 Book 2, Chapter 12 of THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND ASQUIRE. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND ASQUIRE. By William Makepeace Thackeray. Book 2, Chapter 12 I GET A COMPANY IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1706. On Whitsun Day, the famous 23rd of May, 1706, my young lord first came under the fire of the enemy whom we found posted in order of battle, their lines extending three miles or more over the high ground behind the little Geet River, and having on his left the little village of Anderkirk or Otre-Aiglis, and on his right Rameyes, which has given its name to one of the most brilliant and disastrous days of battle that history had ever recorded. Our duke here once more met his old enemy of Blannam, the Bavarian Elector and the Marical Villaroy, over whom the Prince of Savoy had gained the famous victory of Kyari. What Englishman or Frenchman doth not know the issue of that day? Having chosen his own ground, having a force superior to the English, and besides the excellent Spanish and Bavarian troops, the whole Maison du Roy with him, the most splendid body of horse in the world, in an hour, and in spite of the prodigious gallantry of the French royal household who charged through the centre of our line and broke it, this magnificent army of Villaroy was utterly routed by troops that had been marching for twelve hours, and by the intrepid skill of a commander who did, indeed, seem in the presence of the enemy to be the very genius of victory. I think it was more from conviction than policy, though that policy was surely the most prudent in the world, that the great duke always spoke of his victories with an extraordinary modesty, and if it was not so much his own admirable genius and courage which achieved these amazing successes, but as if he was a special and fatal instrument in the hands of Providence, that willed irresistibly the enemy's overthrow. For his actions he always had the church service read solemnly, and professed an undoubting belief that our queen's arms were blessed and our victory sure. All the letters which he writ after his battles show awe rather than exultation, and he attributes the glory of these achievements, about which I have heard mere petty officers and men bragging with the pardonable vain glory, in no eyes to his own bravery or skill, but to the superintending protection of heaven, which he ever seemed to think was our special ally. And our army got to believe so, and the enemy learned to think so too, for we never entered into a battle without a perfect confidence that it was to end in a victory, nor did the French, after the issue of Blenheim and that astonishing triumph of Ramayee, ever meet us without feeling that the game was lost before it was begun to be played, and that our general's fortune was irresistible. Here as at Blenheim the duke's charger was shot, and it was thought for a moment he was dead, as he mounted another, Binfield, his master of the horse, kneeling to hold his grace's stirrup, had his head shot away by a cannon-ball. A French gentleman of the royal household, that was a prisoner with us, told the writer that at the time of the charge of the household, when their horse and ours were mingled, an Irish officer recognized the prince-duke, and calling out, Marvoreau, Marvoreau, fired his pistol at him, a bout pour tant, and that a score for more carbines and pistols were discharged at him. Not one touched him. He rode through the French cuirassiers, sword in hand, and entirely unhurt, and calm and smiling, rallied the German horse, that was reeling before the enemy, brought these and twenty squadrons of Orkneys back upon them, and rode the French across the river, again leading the charge himself, and defeating the only dangerous move the French made that day. Senator General Webb commanded on the left of our line, and had his own regiment under the orders of their beloved Colonel. Neither he nor they belied their character for gallantry on this occasion, but it was about his dear young lord that Esmond was anxious, never having sight of him save once in the whole course of the day, when he brought an order from the Commander-in-Chief to Mr. Webb. When our horse, having charged round the right flank of the enemy by Overkirk, had thrown him into entire confusion, a general advance was made, and our whole line of foot, crossing the little river and the morass, ascended the high ground where the French were posted, cheering as they went, the enemy retreating before them. It was a service of more glory than danger the French battalions never waiting to exchange push of pike or bayonet with ours, and the gunners flying from their pieces, which our line left behind us as they advanced, and the French fell back. At first it was a retreat orderly enough, but presently the retreat became a rout, and a frightful slaughter of the French ensued on this panic, so that an army of sixty thousand men was utterly crushed and destroyed in the course of a couple of hours. It was as if a hurricane had seized a compact, numerous fleet, flung it all to the winds, shattered, sunk, and annihilated it, a flavite déus at Dissipati Sout. The French army of Flanders was gone, their artillery, their standards, their treasure, provisions, and ammunition were all left behind them. The poor devils had even fled without their soup-ketles, which are as much the Palladier of the French infantry as of the grand-seniors Janissaries, and round which they rally even more than round their lilies. The pursuit, and a dreadful carnage which ensued, for the dregs of a battle, however brilliant, are ever a base residue of rapine, cruelty, and drunken plunder, was carried far beyond the field of Ramayis. Honest Lockwood, Esmond's servant, no doubt wanted to be among the marauders himself and take his share of the booty, for when, the action over, and the troops got to their ground for the night, the captain bade Lockwood get a horse. He asked, with a very rueful countenance, whether his honour would have him come to, but his honour only bade him go about his own business, and Jack hopped away quite delighted as soon as he saw his master mounted. Esmond made his way, and not without danger and difficulty, to his grace's headquarters, and found for himself, very quickly, where the Edda camp's quarters were, in an out-building of a farm, where several of these gentlemen receded, drinking and singing, and at supper. If he had any anxiety about his boy, it was relieved at once. One of the gentlemen was singing a song to a tune that Mr. Farkahar and Mr. Gay had both used in their admirable comedies, and very popular in the army of that day, and after the song came a chorus, over the hills and far away, and Esmond heard Frank's fresh voice, soaring, as it were, over the songs of the rest of the young men, a voice that had always a certain artless, indescribable pathos with it, and indeed which caused Mr. Esmond's eyes to fill with tears now, out of thankfulness to God the child was safe, and still alive to laugh and sing. When the song was over, Esmond entered the room, where he knew several of the gentlemen present, and there