war. Godolphin, Somers, and the Dutch Pensionary,
inclined to peace, and were willing to purchase it by the cession of
Sicily to Louis; and Marlborough gave this his entire support, provided
the evacuation of Spain, the great object of the war, could be
secured.[3] But all their efforts were in vain. The ambitious designs of
Austria and Savoy prevailed over their pacific counsels; and we have the
valuable authority of Torcy, who, in the former congress, had accused
the Duke of breaking off the negotiation, that in this year the rupture
was entirely owing to the efforts of Count Zenzindorf.[4] Marlborough,
however, never ceased to long for a termination of hostilities, and took
the field with a heavy heart, relieved only by the hope that one more
successful campaign would give him what he so ardently desired, the rest
consequent upon a general peace.[5]

War being resolved on, Marlborough and Eugene met at Tournay on the
28th April, and commenced the campaign by the capture of the fort of
Mortagne, which capitulated on the same day. Their force already
amounted to sixty thousand men, and, as the troops were daily coming up
from their cantonments, it was expected soon to amount to double the
number. The plan of operations was soon settled between these two great
men; no difference of opinion ever occurred between them, no jealousy
ever marred their co-operations. They determined to commence serious
operations by attacking Douay--a strong fortress, and one of the last of
the first order which, in that quarter, guarded the French territory. To
succeed in this, however, it was necessary to pass the French lines,
which were of great strength, and were guarded by Marshal Montesquieu at
the head of forty battalions and twenty squadrons. Douay itself also was
strongly protected both by art and nature. On the one side lay the Haine
and the Scarpe; in the centre was the canal of Douay; on the other hand
were the lines of La Bassie, which had been strengthened with additional
works since the close of the campaign. Marlborough was very sanguine of
success, as the French force was not yet collected, and he was
considerably superior in number; and he wrote to Godolphin on the same
night--"The orders are given for marching this night, so that I hope my
next will give you an account of our being in Artois."[6]

The Duke operated at once by both wings. On the one wing he detached the
Prince of Wirtemberg, with fifteen thousand men, by Pont-a-Tessin to
Pont-a-Vendin, where the French lines met the Dyle and the canal of
Douay; while Prince Eugene moved forward Count Fels, with a considerable
corps, towards Pont Auby on the same canal. The whole army followed in
two columns, the right commanded by Eugene, and the left by Marlborough.
The English general secured the passage at Pont-a-Vendin without
resistance; and Eugene, though baffled at Pont Auby, succeeded in
passing the canal at Sant and Courieres without serious loss. The first
defences were thus forced; and that night the two wings, having formed a
junction, lay on their arms in the plain of Lens, while Montesquieu
precipitately retired behind the Scarpe, in the neighbourhood of Vitry.
Next morning the troops, overjoyed at their success, continued their
advance. Marlborough sent forward General Cadogan, at the head of the
English troops, to Pont-a-Rache, to circumscribe the garrison of Douay,
on the canal of Marchiennes on the north; while Eugene, encamping on the
other side of the Scarpe, completed the investment on the west. The
perfect success of this enterprise without any loss was matter of equal
surprise and joy to the Duke, who wrote to the Duchess in the highest
strain of satisfaction at his bloodless triumph. It was entirely owing
to the suddenness and secresy of his movements, which took the enemy
completely unawares; for, had the enterprise been delayed four days
longer, its issue would have been extremely doubtful, and thousands of
men must, at all events, have been sacrificed.[7]

Douay, which was immediately invested after this success, is a fortress
of considerable strength, in the second line which covers the French
province of Artois. Less populous than Lille, it embraces a wider
circuit within its ample walls. Its principal defence consists in the
marshes, which, on the side of Tournay, where attack might be expected,
render it extremely difficult of access, especially in the rainy season.
Access to it is defended by Fort Scarpe, a powerful outwork, capable of
standing a separate siege. The garrison consisted of eight thousand men,
under the command of the Marquis Albergotti, an officer of the highest
talent and bravery; and under him were the renowned Valory, to direct
the engineers, and the not less celebrated Chevalier de Jaucourt, to
command the artillery. From a fortress of such strength so defended, the
most resolute resistance might be expected, and no efforts were spared
on the part of the Allied generals to overcome it.

The investment was completed on the 24th, and the trenches opened on the
5th May. On the 7th, the head of the sap was advanced to within two
hundred and fifty yards of the exterior palisades; but the besiegers
that night experienced a severe check from a vigorous sally of the
besieged with twelve hundred men, by which two English regiments were
nearly cut to pieces. But, on the 9th, a great train of artillery,
consisting of two hundred pieces, with a large supply of artillery,
arrived from Tournay; on the 11th, the advanced works were strongly
armed, and the batteries were pushed up to the covered way, and
thundered across the ditch against the rampart. The imminent danger of
this important stronghold now seriously alarmed the French court; and
Marshal Villars, who commanded their great army on the Flemish frontier,
received the most positive orders to advance to its relief. By great
exertions, he had now collected one hundred and fifty-three battalions
and two hundred and sixty-two squadrons, which were pompously announced
as mustering one hundred and fifty thousand combatants, and certainly
amounted to more than eighty thousand. The Allied force was almost
exactly equal; it consisted of one hundred and fifty-five battalions and
two hundred and sixty-one squadrons. Villars broke up from the vicinity
of Cambray on the 21st May, and advanced in great strength towards
Douay. Marlborough and Eugene immediately made the most vigorous
preparations to receive him. Thirty battalions only were left to
prosecute the siege; twelve squadrons were placed in observation at
Pont-a-Rache; and the whole remainder of the army, about seventy
thousand strong, concentrated in a strong position, covering the siege,
on which all the resources of art, so far as the short time would admit,
had been lavished. Every thing was prepared for a mighty struggle. The
whole guns were mounted on batteries four hundred paces from each other;
the infantry was drawn up in a single line along the intrenchment, and
filled up the whole interval between the artillery; the cavalry were
arranged in two lines, seven hundred paces in rear of the foot-soldiers.
It seemed another Malplaquet, in which the relative position of the two
armies was reversed, and the French were to storm the intrenched
position of the Allies. Every man in both armies fully expected a
decisive battle; and Marlborough, who was heartily tired of the war,
wrote to the Duchess, that he hoped for a victory, which should at once
end the war, and restore him to private life.[8]


Yet there was no battle. The lustre of Blenheim and Ramilies played
round Marlborough's bayonets; the recollection of Turin tripled the
force of Eugene's squadrons. Villars advanced on the 1st June, with all
the pomp and circumstance of war, to within musket-shot of the Allied
position; and he had not only the authority but the recommendation of
Louis to hazard a battle. He boasted that his force amounted to a
hundred and sixty thousand men.[9] But he did not venture to make the
attack. To Marlborough's great regret, he retired without fighting; and
the English general, at the age of threescore, was left to pursue the
fatigues and the labours of a protracted campaign, in which, for the
first time in his life, he was doubtful of success, from knowing the
malignant eyes with which he was regarded by the ruling factions in his
own country. "I long," said he, "for an end of the war, so God's will be
done; whatever the event may be, I shall have nothing to reproach myself
with, having, with all my heart, done my duty, and being hitherto
blessed with more success than was ever known before. My wishes and duty
are the same; but I can't say I have the same prophetic spirit I used to
have; for in all the former actions I never did doubt of success, we
having had constantly the great blessing of being of one mind. I cannot
say it is so now; for I fear some are run so far into villanous faction,
that it would more content them to see us beaten; but if I live I will
be watchful that it shall not be in their power to do much hurt. The
discourse of the Duke of Argyle is, that when I please there will then
be peace. I suppose his friends speak the same language in England; so
that I must every summer venture my life in a battle, and be found fault
with in winter for not bringing home peace. No, I wish for it with all
my heart and soul."[10]

Villars having retired without fighting, the operations of the siege
were resumed with redoubled vigour. On the 16th June, signals of
distress were sent up from the town, which the French marshal perceived,
and he made in consequence a show of returning to interrupt the siege,
but his movements came to nothing. Marlborough, to counteract his
movement, repassed the Scarpe at Vitry, and took up a position directly
barring the line of advance of the French marshal, while Eugene
prosecuted the siege. Villars again retired without fighting. On the
22d, the Fort of Scarpe was breached, and the sap was advanced to the
counterscarp of the fortress, the walls of which were violently shaken;
and on the 26th, Albergotti, who had no longer any hope of being
relieved, and who saw preparations made for a general assault,
capitulated with the garrison, now reduced to four thousand five hundred
men.[11]

On the surrender of Douay, the Allied generals intended to besiege
Arras, the _last_ of the triple line of fortresses which on that side
covered France, and between which and Paris no fortified place remained
to arrest the march of an invader. On the 10th July, Marlborough crossed
the Scarpe at Vitry, and, joining Eugene, their united forces, nearly
ninety thousand strong, advanced towards Arras. But Villars, who felt
the extreme importance of this last stronghold, had exerted himself to
the utmost for its defence. He had long employed his troops on the
construction of new lines of great strength on the Crinchon, stretching
from Arras and the Somme, and he had here collected nearly a hundred
thousand men, and a hundred and thirty pieces of cannon. After
reconnoitring this position, the Allied generals concurred in thinking
that it was equally impossible to force them, and undertake the siege of
Arras, while the enemy, in such strength, and so strongly posted, lay on
its flank. Their first intention, on finding themselves baffled in this
project, was to seize Hesdin on the Cancher, which would have left the
enemy no strong place between them and the coast. But the skilful
dispositions of Villars, who on this occasion displayed uncommon
abilities and foresight, rendered this design abortive, and it was
therefore determined to attack Bethune. This place, which was surrounded
with very strong works, was garrisoned by nine thousand men, under the
command of M. Puy Vauban, nephew, of the celebrated marshal of the same
name. But as an attack on it had not been expected, the necessary
supplies for a protracted resistance had not been fully introduced when
the investment was completed on the 15th July.[12]


Villars, upon seeing the point of attack now fully declared, moved in
right columns upon Hobarques, near Montenencourt. Eugene and Marlborough
upon this assembled their covering army, and changed their front, taking
up a new line stretching from Mont St Eloi to Le Comte. Upon advancing
to reconnoitre the enemy, Marlborough discovered that the French,
advancing to raise the siege, were busy strengthening a new set of
lines, which stretched across the plain from the rivulet Ugie to the
Lorraine, and the centre of which at Avesnes Le Comte was already
strongly fortified. It now appeared how much Villars had gained by the
skilful measures which had diverted the Allies from their projected
attack upon Arras. It lay upon the direct road to Paris. Bethune, though
of importance to the ultimate issue of the war, was not of the same
present moment. It lay on the flank on the second line, Arras in front,
and was the only remaining fortress in the last. By means of the new
lines which he had constructed, the able French marshal had erected a
fresh protection for his country, when its last defences were wellnigh
broken through. By simply holding them, the interior of France was
covered from incursion, and time gained for raising fresh armaments in
the interior for its defence, and, what was of more importance to Louis,
awaiting the issue of the intrigues in England, which were expected soon
to overthrow the Whig cabinet. Villars, on this occasion, proved the
salvation of his country, and justly raised himself to the very highest
rank among its military commanders. His measures were the more to be
commended that they exposed him to the obloquy of leaving Bethune to its
fate, which surrendered by capitulation, with its numerous garrison and
accomplished commander, on the 28th August.[13]

Notwithstanding the loss of so many fortresses on the endangered
frontier of his territory, Louis XIV. was so much encouraged by what he
knew of the great change which was going on in the councils of Queen
Anne, that, expecting daily an entire revolution in the ministry, and
overthrow of the war party in the Cabinet, he resolved on the most
vigorous prosecution of the contest. He made clandestine overtures to
the secret advisers of the Queen, in the hope of establishing that
separate negotiation which at no distant period proved so successful.
Torcy, the Duke's enemy, triumphantly declared, "what we lose in
Flanders, we shall gain in England."[14] To frustrate these
machinations, and if possible rouse the national feeling more strongly
in favour of a vigorous prosecution of the war, Marlborough determined
to lay siege to Aire and St Venant, which, though off the line of direct
attack on France, laid open the way to Calais, which, if supported at
home, he hoped to reduce before the conclusion of the campaign.[15] He
entertained the most sanguine hopes of success from this design, which
was warmly supported by Godolphin; but he obtained at this time such
discouraging accounts of the precarious condition of his influence at
court, that he justly concluded he would not be adequately supported in
them from England, from which the main supplies for the enterprise must
be drawn. He wisely, therefore, resolved, in concert with Eugene, to
forego this dazzling but perilous project for the present, and to
content himself with the solid advantages, unattended with risk, of
reducing Aire and St Venant.

Having takes their resolution, the confederate generals began their
march in the beginning of September, and on the 6th of that month, both
places were invested. Aire, which is comparatively of small extent, was
garrisoned by only five thousand seven hundred men; but Venant was a
place of great size and strength, and had a garrison of fourteen
battalions of foot and three regiments of dragoons, mustering eight
thousand combatants. They were under the command of the Count de
Guebriant, a brave and skillful commander. Both were protected by
inundations, which retarded extremely the operations of the besiegers,
the more especially as the autumnal rains had early set in this year
with more than usual severity. While anxiously awaiting the cessation of
this obstacle, and the arrival of a great convoy of heavy cannon and
ammunition which was coming up from Ghent, the Allied generals received
the disheartening intelligence of the total defeat of this important
convoy, which, though guarded by sixteen hundred men, was attacked and
destroyed by a French corps on the 19th September. This loss affected
Marlborough the more sensibly, that it was the first disaster of moment
which had befallen him during nine years of incessant warfare.[16] But,
notwithstanding this disaster, St Venant was so severely pressed by the
fire of the besiegers, under the Prince of Anhalt, who conducted the
operations with uncommon vigour and ability, that it was compelled to
capitulate on the 29th, on condition of its garrison being conducted to
St Omer, not to serve again till regularly exchanged.

Aire still held out, as the loss of the convoy from Ghent, and the
dreadful rains which fell almost without intermission during the whole
of October, rendered the progress of the siege almost impossible. The
garrison, too, under the command of the brave governor, made a most
resolute defence. Sickness prevailed to a great extent in the Allied
army; the troops were for the most part up to the knees in mud and
water; and the rains, which fell night and day without intermission,
precluded the possibility of finding a dry place for their lodging. It
was absolutely necessary, however, to continue the siege; for,
independent of the credit of the army being staked on its success, it
had become impossible, as Marlborough himself said, to draw the cannon
from the trenches.[17] The perseverance of the Allied commanders was at
length rewarded by success. On the 12th November the fortress
capitulated, and the garrison, still three thousand six hundred and
twenty-eight strong, marched out prisoners, leaving sixteen hundred sick
and wounded in the town. This conquest, which concluded the campaign,
was, however, dearly purchased by the loss of nearly seven thousand men
killed and wounded in the Allied ranks, exclusive of the sick, who,
amidst those pestilential marshes, had now swelled to double the
number.[18]

Although the capture of four such important fortresses as Douay,
Bethune, St Venant, and Aire, with their garrisons, amounting to thirty
thousand men, who had been taken in them during the campaign, was a most
substantial advantage, and could not fail to have a most important
effect on the final issue of the war; yet it did not furnish the same
subject for national exultation which preceding ones had done. There had
been no brilliant victory like Blenheim, Ramilies, or Oudenarde, to
silence envy and defy malignity; the successes, though little less real,
had been not so dazzling. The intriguers about the court, the
malcontents in the country, eagerly seized on this circumstance to
calumniate the Duke, and accused him of unworthy motives in the conduct
of the war. He was protracting it for his own private purposes, reducing
it to a strife of lines and sieges, when he might at once terminate it
by a decisive battle, and gratifying his ruling passion of avarice by
the lucrative appointments which he enjoyed himself, or divided among
his friends. Nor was it only among the populace and his political
opponents that these surmises prevailed; his greatness and fame had
become an object of envy to his own party. Orford, Wharton, and Halifax
had on many occasions evinced their distrust of him; and even Somers,
who had long stood his friend, was inclined to think the power of the
Duke of Marlborough too great, and the emoluments and offices of his
family and connexions immoderate.[19] The Duchess inflamed the discord
between him and the Queen, by positively refusing to come to any
reconciliation with her rival, Mrs Masham. The discord increased daily,
and great were the efforts made to aggravate it. To the Queen, the
never-failing device was adopted of representing the victorious general
as lording it over the throne; as likely to eclipse even the crown by
the lustre of his fame; as too dangerous and powerful a subject for a
sovereign to tolerate. Matters came to such a pass, in the course of the
summer of 1710, that Marlborough found himself thwarted in every request
he made, every project he proposed; and he expressed his entire nullity
to the Duchess, by the emphatic expression, that he was a "mere sheet of
white paper, upon which his friends might write what they pleased."[20]

The spite at the Duke appeared in the difficulties which were now
started by the Lords of the Treasury in regard to the prosecution of the
works at Blenheim. This noble monument of a nation's gratitude had
hitherto proceeded rapidly; the stately design of Vanburgh was rapidly
approaching its completion, and so anxious had the Queen been to see it
finished, that she got a model of it placed in the royal palace of
Kensington. Now, however, petty and unworthy objections were started on
the score of expense, and attempts were made, by delaying payment of the
sums from the Treasury, to throw the cost of completing the building on
the great general. He had penetration enough, however, to avoid falling
into the snare, and actually suspended the progress of the work when the
Treasury warrants were withheld. He constantly directed that the
management of the building should be left to the Queen's officers; and,
by steadily adhering to this system, he shamed them into continuing the
work.[21]

