so effectually, that £50,000 per annum was settled by parlia ment on the princess, which gave great offence to their majesties.

This strange and unexpected blow, was followed by an event of a more extraordinary nature; for the earl and several other noblemen were committed to the Tower, upon a false charge of hightreason. The accusation was grounded upon a paper, said to have been an association entered into and signed by these peers against the government. But, upon examining the paper and the evidences closely at the council board, the whole was discovered to be a forgery; the lords were released, and the matter ended in a prosecution on their parts of the offenders, who were set in the pillory, and publicly whipped.

After queen Mary's death, when the interests of the two courts were brought to a better agreement, king William thought fit to recall the earl of Marlborough to his privy-council; and in June 1698, appointed him governor to the duke of Gloucester, with this extraordinary compliment, "Make him but what you are, and my nephew will be all I wish to see him."*

The earl discharged the important duty of governor to the young prince, in a manner equally satifactory to the king and to the na tion; and great hopes were conceived of the promising genius of the royal pupil, when he was seized with a fever, occasioned by his over-heating himself on his birth-day, the 24th of July, 1700; and on the 29th it took him off, in the 11th year of his age. His highness was the last prince of the British line, and the fourth and only surviving child of the princess Anne. After the death of his mother, the crown, by the act of succession, descended, in consequence of his death, to the illustrious house of Hanover.

Soon after the death of the duke of Gloucester, king William made the earl of Marlborough, commander in chief of the British forces in Holland, and ambassador extraordinary to the States Ge neral and this was one of the last marks of honor the earl received from king William, except the recommendation of his lordship to the princess Anne, a little before his death, as the properest person to be trusted with the command of the army, which was to protect the liberties of Europe.

In March, 1702, about a week after the king's death, he was elected knight of the most noble order of the garter; and soon af

ter declared captain-general of all her majesties forces in England and abroad: upon which he was immediately sent over to the Hague, with the same character that he had the year before. His stay in Holland was very short, only just long enough to give the States General the necessary assurances of his royal mistress's sincere intention to pursue the plan that had formerly been settled. The states concurred with him in all that he proposed, and declared him captain-general of all their forces, with an appointment of one hundred thousand florins per annum.

On his return to England he found the queen's council already divided; some being for carrying the war on as auxiliaries only; others, for declaring against France and Spain immediately, and so becoming principals at once. The earl of Mariborough joined with the latter; and these carrying their point, war was declared upon the 4th of May, 1702, and approved afterwards by parliament, though the Dutch, at that time, had not declared.

The earl took the command on the 20th of June; and discerning that the States were made uneasy by the places which the enemy held on the frontiers, he began with attacking and reducing them. Accordingly, in this single campaign, he made himself master of the castles of Gravenbroeck and Waerts; the towns of Venlo, Ruremond, and Stavenwaert; together with the city and citadel of Liege; which last was taken sword in hand.

These advantages were considerable, and acknowledged as such by the States; but they were to have been of a very short date; for the army separating in the neighbourhood of Liege on the 3d of November, the earl was taken the next day in his passage by water, by a small party of thirty men from the garrison at Gueldres ; but it being towards night, and the earl with great composure presenting to the commanding officer of the detachment an old pass, which had been given to his brother, general Churchill, but which was now out of date, he was suffered to proceed, and arrived safe at the Hague, where they were in the utmost consternation at the accident which had befallen him.

The winter approaching, the earl embarked for England, and arrived in London on the 28th of November. The queen had been complimented some time before by both houses of parliament, on the successs of her arms in Flanders; in consequence of which

there had been a public thanksgiving on the fourth of November, when her majesty went in great state to St. Paul's.

Soon after, à committee of the house of commons waited upon the earl with the thanks of the house; and on the 2d of December, her majesty declared her intention in council of creating his lordship a duke, which she soon after did, by the title of marquis of Blandford, and duke of Marlborough. She likewise added a pension of £5000 per annum out of the post-office during her own life; and sent a message to the house of commons, signifying her desire, that they would extend the pension by act of parliament, in the same manner as she had done the title, to him and his heirs male; but with this the house would not comply, contenting themselves, in their address to the queen, with applauding her manner of rewarding public services, but declaring their inability to make such a precedent for alienating the revenue of the crown.