sat my young Lord, having taken off his carass, his waistcoat open, his face flushed, his long yellow hair hanging over his shoulders, drinking with the rest, the youngest, gayest, handsomest there. As soon as he saw Esmond, he clapped down his glass, and running towards his friend put both his arms round him, and embraced him. The other's voice trembled with joy as he greeted the lad, he had thought but now as he stood in the courtyard under the clear shining moonlight, great God, what a scene of murder is here within a mile of us, what hundreds and thousands have faced danger today, and here are these lads singing over their cups, and the same moon that is shining over yonder horrid field is looking down on wall-coat very likely, while my lady sits and thinks about her boy that is at the war. As Esmond embraced his young pupil now, it was with the feeling of quite religious thankfulness, and an almost paternal pleasure that he beheld him. Round his neck was a star with a striped ribbon that was made of small brilliance and might be worth a hundred crowns. Look, says he, won't that be a pretty present for mother? Who gave you the order, says Harry, saluting the gentleman, did you win it in battle? I won it, cried the other, with my sword and my spear. There was a musketeer that had it round his neck, such a big musketeer as big as General Webb. I called out to him to surrender, and that I'd give him quarter. He called me a petit poisson, and fired his pistol at me, and then sent it at my head with a curse. I rode at him, sir, drove my sword right under his arm-hole, and broke it in the rascal's body. I found a person, his holster, with sixty-five louis in it, and a bundle of love-letters, and a flask of hungry water. Viva la guerre! There are the ten pieces you lent me. I should like to have a fight every day." And he pulled at his little mustache, and bade a servant bring a supper to Captain Esmond. Harry fell, too, with a very good appetite. He had tasted nothing since twenty hours ago, at early dawn. Master grandson, who reads this, do you look for the history of battles and sieges? Go, find them in the proper books. This is only the story of your grandfather and his family. Far more pleasant to him than the victory, though for that, too, he may say, Memonise Juvath, it was to find that the day was over, and his dear young Castlewood was unhurt. And would you, sirrah, wish to know how it was that a sedate captain of foot, a studious and rather solitary bachelor of eight or nine and twenty years of age, who did not care very much for the jollities which his comrades engaged in, and was never known to lose his heart in any garrison-town? Should you wish to know why such a man had so prodigious attenderness, and tended so fondly a boy of eighteen? Wait, my good friend, until thou art in love with thy school-fellow's sister, and then see how mighty tender thou will be towards him. Edmunds, General, and his Grace the Prince-Duke were notoriously at variance, and the former's friendship was in no wise likely to advance any man's promotion of whose services Webb spoke well, but rather likely to injure him, so the army said, in the favour of the greater man. However, Mr. Esmond had the good fortune to be mentioned very advantageously by Major General Webb in his report after the action, and the Major of his regiment, and two of the captains having been killed upon the day of Ramayee's, Esmond, who was second of the lieutenants, got his company, and had the honour of serving as Captain Esmond in the next campaign. My lord went home in the winter, but Esmond was afraid to follow him. His dear mistress wrote him letters more than once, thanking him, as mothers know how to thank, for his care and protection of her boy, extolling Esmond's own merits with a great deal more praise than they deserved, for he did his duty no better than any other officer, and speaking sometimes, though gently and cautiously, of Beatrix. News came from home of at least half a dozen grandmatches that the beautiful maid of honour was about to make. She was engaged to an earl, our gentleman of St. James has said, and then jilted him for a duke, who, in his turn, had drawn off. Earl or duke it might be who should win this Helen, Esmond knew that she would never bestow herself on a poor captain. Her conduct, it was clear, was little satisfactory to her mother, who scarcely mentioned her, or else the kind lady thought it was best to say nothing, and leave time to work out its cure. At any rate, Harry was best away from the fatal object which always wrought him so much mischief, and he never asked for leave to go home, but remained with his regiment that was garrisoned in Brussels, which city fell into our hands when the victory of Ramayese drove the French out of Flanders. CHAPTER XIII. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND ESQUIRE by William Makepeace Thackeray. BOOK II CHAPTER XIII. I meet an old acquaintance in Flanders, and find my mother's grave and my own cradle there. Being one day in the church of Sanguidou, at Brussels, admiring the antique splendour of the architecture, and always entertaining a great tenderness and reverence for the mother-church, that hath been as wickedly persecuted in England as ever she herself persecuted in the days of her prosperity, Esmond saw kneeling at a side altar, an officer, in a green uniform coat, very deeply engaged in devotion. Something familiar in the figure and posture of the kneeling man struck Captain Esmond, even before he saw the officer's face. As he rose up, putting away into his pocket a little black breviary, such as priests use, Esmond beheld accountants so like that of his friend and tutor of early days, Father Holt, that he broke out into an exclamation of astonishment, and advanced a step toward the gentleman, who was making his way out of the church. The German officer too looked surprised when he saw Esmond, and his face from being pale grew suddenly red. By this mark of recognition the Englishman knew that he could not be mistaken, and though the other did not stop, but on the contrary, rather hastily walked away toward the door, Esmond pursued him and faced him once more, as the officer, helping himself to holy water, turned mechanically towards the altar, to bow to it ere he quitted the sacred edifice. My father, says Esmond in English. Silence! I do not understand. I do not speak English, says the other in Latin. Esmond smiled at this sign of confusion, and replied in the same language, I should know my father in any garment, black or white, shaven or bearded, for the Austrian officer was habited quite in the military manner, and had as warlike a moustachio as any pandor. He laughed, we were on the church steps by this time, passing through the crowd of beggars that usually is there, holding up little trinkets for sale, and whining for alms. You speak Latin, says he, in the English way, Harry Esmond, you have forsaken the old true Roman tongue you once knew. His tone was very frank, and friendly quite, the kind voice of fifteen years back, he gave Esmond his hand as he spoke. Others have changed their coats to my father, said Esmond, glancing at his