Marlborough's name and influence, however, were too great to be entirely
neglected, and the party which was now rising into supremacy at court
were anxious, if possible, to secure them to their own side. They made,
accordingly, overtures in secret to him; and it was even insinuated
that, if he would abandon the Whigs, and coalesce with them, he would
entirely regain the royal favour, and might aspire to the highest
situation which a subject could hold. Lord Bolingbroke has told us what
the conditions of this alliance were to be:--"He was to abandon the
Whigs, his new friends, and take up with the Tories, his old friends; to
engage heartily in the true interests, and no longer leave his country
a prey to rapine and faction. He was, besides, required to restrain the
rage and fury of his wife. Their offers were coupled with threats of an
impeachment, and boasts that sufficient evidence could be adduced to
carry a prosecution through both Houses."[22] To terms so degrading, the
Duke answered in terms worthy of his high reputation. He declared his
resolution to be of no party, to vote according to his conscience, and
to be as hearty as his new colleagues in support of the Queen's
government and the welfare of the country. This manly reply increased
the repulsive feelings with which he was regarded by the ministry, who
seem now to have finally resolved on his ruin; while the intelligence
that such overtures had been made having got wind, sowed distrust
between him and the Whig leaders, which was never afterwards entirely
removed. But he honourably declared that he would be governed by the
Whigs, from whom he would never depart; and that they could not suspect
the purity of his motives in so doing, as they had now lost the majority
in the House of Commons.[23]

Parliament met on the 25th November; and Marlborough, in the end of the
year, returned to London. But he soon received decisive proof of the
altered temper both of government and the country towards him. In the
Queen's speech, no notice was taken of the late successes in Flanders,
no vote of thanks for his services in the campaign moved by ministers;
and they even contrived, by a sidewind, to get quit of one proposed, to
their no small embarrassment, by Lord Scarborough. The Duchess, too, was
threatened with removal from her situation at court; and Marlborough
avowed that he knew the Queen was "as desirous for her removal as Mr
Harley and Mr Masham can be." The violent temper and proud unbending
spirit of the Duchess were ill calculated to heal such a breach, which,
in the course of the winter, became so wide, that her removal from the
situation she held, as mistress of the robes, was only prevented by the
fear that, in the vehemence of her resentment, she might publish the
Queen's correspondence, and that the Duke, whose military services could
not yet be spared, might resign his command. Libels against both the
Duke and the Duchess daily appeared, and passed entirely unpunished,
though the freedom of the press was far from being established. Three
officers were dismissed from the army for drinking his health. When he
waited on the Queen, on his arrival in England, in the end of December,
she said--"I must request you will not suffer any vote of thanks to you
to be moved in Parliament this year, _as my ministers will certainly
oppose it_." Such was the return made by government to the hero who had
raised the power and glory of England to an unprecedented pitch, and in
that very campaign had cut deeper into the iron frontier of France than
had ever been done in any former one.[24]

The female coterie who aided at St James's the male opponents of
Marlborough, were naturally extremely solicitous to get the Duchess
removed from her situations as head of the Queen's household and keeper
of the privy purse; and ministers were only prevented from carrying
their wishes into effect by their apprehension, if executed, of the
Duke's resigning his command of the army. In an audience, on 17th
January 1711, Marlborough presented a letter to her Majesty from the
Duchess, couched in terms of extreme humility, in which she declared
that his anxiety was such, at the requital his services had received,
that she apprehended he would not live six months.[25] The Queen at
first refused to read it; and when at length, at the Duke's earnest
request, she agreed to do so, she coldly observed--"I cannot change my
resolution." Marlborough, in the most moving terms, and with touching
eloquence, intreated the Queen not to dismiss the Duchess till she had
no more need of her services, by the war being finished, which, he
hoped, would be in less than a year; but he received no other answer,
but a peremptory demand for the surrender of the gold key, the symbol of
her office, within three days. Unable to obtain any relaxation in his
sovereign's resolution, Marlborough withdrew with the deepest emotions
of indignation and sorrow. The Duchess, in a worthy spirit, immediately
took his resolution; she sent in her resignation, with the gold key,
that very night. So deeply was Marlborough hurt at this extraordinary
ingratitude for all his services, that he at first resolved to resign
his whole command, and retire altogether into private life. From this
intention he was only diverted, and that with great difficulty, by the
efforts of Godolphin and the Whigs at home, and Prince Eugene and the
Pensionary Heinsius abroad, who earnestly besought him not to abandon
the command, as that would at once dissolve the grand alliance, and ruin
the common cause. We can sympathise with the feelings of a victorious
warrior who felt reluctant to forego, by one hasty step, the fruit of
nine years of victories: we cannot but respect the self-sacrifice of the
patriot who preferred enduring mortifications himself, to endangering
the great cause of religious freedom and European independence.
Influenced by these considerations, Marlborough withheld his intended
resignation. The Duchess of Somerset was made mistress of the robes, and
Mrs Masham obtained the confidential situation of keeper of the privy
purse. Malignity, now sure of impunity, heaped up invectives on the
falling hero. His integrity was calumniated, his courage even
questioned, and the most consummate general of that, or perhaps any
other age, represented as the lowest of mankind.[26] It soon appeared
how unfounded had been the aspersions cast upon the Duchess, as well as
the Duke, for their conduct in office. Her accounts, after being rigidly
scrutinised, were returned to her without any objection being stated
against them; and Marlborough, anxious to quit that scene of ingratitude
and intrigue for the real theatre of his glory, soon after set out for
the army in Flanders.[27]

Marlborough arrived at the Hague on the 4th March; and, although no
longer possessing the confidence of government, or intrusted with any
control over diplomatic measures, he immediately set himself with the
utmost vigour to prepare for military operations. Great efforts had been
made by both parties, during the winter, for the resumption of
hostilities, on even a more extended scale than in any preceding
campaign. Marlborough found the army in the Low Countries extremely
efficient and powerful; diversions were promised on the side both of
Spain and Piedmont; and a treaty had been concluded with the Spanish
malcontents, in consequence of which a large part of the Imperial forces
were rendered disposable, which Prince Eugene was preparing to lead into
the Low Countries. But, in the midst of these flattering prospects, an
event occurred which suddenly deranged then all, postponed for above a
month the opening of the campaign, and, in its final result, changed the
fate of Europe. This was the death of the Emperor Joseph, of the
smallpox, which happened at Vienna on the 16th April--an event which was
immediately followed by Charles, King of Spain, declaring himself a
candidate for the Imperial throne. As his pretensions required to be
supported by a powerful demonstration of troops, the march of a large
part of Eugene's men to the Netherlands was immediately stopped, and
that prince himself was hastily recalled from Mentz, to take the command
of the empire at Ratisbon, as marshal. Charles was soon after elected
Emperor. Thus Marlborough was left to commence the campaign alone, which
was the more to be regretted, as the preparations of Louis, during the
winter, for the defence of his dominions had been made on the most
extensive scale, and Marshal Villars' lines had come to be regarded as
the _ne plus ultra_ of field fortification. Yet were Marlborough's
forces most formidable; for, when reviewed at Orchies on the 30th April,
between Lille and Douay, they were found, including Eugene's troops
which had come up, to amount to one hundred and eighty-four battalions,
and three hundred and sixty-four squadrons, mustering above one hundred
thousand combatants.[28] But forty-one battalions and forty squadrons
were in garrison, which reduced the effective force in the field to
eighty thousand men.

The great object of Louis and his generals had been to construct such a
line of defences as might prevent the irruption of the enemy into the
French territory, now that the interior and last line of fortresses was
so nearly broken through. In pursuance of this design, Villars had, with
the aid of all the most experienced engineers in France, and at a vast
expense of labour and money, constructed during the winter a series of
lines and field-works, exceeding any thing yet seen in modern Europe in
magnitude and strength, and to which the still more famous lines of
Torres Vedras have alone, in subsequent times, afforded a parallel. The
works extended from Namur on the Meuse, by a sort of irregular line, to
the coast of Picardy. Running first along the marshy line of the Canche,
they rested on the forts of Montreuil, Hesdin, and Trevant; while the
great fortresses of Ypres, Calais, Gravelines, and St Omer, lying in
their front, and still in the hands of the French, rendered any attempt
to approach them both difficult and hazardous. Along the whole of this
immense line, extending over so great a variety of ground, for above
forty miles, every effort had been made, by joining the resources of art
to the defences of nature, to render the position impregnable. The lines
were not continuous, as in many places the ground was so rugged, or the
obstacles of rocks, precipices, and ravines were so formidable, that it
was evidently impossible to overcome them. But whereever a passage was
practicable, the approaches to it were protected in the most formidable
manner. If a streamlet ran along the line, it was carefully dammed up,
so as to be rendered impassible. Every morass was deepened, by stopping
up its drains, or letting in the water of the larger rivers by
artificial canals into it; redoubts were placed on the heights, so as to
enfilade the plains between them; while in the open country, where no
advantage of ground was to be met with, field-works were erected, armed
with abundance of heavy cannon. To man these formidable lines, Villars
had under his command one hundred and fifty-six battalions, and two
hundred and twenty-seven squadrons in the field, containing seventy
thousand infantry, and twenty thousand horse. He had ninety field guns
and twelve howitzers. There was, besides, thirty-five battalions and
eighty squadrons detached or in the forts; and, as Eugene soon took away
twelve battalions and fifty squadrons from the Allied army, the forces
on the opposite side, when they came to blows, were very nearly
equal.[29]

Marlborough took the field on the 1st May, with eighty thousand men;
and his whole force was soon grouped in and around Douay. The
headquarters of Villars were at Cambray; but, seeing the forces of his
adversary thus accumulated in one point, he made a corresponding
concentration, and arranged his whole disposable forces between Bouchain
on the right, and Monchy Le Preux on the left. This position of the
French marshal, which extended in a concave semicircle with the
fortresses, covering either flank, he considered, and with reason, as
beyond the reach of attack. The English general was meditating a great
enterprise, which should at once deprive the enemy of all his defences,
and reduce him to the necessity of fighting a decisive battle, or losing
his last frontier fortresses. But he was overwhelmed with gloomy
anticipations; he felt his strength sinking under his incessant and
protracted fatigues, and knew well he was serving a party who, envious
of his fame, were ready only to decry his achievements.[30] He lay,
accordingly, for three weeks awaiting the arrival of his illustrious
colleague, Prince Eugene, who joined on the 23d May, and took part in a
great celebration of the anniversary of the victory at Ramilies, which
had taken place on that day. The plans of the Allied generals were soon
formed; and, taking advantage of the enthusiasm excited by that
commemoration, and the arrival of so illustrious a warrior, preparations
were made for the immediate commencement of active operations. On the
28th, the two generals reviewed the whole army. But their designs were
soon interrupted by an event which changed the whole fortune of the
campaign. Early in June, Eugene received positive orders to march to
Germany, with a considerable part of his troops, to oppose a French
force, which was moving towards the Rhine, to influence the approaching
election of Emperor. On the 13th June, Eugene and Marlborough separated,
for _the last time_, with the deepest expressions of regret on both
sides, and gloomy forebodings of the future. The former marched towards
the Rhine with twelve battalions and fifty squadrons, while
Marlborough's whole remaining force marched to the right in six
divisions.[31]

Though Villars was relieved by the departure of Eugene from a
considerable part of the force opposed to him, and he naturally felt
desirous of now measuring his strength with his great antagonist in a
decisive affair, yet he was restrained from hazarding a general
engagement. Louis, trusting to the progress of the Tory intrigues in
England, and daily expecting to see Marlborough and the war-party
overthrown, sent him positive orders not to fight; and soon after
detached twenty-five battalions and forty squadrons, in two divisions,
to the Upper Rhine, to watch the movements of Eugene. Villars encouraged
this separation, representing that the strength of his position was
such, that he could afford to send a third detachment to the Upper
Rhine, if it was thought proper. Marlborough, therefore, in vain offered
battle, and drew up his army in the plain of Lens for that purpose.
Villars cautiously remained on the defensive; and, though he threw
eighteen bridges over the Scarpe, and made a show of intending to fight,
he cautiously abstained from any steps which might bring on a general
battle.[32] It was not without good reason that Louis thus enjoined his
lieutenant to avoid compromising his army. The progress of the
negotiations with England gave him the fairest ground for believing that
he would obtain nearly all he desired from the favour with which he was
regarded by the British cabinet without running any risk. He had
commenced a _separate_ negotiation with the court of St James's, which
had been favourably received; and Mr Secretary St John had already
transmitted to Lord Raby, the new plenipotentiary at the Hague, a sketch
of six preliminary articles proposed by the French king, which were to
be the basis of a general peace.[33]

The high tone of these proposals proved how largely Louis counted upon
the altered dispositions of the British cabinet. The Spanish succession,
the real object of the war, was evaded. Every thing was directed to
British objects, and influenced by the desire to tempt the commercial
cupidity of England to the abandonment of the great objects of her
national policy. Real security was tendered to the British commerce with
Spain, the Indus, and the Mediterranean; the barrier the Dutch had so
long contended for was agreed to; a reasonable satisfaction was tendered
to the allies of England and Holland; and, as to the Spanish succession,
it was to be left to "new expedients, to the satisfaction of all parties
interested." These proposals were favourably received by the British
ministry; they were in secret communicated to the Pensionary Heinsius,
but concealed from the Austrian and Piedmontese plenipotentiaries; and
they were _not communicated to Marlborough_--a decisive proof both of
the altered feeling of the cabinet towards that general, and of the
consciousness on their part of the tortuous path on which they were now
entering.[34]

After much deliberation, and a due consideration of what could be
effected by the diminished force now at his disposal, which, by the
successive drafts to Eugene's army, was now reduced to one hundred and
nineteen battalions, and two hundred and fifty-six squadrons, not
mustering above seventy-five thousand combatants, Marlborough determined
to break through the enemies' boasted lines; and, after doing so,
undertake the siege of Bouchain, the possession of which would give him
a solid footing within the French frontier. With this view, he had long
and minutely studied the lines of Villars; and he hoped that, even with
the force at his disposal, they might be broken through. To accomplish
this, however, required an extraordinary combination of stratagem and
force; and the manner in which Marlborough contrived to unite them, and
bring the ardent mind and lively imagination of his adversary to play
into his hands, to the defeat of all the objects he had most at heart,
is perhaps the most wonderful part of his whole military
achievements.[35]

During his encampment at Lewarde, opposite Villars, the English general
had observed that a triangular piece of ground in front of the French
position, between Cambray, Aubanchocil-au-bac, and the junction of the
Sauzet and Scheldt, offered a position so strong, that a small body of
men might defend it against a very considerable force. He resolved to
make the occupation of this inconsiderable piece of ground the pivot on
which the whole passage of the lines should be effected. A redoubt at
Aubigny, which commanded the approach to it, was first carried without
difficulty. Arleux, which also was fortified, was next attacked by seven
hundred men, who issued from Douay in the night. That post also was
taken, with one hundred and twenty prisoners. Marlborough instantly used
all imaginable expedition in strengthening it; and Villars, jealous of a
fortified post so close to his lines remaining in the hands of the
Allies, attacked it in the night of the 9th July; and, though he failed
in retaking the work, he surprised the Allies at that point, and made
two hundred men and four hundred horses prisoners. Though much chagrined
at the success of this nocturnal attack, the English general now saw
his designs advancing to maturity. He therefore left Arleux to its own
resources, and marched towards Bethune. That fort was immediately
attacked by Marshal Montesquieu, and, after a stout resistance, carried
by the French, who made the garrison, five hundred strong, prisoners.
Villars immediately razed Arleux to the ground, and withdrew his troops;
while Marlborough, who was in hopes the lure of these successes would
induce Villars to hazard a general engagement, shut himself up in his
tent, and appeared to be overwhelmed with mortification at the checks he
had received.[36]

Villars was so much elated with these successes, and the accounts he
received of Marlborough's mortification, that he wrote to the king of
France a vain-glorious letter, in which he boasted that he had at length
brought his antagonist to a _ne plus ultra_. Meanwhile, Marlborough sent
off his heavy baggage to Douay; sent his artillery under a proper guard
to the rear; and, with all imaginable secresy, baked bread for the whole
troops for six days, which was privately brought up. Thus disencumbered
and prepared, he broke up at four in the morning on the 1st of August,
and marched in eight columns towards the front. During the three
following days, the troops continued concentrated, and menacing
sometimes one part of the French lines and sometimes another, so as to
leave the real point of attack in a state of uncertainty. Seriously
alarmed, Villars concentrated his whole force opposite the Allies, and
drew in all his detachments, evacuating even Aubigny and Arleux, the
object of so much eager contention some days before. On the evening of
the 4th, Marlborough, affecting great chagrin at the check he had
received, spoke openly to those around him of his intention of avenging
them by a general action, and pointed to the direction the attacking
columns were to take. He then returned to the camp, and gave orders to
prepare for battle. Gloom hung on every countenance of those around him;
it appeared nothing short of an act of madness to attack an enemy
superior in number, and strongly posted in a camp surrounded with
entrenchments, and bristling with cannon. They ascribed it to
desperation, produced by the mortifications received from the
government, and feared that, by one rash act, he would lose the fruit of
all his victories. Proportionally great was the joy in the French camp,
when the men, never doubting they were on the eve of a glorious victory,
spent the night in the exultation which, in that excitable people, has
so often been the prelude to disaster.[37]