He was on the point of returning to Holland, when, on the 20th of February, 1703, his only son, the marquis of Blandford, died at Cambridge, at the age of eighteen. This afflicting accident did not however, long retard his grace but he passed over to Holland, and arrived at the Hague on the seventeenth of March.

i

The nature of this work will not suffer us to relate all the military exploits in which the duke of Marlborough was engaged. It is sufficient to say, that numerous as they were, they were all successful. The French had a great army this year in Flanders, in the Low-countries, and in that part of Germany which the elector ot Cologne had put into their hands; and prodigious preparations were made under the most experienced commanders: but the vigilance and activity of the duke baffled

them all.

When the campaign was over, his grace went to Dusseldorp to have an interview with the archduke Charles, who had just taken the title of Charles III. king of Spain; he made him a present of a rich sword from his side, at the same time highly complimenting him on his great military reputation. The duke then accompanied the Spanish monarch to the Hague, and after a very short stay came over to England.

He arrived on the 13th of October, 1703; and soon after king Charles III. came likewise over to England, and arrived at Spithead on the 26th of December; upon which the dukes of Somerset and Marlborough were immediately sent to receive and conduct him to Windsor.

In the beginning of January, 1704, the States General desired leave of her majesty for his grace of Marlborough to come to the Hague; which being granted, his grace embarked on the fifteenth, and passed over to Rotterdam. He went from thence immediately to the Hague, where he communicated to the pensionary his sense of the necessity there was of attempting something the next campaign for the relief of the emperor of Germany, Charles VI. whose affairs at this time were in the utmost distress, having the Bavarians on the one side, and the Hungarian mal-contents on the other, making incursions to the very gates of Vienna, while his whole force scarcely enabled him to maintain a defensive war. This scheme being approved of, and the plan of it being adjusted, the duke returned to England on the fourteenth of February.

When the measures were properly settled at home, the duke on the 8th of April, 1704, embarked for Holland; where staying about a month to adjust the necessary steps, he began his march towards the heart of Germany, and after a conference held with prince Eugene of Savoy, and prince Lewis of Baden, he ar rived before the strong entrenchments of the enemy at Schellenburg, very unexpectedly, on the 21st of June; and after an obstinate and bloody battle, he entirely routed them, It was on this occasion the emperor wrote the duke a letter with his own hand, acknowledging his great services, and offering him the title of a prince of the empire, which he modestly declined, till the queen afterwards commanded him to accept of it.

The duke made the best advantage of this success, and having advanced with the confederate army within a league of Augsburgh, where the elector of Bavaria was securely encamped under the cannon of that city, his grace so effectually cut off his communication with his electoral dominions, that seeing his subjects left to the mercy of the confederate army, he had actually agreed with the duke of Marlborough, to sign a treaty of peace, and

abandon the French interest, when he received the news that marshall Tallard, who commanded the French army, was on the point of joining him, which he did soon after; and this change of affairs brought on the famous battle of Hockstedt (a town near the village of Blenheim); it was fought on the 13th of August, 1704, and the confederate army under the command of prince Eugene and the Duke of Merlborough, gained a complete victory over the French and Bavarians. More than 10,000 French and Bavarians were killed in this memorable battle; near 10,000 were wounded, or drowned in the Danube; marshal Tallard, the commander-in-chief of the French forces, was taken prisoner, and with him 13,000 of the combined army; 100 pieces of cannon, 24 mortárs, 129 colours, 171 standards, 17 pair of kettle drums, 3,600 tents, 34 coaches, 300 mules laden with provisions, ammunition, and baggage, two bridges of boats, and fifteen barrels and eight casks of silver, were the spoils of the day. But, what is still more remarkable, the victor lost only 4,500 men killed, and about 8000 wounded or taken prisoners. This battle is generally styled in history the battle of Blenheim; though it is sometimes called that of Hockstedt.

After this glorious action by which the empire was saved, and the whole electorate of Bavaria conquered, the duke continued his pursuit till he forced the French to repass the Rhine. Then prince Lewis of Baden laid siege to Landau, while the duke and prince Eugene covered it; but it was not taken till the 12th of November. The duke made a tour also to Berlin; and by a short negotiation suspended the disputes between the king of Prussia and the Dutch, by which he gained the good will of both parties.

When the campaign was over, he returned to Holland, and on the 14th of December, arrived in England. He brought over with him marshal Tallard, and 26 other officers of distinction, and the colours, which by her majesty's order, were put up in Westminster-hall.

He was received by the queen and her royal consort with the highest marks of esteem, and had the solemn thanks of both houses of parliament. Beside this, the commons addressed her majesty to perpetuate the memory of this victory; which she