friend's military decoration. Hush! I am Mr. or Captain von Holtz, in the Bavarian elector service, and on a mission to his highness the prince of Savoy, you can keep a secret, I know from old times. Captain von Holtz, says Esmond, I am your very humble servant. And you too have changed your coat, continues the other in his laughing way, I have heard of you at Cambridge, and afterwards, we have friends everywhere, and I am told that Mr. Esmond at Cambridge was as good a fencer as he was a bad theologian. So thinks Esmond, my old metrid arms was a Jesuit, as they said. Perhaps you are right, says the other, reading his thoughts quite as he used to do in old days, you were all but killed at hockstead of a wound in the left side, you were before that at Vigo, ed to come to the Duke of Ormond. You got your company the other day after Ramelliers, your general and the prince-duke are not friends. He is of the webs of Liddiard-Traghose, in the county of York, a relation of my Lord Saint John. Your cousin, Mr. Decastlewood, served his first campaign this year in the guard, yes I do know a few things as you see. Captain Esmond laughed in his turn. You have indeed a curious knowledge, he says. A foible of Mr. Holtz, who did know more about books and men than perhaps almost any person Esmond had ever met, was omniscience, thus in every point he here professed to know he was nearly right, but not quite. Esmond's wound was in the right side, not the left. His first general was General Lumley. Mr. Webb came out of Wilshire, not out of Yorkshire, and so forth. Esmond did not think fit to correct his old master in these trifling blunders, but they served to give him a knowledge of the other's character, and he smiled to think that this was his oracle of early days, only now no longer infallible or divine. Yes, continues Father Holtz, or Captain Bonholtz, for a man who has not been in England these eight years I know what goes on in London very well. The old dean is dead, my Lady Castlewood's father. And do you know that your recusant bishops wanted to consecrate him Bishop of Southampton, and that Collier is Bishop of Thetford by the same imposition? The Princess Anne has the gout and eats too much. When the king returns, Collier will be an archbishop. Amen! says Esmond, laughing, and I hope to see your eminence no longer in jack-boots but red stockings at Whitehall. You are always with us, I know that, I heard of that when you were at Cambridge. So was the late Lord, so is the young bicount. And so was my father before me, said Mr. Esmond, looking calmly at the other, who did not, however, show the least sign of intelligence in his impenetrable grey eyes, how well Harry remembered them and their look. Only crow's-feet were wrinkled round them, marks of black old time had settled there. Esmond's face chose to show no more sign of meaning than the father's. There may have been on the one side and the other just the faintest glitter of recognition as you see a bayonet shining out of an ambush, but each party fell back when everything was again dark. And you, Maud Capitaine, where have you been? says Esmond, turning away the conversation from this dangerous ground where neither chose to engage. I may have been in Pekin, says he, or I may have been in Peregwe, who knows where. I am now Captain Bonholtz, in the service of his electoral highness, come to negotiate exchange of prisoners with his highness of Savoy. It was well known that very many officers in our army were well affected towards the young king of Saint Germain, whose right to the throne was undeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by far the greater part of the English people would have preferred to the having a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty and rapacity, boorish manners, and odious foreign ways a thousand stories were current. It wounded our English pride to think that a shabby high Dutch duke, whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many of the princes of our ancient English nobility, who could not speak a word of our language, and whom we chose to represent as a sort of German boor, feeding on train-oil and sauerkraut, with a bevy of mistresses in a barn, should come to reign over the proudest and most polished people in the world. Were we, the conquerors of the grand monarch, to submit to that ignoble domination? What did the Hanoverian's Protestantism matter to us? Was it not notorious, we were told and led to believe so, that one of the daughters of this Protestant hero was being bred up with no religion at all, as yet, and ready to be made Lutheran or Roman, according as the husband might be whom her parents should find for her. This talk, very idle and abusive much of it was, went on at a hundred mess-tapels in the army. There was scarce an ensign that did not hear it or join in it, and everybody knew or affected to know that the commander in chief himself had relations with his nephew, the Duke of Burwick, t'was by an Englishman, thank God, that we were beaten at Almanza, and that his grace was most anxious to restore the royal race of his benefactors and repair his former treason. This is certain, that for a considerable period no officer in the Duke's army lost favour with the commander-in-chief for entertaining or proclaiming his loyalty towards the exiled family. When the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, as the King of England called himself, came with the dukes of the French blood-royal to join the French army under vindom, hundreds of hours saw him and cheered him, and we all said he was like his father in this, seeing the action of La Hogue fought between the French ships and ours was on the side of his native country during the battle. But this, at least the Chevalier knew, and everyone knew that, however well our troops and their general might be inclined toward the prince personally, in the face of the enemy there was no question at all. Wherever my lord Duke found a French army he would fight and beat it, as he did at Udenard, two years after Ramayet, where his grace achieved another of his transcendent victories, and the noble young prince, who charged gallantly along with the magnificent Maison du Roy, sent to compliment his conquerors after the action. In this battle, where the young electoral prince of Hanover behaved himself very gallantly, fighting on our side, Esmond's dear General Webb distinguished himself prodigiously, fighting consummate skill and coolness as a general, and fighting with the personal bravery of a common soldier. Esmond's good luck again attended him, he escaped without a hurt, although more than a third of his regiment was killed, had again the honour to be favourably mentioned in his commander's report, and was advanced to the rank of Major. But of this action there is little need to speak, as it hath been related in every Gazette, and talked of in every hamlet in this country. To return from it to the writer's private affairs, which here in his old age, and at a distance, he narrates for his children who come after him. Before Udenard, after that chance from Contra with Captain Von Holtz at Brussels, a space of more than a year