Having brought the feeling of both armies to this point, and produced a
concentration of Villars's army directly in his front, Marlborough, at
dusk on the 4th, ordered the drums to beat; and before the roll had
ceased, orders were given for the tents to be struck. Meanwhile Cadogan
secretly left the camp, and met twenty-three battalions and seventeen
squadrons, drawn from the garrisons of Lille and Tournay, which
instantly marched; and continuing to advance all night, passed the lines
rapidly to the left, without opposition at Arleux, at break of day. A
little before nine, the Allied main army began to defile rapidly to the
left, through the woods of Villers and Neuville--Marlborough himself
leading the van, at the head of fifty squadrons. With such expedition
did they march, still holding steadily on to the left, that before five
in the morning of the 5th they reached Vitry on the Scarpe, where they
found pontoons ready for their passage, and a considerable train of
field artillery. At the same time, the English general here received the
welcome intelligence of Cadogan's success. He instantly dispatched
orders to every man and horse to press forward without delay. Such was
the ardour of the troops, who all saw the brilliant manoeuvre by which
they had outwitted the enemy, and rendered all their labour abortive,
that they marched _sixteen hours_ without once halting; and by ten next
morning, the whole had passed the enemies' lines without opposition, and
without firing a shot! Villars received intelligence of the night-march
having begun at eleven at night; but so utterly was he in the dark as to
the plan his opponent was pursuing, that he came up to Verger, when
Marlborough had drawn up his army on the _inner_ side of the lines in
order of battle, attended only by a hundred dragoons, and narrowly
escaped being made prisoner. Altogether, the Allied troops marched
thirty-six miles in sixteen hours, the most part of them in the dark,
and crossed several rivers, without either falling into confusion or
sustaining any loss. The annals of war scarcely afford an example of
such a success being gained in so bloodless a manner. The famous French
lines, which Villars boasted would form the _ne plus ultra_ of
Marlborough, had been passed without losing a man; the labour of nine
months was at once rendered of no avail, and the French army, in deep
dejection, had no alternative but to retire under the cannon of
Cambray.[38]

This great success at once restored the lustre of Marlborough's
reputation, and, for a short season, put to silence his detractors.
Eugene, with the generosity which formed so striking a feature in his
character, wrote to congratulate him on his achievement;[39] and even
Bolingbroke admitted that this bloodless triumph rivalled his greatest
achievements.[40] Marlborough immediately commenced the siege of
Bouchain; but this was an enterprise of no small difficulty, as it was
to be accomplished on very difficult ground, in presence of an army
superior in force. The investment was formed on the very day after the
lines had been passed, and an important piece of ground occupied, which
might have enabled Villars to communicate with the town, and regain a
defensible position. On the morning of the 8th August, a bridge was
thrown over the Scheldt at Neuville, and sixty squadrons passed over,
which barred the road from Douay. Villars upon this threw thirty
battalions across the Seuzet, and made himself master of a hill above,
on which he began to erect works, which would have kept open his
communications with the town on its southern front. Marlborough saw at
once this design, and at first determined to storm the works ere they
were completed; and, with this view, General Fagel, with a strong body
of troops, was secretly passed over the river. But Villars, having heard
of the design, attacked the Allied posts at Ivry with such vigour, that
Marlborough was obliged to counter-march in haste, to be at hand to
support them. Baffled in this attempt, Marlborough erected a chain of
works on the right bank of the Scheldt, from Houdain, through Ivry, to
the Sette, near Haspres, while Cadogan strengthened himself with similar
works on the left. Villars, however, still retained the fortified
position which has been mentioned, and which kept up his communication
with the town; and the intercepting this was another, and the last, of
Marlborough's brilliant field operations.[41]

Notwithstanding all the diligence with which Villars laboured to
strengthen his men on this important position, he could not equal the
activity with which the English general strove to supplant them. During
the night of the 13th, three redoubts were marked out, which would have
completed the French marshal's communication with the town. But on the
morning of the 14th they were all stormed by a large body of the Allied
troops before the works could be armed. That very day the Allies carried
their zig-zag down to the very edge of a morass which adjoined Bouchain
on the south, so as to command a causeway from that town to Cambray,
which the French still held, communicating with the besieged town. But,
to complete the investment, it was necessary to win this causeway; and
this last object was gained by Marlborough with equal daring and
success. A battery, commanding the road, had been placed by Villars in a
redoubt garrisoned by six hundred men, supported by three thousand more
close in their rear. Marlborough, with incredible labour and diligence,
constructed two roads, made of fascines, through part of the marsh, so
as to render it passable to foot-soldiers; and, on the night of the
16th, six hundred chosen grenadiers were sent across them to attack the
intrenched battery. They rapidly advanced in the dark till the fascine
path ended, and then boldly plunging into the marsh, struggled on, with
the water often up to their arm-pits, till they reached the foot of the
intrenchment, into which they rushed, without firing a shot, with fixed
bayonets. So complete was the surprise, that the enemy were driven from
their guns with the loss only of six men; the work carried; and with
such diligence were its defences strengthened, that before morning it
was in a condition to bid defiance to any attack.[42]

Villars was now effectually cut off from Bouchain, and the operations of
the siege were conducted with the utmost vigour. On the night of the
21st, the trenches were opened; three separate attacks were pushed at
the same time against the eastern, western, and southern faces of the
town, and a huge train of heavy guns and mortars thundered upon the
works without intermission. The progress of the siege, notwithstanding a
vigorous defence by the besieged, was unusually rapid. As fast as the
outworks were breached they were stormed; and repeated attempts on the
part of Villars to raise the siege were baffled by the skilful
disposition and strong ground taken by Marlborough with the covering
army. At length, on the 12th September, as the counterscarp was blown
down, the rampart breached, and an assault of the fortress in
preparation, the governor agreed to capitulate; and the garrison, still
three thousand strong, marched out upon the glacis, laid down their
arms, and were conducted prisoners to Tournay.[43] The two armies then
remained in their respective positions, the French under the cannon of
Cambray, the Allied in the middle of their lines, resting on Bouchain;
and Marlborough gave proof of the courtesy of his disposition, as well
as his respect for exalted learning and piety, by planting a detachment
of his troops to protect the estates of Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray,
and conduct the grain from thence to the dwelling of the illustrious
prelate in that town, which began now to be straitened for
provisions.[44]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "La Madeleine comme le Pantheon avait ete commencee la meme annee en
1764, par les ordres de Louis XV., le roi des grand monumens, et dont le
regne a ete travesti par la petite histoire."--CAPEFIGUE, _Histoire de
Louis Philippe_, viii. 281.

[2] Marlborough to the Earl of Sunderland, 8th Nov. 1709. _Disp._ iv.
647. Coxe, iv. 167.

[3] Coxe, iv. 169. Lamberti, vi. 37, 49.

[4] Note to Petcum, August 10, 1710. _Marlborough Papers_; and Coxe, iv.
173.

[5] "I am very sorry to tell you that the behaviour of the French looks
as if they had no other desire than that of carrying on the war. I hope
God will bless this campaign, for I see nothing else that can _give us
peace either at home or abroad_. I am so discouraged by every thing I
see, that I have never, during this war, gone into the field with so
heavy a heart as at this time. I own to you, that the present humour in
England gives me a good deal of trouble; for I cannot see how it is
possible they should mend till every thing is yet worse." _Marlborough
to Duchess Marlborough_, Hague, 14th April 1710. Coxe, iv. 179.

[6] Marlborough to Godolphin, 20th April, iv. 182.

[7] "In my last, I had but just time to tell you we had passed the
lines. I hope this happy beginning will produce such success this
campaign as must put an end to the war. I bless God for putting it into
their heads not to defend their lines; for at Pont-a-Vendin, when I
passed, the Marshal D'Artagnan was with twenty thousand men, which, if
he had staid, must have rendered the event very doubtful. But, God be
praised, we are come without the loss of any men. The excuse the French
make is, that we came four days before they expected us."--_Marlborough
to the Duchess_, 21st April 1710. Coxe, ix. 184.

[8] "I hope God will so bless our efforts, that if the Queen should not
be so happy as to have a prospect of peace before the opening of the
next session of parliament, she and all her subjects may be convinced we
do our best here in the army to put a speedy and good period to this
bloody war." _Marlborough to the Duchess_, May 12, 1710.

"I hear of so many disagreeable things, that make it very reasonable,
both for myself and you, to take no steps but what may lead to a quiet
life. This being the case, am I not to be pitied that am every day in
danger of exposing my life for the good of those who are seeking my
ruin? God's will be done. If I can be so blessed as to end this campaign
with success, things must very much alter to persuade me to come again
at the head of the army." _Marlborough to the Duchess_, 19th May 1710.
Coxe, iv. 191, 192.

[9] Marlborough to Godolphin, 26th May and 2d June 1710.

[10] Marlborough to the Duchess, 12th June 1710. Coxe, iv. 197.

[11] Marlborough to Godolphin, 26th June 1710. _Disp._ iv. 696.

[12] _Considerat. sur la Camp. de 1710, par M. le Marshal Villars_; and
Coxe, iv. 192.

[13] Marlborough to Godolphin, 29th August 1710. _Disp._ iv. 581. Coxe,
iv. 294.

[14] Coxe, iv. 343, 344.

[15] "I am of opinion that, after the siege of Aire, I shall have it in
my power to attack Calais. This is a conquest which would very much
prejudice France, and ought to have a good effect for the Queen's
service in England; but I see so much malice levelled at me, that I am
afraid it is not safe for me to make any proposition, lest, if it should
not succeed, my enemies should turn it to my disadvantage." _Marlborough
to Godolphin_, 11th August 1710. Coxe, iv. 343.

[16] "Till within these few days, during these _nine years_ I have never
had occasion to send ill news. Our powder and other stores, for the
carrying on these two sieges, left Ghent last Thursday, under the convoy
of twelve hundred foot and four hundred and fifty horse. They were
attacked by the enemy and beaten, so that they blew up the powder, and
sunk the store-boats." _Marlborough to the Duchess_, 22d September 1710.
Coxe, iv. 365.

[17] "Take it we must, for we cannot draw the guns from the batteries.
But God knows when we shall have it: night and day our poor men are up
to the knees in mud and water." _Marlborough to Godolphin_, 27th October
1710.

[18] Marlborough to Godolphin, 13th November 1710. _Disp._ iv. 685, 689.
Coxe, iv. 366, 367.

[19] Cunningham, ii. 305.

[20] Marlborough to the Duchess, 26th July 1710. Coxe, iv. 299.

[21] Marlborough to the Duchess, 25th October and 24th November 1710.
Coxe, iv. 351, 352.

[22] Bolingbroke's _Corresp._, i. 41; Mr Secretary St John to Mr
Drummond, 20th Dec. 1710.

[23] "I beg you to lose no time in sending me, to the Hague, the opinion
of our friend mentioned in my letter; for I would be governed by the
Whigs, from whose principle and interest I will never depart. Whilst
they had a majority in the House of Commons, they might suspect it might
be my interest; but now they must do me the justice to see that it is my
inclination and principle which makes me act." _Marlborough to the
Duchess_, Nov. 9, 1710. Coxe, iv. 360.

[24] Coxe, iv. 405.

[25] "Though I never thought of troubling your Majesty again in this
manner, yet the circumstances I see my Lord Marlborough in, and the
apprehension I have that he cannot live six months, if there is not some
end put to his sufferings on my account, make it impossible for me to
resist doing every thing in my power to ease him." _Duchess of
Marlborough to Queen Anne_, 17th Jan. 1711. Coxe, iv. 410.

[26] Smollett, c. x. Sec. 20.

[27] Marlborough to the Duchess, 24th May 1711. Coxe, v. 417-431.

[28] Eugene to Marlborough, 23d April 1710; Marlborough to St John, 29th
April 1710. Coxe, vi. 16. _Disp._ v. 319.

[29] Lidiard, ii. 426. Coxe, vi. 21. 22.

[30] "I see my Lord Rochester has gone where we all must follow. I
believe my journey will be hastened by the many vexations I meet with. I
am sure I wish well to my country, and if I could do good, I should
think no pains too great; but I find myself decay so very fast, that
from my heart and soul I wish the Queen and my country a peace by which
I might have the advantage of enjoying a little quiet, which is my
greatest ambition." _Marlborough to the Duchess_, 25th May, 1711. Coxe,
vi. 28.

[31] Marlborough to St John, 14th June 1711. _Disp_. v. 428. Coxe, vi.
29, 30.

[32] _Villars' Mem._ tom. ii. ann. 1711.

[33] _Bolingbroke's Corresp._ i. 172.

[34] "The Duke of Marlborough has no communication from home on this
affair; I suppose he will have none from the Hague." _Mr Secretary St
John to Lord Raby_, 27th April 1711. _Bolingbroke's Corresp._ i. 175.

[35] Coxe, vi. 52-54.

[36] Kane's _Memoirs_, p. 89. Coxe, vi. 53, 55; _Disp._ v. 421, 428.

[37] Kane's _Memoirs_, p. 92. Marlborough to Mr Secretary St John, 6th
August, 1711. _Disp._ v. 428.

[38] Marlborough to Mr Secretary St John, 6th August 1711. _Disp._ v.
428. Coxe, vi. 60-65. _Kane's Mil. Mem._ 96-99.

[39] "No person takes a greater interest in your concerns than myself;
your highness has penetrated into the _ne plus ultra_. I hope the siege
of Bouchain will not last long." _Eugene to Marlborough_, 17th August
1711. Coxe, vi. 66.

[40] "My Lord Stair opened to us the general steps which your grace
intended to take, in order to pass the lines in one part or another. It
was, however, hard to imagine, and too much to hope, that a plan, which
consisted of so many parts, wherein so many different corps were to
co-operate personally together, should entirely succeed, and no one
article fail of what your grace had projected. I most heartily
congratulate your grace on this great event, of which I think no more
needs be said, than that you have obtained, without losing a man, such
an advantage, as we should have been glad to have purchased with the
loss of several thousand lives." _Mr Secretary St John to Marlborough_,
31st July 1711. _Disp._ v. 429.

[41] Marlborough to Mr Secretary St John, 10th August 1711. _Disp._ v.
437.

[42] Coxe, vi. 71-80; Marlborough to Mr Secretary St John, 14th, 17th,
and 20th August 1711; _Disp._ v. 445, 450, 453.

[43] Marlborough to Mr Secretary St John, 14th Sept. 1711. _Disp._ v.
490. _Coxe_, vi. 78-88.

[44] _Victoires de Marlborough_, iii. 22. Coxe, vi. 87.




MOHAN LAL IN AFGHANISTAN.


     _The Life of the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan of Kabul._ By MOHAN LAL,
     Esq., Knight of the Persian order of the Lion and Sun, lately
     attached to the Mission at Kabul, &c. &c. London: 1846.

We have arrived at an age when striking contrasts and seeming
incongruities cease to startle and offend. If we have not yet attained
the promised era when the lion shall lie down with the lamb--and even of
that day a VAN AMBURGH and a CARTER have given us significant
intimations--we have certainly reached an epoch quite as extraordinary,
and behold things as opposite conciliated, as hostile reconciled. We
need not go far for illustrations: in the columns of newspapers, in the
public market-place, at each street-corner, they force themselves upon
us. The EAST and the WEST are brought together--the desert and the
drawing-room are but a pace apart--European refinements intrude
themselves into the haunts of barbarism--and bigoted Oriental potentates
learn tolerance from the liberality of the Giaour. An article upon
contrasts would fill a magazine. Ibrahim Pasha and religious liberty,
the Red Sea and the Peninsular Steam Company, the Great Desert and the
Narrow Gauge, are but one or two of a thousand that suggest themselves.
On all sides Europe thrusts out the giant arms of innovation, spanning
the globe, encompassing the world. England, especially, ever foremost in
the race, by enterprise and ingenuity achieves seeming miracles. With
steam for her active and potent agent, she drives highways across the
wilderness, covers remote seas with smoky shipping, replaces dromedaries
by locomotives, runs rails through the Arab village and the lion's lair.
From his carpet and coffee, his pipe and _farniente_, the astonished
Mussulman is roused by the rush and rattle of the train. On the sudden,
by no gradual transition or slow approach, is this semi-savage brought
in contact with the latest refinements and most astounding discoveries
of civilisation. He is bewildered by sights and sounds of which
yesterday he had not the remotest conception. Couriers traverse the
desert with the regularity of a London and Edinburgh mail; caravans of
well-dressed ladies and gentlemen ramble leisurely over the sands, and
brave the simoon on a trip of pleasure to the far East; omnibuses, after
the fashion of Paddington, have their stations on the Isthmus of Suez.
Every where the hat is in juxtaposition with the turban, and the boot of
the active Christian galls the slippered heel of Mahomet's indolent
follower, spurring him to progress and improvement.