elapsed, during which the captain of Jesuits and the captain of Webb's Fusilliers were thrown very much together. Esmond had no difficulty in finding out, indeed the other made no secret of it to him, being assured from old times of his pupil's fidelity, that the negotiator of prisoners was an agent from Saint-Germain, and that he carried intelligence between great personages in our camp and that of the French. My business, said he, and I tell you both because I can trust you and your keen eyes have already discovered it, is between the King of England and his subjects here engaged in fighting the French King. As between you and them all the Jesuits in the world will not prevent your quarrelling, fight it out, gentlemen, Saint George for England, I say, and you know who says so, wherever he may be. I think Holt loved to make a parade of mystery, as it were, and would appear and disappear at our quarters as suddenly as he used to return and vanish in the old days at Castlewood. He had passes between both armies, and seemed to know, but with that inaccuracy which belonged to the good father's omniscience, equally well what passed in the French camp and in ours. One day he would give Esmond news of a great fest that took place in the French quarters of a supper of Monsieur the Rohans, where there was play and violins, and then dancing and masks, the King drove thither in Marshal Villar's old gringette. Another day he had the news of his Majesty's egg. The King had not had a fit these ten days, and might be said to be well. Esmond Holt's made a visit to England during this time, so eager was he about negotiating prisoners, and was on returning from this voyage that he began to open himself more to Esmond, and to make him, as occasion served, at their various meetings, several of those confidences which are here set down altogether. The reason of his increased confidence was this. Upon going to London, the old director of Esmond's aunt, the Dowager, paid her ladyship a visit at Chelsea, and there learnt from her that Captain Esmond was acquainted with the secret of his family, and was determined never to divulge it. The knowledge of this fact raised Esmond in his old tutor's eyes, so Holt was pleased to say, and he admired Harry very much for his abnegation. The family at Castlewood have done far more for me than my own ever did, Esmond said. I would give my life for them. Why should I grudge the only benefit that is in my power to confer on them? The good father's eyes filled with tears at this speech, which to the other seemed very simple. He embraced Esmond, and broke out into many admiring expressions. He said he was a noble cur, that he was proud of him, and fond of him as his pupil and friend, regretted more than ever that he had lost him, and been forced to leave him in those early times, when he might have had an influence over him, have brought him into that only true church to which the father belonged, and enlisted him in the noblest army in which a man ever engaged, meaning his own society of Jesus, which numbers, says he, in the troops the greatest heroes the world ever knew, warriors brave enough to dare or endure anything, to encounter any odds, to die any death, soldiers that have won triumphs a thousand times more brilliant than those of the greatest general, that have brought nations on their knees to their sacred banner the cross, that have achieved glories and palms incomparably brighter than those awarded to the most splendid earthly conquerors, crowns of immortal light, and seats in the high places of heaven. Esmond was thankful for his old friend's good opinion, however little he might share the Jesuit father's enthusiasm. I have thought of that question too, says he, dear father, and he took the other's hand, thought it out for myself as all men must, and contrived to do the right, and trust to heaven as devoutly in my way as you and yours. Another six months of you as a child, and I had desired no better. I used to weep upon my pillow at Castlewood as I thought of you, and I might have been a brother of your order, and who knows, Esmond added with a smile, a priest in full orders, and with a pair of moustachios, and a Bavarian uniform. My son, says father Holt, turning red, in the cause of religion and loyalty, all disguises are fair. Yes, broke in Esmond, all disguises are fair, you say, and all uniforms, say I, black or red, a black cockade or a white one, or a laced hat, or a sombrero with a tonsure under it. I cannot believe that Saint Francis Xavier sailed over the sea in a cloak or raised the dead. I tried, and very nearly did once, but cannot. I did not have the courage for me to do the right and to hope for the best in my own way. Esmond wished to cut short the good father's theology, and succeeded, and the other, sighing over his pupil's invincible ignorance, did not withdraw his affection from him, but gave him his utmost confidence, as much, that is to say, as a priest can give, more than most do, for he was naturally garrulous, and too eager to speak. Encouraged Captain Esmond to ask what he long wished to know, and none could tell him, some history of the poor mother whom he had often imagined in his dreams, and whom he never knew. He described to Holt those circumstances which are already put down in the first part of this story, the promise he had made to his dear Lord, and that dying friend's confession, and he besought Mr. Holt to tell him what he knew regarding the poor woman from whom he had been taken. She was of this very town, Holt said, and took Esmond to see the street where her father lived, and where, as he believed, she was born. In 1676, when your father came hither in the retinue of the late King, then Duke of York, and banished hither in disgrace, Captain Thomas Esmond became acquainted with your mother, pursued her, and made a victim of her. He hath told me in many subsequent conversations which I felt bound to keep private, then, that she was a woman of great virtue and tenderness, and in all respects a most fond, faithful creature. He called himself Captain Thomas, having good reason to be ashamed of his conduct towards her, and hath spoken to me many times with sincere remorse for that, as with fond love for her many amiable qualities. He owned to having treated her very ill, and that at this time his life was one of profligacy, gambling, and poverty. She became with child of you, was cursed by her own parents at that discovery, though she never up braided except by her involuntary tears and the misery depicted on her countenance, the author of her wretchedness and ruin. Thomas Esmond, Captain Thomas, as he was called, became engaged in a gaming-house brawl, of which the consequence was a duel and a wound so severe that he never, his surgeon said, could outlive it. Thinking his death certain, and touched with remorse, he sent for a priest of the very church of Sankudul, where I met you, and on the same day, after his making submission to our church, was married to your mother a few weeks before you were born. My Lord Viscount Castlewood, Mark E. of Esmond, by King James' patent, which I myself took to your father, your lordship, was christened at Sankudul by the same curee who married your parents, and by the name of Henry Thomas, son of E. Thomas, officer and law, and jerkured maize. You see, you belong to us from your birth, and why I did not christen you when you became my dear little pupil at Castlewood. Your father's wound took a favourable turn. Perhaps his conscience was eased by the right he had done, and, to the surprise of the doctors, he recovered. But as his health came back, his wicked nature too returned. He was tired of the poor girl whom he had ruined, and receiving some remittance from his uncle, my Lord the Old Viscount, then in England, he pretended business, promised return, and never saw your poor mother more. He owned to me, in confession first, but afterward in talk before your aunt, his wife, else I never could have disclosed what I now tell you, that on coming to London he writ a pretended confession to poor Gertrude Maes, Gertrude Esmond, of his having been married in England previously, before uniting himself with her, said that his name was not Thomas, that he was about to quit Europe for the Virginian plantations, where indeed your family had a grant of land from King Charles I, sent her a supply of money, the half of the last hundred guineas he had, and treated her pardon, and bade her farewell. Poor Gertrude never thought that the news in this letter might be untrue as the rest of your father's conduct to her, but though a young man of her own degree, who knew her history, and whom she liked before she saw the English gentleman, who was the cause of all her misery, offered to marry her, and to adopt you as his own child, and give you his name, she refused him. This refusal only angered her father, who had taken her home, she never held up her head there, being the subject of constant unkindness after her fall, and summed about ladies of her acquaintance offering to pay a little pension for her, she went into a convent, and you were put out to nurse. A sister of the young fellow who would have adopted you as his son was the person who took charge of you. Your mother and this person were cousins. She had just lost a child of her own, which you replaced, your own mother being too sick and feeble to feed you, and presently your nurse grew so fond of you that she even grudged letting you visit the convent where your mother was, and where the nuns petted the little infant, as they pitied and loved its unhappy parent. Your vocation became stronger every day, and at the end of two years she was received as a sister of the house. Your nurse's family were silk-weavers out of France, whither they returned to Arras in French Blanders shortly before your mother took her vows, carrying you with them, then a child of three years old. It was a town before the late vigorous measures of the French king full of Protestants, and here your nurse's father, old Pastor O, he with whom you afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted the reformed doctrines perverting all his house with him. They were expelled thence by the edict of his most Christian majesty, and came to London, and set up their looms in spittle fields. The old man brought a little money with him, and carried on his trade, but in a poor way. He was a widower, by this time his daughter, a widow too, kept house for him, and his son and he labored together at their vocation. Meanwhile your father had publicly owned his conversion just before King Charles's death, in whom our church had much such another convert, was reconciled to my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and married, as you know, to his daughter. It chanced that the younger Pastor O, going with a piece of brocade to the Mercer who employed him on Ludgate Hill, met his old rival coming out of an ordinary there. Pastor O knew your father at once, seized him by the collar, and upbraided him as a villain who had seduced his mistress and afterwards deserted her and her son. Mr. Thomas Esmond also recognized Pastor O at once, besought him to calm his indignation, and not to bring a crowd round about them, and bade him to enter into the tavern out of which he had just stepped when he would give him any explanation. Pastor O entered, and heard the landlord order the drawer to show Captain Thomas to a room. It was by his Christian name that your father was familiarly called at his tavern haunts, which, to say the truth, were none of the most reputable. I must tell you that Captain Thomas, or my Lord Viscount afterwards, was never at a loss for a story, and could cajole a woman or a done with a volubility, and an air of simplicity at the same time of which many a creditor of his has been the dupe. His tales used together very similitude as he went on with them. He strung together fact after fact with a wonderful rapidity and coherence. It required, saving or presence, a very long habit of acquaintance with your father to know when his lordship was telling the truth or no. He told me, with rueful remorse, when he was ill, for the fear of death set him instantly repenting, and with shrieks of laughter when he was well, his lordship having a very great sense of humor. How, in a half an hour's time, and before a bottle was drunk, he had completely succeeded in biting poor Pastor Rowe, the seduction he owned to, that he could not help, he was quite ready with tears at a moment's warning, and shed them profusely to melt his credulous listener. He wept for your mother even more than Pastor Rowe did, who cried very heartily, poor fellow, as my lord informed me, he swore upon his honour that he had twice sent money to Brussels, and mentioned the name of the merchants with whom it was lying for poor Gertrude's use. He did not even know whether she had a child or no, or whether she was alive or dead, but got these facts easily out of honest Pastor Rowe's answers to him. When he heard that she was in a convent, he said he hoped to end his days in one himself, should he survive his wife, whom he hated, and had been forced by a cruel father to marry. And when he was told that Gertrude's son was alive and actually in London, I started, says he, for then, damn my wife was expecting to lie in, and I thought, should this old putt, my father-in-law, run rusty, here would be a good chance to frighten him. He expressed the deepest gratitude to the Pastor Rowe family for the care of the infant. You were now near six years old, and on Pastor Rowe bluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant and see the darling child, that they never wished to see his ill-aumined face again within their doors, that he might have the boy, though they should all be very sorry to lose him, and that they would take his money, they being poor if he gave it, or bring him up, by God's help, as they had hitherto done without. He acquiesced in this at once, with a sigh, said, well, it was better that the dear child should remain with friends who has been so admirably kind to him. And in his talk to me afterwards, honestly praised and admired the weaver's conduct and spirit, owned that the Frenchman was a right fellow, and he, the Lord, have mercy upon him, a sad villain. Your father, Mr. Holt went on to say, was