As strange as any of the incongruous associations already hinted at, is
one that we are about to notice. That an Oriental should write a book,
is in no way wonderful; that he should write it in English, more or less
correct, may also be conceived, since abundant opportunities are
afforded to our Eastern fellow-subjects for the acquirement of that
language; but that he should write it, not out of the fulness of his
knowledge, or to convey the results of long study and profound
meditation, but merely, as the razors were made, to sell, does seem
strangely out of character, sadly derogatory to the gravity and dignity
of a Wise Man of the East. We have really much difficulty in portraying
upon our mental speculum so anomalous an animal as an Oriental
bookmaker. We cannot fancy a Knight of the very Persian order of the
Lion and Sun transformed into a publisher's hack, driving bargains with
printers, delivered over to devils, straining each nerve, resorting to
every stale device to swell his volumes to a presentable size, as if
bulk would atone for dulness, and wordiness for lack of interest. Such,
nevertheless, is the painful picture now forced upon us by a Kashmirian
gentleman of Delhi, Mohan Lal by name. Encouraged by the indulgent
reception accorded to an earlier, less pretending, and more worthy
literary attempt--allured also, perhaps, by visions of a shining river
of rupees pleasantly flowing into his purse, the aforesaid Lal,
Esquire--so does his title-page style him--has committed himself by the
fabrication of two heavy volumes, whose interesting portions are, for
the most part stale, and whose novelties are of little interest. Neither
the fulsome dedication, nor the humility of the preface, nor the
indifferent lithographs, purporting to represent notable Asiatics and
Europeans, can be admitted in palliation of this Kashmirian scribbler's
literary misdemeanour. It is impossible to feel touched or mollified
even by the plaintive tone in which he informs us that he has disbursed
three hundred pounds for payment of copyists, paper, and portraits. The
latter, by the bye, will hardly afford much gratification to their
originals, at least if they be all as imperfect and unflattering in
their resemblance as some two or three which we have had opportunities
of comparing. But that is a minor matter. Illustration is a mania of the
day--a crotchet of a public whose reading appetite, it is to be feared,
is in no very healthy state. From penny tracts to quarto volumes, every
thing must have pictures--the more the better--bad ones rather than
none. Turning from the graphic embellishments of the books before us, we
revert to the letterpress, and to the endeavour to sift something of
interest or value out of the nine hundred pages through which, in
conscientious fulfilment of our critical duties, we have wearisomely
toiled.

The work in question purports to be a life of Dost Mohammed Khan, the
well-known Amir of Kabul. It is what it professes to be, but it is also
a great deal more; the whole has been named from a part. A history of
the affairs of Sindh occupies nearly half a volume, and consists chiefly
of copious extracts from works already published--such as _Pottinger's
Bilochistan_, _Dr Burnes' Visit to the Court of Sindh_, _Sir A. Burnes'
Travels in Bokhara_, _Thornton's British India_--from which sources the
unscrupulous Lal helps himself unsparingly, and with scarce a word of
apology either to reader or writer. We have long accounts of Russian
intrigues, and of those alarming plots and combinations which frightened
Lords Auckland and Palmerston from their propriety, and led to our
interference and reverses in Afghanistan--interference so impotently
followed up, reverses which neither have been nor ever can be fully
redeemed. The mismanagement or incapacity of our political agents during
the short time that we maintained the unfortunate Shah Shuja on the
throne of Kabul, is another fertile topic for the verbose Kashmirian;
but this, it must be observed, is one of the best portions of his book,
although it has no very direct reference to Dost Mohammed, "the lion of
my subject and hero of my tale," as his historian styles him. Numerous
copies of despatches, treaties and diplomatic correspondence, sundry
testimonies of Mr. Lal's abilities and services, and various extraneous
matters, complete the volumes. To give the barest outline of so
voluminous a work would lead us far beyond our allotted limits. We
should even be puzzled to effect the analysis of the first half volume,
which sketches the history of Afghanistan from the period when Payandah
Khan, chief of the powerful Barakzai tribe and father of Dost Mohammed,
was the prime favourite and triumphant general of Taimur Shah, up to the
date when the Dost himself, after a long series of bloody wars, sat upon
the throne, was in the zenith of his prosperity, and when British
diplomatists first began to make and meddle in the affairs of his
kingdom. The perpetually recurring changes, the revolts, revolutions,
and usurpations of which Afghanistan was the scene with little
intermission during the whole of that period, the absence of dates,
which Mohan Lal accounts for by the loss of his manuscripts during the
Kabul insurrection, and the host of proper names introduced, render this
part of the work most perplexingly confused. The reader, however
attentive to his task, becomes fairly bewildered amidst the multitude of
Khans, Shahs, Vazirs, Sardars, and other personages, who pass in hurried
review before his eyes, and utterly puzzled by the strange manoeuvres
and seemingly unaccountable treasons of the actors in this great
Eastern melodrama. In glancing at the book, we shall confine ourselves
more strictly than Mohan Lal has done, to the personal exploits and
history of Dost Mohammed.

On the death of Taimur Shah, leaving several sons, there was much
difference of opinion amongst the nobles as to who should succeed him.
Payandah Khan, who had received from the sovereign he had so faithfully
served, the title of Sarfraz, or, the Lofty, and whose position and
influence in the country enabled him in some sort to play the part of
king-maker, solved the difficulty by placing Prince Zaman upon the
throne. For a time Zaman was all gratitude, until evil advisers poisoned
his mind, and accused Payandah and other chiefs of plotting to transfer
the crown to Shah Shuja, another son of Taimur. Without trial or
investigation, the persons accused were put to death; and the sons and
nephews of Payandah became fugitives, and suffered great misery. Some
were taken prisoners, others begged their bread, or took shelter in the
mausoleum of Ahmad Shah, in order to receive a share of the food there
doled out for charity's sake. Fatah Khan, the eldest son of Payandah,
fled to Persia; Dost Mohammed, the twentieth son of the same father,
found protection in a fortress belonging to the husband of his mother,
who, in conformity with an Afghan custom, had been claimed by and
compelled to marry one of the nearest relatives of her deceased lord.
This occurred when Dost was a child of seven or eight years old. After a
while, Fatah Khan returned from Persia with an army, and accompanied by
Mahmud Shah, another of Taimur's sons who pretended to the crown of
Afghanistan. His first encounter with the troops of Shah Zaman was a
triumph; and now, says the figurative Lal, the stars of the descendants
of the Sarfraz began to shine. Fatah sought out his young brother, Dost
Mohammed, gave him in charge to a trusty adherent, fixed an income for
his support, and marched away to besiege Qandhar, which he took by
escalade. This was the commencement of a war of succession, or rather of
a series of wars, in which the two sons of Payandah played important
parts. The elder met his death, the younger gained a crown. At first the
contest was amongst the sons and grandsons of Taimur; to several of whom
in turn Fatah and Dost gave their powerful support. It was not till
after many years of civil strife that the last-named chief, prompted by
ambition, and presuming on his popularity and high military reputation,
set up on his own account, and bore away the prize from the more
legitimate competitors.

When only in his twelfth year, Dost Mohammed Khan was attached to the
retinue of his brother as _abdar_, or water-bearer. He soon acquired
Fatah's confidence, and was admitted to share his secrets. Before he was
fourteen years old, he displayed great energy and intrepidity, which
qualities, added to his remarkable personal beauty, rendered him
exceedingly popular in the country and a vast favourite with Fatah, but
excited the jealousy of his other brothers--men of little more than
ordinary capacity, totally unable to compete with him in any respect.
Whilst still a mere lad, Dost, by his courage and sagacity, delivered
Fatah from more than one imminent peril. At last Shah Zaman, who had
been deposed and blinded, and his son Shah Zadah, laid a snare for Fatah
in the palace-gardens at Qandhar. Ambushed men suddenly seized him,
hurled him to the ground with such violence as to break his teeth, and
kept him prisoner. Dost Mohammed made a dashing attempt at a rescue; but
he had only five hundred followers, the palace was strongly garrisoned,
and a heavy fire of matchlocks repelled him. Meanwhile large bodies of
troops marched to occupy the city gates; and, for his own safety's sake,
he was compelled to leave his brother in captivity, and cut his way out.
Retreating to his stronghold of Giriskh, he awaited the passage of a
rich caravan from Persia. This he plundered, thereby becoming possessed
of about four lakhs of rupees, which he employed in raising troops. With
these he invested Qandhar. After a three months' siege, the garrison had
exhausted its provisions and ammunition; and Zadah, to get rid of the
terrible Dost, released Fatah Khan. The prisoner's liberation was also
partly owing to the intercession of Shah Shuja; notwithstanding which,
Fatah and Dost, with an utter contempt of gratitude and loyalty, soon
afterwards turned their arms against that prince. A great cavalry fight
took place, in which the brave but unprincipled brothers were
victorious. Dost Mohammed was made a field-marshal, and marched against
an army commanded by Shah Shuja in person; a desperate battle ensued,
terminated by negotiation, and once more Dost and the Shah were allies.
But no sooner had poor Shuja gained over his enemies, than his friends
revolted against him, and set up his nephew Zadah as king of
Afghanistan; and very soon his new allies, with unparalleled treachery,
and despite of the titles and presents he had showered upon them, once
more abandoned him. Friend Lal, we are sorry to perceive, seems struck
rather with admiration than horror of these double-dyed traitors, and
talks of the brave heart and wise head of Dost Mohammed, and of the
noble and independent notions which nature had cultivated in him; thus
betraying a certain Oriental laxity of principle which European
education and society might have been expected to eradicate. But he is
perhaps dazzled and blinded by the brilliant military prowess of Dost,
who, at the head of only three thousand men, fell upon the
advanced-guard of the Shah's army, ten thousand strong, and, after a
terrible slaughter, completely routed it. The news of this reverse
greatly incensed and alarmed Shuja, who said confidentially to his
minister, that whilst Dost Mohammed was alive and at large, he (Shuja)
could never expect victory or the enjoyment of his crown. A wonderful
and true prophecy, observes Mohan Lal. Shortly afterwards, the remainder
of the Shah's troops were defeated by Dost, and the Shah himself was
once more a fugitive.

Shah Mahmud was now placed upon the throne; Vazir Fatah Khan was his
prime minister, and Dost received the title of Sardar, or chief. It was
about this time that the "Sardar of my tale," as the worthy Lal
affectionately styles his hero, committed the first of a series of
murders which, were there no other infamous deeds recorded of him, would
stamp him as vile, and destroy any sympathy that his bravery in the
field and notable talents might otherwise excite in his favour. A
Persian secretary, one Mirza Ali Khan, by his skill and conduct as a
politician, and by his kindly disposition, gained a popularity and
influence which offended the ambitious brothers, and Fatah desired Dost
to make away with him.

"On receiving the orders of the Vazir, Dost Mohammed armed himself
cap-a-pie, and taking six men with him, went and remained waiting on the
road between the house of Mohammed Azim Khan and the Mirza. It was about
midnight when the Mirza passed by Dost Mohammed Khan, whom he saw, and
said, 'What has brought your highness here at this late hour? I hope all
is good.' He also added, that Dost Mohammed should freely command his
services if he could be of any use to him. He replied to the Mirza that
he had got a secret communication for him, and would tell him if he
moved aside from the servants. He stopped his horse, whereupon Dost
Mohammed, holding the mane of the horse with his left hand, and taking
his dagger in his right, asked the Mirza to bend his head to hear him.
While Dost Mohammed pretended to tell him something of his own
invention, and found that the Mirza was hearing him without any
suspicion, he stabbed him between the shoulders, and throwing him off
his horse, cut him in many places. This was the commencement of the
murders which Dost Mohammed Khan afterwards frequently committed."

Notwithstanding his high military rank and great services, Dost was very
submissive to Fatah, who was greatly his senior. He acted as his
cup-bearer, and was a constant attendant at his nocturnal carouses,
carrying a golden goblet, and helping him to wine. The morals of both
brothers were as exceptionable in private as in public life. Their
biographer gives details of an intrigue between Dost and the favourite
wife of Fatah; and even hints a doubt whether the Vazir was not
cognizant of the intercourse, which he took no steps to check or punish.
Both brothers were fond of wine, and indulged in it to excess. Dost,
especially, was at one time a most unmitigated sot, although his
bibulous propensities had apparently no permanent effect upon his
intellects and energies. His capacity for liquor, if Lal's account be
authentic, was extraordinary. "It is said that he has emptied several
dozens of bottles in one night, and did not cease from drinking until he
was quite intoxicated, and could not drink a drop more. He has often
become senseless from drinking, and has, on that account, kept himself
confined in bed during many days. He has been often seen in a state of
stupidity on horseback, and having no turban, but a skull-cap, on his
head." At a later period of his life, Dost Mohammed, being abroad one
evening, met two of his sons, Afzal Khan, and the well-known Akhbar
Khan, in an intoxicated state. Less tolerant for his children than for
himself, he gave them a sound thrashing, and, not satisfied with that,
took them up to the roof of a house, and threw them down on stony
ground, to the risk of their lives. The mother of Akhbar heard of this,
and reproached her husband with punishing others for a vice he himself
was prone to. Dost hung his head, and swore to drink wine no more. We
are not told whether he kept the vow, but subsequently, when he was made
Amirul-Momnim, or Commander of the Faithful, he did forsake his drunken
habits. On his reinstatement at Kabul, after its final abandonment by
the British, he relapsed into his old courses, saying, that whilst he
was an enemy to wine, he was always unlucky; but that since he had
resumed drinking, his prosperity had returned, and he had gained his
liberty after being in "Qaid i Frang," which, being interpreted, means
an English prison. When sitting over his bottle, he can sing a good
song, and play upon the _rabab_, a sort of Afghan fiddle, with very
considerable skill. Altogether, and setting aside his throat-cuttings,
and a few other peculiarities, Dost Mohammed must be considered as
rather a jovial and good-humoured barbarian.

Although a fervent admirer of the fair sex, the valiant Sardar
occasionally, in the hurry and excitement of war and victory, forgot the
respect to which it is entitled. A blunder of this description was
productive of fatal consequences to his brother the Vazir. A breach of
decorum overthrew a dynasty: a lady's girdle changed the destinies of a
kingdom. The circumstances were as follows:--By a well-executed
stratagem, Dost Mohammed surprised the city of Hirat, seized Shah Zadah
Firoz, who ruled there, and plundered the palace. Not content with
appropriating the rich store of jewels, gold, and silver, found in the
treasury, he despoiled the inmates of the harem, and committed an
offence unpardonable in Eastern eyes, by taking off the jewelled band
which fastened the trowsers of the daughter-in-law of Shah Zadah. The
insulted fair one sent her profaned inexpressibles to her brother, a son
of Mahmud Shah, known by the euphonious appellation of Kam Ran. Kam
swore to be revenged. Even Fatah Khan was so shocked at the unparalleled
impropriety of his brother's conduct, that he threatened to punish him;
whereupon Dost, with habitual prudence, avoided the coming storm, and
took refuge with another of his brothers, then governor of Kashmir. Kam
Ran came to Hirat, found that Dost had given him the slip, and consoled
himself by planning, in conjunction with some other chiefs, the
destruction of Fatah Khan. They seized him, put out his eyes, and
brought him pinioned before Mahmud Shah, whom he himself had set upon
the throne. The Shah desired him to write to his rebellious brothers to
submit: he steadily refused, and Mahmud then ordered his death. "The
Vazir was cruelly and deliberately butchered by the courtiers, who cut
him limb from limb, and joint from joint, as was reported, after his
nose, ears, fingers, and lips, had been chopped off. His fortitude was
so extraordinary, that he neither showed a sign of the pain he suffered,
nor asked the perpetrators to diminish their cruelties; and his head was
at last sliced from his lacerated body. Such was the shocking result of
the misconduct of his brother, the Sardar Dost Mohammed Khan, towards
the royal female in Hirat. However, the end of the Vazir, Fatah Khan,
was the end of the Sadozai reign, and an omen for the accession of the
new dynasty of the Barakzais, or his brothers, in Afghanistan."

It would be tiresome to trace in detail the events that followed the
Vazir's death,--the numerous battles--the treaties concluded and
violated--the reverses and triumphs of the various chiefs who contended
for the supremacy. To revenge their brother, and gratify their own
ambition, the Barakzais united together, expelled Mahmud, and divided
the country amongst themselves. Mohammed Azim, the eldest brother, took
Kabul, Sultan Mohammed had Peshavar, Purdil Khan received Qandhar, and
to the Sardar Dost Mohammed Ghazni was allotted. Apparently all were
content with this arrangement; but, in secret, Dost was far from
satisfied, and plotted to improve his share. With this view, he entered
into negotiations with Ranjit Singh and the Lahore chiefs; and at last,
by intrigue and treachery, rather than by force of arms, he reduced
Mohammed Azim to such extremities and despair, that he retired to Kabul,
and there died broken-hearted. His son, Habib-Ullah, who succeeded him,
fared no better. He was turned out of Kabul, and exposed to want and
misery, which broke his spirit, and rendered him insane. He left the
country with his wives and children, whom he murdered on the banks of
the Indus, and threw into the river.