good-natured with his money when he had it, and having that day received a supply from his uncle, gave the weaver ten pieces with perfect freedom, and promised him further remittances. He took down eagerly Pastor Rowe's name and place of abode in his table-book, and when the other asked him for his own, gave, with the utmost readiness, his name as Captain Thomas, New Lodge, Penzance, Cornwall. He said he was in London for a few days only on business connected with his wife's property, described her as a shrew, though a woman of kind disposition, and depicted his father as a Cornish squire in an infirm state of health, at whose death he hoped for something handsome, when he promised richly to reward the admirable protector of his child and to provide for the boy. Then by gad, sir, he said to me in his strange laughing way, I ordered a piece of brocade the very same pattern as that which the fellow was carrying, and presented it to my wife for a morning wrapper, to receive company after she lay in of our little boy. Your little pension was paid regularly enough, and when your father became Viscount Castlewood on his uncle's demise, I was employed to keep a watch over you, and was at my insistence that you were brought home. Your foster mother was dead. Her father made acquaintance with the woman whom he married who quarreled with his son. The faithful creature came back to Brussels to be near the woman he loved, and died two a few months before her. Will you see her cross in the convent cemetery? The superior is an old penitent of mine, and remembers Sir Marie Madeleine fondly still. Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and saw, amidst a thousand black crosses casting their shadows across the grassy mounds, that particular one which marked his mother's resting place. Many more of those poor creatures that lay there had adopted that same name with which Sorrow had rebaptised her, and which fondly seemed to hint their individual story of love and grief. He fancied her in tears and darkness, kneeling at the foot of her cross under which her cares were buried. Surely he knelt down and said his own prayer there, not in Sorrow so much as in awe, for even his memory had no recollection of her. And in pity for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been made to suffer. To this cross she brought them. For this heavenly bridegroom she exchanged the husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had left her. A thousand such hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of the grass over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat. A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard by at a sleeping sister's bedside, so fresh made that the spring had scarce head-time to spin a coverlid for it. Beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the spires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and lit first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away presently with a leaf in its mouth. Then came a sound as of chanting from the chapel of the sister's heart by. Others had long since filled the place which poor Mary Magdalene once had there. Were kneeling at the same stall, and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart had found consolation. Might she sleep in peace? Might she sleep in peace? And we too, when our struggles and pains are over. But the earth is the Lord's as the heaven is. We are alike his creatures here and yonder. I took a little flower off the hillock and kissed it, and went my way, like the bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the world again. Silent receptacle of death, tranquil depth of calm, out of reach of tempest and trouble. I felt as one who had been walking below the sea and treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks. End of CHAPTER XIII. Book II. CHAPTER XIV. OF THE HISTORY OF HENRY ASMOND ESQUIRE. By William Makepeace Thackeray. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ralph Snelson. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ASMOND ESQUIRE by William Makepeace Thackeray. Book II, CHAPTER XIV. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1707, 1708. During the whole of the year which succeeded that in which the glorious battle of Remelies had been fought, our army made no movement of importance, much to the disgust of very many of our officers remaining inactive in Flanders, who said that his grace, the Captain General, had had fighting enough and was all for money now, and the enjoyment of his five thousand a year and his splendid palace at Woodstock, which was now being built, and his grace had sufficient occupation fighting his enemies at home this year, where it began to be whispered that his favor was decreasing, and his Duchess losing her hold on the Queen, who was transferring her royal affections to the famous Mrs. Micham, and Mrs. Micham's humble servant, Mr. Harley. Against their intrigues our Duke passed a great part of his time intriguing. Mr. Harley was got out of office, and his grace, in so far, had a victory, but her majesty, convinced against her will, was of that opinion still, of which the poet says people are when so convinced, and Mr. Harley before long had his revenge. Meanwhile, the business of fighting did not go on any way to the satisfaction of Marlborough's gallant lieutenants. During all 1707, with the French before us, we had never so much as a battle. Our army in Spain was utterly routed at Almanza, by the gallant Duke of Burwick, and we, of Webb's, which regiment the young Duke had commanded before his father's abdication, were a little proud to think that it was our colonel who had achieved this victory. I think if I had had Galway's place, and my fusiliers, says our general, we would not have laid down our arms even to our old colonel, as Galway did, and Webb's officers swore, if we had had Webb, at least we would not have been taken prisoners. Our dear old general talked incautiously of himself and of others. A braver or more brilliant soldier never lived than he, but he blew his honest trumpet rather more loudly than became a commander of his station, and mighty man of valor as he was, shook his great spear and blustered before the army too fiercely. Mysterious Mr. Holtz went off on a secret expedition in the early part of 1708, with great elation of spirits and a prophecy to Esmond that a wonderful something was about to take place. This secret came out on my friend's return to the army, whether he brought a most rueful and dejected countenance and owned that the great something he had been engaged upon had failed utterly. He had been indeed with that luckless expedition of the Chevalier de Saint-George, who was sent by the French king with ships and an army from Dunkirk, and was to have invaded and conquered Scotland. But that ill-win which ever opposed all the projects upon which the Prince ever embarked prevented the Chevalier's invasion of Scotland as to his known and blew poor, misured Van Holtz back into our camp again to scheme and foretell and to pry about as usual. The Chevalier, the king of England as some of us held him, went from Dunkirk to the French army to make the campaign against us. The Duke of Burgundy had the command this year, having the Duke of Berry with him, and the famous Marichal of Vettissomé and the Duke of Matillon to aid him in the campaign. Holtz, who knew everything that was passing in Flanders and France and the Indies, for what I know, insisted that there would be no more fighting in 1708 than there had been in the previous year, and that our commander had reasons for keeping him quiet. Indeed, Esmond's general, who was known as a grumber, and to have a hearty mistrust of the great Duke, and hundreds more officers besides, did not scruple to say that these private reasons came to the Duke in the shape of crown pieces from the French king by whom the general Esmol was bribed to avoid a battle. There were plenty of men in our lines, quidnunks, to whom Mr. Edd listened only too willingly, who could specify the exact sums the Duke got, how much fell to the Cadogan's share, and what was the precise fee given to Dr. Hare, and the successes with which the French began the campaign of 1708 served to give strength to these reports of treason which were in everybody's mouth. Our general allowed the enemy to get between us and Ghent, and declined to attack him, though for eight and forty hours the armies were in presence of each other. Ghent was taken, and on the same day Monsieur de La Molte summoned Bruges, and these two great cities fell into the hands of the French without firing a shot. A few days afterwards La Molte seeded upon the Fort of Plechendale, and it began to be supposed that all Spanish Flanders, as well as Breuilant, would fall into the hands of the French troops. When the Prince Eugene arrived from the Moselle, and then there was no more shilly shelling, the Prince of Savoy always signalized his arrival at the army by a great feast. My Lord Duke's entertainments were both seldom and shabby, and I remember our general returning from this dinner with the two commanders-in-chief, his honest head a little excited by wine, which was dealt out much more liberally by the Austrian than by the English commander. Now, says my general, slapping the table with an oaf, he must fight, and when he is forced to it, damn it, no man in Europe can stand up against Jack Churchill. Within a week the battle of Udnard was fought. When hate each other as they might, Esmond's general and the commander-in-chief were forced to admire each other, so splendid was the gallantry of each upon this day. The brigade commanded by Major General Webb gave and received about as hard knocks as any that were delivered in bad action, in which Mr. Esmond had the fortune to serve at the head of his own company in his regiment under the command of their own Colonel as Major General, and it was his good luck to bring the regiment out of action as commander of it, the four senior officers above him being killed in the prodigious slaughter which happened on that day. I like to think that Jack Haythorn, who sneered at me for being a bastard and a parasite of webs, as he chose to call me, and with whom I had had words, shook hands with me the day before the battle began. Three days before, poor Brace, our Lieutenant Colonel, had heard of his elder brother's death, and was heir to a barren sea in Norfolk and four thousand a year. Fate that had left him harmless through a dozen campaigns seized on him just as the world was worth living for, and he went into action annoying as he said that the luck was going to turn against him. The Major had just joined us, a creature of Lord Marlboro, put in much to the dislike of the other officers, and to be a spy upon us as it was said. I know not whether the truth was so, nor who took the tattle of our mess to headquarters, but Webb's regiment, as its Colonel, was known to be in the Commander-in-Chief's black books, and if he did not dare to break it up at home, our old gallant chief used to say he was determined to destroy it before the enemy, so that poor Major Proudfoot was put into a post of danger. Esmond's dear young discount, serving as aid to count to my Lord Duke, received a wound and won an honorable name for himself in the Gazette, and Captain Esmond's name was sent in for promotion by his general, too, whose favorite he was. It made his heart beat to think that certain eyes at home, the brightest in the world, might read the page on which his humble services were recorded, but his mind was made up steadily to keep out of their dangerous influence, and to let time and absence conquer that passion he had still lurking about him. Away from Beatrix it did not trouble him, but he knew as certain that if he returned home his fever would break out again and avoided Walcott as a Lincolnshire man avoids returning to his fans, where he is sure that the egg is lying in wait for him. We of the English party in the army who were inclined to sneer at everything that came out of Hanover, and to treat as little better than boars and savages the Elector's court and family, were yet forced to confess that on the day of Udnard the young electoral prince, in making his first campaign, conducted himself with the spirit and courage of an approved soldier. On this occasion his electoral highness had better luck than the King of England, who was with his cousins in the enemy's camp, and had to run with them at the ignominious end of the day. With the most consummate generals in the world before them, and an admirable commander on their own side, they chose to neglect the councils and to rush into a combat with the former, which would have ended in the utter annihilation of their army but for the great skill and bravery of the Duke of Bendisome, who remedied as far as courage and genius might the disaster's occasion by the squabbles and follies of his kinsmen, the legitimate princes of the royal blood. If the Duke of Burwick had been in the army the fate of the day would have been very different was all that poor Mr. Bonholz could say, and you would have seen that the hero of Almanza was fit to measure swords with the conqueror of Blenheim. The business relative to the exchange of prisoners was always going on, and was at least that ostensible one which kept Mr. Holz perpetually on the move between the forces of the French and the Allies. I can answer for it that he was once very near hanged as a spy by Major General Wayne when he was released and sent on to headquarters by a special order of the Commander-in-Chief. He came and went, always favoured wherever he was, by some high, though a coat, protection. He carried messages between the Duke of Burwick and his uncle, our Duke. He seemed to know as well what was taking place in the Prince's Quarter as our own. He brought the compliments of the King of England to some of our officers, the gentlemen of webs among the rest, for their behavior on that great day. And after Wynendahl, when our General was chafing at the neglect of our Commander-in-Chief, he said he knew how that action was regarded by the Chiefs of the French Army, and that the stand made before Wynendahl would was the passage by which the Allies entered Lily. Ah, says Holz! And some folks were very willing to listen to him. If the King came by his own, how