Whilst Dost was in full career of success and aggrandisement, achieved
by the most treacherous and sanguinary means, Shah Shuja raised an army
in Sindh, intending to invade Qandhar and recover his dominions. A
report was spread by certain discontented chiefs in Dost Mohammed's and
the Qandhar camps that the English favoured Shuja's attempt. To
ascertain the truth of this, Dost Mohammed addressed a letter to Sir
Claude Wade, then political agent at Loodianah, requesting to know
whether the Shah was supported by the English. If so, he said, he would
take the state of affairs into his deliberate consideration; but if the
contrary was the case, he was ready to fight the Shah. Sir Claude Wade
replied, that the British government took no share in the king's
expedition against the Barakzai chief, but that it wished him well.
Thereupon Dost and his son Akhbar Khan marched to meet the Shah. A
battle was fought in front of Qandhar, and at first victory seemed to
incline to Shuja; but by the exertions and valour of the Sardar and his
son, the tide was turned, and the threatened defeat converted into a
signal victory. "All the tents, guns, and camp equipage of the
ever-fugitive Shah Shuja fell into the hands of the Lion of Afghanistan,
and a large bundle of the papers and correspondence of various chiefs in
his country with the Shah. Among these he found many letters under the
real or forged seal of Sir Claude Wade, to the address of certain
chiefs, stating that any assistance given to Shah Shuja should be
appreciated by the British government."

Whilst Mohammed thus successfully assisted his brothers, the Qandhar
chiefs, against their common foe, Shah Shuja, his other brothers, the
Peshavar chiefs, were dispossessed by the Sikhs, and compelled to take
refuge at Jellalabad. There, expecting that Dost would be beaten by the
Shah, they planned to seize upon Kabul. Their measures were taken, and
in some districts they had actually appointed governors, when they
learned Shuja's defeat, and their brother's triumphant return. This was
the destruction of their ambitious projects; but with true Afghan craft
and hypocrisy, they put a good face upon the matter, fired salutes in
honour of the victory, disavowed the proceedings of those officers who,
by their express order, had taken possession of the Sardar's villages,
and went out to meet him with every appearance of cordiality and joy.
Although not the dupe of this seeming friendship, Dost Mohammed received
them well, and declared his intention of undertaking a religious war
against the Sikhs to revenge their aggressions at Peshavar, and to
punish them for having dared, as infidels, to make an inroad into a
Mahomedan land. In acting thus, the cunning Sardar had two objects in
view. One was to obtain recruits by appealing to the fanaticism of the
people, for his funds were low, and the Afghans were weary of war; the
other, which he at once attained, was to get himself made king, on the
ground that religious wars, fought under the name and flag of any other
than a crowned head, do not entitle those who fall in them to the glory
of martyrdom. The priests, chiefs, and counsellors, consulted together,
and agreed that Dost Mohammed ought to assume the royal title. The
Sardar, without any preparation or feast, went out of the Bala Hisar
with some of his courtiers; and in Idgah, Mir Vaiz, the head-priest of
Kabul, put a few blades of grass on his head, and called him
"Amirul-Momnin," or, "Commander of the Faithful." Thus did the wily and
unscrupulous Dost at last possess the crown he so long had coveted.
Instead, however, of being inflated by his dignity, the new Amir became
still plainer in dress and habits, and more easy of access than before.
Finding himself in want of money for his projected war, and unable to
obtain it by fair means, he now commenced a system of extortion, which
he carried to frightful lengths, pillaging bankers and merchants,
confiscating property, and torturing those who refused to acquiesce in
his unreasonable demands. One poor wretch, a trader of the name of Sabz
Ali, was thrown into prison, branded and tormented in various ways,
until he expired in agony. His relatives were compelled to pay the
thirty thousand rupees which it had been the object of this barbarous
treatment to extort. At last five lakhs of rupees were raised, wherewith
to commence the religious war. Its result was disastrous and
discreditable to the Amir. Without having fought a single battle, he was
outwitted and outmanoeuvred, and returned crestfallen to Kabul--his
brothers, the Peshavar chiefs, who were jealous of his recent elevation,
having aided in his discomfiture.

Although the Amir had many enemies both at home and abroad--the most
inveterate amongst the former being some of his own brothers--and
although he was often threatened by great dangers, he gradually
succeeded in consolidating his power, and fixing himself firmly upon the
throne he had usurped. Himself faithless and treacherous, he distrusted
all men; and gradually removing the governors of various districts, he
replaced them by his sons, who feared him, scrupulously obeyed his
orders, and followed his system of government. In time his power became
so well established that the intrigues of his dissatisfied brethren no
longer alarmed him. The Sikhs gave him some uneasiness, but in a battle
at Jam Road, near the entrance of the Khaibar Pass, his two sons, Afzal
and Akhbar, defeated them and killed their general, Hari Singh. The
victory was chiefly due to Afzal, but Akhbar got the credit, through the
management of his mother, the Amir's favourite wife. This unjust
partiality, to which we shall again have occasion to refer when touching
upon the future prospects of Afghanistan, greatly disheartened Afzal and
his brothers, and indisposed them towards their father.

The brief and imperfect outline which we have been enabled to give of
the career of Dost Mohammed, and of his arrival at the supreme power in
Kabul, is entirely deficient in dates. The Afghans have no records, but
preserve their history solely by tradition and memory. Mohan Lal having,
as before mentioned, lost his manuscripts, containing information
supplied by the Amir's relations and courtiers, was afterwards unable to
place the circumstances of his history in chronological order. The
deficiency is not very important, since it naturally ceases to exist
from the time that British India became mixed up in the affairs of
Afghanistan. The fight of Jam Road, in which the Afghans were the
aggressors, and which was occasioned by the Amir's cravings after the
province of Peshavar, brings us up to the latter part of the year 1836.
Previously and subsequently to that battle, Dost Mohammed wrote several
letters to the Governor-general of India, Lord Auckland, expressing his
fear of the Sikhs, and asking advice and countenance. Lord Auckland
resolved to accord him both, and dispatched Sir Alexander Burnes to
Kabul to negotiate the opening of the Indus navigation. The presence of
the British mission at the Amir's court, and the proposals made by the
Governor-general to the Maharajah to mediate between him and Dost
Mohammed, sufficed to check the advance of a powerful Sikh army which
Ranjit Singh had assembled to revenge the reverse of Jam Road. The Amir
was not satisfied with this protection; but urged Sir Alexander Burnes
to make the Sikhs give up Peshavar to him. The reply was, that Peshavar
had never belonged to the Amir, but to his brothers; that Ranjit Singh
was a faithful ally of the English government, which could not use its
authority directly in the case; but that endeavours should be made to
induce the Maharajah amicably to yield Peshavar to its former chief,
Sultan Mohammed Khan. This mode of viewing the question by no means met
the wishes of the ambitious Amir; for he coveted the territory for
himself, and would rather have seen it remain in the hands of the Sikhs
than restored to Sultan Mohammed, who was his deadly enemy.[45] He
expressed his dissatisfaction in very plain terms to Sir Alexander
Burnes; and perceiving that the English were not disposed to aid him in
his unjustifiable projects of aggrandisement, he threw himself into the
arms of Russia and Persia, to which countries he had, with
characteristic duplicity, communicated his grievances and made offers of
alliance, at the same time that he professed, in his letters to Lord
Auckland, to rely entirely upon British counsels and friendship.

And now commenced those intrigues and machinations of Russia, of which
so great a bugbear was made both in India and England. Mohan Lal
maintains that the apprehensions occasioned by these manoeuvres were
legitimate and well-founded; that the views of Russia were encroaching
and dangerous; and that her name and influence were already seriously
injurious to British interests, as far even as the eastern bank of the
Indus. Vague rumours of Russian power and valour had spread through
British India; had been exaggerated by Eastern hyperbole, and during
their passage through many mouths; and had rendered numerous chiefs,
Rajput as well as Mahomedan, restless and eager for a fray. Throughout
the country there was a growing belief that English power was on the eve
of a reverse. We are told of the mission of Captain Vikovich, of
Muscovite ducats poured into Afghan pockets, of an extension of
influence sought by Russia in Turkistan and Kabul, of arms to be
supplied by Persia, and of a Persian army to be marched into Afghanistan
to seize upon the disputed province of Peshavar. As the companion and
friend of Sir Alexander Burnes during his mission to Kabul, Mohan Lal
coincides in the opinions of that officer with respect to the necessity
of taking vigorous and immediate steps to counteract the united
intrigues of the Shah of Persia and Count Simonich, the Russian
ambassador at Tehran. This necessity was pressed upon Lord Auckland in
numerous and alarming despatches from Sir A. Burnes and other
Anglo-Indian diplomatists.

With such opinions and prognostications daily ringing in his ears, Lord
Auckland, who at first, we are told, did not attach much importance to
the Vikovich mission and the Russian intrigues, at last took fright, and
prepared to adopt the decisive measures so plausibly and perseveringly
urged by the alarmists. The well-known and notable plan to be resorted
to, was the expulsion of the Amir Dost Mohammed and of the other
Barakzai chiefs inimical to the British, and the establishment of a
friendly prince upon the throne of Kabul. Who was to be chosen? Two
candidates alone appeared eligible--Sultan Mohammed Khan, chief of
Peshavar, brother and bitter foe of the Amir, and Shah Shuja, the
deposed but legitimate sovereign of Afghanistan. The Shah, who had long
lived inactive and retired at Loodianah, was believed, not without
reason, to have lost any ability or talent for reigning which he had
ever possessed; nevertheless, his name and hereditary right caused him
to be preferred by Lord Auckland, whose advisers also were unanimous in
their recommendation of Shuja. "As for Shah Shuja," wrote Sir Alexander
Burnes, who had now left Kabul, in his letter to the Governor-general,
dated 3d June 1838, "the British government have only to send him to
Peshavar with an agent, one or two of its own regiments as an honorary
escort, and an avowal to the Afghans that we have taken up his cause, to
ensure his being fixed _for ever_ on his throne."

"The British government," said one of those on whose information that
government acted, (Mr Masson,) "could employ interference without
offending half-a-dozen individuals. Shah Shuja, under their auspices,
would not even encounter opposition," &c.--(_Thornton's British India_,
vol. vi. p. 150.)

"Annoyed at Dost Mohammed's reception of Vikovich, the Russian emissary,
and disquieted by the departure of the British agent, they (the
Afghans)" says Lieutenant Wood, "looked to the Amir as the sole cause of
their troubles, and thought of Shah Shuja and redress."

Sir C. Wade, Mr Lord, and other authorities supposed to be well versed
in the politics of the land where mischief was imagined to be brewing,
expressed opinions similar in substance to those just cited. It was
decided that Shuja was the man; and Sir William M'Naghten started for
the court of Lahore to negotiate a tripartite treaty between the
Maharajah, the Shah, and the British government. Wade and Burnes were to
co-operate with the envoy. The treaty was concluded and signed, advices
from Lord Palmerston strengthened and confirmed Lord Auckland in his
predilection for "vigorous measures," and a declaration of war was
proclaimed and circulated throughout India and Afghanistan.

Lord Auckland is, we dare to say, a very well-meaning man--albeit not
exactly of the stuff of which viceroys of vast empires ought to be made;
and we willingly believe that he acted to the best of his judgment in
undertaking the Afghan war. Unfortunately, that is not saying much. His
lordship's advisers may have been right in supposing that the people of
Kabul were weary of the Amir's extortionate and tyrannical rule, and
desired the milder government of Shah Shuja; but if so, it is the more
to be regretted that, when we had established Shuja on the throne, the
mismanagement and want of unity of British agents--amongst whom were
some of those very advisers--should so rapidly have changed the
partiality of the Afghans for the Shah into contempt, their friendly
dispositions towards the British into aversion and fierce hatred. Mohan
Lal strenuously insists upon the blamelessness of Lord Auckland in the
whole of the unfortunate affairs of Afghanistan; lauds his judicious
measures, and maintains that had they not been adopted, "disasters and
outbreaks would soon have appeared in the very heart of India. The
object of the governor-general was to annihilate the Russian and Persian
influence and intrigues in Afghanistan, both at that time, and for all
time to come, unless they adopt open measures; and this object he
fortunately and completely attained, in a manner worthy of the British
name, and laudable to himself as a statesman." We could say a word or
two on this head, but refrain, not wishing to rake up old grievances, or
discuss so uninteresting a subject as Lord Auckland's merits and
abilities. Mr Lal admits that his lordship made two enormous blunders:
one "in appointing two such talented men as Sir William M'Naghten and
Sir Alexander Burnes, to act at the same time, in one field of honour;
the second was, that on hearing of the outbreak at Kabul, he delayed in
insisting upon the commander-in-chief to order an immediate despatch of
the troops towards Peshavar." "He being the superior head of the
government," continues this long-winded Kashmirian, "he ought not to
allow hesitation to approach and to embarrass his sound judgement, at
the crisis when immediate and energetic attention was required." _De
mortuis nil_, &c.; and therefore, of the two unfortunate gentlemen above
referred to, we will merely say, that many have considered their talents
far less remarkable than their blunders. As to the Earl of
Auckland--"Save me from my friends!" his lordship might well exclaim.
Indecision and lack of discrimination compose a nice character for a
governor-general. One great criterion of ability to rule is a judicious
choice of subordinate agents. Lord Auckland's reason for not sending the
reinforcements so terribly required by our troops in Kabul, is thus
curiously rendered by his Eastern advocate:--"His lordship had already
made every arrangement to retire from the Indian government, and
therefore did not wish to prolong the time for his departure by
embarking in other and new operations." Truly a most ingenious defence!
So, because the governor-general was in haste to be off, an army must be
consigned to destruction. Most sapient Lal! his lordship is obliged to
you. "Call you that backing your friends?" May our worst enemy have you
for his apologist.

We return to Dost Mohammed and his fortunes. Shah Shuja was publicly
installed upon the throne; numerous chiefs tendered him their
allegiance; Kalat, Qandhar, and Ghazni fell into the hands of his
British allies, before the Amir himself gave sign of life. This he did
by sending his brother, Navab Jabbar Khan, who was considered a stanch
friend of Europeans, and especially of the English, to treat with Sir
William M'Naghten. The Navab stated that the Amir was desirous to
surrender, on condition that he should be made Vazir or Prime Minister
of the Shah, to which post he had an hereditary claim. The condition was
refused; as was also the Navab's request that his niece, the wife of
Haidar Khan, the captured governor of Ghazni, should be given up to him.
Altogether, the poor Navab was treated in no very friendly manner; and
he returned to Kabul with his affection for the English considerably
weakened. As he had long been suspected of intriguing against the Amir,
he took this opportunity to wipe off the imputation, by encouraging the
people to rise and oppose his brother's enemies. "The Amir called an
assembly in the garden which surrounds the tomb of Taimur Shah, and made
a speech, petitioning his subjects to support him in maintaining his
power, and in driving off the infidels from the Mahomedan country. Many
people who were present stated to me that his words were most touching
and moving, but they gained no friends." He also invented various
stories to frighten the lower orders into resistance, saying that during
their march from Sindh to Ghazni, the English had ill-treated the women,
and boiled and eaten the young children. Arguments and lies--all were in
vain. The Kohistanis, his own subjects, who had been induced to rise
against him, descended from their valley, and threatened to attack the
Kabulis, if they allowed the Amir to remain amongst them. The army of
the Indus drew near, and at last Dost Mohammed abandoned the city, and
fled to Bamian, leaving his artillery and heavy baggage at Maidan. There
it was taken possession of by the British, and given up to Shah Shuja;
and on the 7th of August 1839, that prince, after an exile of thirty
years, re-entered the capital of his kingdom.

Hard upon the track of the fugitive Amir, followed Colonel Outram, with
several other officers, and some Afghans under Haji Khan Kaker, in all
about eight hundred foot and horse. Dost Mohammed had with him a handful
of followers, including the Navab Jabbar Khan and Akhbar Khan, the
latter of whom was sick and travelled in a litter. On the 21st August,
Colonel Outram was informed that he was within a day's march of the
object of his pursuit, whose escape, on that occasion, he attributes to
the treachery of Haji Khan. One night the Hazarahs stole twenty of the
Amir's horses, which greatly reduced the numbers of his little escort.
At last, however, he found himself in safety amongst the Uzbegs, and
thence wished to proceed to Persia; but the difficulties of the road,
already nearly impassible on account of the snow, decided him to accept
the proferred protection of the Amir of Bokhara. By this half-mad
monarch he was very queerly treated; at one time his life was in
peril--a treacherous attempt being made to drown him, his sons, and
relations, whilst crossing the river Oxus in a boat. At last he was
forbidden to leave his house, even to make his prayers at the mosque,
and was in fact a prisoner. His two sons, Afzal and Akhbar, shared his
captivity.