changed the conduct of affairs would be. His Majesty's very exile has this advantage that he is enabled to read England impartially, and to judge honestly of all the eminent men. His sister is always in the hand of one greedy favourite or another, through whose eyes she sees, and to whose flattery or dependence she gives away everything. Do you suppose that his Majesty, knowing England so well as he does, would neglect such a man as General Webb? He ought to be in the House of Peers, as Lord Lideard. The enemy and all Europe know his merit. It is that very reputation which certain great people who hate all equality and independence can never pardon. It was intended that these conversations should be carried to Mr. Webb. They were welcome to him. For great as his services were, no man could value them more than John Richmond Webb did himself, and the differences between him and Marlborough being notorious. His grace's enemies in the army and at home began to court-web and set him up against the all-grasping, domineering chief. And soon after the victory of Udenard, a glorious opportunity fell into General Webb's way, which that gallant warrior did not neglect and which gave him the means of immensely increasing his reputation at home. After Udenard, and against the councils of Marlborough, it was said the Prince of Savoy sat down before Lily, the captain of French Flanders, and commenced that siege the most celebrated of our time, and almost as famous as the Siege of Troy itself, for the feats of valor performed in the assault and the defence. The enmity of the Prince of Savoy against the French King was a furious personal hate, quite unlike the calm hostility of our great English general, who was no more moved by the game of war than that of Billiards, and pushed forward his squadrons and drove his red battalions hither and thither, as calmly as he would combine a stroke or make a cannon with the balls. The game over, and he played it so as to be pretty sure to win it, not the least animosity against the other party remained in the breast of this consummate tactician, whereas between the Prince of Savoy and the French it was Guérin Amore, beaten off in one quarter as he had been at Teuron in the last year. He was back again on another frontier of France, assailing it with his indefatigable fury. When the Prince came to the army, the smoldering fires of war were lighted up and burst out into a flame. Our phlegmatic Dutch allies were made to advance at a quick march, our calm duke forced into action. The Prince was an army in himself against the French. The energy of his hatred, prodigious, indefatigable, infectious over hundreds of thousands of men, the Emperor's general was repaying, and with a vengeance the slight the French king had put upon the fiery little abbey of Savoy. Bridgint and famous as a leader himself, and beyond all major daring and intrepid, and enabled to cope with almost the best of those famous men of war who commanded the armies of the French king, Eugène had a weapon, the equal of which could not be found in France, since the cannon-shot of Sassbac laid low the noble Tyrena, and could hurl Marlborough at the heads of the French host and crush them as with a rock under which all the gathered strength of their strongest captains must go down. The English duke took little part in that vast siege of Lily, which the Imperial General Lyceumole pursued with all his force and vigor, further than to cover the besieging lines of the Duke of Burgundy's army between which and the imperialists our duke lay. Once when Prince Eugène was wounded our duke took his highness's place in the trenches, but the siege was with the imperialist not with us. A division under Webb and Rentsau was detached into Artois and Picardy upon the most painful and odious service that Mr. Esmond ever saw in the course of his military life. The wretched towns of the defenseless provinces whose young men had been drafted away into the French armies, which year after year the insatiable war devoured, were left at our mercy, and our orders were to show them none. We found places garrisoned by invalids, and children, and women. Poor as they were, and as the costs of this miserable war had made them, our commission was to rob these almost starving wretches to tear the food out of their granaries and strip them of their rags. It was an expedition of rapine and murder we were sent on. Our soldiers did deed such as an honest man must blush to remember. We brought back money and provisions in quantity to the duke's camp. There had been no one to resist us, and yet who dares to tell with what murder and violence, with what brutal cruelty, outrage, insult, that ignoble booty had been ravished from the innocent and miserable victims of the war. Meanwhile, gallantly as the operations before Lully had been conducted, the Allies had made but little progress, and was said when we returned to the Duke of Marlborough's camp that the siege would never be brought to a satisfactory end and that the Prince of Savoy would be forced to raise it. My Lord Marlborough gave this as his opinion openly. Those who mistrusted him, and Mr. Esmond Owens himself to be one of the number, hinted that the duke had his reasons why Lully should not be taken, and that he was paid to that end by the French King. If this was so, and I believe it, General Webb had now a remarkable opportunity of gratifying his hatred of the Commander in Chief, of balking that shameful avarice which was one of the basest and most notorious qualities of the famous duke, and of showing his own consummate skill as a commander. And when I consider all the circumstances preceding the event which will now be related, that my Lord Duke was actually offered certain millions of crowns, provided that the siege of Lully should be raised, that the Imperial Army, before it was without provisions and ammunition, and must have decamped but for the supplies that they received, that the march of the convoy destined to relieve the siege was accurately known to the French, and that the force covering it was shamefully inadequate to that end, and by six times inferior to Count Delamothe's army which was sent to intercept the convoy, when to certain that the duke of Burwick, Delamothe's Chief, was in constant correspondence with his uncle the English Generalesimale, I believe on my conscience that was my Lord Marlborough's intention to prevent those supplies, of which the Prince of Savoy stood in absolute need, from ever reaching his Highness, that he meant to sacrifice the little army which covered this convoy, and to betray it as he had betrayed Delamothe at rest, as he had betrayed every friend he had to further his own schemes of avarice or ambition. But for the miraculous victory which Asman's General won over an army six or seven times greater than his own, the siege of Lily must have been raised, and it must be remembered that our gallant little force was under the command of a general whom Marlborough hated, that he was furious with the conqueror, and tried by the most open and shameless injustice afterwards to rob him of the credit of his victory. Chapter 14 Recording by Ralph Snowson