For the easy conquest of Afghanistan, and for the popularity of the
English during the early days of its occupation, a long string of
reasons is given by Mohan Lal. By various parts of his conduct,
especially by his injustice and extortions, the Amir had made himself
unpopular with the Afghans, who, on the other hand, remembered the
liberality displayed by the Honourable Montstuart Elphinstone in the
days of his mission to Kabul, and being by nature exceedingly
avaricious, hoped to derive immense profit and advantage from British
occupation of their country. The recent intercourse and friendship of
the Amir with the Shah of Persia had also excited the indignation of his
subjects, who, being Sunnies by sect, were deadly enemies of the Persian
Shias. The English, in short, were as popular as the Barakzais were
detested. Nevertheless it behoved the Shah Shuja and his European
supporters to be circumspect and conciliatory; for Dost Mohammed was
still at large, and lingering on the frontier, and any offence given to
the Kabulis might be the signal for his recall. "Notwithstanding," says
Mohan Lal, "all these points of grave concern, we sent a large portion
of the army back, with Lord Keane, to India; and yet we interfered in
the administration of the country, and introduced such reforms amongst
the obstinate Afghans just on our arrival, as even in India, the
quietest part of the world, Lords Clive and Wellesley had hesitated to
do but slowly." The administration of the principal frontier towns was
now confided to the Shah's officers; but these were not suffered to rule
undisturbed, for Sir W. MacNaghten's political assistants every where
watched their conduct and interfered in their jurisdictions. The occult
nature of this interference prevented benefit to the people, whilst it
caused a disregard for the local authorities. An undecided course was
the bane of our Afghanistan policy. The government was neither entirely
taken into the hands of the British, nor wholly left in those of the
Shah. Outwardly, we were neutral; in reality, we constantly interfered:
thus annoying the king and disappointing the people. Shah Shuja grew
jealous of British influence, and began to suspect that he was but the
shadow of a sovereign, a puppet whose strings were pulled for foreign
advantage. Sir A. Burnes introduced reductions in the duties on all
articles of commerce. Trade improved, but the Shah's servants frequently
deviated from the new tariff, and extorted more than the legal imposts.
When complaints were made to the English, they were referred to the
Shah's Vazir, Mulla Shakur, who, instead of giving redress, beat and
imprisoned the aggrieved parties for having appealed against the king's
authority. Persons known to be favoured by the English were vexed and
annoyed by the Shah's government; and it soon became evident that Mulla
Shakur was striving to form a party for Shuja, in order to make him
independent of British support. The people began to look upon the Shah
as the unwilling slave of the Europeans; the priests omitted the
"Khutbah," or prayer for the king, saying that it could only be recited
for an independent sovereign. Soon the high price of provisions gave
rise to grave dissensions. The purchases of grain made by the English
commissariat raised the market, and placed that description of food out
of reach of the poorer classes. Forage, meat, and vegetables, all rose
in proportion, and a cry of famine was set up. Both in town and country,
the landlords and dealers kept back the produce, or sent the whole of
it to the English camp. A proclamation made by Mulla Shakur, forbidding
the hoarding of provisions, or their sale above a fixed price, was
disregarded. The poor assembled in throngs before the house of Sir A.
Burnes, who was compelled to make gratuitous distributions of bread. At
last the Shah's government adopted the course usual in Afghanistan in
such emergencies; the store-keepers were seized, and compelled to sell
their grain at a moderate price. They complained to the English agents,
who unwisely interfered. Mohan Lal was ordered to wait upon Mulla
Shakur, and to request him to release the traders. The result of this
was a universal cry throughout the kingdom, that the English were
killing the people by starvation. What wretched work was this? what
miserable mismanagement? and how deluded must those men have been who
thought it possible, by pursuing such a course, to conciliate an
ignorant and barbarous people, and secure the permanence of Shah Shuja's
reign? "After the outbreak of Kabul," says Mohan Lal, whose evidence on
these matters must have weight, as that of an eyewitness, and of one
who, from his position as servant of the East India Company, would not
venture to distort the truth, "when I was concealed in the Persian
quarters, I heard both the men and the women saying that the English
enriched the grain and the grass-sellers, &c., whilst they reduced the
chiefs to poverty and killed the poor by starvation."

It is a well-known English foible to think nothing good unless the price
be high. This was strikingly exemplified in Afghanistan, where every
thing was done virtually to lower the value of money. The labourers
employed by our engineer officers were paid at so high a rate that there
was a general strike, and agriculture was brought to a stand-still. The
king's gardens were to be put in order, but not a workman was to be had
except for English pay. The treasury could not afford to satisfy such
exorbitant demands, and the people were made to work, receiving the
regular wages of the country. Clamour and complaint were the
consequence, and the English authorities informed Mullah Shakur, that if
he did not satisfy the grumblers, they would pay them for the Shah, thus
constituting him their debtor. Shuja's jealousy increased, and he showed
his irritation by various petty attempts at annoyance. Discontent was
rife in Afghanistan, even when the general impression amongst the
English officers there, was, that the country was quiet and the people
satisfied. Colonel Herring was murdered near Ghazni; a chief named Sayad
Hassim rebelled, but was subdued, and his fort taken, by Colonel Orchard
and the gallant Major Macgregor.

It was at this critical period that news came to Kabul of Dost
Mohammed's escape from Bokhara. The Shah of Persia had rebuked the
Bokhara ambassador for his master's harsh treatment of the Amir,
whereupon the latter was allowed more liberty, of which he took
advantage to escape. On the road his horse knocked up, but he luckily
fell in with a caravan, and obtained a place in a camel-basket. The
caravan was searched by the emissaries of the King of Bokhara, but the
Amir had coloured his white beard with ink, and thus avoided detection.
He was received with open arms by the Mir of Shahar Sabz and the Vali of
Khulam, and held counsel with those two chiefs and some other adherents
as to the course he should adopt. It was resolved to make an attempt to
recover Kabul, and measures were taken to collect money, men, and
horses. The moment appeared favourable for the enterprise; the Afghan
chiefs and people were discontented, and there were disturbances in
Kohistan. Sir William MacNaghten knew not whom to trust; and a vast
number of arrests were made on suspicion, some without the slightest
cause, which increased the disaffection and want of confidence. On the
30th of August hostilities commenced with an attack by Afzal Khan on the
British post at Bajgah. It was repulsed, and on the 18th of September
the Amir and the Vali of Khulam were routed by Colonel Dennie. Dost
Mohammed fled to Kohistan, many of whose chief inhabitants rallied round
his standard, until he found himself at the head of five thousand men.
He might have augmented this number, but for the exertions of Sir A.
Burnes and Mohan Lal, who sent agents into the revolted country with
money to buy up the inhabitants. This became known amongst the Amir's
followers, and rendered him distrustful of them; for he feared they
would be unable to withstand the temptations held out, and would betray
him, in hopes of a large reward. On the 2d of November occurred a
skirmish between the Amir's forces and the troops under General Sale and
Shah Zadah, in which the 2d cavalry were routed, and several English
officers killed, or severely wounded. Notwithstanding this slight
advantage, and a retrograde movement effected the same night by the
united British and Afghan division, the Amir felt himself so insecure,
fearing even assassination at the hand of the Kohistanis, that, on the
evening of the 30th November, he gave himself up to Sir William
MacNaghten at Kabul. He was delighted with the kind and generous
reception he met, and wrote to Afzal Khan and his other sons to join
him. After a few days, the necessary arrangements being completed, he
was sent to India.

The Amir a prisoner, the chief apparent obstacle to the tranquillity of
Afghanistan was removed, and it was not unreasonable to suppose that
Shah Shuja would thenceforward sit undisturbed upon the throne of his
ancestors. Unfortunately such anticipations were erroneous. Had Dost
Mohammed remained at large, any harm he could have done would have been
inferior to that occasioned by the injudicious measures of the British
agents. These measures, as Mohan Lal asserts, with, we fear, too much
truth, were the very worst that could be devised for the attainment of
the ends proposed. The Afghan character was misunderstood, Afghan
customs and institutions were interfered with, and Afghan prejudices
shocked. Certain things there were, which it would have been good policy
to wink at, or appear ignorant of. The contrary course was adopted. On
the field of Parvan, where the combat of the 2d November took place, a
bag of letters was found, compromising a large number of chiefs and
influential Kabulis. The Amir having surrendered, and as it was not
intended to punish these persons, the wisest plan would have been to
suppress the letters entirely; but this was not done, and the disclosure
caused a vast deal of mistrust on the part of the suspected chiefs
towards the English. It also gave a stimulus to a practice then very
prevalent in Kabul, that of forging letters from persons of note, with a
view to compromise the supposed writers, and to procure for the forgers
money and English friendship. Much mischief was done by these letters,
some of which were fabricated by Afghans enjoying the favour and
confidency of Sir A. Burnes and Sir W. MacNaghten.

On the repeated solicitations of the English, the Vazir Mulla Shakur was
dismissed. His successor, Nizam-ul-Daulah, was almost forced upon the
Shah, whose power was thus rendered contemptible in the eyes of the
Afghans. The new minister took his orders rather from the British agents
than from his nominal master--going every day to the former to report
what he had done, caring nothing for the good or bad opinion of the
nation, or for the will of the Shah, whose mandates he openly disobeyed.
Having committed an oppressive act, by depriving a Sayad of his land,
Shuja repeatedly enjoined him to restore the property to its rightful
owner. He paid no attention to these injunctions; and at last the Shah
told the suppliant, when he again came to him for redress, "that he had
no power over the Vazir, and therefore that the Sayad should curse him,
and not trouble the Shah any more, because he was no more a king but a
slave." By bribes to the newswriters of the envoy and Sir A. Burnes,
Nizam-ul-Daulah endeavoured to keep his misdeeds from the ears of those
officers. Nevertheless, they became known to them through Mohan Lal and
others; but Sir A. Burnes "felt himself in an awkward position, and
considered it impossible to cause the dismissal of one whose nomination
he had with great pains so recently recommended."

A reform in the military department, recommended by Sir A. Burnes,
caused immense bitterness and ill-blood amongst the chiefs, whose
retinues were compulsorily diminished, the men who were to be retained,
and those who were to be dismissed, being selected by a British officer.
This was looked upon as an outrageous insult and grievous humiliation.
The reduction was effected, also, in a harsh and arbitary manner,
without consideration for the pride of the chiefs and warriors, by whom
all these offences were treasured up, to be one day bloodily revenged.
Other innovations speedily followed and increased their discontent;
until at last they were reduced to so deplorable a position that they
waited in a body upon Shah Shuja to complain of it. The Shah imprudently
replied, that he was king by title only, not by power, and that the
chiefs were cowards, and could do nothing. These words Mohan Lal
believes were not spoken to stimulate the chiefs to open rebellion, but
merely to induce them to such acts as might convince the English of the
bad policy of their reforms and other measures. But the Shah had
miscalculated the effect of his dangerous hint. After the interview with
him, at the end of September 1841, the chiefs assembled, and sealed an
engagement, written on the leaves of the Koran, binding themselves to
rebel against the existing government, as the sole way to annihilate
British influence in Kabul. Mohan Lal was informed of this plot, and
reported it to Sir A. Burnes, who attached little importance to it, and
refused to permit the seizure of the Koran, whence the names of the
conspirators might have been learned. It has been frequently stated,
that neither Burnes nor MacNaghten had timely information of the
discontent and conspiracy of the chiefs. Mohan Lal affirms the contrary,
and supports his assertion by extracts from letters written by those
gentlemen. Pride of power, he says, and an unfortunate spirit of
rivalry, prevented them from taking the necessary measures to meet the
outbreak. Sir A. Burnes thought that to be on the alert would show
timidity, whilst carelessness of the alarming reports then afloat would
prove intrepidity, and produce favourable results. But it was not the
moment for such speculations. A circular letter was secretly sent round
to all the Durrani and Persian chiefs in Kabul and the suburbs, falsely
stating that a plan was on foot to seize them and send them to India,
whither Sir W. MacNaghten was about to proceed as governor of Bombay.
The authors of this atrocious forgery were afterwards discovered. They
were three Afghans of bad character and considerable cunning, who had
been employed by the Vazir, by the envoy, and by Sir A. Burnes. Their
object was to produce a revolt, in which they might make themselves
conspicuous as friends of the English, and so obtain reward and
distinction. They had been wont to derive advantage from revolutions and
outbreaks, and were eager for another opportunity of making money. Their
selfish and abominable device was the spark to the train. It caused a
prompt explosion. The chiefs again assembled, resolved upon instant
action, and fixed upon its plan. It was decided to begin by an attack
upon the houses of Sir A. Burnes and the other English officers resident
in the city. For fear of discovery, not a moment was to be lost. The
following day, the 2d of November, was to witness the outbreak.

And now, at the eleventh hour, fresh intimations of the approaching
danger were conveyed to those whom it threatened. Two persons informed
Sir A. Burnes of it; and one of the conspirators more than hinted it to
Mohan Lal, who had boasted to him that the Ghilzais were pacified by
Major Macgregor, and that Sir Robert Sale was on his victorious march to
Jellalabad. The conspirator laughed. "To-morrow morning," he said, "the
very door you now sit at will be in flames of fire; and yet still you
pride yourselves in saying that you are safe!"

"I told all this," says Mohan Lal, "to Sir Alexander Burnes, whose reply
was, that we must not let the people suppose we were frightened, and
that he will see what he can do in the cantonment, whither he started
immediately. Whilst I was talking with Sir A. Burnes, an anonymous note
reached him in Persian, confirming what he had heard from me and from
other sources, on which he said, 'The time is arrived that we must leave
this country.'" The time for that was already past.

The disastrous occurrences in Afghanistan, on and subsequently to the 2d
of November 1841, are so recent, so well-known, and have been so much
written about, that any thing beyond a passing reference to them is here
unnecessary. Mohan Lal's account of the deaths of Sir A. Burnes, Charles
Burnes, Sir W. MacNaghten, and Shah Shuja, is interesting, as are also
some details of his own escapes and adventures during the insurrection.
From the roof of his house he witnessed the attack upon that of Sir A.
Burnes, and the death of Lieutenant H. Burnes, who slew six Afghans
before he himself was cut to pieces. Sir Alexander was murdered without
resistance, having previously tied his cravat over his eyes, in order
not to see the blows that put an end to his existence. Mohan Lal himself
narrowly escaped death at the hands of the man who subsequently murdered
Shah Shuja; but he was rescued by an Afghan friend, and concealed in a
harem. Afterwards, whilst prisoner to Akhbar Khan, he did good service
in sending information to the English generals and political agents, and
finally in negotiating the release of the Kabul captives. For all these
matters we refer our readers to the closing chapters of his book, and
return to Dost Mohammed.

On his arrival at Calcutta, the Amir was treated by Lord Auckland with
great attention and respect, an income of three lakhs of rupees was
allotted to him, and he was taken to see the curiosities of the city,
the naval and military stores, &c. All these things greatly struck him,
and he was heard to say, that had he known the extraordinary power and
resources of the English, he would never have opposed them. After a
while, his health sufferred from the Calcutta climate; he became greatly
alarmed about himself, and begged to be allowed to join his family at
Loodianah. He was sent to the upper provinces, and afterwards to the
hills, where the temperature was cool and somewhat similar to that of
his own country. During the Kabul insurrection he managed to keep up a
communication with his son Akhbar, whom he strongly advised to destroy
the English by every means in his power.

When the British forces re-entered Afghanistan to punish its inhabitants
for the Kabul massacres, Prince Fatah Jang, son of the murdered Shah
Shuja, was placed upon the throne. But when he found that his European
supporters, after accomplishing the work of chastisement, were about to
evacuate the country with a precipitation which, it has been said,
"resembled almost as much the retreat of an army defeated as the march
of a body of conquerors,"[46] he hastened to abdicate his short-lived
authority. He was too good a judge of the chances, to await the
departure of the British and the arrival of Akhbar Khan, and preferred
taking off his crown himself to having it taken off by somebody else,
with his head in it. His brother, Prince Shahpur, a mere boy, was then
seated upon the throne, and left at the mercy of his enemies. His reign
was very brief. As the English marched from Kabul, Akhbar Khan
approached it, and the son of Shuja had to run away, with loss of
property and risk of life. "By such a precipitate withdrawal from
Afghanistan," says Mohan Lal, "we did not show an honourable sentiment
of courage, but we disgracefully placed many friendly chiefs in a
serious dilemma. There were certain chiefs whom we detached from Akhbar
Khan, pledging our honour and word to reward and protect them; and I
could hardly show my face to them at the time of our departure, when
they came full of tears, saying, that 'we deceived and punished our
friends, causing them to stand against their own countrymen, and then
leaving them in the mouths of lions.' As soon as Mohammed Akhbar
occupied Kabul, he tortured, imprisoned, extorted money from, and
disgraced, all those who had taken our side. I shall consider it indeed
a great miracle and a divine favour, if hereafter any trust ever be
placed in the word and promise of the authorities of the British
government throughout Afghanistan and Turkistan."

When it at last became evident that the feeble and talentless Sadozais
were unable to hold the reins of power in Afghanistan, or to contend,
with any chance of success, against the energy and influence of the
Barakzai chiefs, Dost Mohammed was released, and allowed to return to
his own country. On his way he concluded a secret treaty of alliance
with Sher Singh, the Maharajah of the Punjaub, and from Lahore was
escorted by the Sikhs to the Khaibar pass, where Akhbar Khan and other
Afghan chiefs received him. The Amir's exultation at again ascending his
throne knew no bounds. Unschooled by adversity, he very soon recommenced
his old system of extortion, and made himself so unpopular, that he was
once fired at, but escaped. He now enjoys his authority and the
superiority of his family, fearless of invasion from West or East.

Although Akhbar Khan, of all the Amir's sons, has the greatest influence
in Afghanistan, and renown out of it, his elder brother, Afzal Khan, is,
we are informed, greatly his superior in judgment and nobility of
character. Mohan Lal predicts a general commotion in Kabul when Dost
Mohammed dies. If any one of his brothers, the chiefs of Qandhar, or
Sultan Mohammed Khan, the ex-chief of Peshavar, be then alive, he will
attempt to seize Kabul, and many of the Afghan nobles, some even of the
Amir's sons, will lend him their support against Akhbar Khan. The
popular candidate, however, the favourite of the people, of the chiefs,
and of his relations, the Barakzais, is Afzal Khan. Akhbar will be
supported by his brothers--the sons, that is to say, of his own mother
as well as of the Amir. Perhaps the whole territory of Kabul will be
divided into small independent principalities, governed by the different
sons of Dost Mohammed. At any rate, there can be little doubt that at
his death wars and intrigues, plunderings and assassinations, will again
distract the country. The crown that was won by the crimes of the
father, will, in all probability, be shattered and pulled to pieces by
the dissensions and rivalry of the children.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] There were special reasons for the mutual hatred of these two
brothers. One of the Amir's wives was a lady of the royal family of
Sadozai, who, when the decline of that dynasty commenced, had attracted
the attention of Sultan Mohammed Khan, and a correspondence took place
between them. She prepared to leave Kabul to be married to him, when the
Amir, who was also smitten with her charms, forcibly seized her and
compelled her to become his wife. This at once created, and has ever
since maintained, a fatal animosity between the brothers; and Sultan
Mohammed Khan has often been heard to say, that nothing would afford him
greater pleasure, even at breathing his last, than to drink the blood of
the Amir. Such is the nature of the brotherly feeling now existing
between them.--See _Life of Dost Mohammed Khan_, vol. i. p. 222, 223.

[46] _Sale's Brigade in Afghanistan._ By the Rev. G.R. GLEIG.




ON THE OPERATION OF THE ENGLISH POOR-LAWS.


The time has arrived when the modes of administering the poor-law in
England and Wales must undergo inquiry and revision. Twelve years have
elapsed since the Poor-Law Amendment Act became the law of the land; and
during the period many changes have been made. In many cases, the new
arrangements of the Poor-Law Commissioners have been adopted without a
murmur. In some cases, they have met with continued but fruitless
opposition. In others, they have been resisted with success. During the
whole period a war has raged, in which no two of the combatants have
used the same weapons, or drawn them in the same cause. One has adduced
particular cases of hardship, suffering, and death, as the results of
the new system. Another has collected statistics, and referred to
depauperised counties. And yet the same number of cases of hardship and
suffering may have occurred before 1834, although unrecorded and
unknown. Nor does it follow, because the official returns from
agricultural counties may show a diminished number of paupers, or a
diminished expenditure, that the residue have been able to earn their
bread as independent labourers. No period appears to have been assigned
when the results of the new system should be examined. Successive
governments have kept aloof from fear, until an accident led to
important disclosures, and an inquiry is now inevitable. The Poor-Law
Commissioners have been invested with extraordinary and dangerous
powers. They possess the united powers of Queen, Lords, and Commons.
Their most imperfectly-considered resolutions have the force of an act
of parliament, or rather, ten-fold more force--it being their duty,
first, to ascertain _what ought to be the law--then to make the
law--then to enforce it--and then, after the elapse of time, to report
upon its success or failure_. It would be difficult for the wisest to
exercise powers like these beneficially; and it is to be feared that
abuses have crept in. And when we find that men, who have hitherto
upheld the system, now demand inquiry in their place in parliament, and
the ministers who were concerned in the establishment of the system,
promising, either to withdraw opposition to the demand, or to amend the
laws themselves so we may be assured that the topic at the present time,
as regards the administration of Relief to the Poor in England and
Wales, is Inquiry and Revision.

The subject matter of this article must be suggestive, rather than
affirmative. Even at this time of day, it would be presumptuous to take
up a commanding or decided position. The old system was rotten. The good
it contained was choked up with weeds; the pruning-knife has been
applied unsparingly; and it is to be feared that good wood has been cut
away. New arrangements have been devised with practical shrewdness, to
displace clearly recognised evils; but, with these practical
improvements, certain economic theories have been speculatively, tried;
and it is likely that evils have sprung up; so that those who proclaim
so loudly that every part of the new arrangements is either naught or
vicious, and those who affirm that the old methods were all good, are
both remote from the truth, which, probably, lies somewhere between the
two.

The subject being set apart for inquiry, the question arises--How can a
subject which has so many phases be advantageously considered; to whom
must we go for information; and to what matters should the attention be
chiefly directed? It is to these questions this article will attempt to
provide answers. To the first question--To whom must we go for
information?--the answer is obvious. To all who are engaged in the
administration of the law, and chiefly to those who have to do with
those departments where evils may be supposed to exist. And, in order to
answer the second, the subject must be divided into classes, and the
mode of operation of the law in each must be sketched. The reader will
then be able to see for himself, and judge whether the matters referred
to are not those which most imperatively demand inquiry.

The several parishes, townships, chapelries, and hamlets of England and
Wales, whether grouped into Unions or not, may be usefully distributed
into three classes.

_The First Class_ includes "parishes, townships, chapelries, and
hamlets," grouped into Unions, in which the _population bears a small
proportion to the number of acres they comprise_.

_The Second Class_ includes small populous parishes, grouped into
Unions, in which the _population bears a large proportion to the number
of statute acres they cover_.

_The Third Class_ consists of _large single parishes_, in which the
_population bears a large proportion to the number of acres_.

The following diagram will explain this classification:

 _____________________________________________________________________
|              |          |      |Population|       |Area of|No. of   |
|  COUNTY.     |   UNION. |No. of|   of     |Popula-|Union, |Relieving|
|              |          |Par-  |Parishes  |tion of|Statute|Officers.|
|              |          |ishes |__________|Union  |Acres. |         |
|              |          |      |High |Low |       |       |         |
|______________|__________|______|_____|____|_______|_______|_________|
|FIRST CLASS,  |          |      |     |    |       |       |         |
|Denbigh,      |Ruthin,   |   21 | 2066|  97| 16,019|166,619|   2     |
|Durham,       |Easington,|   19 | 2976|  10|  6,984| 34,660|   1     |
|Staffordshire,|Uttoxeter,|   16 | 4864| 116| 12,837| 56,685|   1     |
|Derbyshire,   |Shardlow, |   46 | 3182|  23| 29,812| 66,974|   2     |
|Lincoln       |Louth     |   88 | 6927|  24| 25,214|152,251|   3     |
|______________|__________|______|_____|____|_______|_______|_________|
|SECOND CLASS, |          |      |     |    |       |       |         |
|Middlesex     |City of   |      |     |    |       |       |         |
|              | London   |   98 | 4014|  72| 57,100|    370|   3     |
|______________|__________|______|_____|____|_______|_______|_________|
|THIRD CLASS,  |Parish.   |      |     |    |       |       |         |
|Middlesex     |Marylebone|   1  |.....|....|138,164|   1490|  ...    |
|______________|__________|______|_____|____|_______|_______|_________|

These divisions of territory may be regarded from different points of
view. They may be seen through the media of statute-books, reports,
returns, and statistics; or they may be actually surveyed. Each course
has its peculiar dangers. The mind, occupied with matters of detail and
routine occurrences, is apt to lose in comprehensiveness as much as it
gains in minute exactness. To avoid this danger the mind must soar as
the facts accumulate. It must regard them, sometimes from the height of
one theory, and sometimes from the height of another. For the mind
becomes tinged with the hue of whatever is frequently presented to it.
Opinions even are hereditary. And every set of facts leads to a
different conclusion, according to the texture of the minds they pass
through. Refer to the facts connected with the condition of the poor,
which have been proclaimed during the last few years; and then reflect
to what contradictory opinions they have led. The man of strong
benevolent feelings deduces one inference. The politico-economical
theorist deduces another. And the man of practice and experience is as
likely to be deluded as either. He sees destitution so frequently
connected with imprudence, laziness, and crime, that he is apt to
believe that the union is indissoluble. His mind has never embraced a
general idea, or traced effects to causes, or distinguished them, the
one from the other. And in this matter, where the causes and effects are
so complicated, and entangled by their mutual reaction, he is likely to
be at fault. Then the man of pure benevolence sees only the pain, and
demands only the means of immediate relief. And the political economist
tells us, "That the law which would enforce charity can fix no limits,
either to the ever-increasing wants of a poverty which itself has
created, or to the insatiable desires and demands of a population which
itself hath corrupted and led astray."

In the First Class, the parishes are large, thinly populated, and
situated generally in rural districts. In some cases, the Union includes
a country town; the neighbouring parishes and hamlets being connected
with it. The total number of parishes may be eighteen or twenty. In
other cases, the Union consists of about twenty-five parishes,
townships, hamlets, and chapelries. In some instances, the population of
the parishes are collected into so many villages, which are distant from
each other. In others, the entire surface of the country is sprinkled
thinly with cottages. The communications are by high-roads, and muddy
lanes, over high hills, and through bogs and marshes, and by
bridle-roads and footpaths--

    "O'er muirs and mosses many, O."

In each of these Unions, the management of the relief fund is confided
to a Board, consisting of resident rate-payers, and resident country
magistrates. The former are guardians by election, and the latter
ex-officio. The Board is completed by the addition of the churchwardens
and overseers. The chairman is generally the most distinguished, and the
vice-chairman the most active man in the Union. The chairman regulates
the proceedings of the Board, and ascertains its resolutions. The clerk
records them. The relief which applicants are to receive, is determined
by the Board; except that which is given by certain officers in cases of
"sudden and urgent necessity." The management of the Union-house is
invested in the master--a paid officer. His duties are ascertained and
fixed. He is liable to dismissal by the joint resolution of the Poor-Law
Commissioners and the Guardians, or by the order of the Commissioners
alone. It is also the duty of the master to attend to such cases of
destitution as may be presented at the Union-House gate; and, if their
necessities be of a sudden and urgent character, to admit them into the
house. It may be remarked here, that information is wanted upon this
point. The question is not, by what general term may the cases be
designated, whether sudden or urgent, but what the circumstances of the
cases really are, which are so relieved. The answers to the question
would throw light upon the relation subsisting between a strict
work-house system and the increase of vagrancy. To continue. The sick
poor are confided to the care of the medical officer; and the out-door
relief is chiefly administered by the relieving-officer. His duties in
rural Unions are as follows:--To pay or deliver such amounts of money or
food as the Board may have ordered the poor to receive, at the villages,
hamlets, and cottages where they may reside. He must visit the poor at
their homes. He receives applications for relief; and when the necessity
is sudden and urgent, he relieves the case promptly with food. He must
report upon the circumstances of each case, and keep accounts. For
neglect of duty, he is liable to penal consequences, and to dismissal,
in the same way as the master. The average number of parishes,
townships, and hamlets committed to the care of the relieving-officer
may be about twenty. The reader may be able, from his local knowledge,
to picture this Union, and give it a name.

The Union then consists of twenty parishes. The Union-house is pretty
central, and situated near a small market-town. The meetings of the
Board are held in the Union-house, and upon the market-day; because then
the guardians, churchwardens, and overseers, after having transacted
their private business, may conveniently perform their public duties. At
the last meeting of the Board of Guardians, certain poor persons
appeared before them, and were ordered to be relieved with money or
food, at a specific rate, and for a specified time. The
relieving-officer resides in that part of the Union from whence he can
reach the most distant and opposite points with nearly equal facility.
He divides his district into rounds, and each occupies the greatest
portion of a day. At the end of each week he will have visited the whole
of the twenty parishes.

The Board met yesterday, and to-day the relieving-officer's week began.
By the conditions of his appointment, he must have a horse and chaise.
The contractor for bread is bound to deliver it at the home of the
pauper; he must therefore provide man and horse, and they accompany the
relieving-officer. They set out on the first day's journey; they arrive
at the first hamlet on the route, and stop at a cottage door. Around it
and within it the destitute poor of the hamlet are assembled. Each
receives his allowance of money and bread. But a group has collected
about the door, whose names are not on the relief-list. One woman tells
the relieving-officer that her husband is ill with fever, and her
children are without food. He knows the family; he hastens down the
lane, and across the field, and enters the labourer's hut. The man is
really ill, and there are too evident signs of destitution. A written
order is given on the medical officer to attend the case, and necessary
relief is given. The man who now approaches the officer with such an air
of overbearing insolence, or fawning humility, is also an applicant. He
is known at the village beer-shop, and by the farmer as a man who can
work, but will not; he is the last man employed in the parish; his hovel
is visited--it is a scene of squalid misery. What is to be done? He may
be relieved temporarily with bread, or admitted into the Union-house, or
he is directed to attend the Board. The relieving officer then proceeds
to his next station. There a larger supply of bread awaits him, for he
is now in a populous parish. The poor of the place are assembled at the
church door, and the relief is given in the vestry-room. The
applications are again received and disposed of. He then rides to the
cottages of the sick and the aged, and again continues his route. He
does not proceed far before he is hailed by the labourer in the field,
who tells him of some solitary person who is without medical aid.
By-and-by, he is stopped by the boy who has long waited for him on the
stile, and begs him to come and see his mother; and the farmer's man, on
the farmer's horse, gives him further news of disease, destitution, or
death. He completes his day's journey before the evening. To-morrow
another route is taken; and thus he proceeds from day to day, and from
month to month, through summer's heat and winter's cold.

The number of medical officers in a Union varies. In some cases, where
there are two relieving-officers, there are four medical officers. The
medical officer resides within the limits of the Union. He is not
prevented from attending to his private practice, and he does not
therefore reside in a central position, or at the nearest point to his
pauper patients; he is supplied with a list of persons who are in
receipt of relief, and he is bound to attend these without an order; he
must also attend to cases upon the receipt of a written order from the
relieving-officer or the overseer; he regulates the diet of his
patients, and he is paid by a salary, and by fees in certain cases.

There are contradictory opinions respecting the efficiency of this
system. Some say that the amount of remuneration is inadequate to insure
qualified persons, and others that the qualifications are secured by the
requisition of recognised diplomas.

If we inquire of those among the peasantry who have never received
parochial relief, or even of the yeomanry, we find that in many
districts, and especially those of which we are now speaking, it is a
difficult matter to obtain immediate medical aid; and if this
consideration have any weight, the system would appear satisfactory,
providing always the overseers perform their duty when applied to. It
would be desirable to ascertain whether there are any restrictions in
the issue of medical orders. As regards relieving the poor with food,
there are many who say, that, in so doing, the very evil is created
which we are endeavouring to destroy. But this is not said with respect
to medical relief. The labouring man with his family may earn an average
wage of from 7s. to 12s. per week. The most prudent cannot save much,
and those savings are invested in the purchase of a stack of wood, a
sack of meal, a crop of potatoes, a stye of pigs, or a cow. His savings
might enable him to provide food for his family during illness, but they
would be totally insufficient to pay for medicine and medical aid. It
would be desirable to ascertain where and to what extent medical clubs
and dispensaries exist, and what means the agricultural labourer, in
thinly populated districts, possesses for obtaining gratuitous medical
aid.

It would be well, too, if Boards of Guardians would remember that their
duties have not ended when they have disposed of the cases on each
board-day. They have to do with pauperism, not only as it exists to-day,
but as it may exist next month or next year; and therefore they have to
do with its causes, as well as its existing results. This truth is just
now occupying the minds of statesmen, and it is to be hoped that it may
receive the attention of Boards of Guardians. Sanatory regulations will
decrease pauperism. Many men have been destroyed, and their families
pauperised, by uncovered sewers in thickly populated lanes and alleys;
and much disease has been engendered by the want of facilities for
cleanliness. And so also has much pauperism been engendered by the drain
upon the resources of the poor man during a long illness. Could not this
be remedied, and that without weakening the feeling of independence? And
why might not a Board of Guardians be allowed, or compelled, to
contribute a given sum to any dispensary or medical club which may be
governed by certain rules duly certified?

We must now refer to the churchwardens and overseers of the several
parishes of this rural Union. The question with respect to them is, do
they receive the applications of the poor in their respective parishes,
and deal with them in the same way as the relieving-officer? It would
not be a sufficient answer to quote acts of parliament, or lists of
duties. It is doubtless of importance to know that, according to law,
the duty of relieving in cases of sudden and urgent necessity is still
reserved to the overseer. But it is of equal importance to ascertain
whether, in those extensive or thinly populated parishes where the
relieving-officer may reside many a weary mile distant from the cottage
of the destitute, any check, or hinderance, or heavy discouragement has
been offered to the overseer in his attempt to perform his duty. We can
easily conceive the farmer overseer, before 1834, riding over the fields
of his parish, and meeting one of the poor cottagers, at once relieving
him with a piece of money, and taking no further note of the
circumstance than was necessary to prevent his forgetting to repay
himself. And we can understand how the same overseer, under the new
system, when men to whom he has been accustomed to look up with
deference are united with him in the administration of relief, may not
trouble himself to inquire into, or care to exercise, the rights
reserved to him. Or he may find that he has something more to do than
merely to enter the amount in his pocket-book. He may have to report the
case to the relieving-officer, or to defend it at the Board--neither of
which acts his literary habits, his opportunities, his patience, or his
ability to speak before the magnates of his district in Board assembled,
may dispose him to perform. In other cases, where these considerations
may have no weight, the overseer may be of opinion, since paid officers
have been appointed to do the duty, and are paid to do it, that they are
the proper persons to perform it.

In thus referring to the duties of overseers, it must not be supposed
that a recurrence to the old system is aimed at. It is a common opinion
that the Union system is diametrically opposed to the old parochial
system. And it seems to be too generally thought that relief should be
given through paid agency. But this is not so. The power to relieve, in
cases of sudden and urgent necessity, still rests with the overseers.
But the law has deprived the overseer of the power to give permanent
relief. It will not allow him to give a regular weekly allowance. The
question the overseer has to do with is not whether labourer Miles shall
receive, for a number of consecutive weeks or months, a certain sum, but
whether he should not receive relief at this moment, his necessities
being sudden and urgent. The question of permanent relief is no longer a
subject of personal controversy and irritation between the labourer and
the farmer. It is now a question between the labourer and the Board.
What he shall receive no longer depends upon the will of a single
person, but upon the collective will of a number so great, that personal
partialities and prejudices can scarcely have place. The system, in this
respect, assures justice alike to the rate-payer and the indigent poor.
It stands between the poor man and the overseer; and also between the
overseer and the sturdy threatening vagrant.

But it is desirable to know whether the dereliction of duty by overseers
has been of frequent occurrence, and whether there has been any want of
care or disposition on the part of the authorities to facilitate its
exercise. That the relief given must be duly recorded and accounted for,
is quite clear. Now, do the means for doing this equal those given to
the relieving-officer, who requires them less? Then, again, have
arrangements been duly made to enable overseers to relieve in food? Is
the loaf or the meat at hand? Can it be had from the nearest shop? Or
must it be brought from the store of the contractor, who cannot always
reside in the next village? In fact, must the destitute person wait for
the periodical visit of the relieving-officer, and is the duty of the
overseer thus made a superfluity?

It is likely that the dweller in cities may not sufficiently estimate
the importance of this topic. In a populous city, however sudden the
casualty may be to which a fellow-creature may fall a victim, the means
of relief are within a stone's-throw from the spot. But the case is
different in that wide expanse of level country which opens to the view
of the pedestrian as he gains the summit of the hill. The plain is
dotted with solitary cottages, hamlets, and villages. The town is just
perceptible in the distance. But its hum and its chimes are unheard. The
Union-house loses its barrack-like appearance by its remoteness. He
descends, and its "goes on his way." He hears the voices of children,
the song of birds; and he sees cottages "embosomed" in trees, and those
pictures which pastoral poets have so loved to paint, pass in panoramic
order before him. He enters the cottage door; he sees the dampness of
the walls; he feels the clayey coldness of the floors, and observes the
signs of poverty. While pondering upon these things, sensation vacates
its office, and imagination rules in the ascendant; material images fade
away. Now the fields, the trees, and the entire air become covered and
filled with drifting snow. Or,

    "The stillness of these frosty plains,
    Their utter stillness, and the silent grace
    Of yon ethereal summits, white with snow,
    (Whose tranquil pomp and spotless purity
    Report of storms gone by
    To those who tread below.")

Or the winds howl, the biting sharpness of the frosty air nips the
joints and shrivels the flesh, and the smoking smouldering fire has no
power to control the winds which rush across the room. The scene
changes. The lowlands are flooded, and the waters reach to, and stagnate
at the cottage door. The rains descend; the air is saturated with water;
it chills the frame; the heart beats languidly, and the soul of man
stoops to the deadening influence of the elements. Agues, rheumatism,
and fevers prevail. The hardships of the season bear down old and young;
for the want of sufficient or nutritious food has shorn them of their
strength.

Upon awakening from this trance, "which was not all a dream," and
reflecting how far aid is distant, even if it can be obtained from the
nearest overseer, how forcibly must the thought occur--what numbers
suffer and die whose suffering is unrelieved and unknown! If our
pedestrian learn nothing from his trip for health and pleasure more than
this, he will have learnt enough to satisfy him that the point we have
directed his attention to, viz. that the means of relief in rural
districts should be made as ample as possible; and that, therefore, the
right and duty of the overseers to relieve promptly should be encouraged
and zealously guarded.

Reference must now be made to the notorious "Prohibitory Order." And in
doing so, it is not to the order itself, either in its original or
amended form, that the following remarks are especially made, but to the
practices which owe their origin to the enactments of the Poor-Law
Amendment Act, to the Utopian expectations of many, that a strict
work-house test would destroy pauperism, and to the explanations and
reports of the Commissioners themselves. The following is the
prohibitory in its latest and most humanised form:--

     "Article I.--Every able-bodied person, male or female, requiring
     relief from any parish within any of the said Unions, shall be
     relieved wholly in the work-house of the said Unions, together with
     such of the family of every such able-bodied person as may be
     resident with him or her, and may not be in employment, and
     together with the wife of every such able-bodied male person, if he
     be a married man, and if she be resident with him; save and except
     in the following cases:--

     1st, Where such person shall require relief on account of sudden
     and urgent necessity.[47]

     2d, Where such person shall require relief on account of any
     sickness, accident, or bodily or mental infirmity, affecting such
     person, or any of his or her family.

     3d, Where such person shall require relief, for the purpose of
     defraying the expenses, either wholly or in part, of the burial of
     his or her family.

     4th, Where such person, being a widow, shall be in the first six
     months of her widowhood.

     5th, Where such person shall be a widow, and have a legitimate
     child or legitimate children dependent upon her, and incapable of
     earning his, her, or their livelihood, and no illegitimate child
     born after the commencement of her widowhood.

     6th, Where such person shall be confined in any jail or place of
     safe custody.

     7th, Where the relief shall be required by the wife, child, or
     children of any able-bodied man who shall be in the service of her
     Majesty, as a soldier, sailor, or marine.

     8th, Where any able-bodied person, not being a soldier, sailor, or
     marine, shall not reside within the Union, but the wife, child, or
     children, of such person shall reside within the same, the Board of
     Guardians of the Union, according to their discretion, may afford
     relief in the work-house to such wife, child, or children, or may
     allow out-door relief for any such child or children, being within
     the age of nurture, and resident with the mother within the Union."

The fifth exception, relating to widows, is accompanied with a course of
reasoning directed against its application; and as it is to be feared
that the practice engendered by a former order, in which this exception
had no place, may have become habitual, this exception will be treated
as if it did not exist. Especial inquiries ought to be made, in order to
ascertain whether widows with children are generally allowed out-door
relief.

The immediate effect of this system of relief is a diminution of
expenditure. But we must look beyond the immediate effects. It is to be
feared that great politico-social evils result from this system. They
have been somewhat reduced in number, perhaps, by the new prohibitory
order. But it is too probable that the original wound has left a scar.
The evils are not on the surface, and strike the mind at intervals.
Perhaps we may be struck with the fact, that our prisons are filled with
individuals who have been committed for slight offences, and for short
periods; and it may casually appear, that the work-house has something
to do with it. Then the question may occur, why the ordinary
accommodation for wayfarers in the casual wards of work-houses has
become insufficient or less ample than formerly? Or, when travelling, we
may see whole families creeping along the roads apparently without
object or aim; and if, after giving them a coin, you ask them where they
are going to, and why they are going? you will be struck with the
vagueness of their replies. Wherever you meet them, you find they are
going from this place to that; and if you were to meet them every day
for a twelvemonth, the answers would always be as indefinite. At another
time, we may be deeply concerned in the subject of prison discipline;
and while studying reports, returns, and dietaries, the subject of
workhouse discipline may become associated with it, and induce
comparisons. And it may come to our knowledge, that there is a vast body
of persons to whom it is a matter of indifference whether they are
inmates of a prison or a workhouse. Or the mind may soar above the dull,
cold, field of politics, and extend its researches to the pure regions
of morality, leaving the questions of science for those of philosophy;
and then it will appear that there are causes in operation, and results
constantly flowing, which escape the "economic" eyes of assistant
Commissioners.

But we must avoid generalities. We still retain our original ground,
viz. the rural Union, with its large area and its thinly scattered
population. The reader must accompany us to the rural Union, where the
spirit of the prohibitory order exercises its most baneful influence.

We saw the relieving-officer performing his round of duties. The poor
were assembled at the cottage door. Two classes of applicants were then
given. We must now, however, look deeper into human nature. The
destitute consist of the virtuous and the vicious, the vulgar and the
refined. There stands an able-bodied man with his able-bodied wife, and
his large healthy family. His weekly wages amount to nine shillings per
week. If he loses a week's work he is destitute. He is now making an
application to the relieving-officer. But it is useless. He must walk to
the Union, and become an inmate, where his dinner awaits him. The man
who now approaches the officer is like the last, able-bodied and out of
work; but, unlike him, he has an idle, unthrifty, drunken wife. He is
always trembling on the confines of destitution; and the instant he is
without work he is on the brink of starvation. His spirit is broken. His
children are dirty and ragged, and appear emaciated without disease. He,
too, must enter the Union. The next is a hard-featured man;--

    "A savage wildness round him hung
    As of a dweller out of doors;
    In his whole figure, and his mien,
    A savage character was seen
    Of mountains and of dreary moors."

He does not seem to care whether relief is granted or not; and we may
hear him say, "I don't want relief for myself, I can get my living
somehow or other--but my wife and child musn't starve. I shan't go to
the Union--I shall be off--and catch me who can."--In the cottage, a
woman is seated with her children, whose husband has done that which the
other has threatened to do. She may be industrious or idle, but she
cannot support herself, thus suddenly thrown upon her own resources. Let
us hope that she is allowed the benefit of the amended order.--There is
the man whose children are approaching the state of womanhood or
manhood. He has work to do, and he does it. He could manage to eke out a
subsistence for himself--for his habits are simple and frugal; but his
children are now a sore trial to him. His daughter has returned to his
cottage with a child of shame. She has erred, but she cannot be turned
from his door. She has tried to make the father contribute to the
support of the child, but without success. Poor ignorant creature,
instead of taking a competent witness with her, when she asked the man
to assist her, she was too anxious to hide her shame. Instead of putting
questions to him, in order "to get up" the corroborative evidence, she
was too apt to spoil all by passionate upbraidings. And then, when she
appeared before their worships the justices, she was too much abashed or
excited, to enable her to develope those latent powers of examination
and cross-examination which the law supposes her to possess. Those who
have witnessed those humiliating proceedings in our petty courts of
justice, and seen the magistrate at one moment kindly acting as counsel
for the girl, then falling back to his position as judge, and observed
the evident helplessness of the girl, must have left the court with the
impression that the whole affair is a disgusting farce. She departs
without redress. The "corroborative evidence" is declared insufficient.
She goes to her father's cottage. His heart compels him to give her
shelter, and a place at his scanty board. But the smallest assistance
cannot be rendered with impunity. And there he stands an applicant. He
is told, "you must come into the house." "But it is my daughter." "Then
she must enter the Union." And, if she does, there she must remain until
her child dies, or her hair grows grey.--On the other side, and away
from the rest, stands a coarse-featured man, who has often been an
inmate of the county jail. He is the smuggler on the coast, the footpad
on the common, the poacher in the forest, the housebreaker, the
horse-stealer, the sheep-slayer, or the incendiary. He may be any of
these. He demands his rights, and threatens vengeance if refused.--We
turn from this group, and walk slowly to the Union-house, now visible in
the distance; and, in walking, the time may be well employed in
reflection. The thought which occurs with the greatest vividness is
this--for the reception of such a group, what must the arrangements be?
There is the old man, honest but poor, who seeks there an asylum. There
is the man old in sin and iniquity, as well as years. There is the
able-bodied man and woman with their family. There is the able-bodied
man with his drunken, unthrifty wife, and his emaciated children. There
is the young girl, whom the season has thrown out of her ordinary field
employment. There is the woman with her illegitimate child, either
heart-broken, or glorying in her shame. There is the girl, young in
years but old in profligacy, suffering for her sins. There is the matron
in her green old age, the result of a life of industry and prudence. And
there is the ruffian, and the thief, and the profligate vagrant, male
and female. Now what arrangements can be made for this assemblage--the
bad anxious to obtain temporary quarters, the good anxious to retain
their homes?

Surely they are not classed according to rules in which age, and sex,
and state of health are the only principles? The widow with the
prostitute, the aged cottar with the aged vagrant. If this were all, the
moral consequences would not be so fearful. Does the young girl, who is
now innocent, associate daily with her who has wandered over half the
neighbouring counties, sinking lower and lower each journey? If so,
poison will be instilled, which produces certain moral death. Refer to
any list, now seven years old, of the inmates of a workhouse, who were
then aged from twelve to eighteen years, and then inquire what has
become of them. Or inquire of those who have the administration in
metropolitan parishes, or in manufacturing and sea-port towns, how many
of those unfortunates, scarcely yet arrived at the state of womanhood,
and suffering from loathsome diseases, were brought up, or were sometime
inmates of one of these Unions. Then there are the children of all
these;--the children of the farm-labourer associating with those of the
vagrant, who has quartered himself in the Union during the rains.

The evils which this system occasions are not, unfortunately, either to
be seen or understood by the casual observer. Even our observer may
suppose that all is well, after he has inspected the place. He sees
every thing clean and in order. There are no rags, no unshorn beards, no
unclean flesh. The ordinary concomitants of virtue are here present--by
compulsion. The rags, the filthiness of place and person, are absent--by
order. This is forgotten; and, allowing the outward and visible to
govern his judgment rather than the inward and spiritual, he leaves the
place exclaiming, "Well! this is not so bad after all!" The outside is
indeed white, but it is the whiteness of the sepulchre.

If this group is to be received into one building, there must be
something peculiar in its arrangements. All these persons are suffering,
more or less, from the want of food, or lodging, or clothing, or medical
aid. They are now offered the whole of these blessings, and yet they do
not feel blessed thereby. He has now that livelihood freely offered to
him which had cost him many a sigh to procure, and he has often sighed
in vain. What then can or must be the nature of the arrangements? It
must be remembered that this Union is presumed to be a test of poverty,
and therefore the condition of its inmates must be inferior to that of
the independent labourer.

To effect this, how must the authorities proceed? In the first place,
there are arrangements which they cannot make. They cannot altogether
dispense with the counsels of the medical man, while the matter is under
discussion. And an inspector of prisons should be admitted, certainly,
as far as the ante-room. Then the locality of the Union-house must not
be unhealthy. The internal parts of the building must not be exposed to
the inclemency of the seasons.

The rooms cannot be badly warmed or ventilated. They must not be allowed
to become filthy. The inmates must not sleep on a damp floor, with loose
straw for a bed, or an old carpet for a coverlid. Their clothes must not
be permitted to fall from them in tatters. They must not remain
twenty-four hours without food. And they cannot experience that gnawing
anxiety--that sickness of heart which those thousands suffer who rise in
the morning without knowing where they can obtain a meal, or lay down
their head at night. These "ills," which constitute so large a portion
of the poor man's lot, the inmate of this Union cannot be _made_ to
suffer. Nor can they be detained like prisoners. He must not be confined
for a longer period, after an application to leave has been made, than
will allow for forms and casualties. So in three hours he is a free man
again. What is to be done? Might not his food be touched? Might he not
be allowed food which, although possessing nutritious qualities, should
not be palatable? At this point, the prison inspector should be
consulted. This experiment upon the dietaries has been tried, and with
what success let public opinion trumpet-tongued proclaim. What must then
be done? First, the family may, nay, must be divided and distributed
over the building. The husband is sent to the "Man's Hall," the wife to
the "Woman's Ward," and the male and female children each to their's.
This arrangement is inevitable, but is fraught with dangers. The man who
has lived for months estranged from his wife and children--for seeing
them at certain times cannot be considered the same thing as living with
them--may learn to believe that their presence is not necessary to his
existence. And then it should not be forgotten, that the pain here
introduced is the pain arising from the infliction of a moral wound. An
attempt has been made to disturb a set of virtuous emotions in their
healthy exercise. By this separation they are deprived of their
necessary aliment; and, if they are not strong, will soon sicken and
die. Now, those moral feelings which preside over the social hearth are
those which exercise the greatest influence over the heart of the poor
man, and bind, and strengthen, and afford opportunities for the
development of the rest. They are in general the last that leave him.
And when they are gone, he is bankrupt indeed. It is a pain, too, which
only the virtuous feel. The lawless, the debauched, and the drunken pass
unscathed. Is there not danger?

In the second place, the inmates of the Union must work. And here also
there are limits which a Board cannot pass. Labour cannot be enforced
from a diseased man. The prudent master of a Union will not require a
task to be performed which he cannot enforce. The question is, what work
can the inmates be set to do? Not to lace-making or stocking-weaving,
for that is the staple of the neighbourhood. To give them this work
would diminish the demand for labour out of doors. What labour then must
it be? Here is the rock upon which the vessel is now driving. It must
certainly be real work. Must it, then, be disagreeable work? It must.
But there is no work so disagreeable that willing labourers cannot be
found to do it, and that at a rate of wages reduced by competition.
Then, again, the most disagreeable kind of labour cannot be done in a
Union-house. And experience proves, that the number of such employments
is extremely limited.

There are, however, certain kinds of labour that require no exertion of
skill--no variety of operation--and consisting of the mechanical and
monotonous operation of picking, which, if performed in the same room
during a certain number of hours of each day, and from day to day, and
from week to week, will be

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