ΤΗ

WAR OF THE SUCCESSION IN SPAIN

JANUARY, 1833

NOTE ON THE ESSAY

HE essay on the War of the Succession in Spain is full of brilliant and powerful passages in Macaulay's most characteristic style. The vivid picture of the decline of the Spanish monarchy and the rapid narrative of Peterborough's campaigns have been the delight of many readers of all ages. Unfortunately none of the other essays has suffered so much by the progress of historical criticism. It now appears that Macaulay's description of the War of the Succession is incorrect in outline as well as in detail and that the hero of his story was little better than an impostor.

Macaulay, who had made no deep study of Spanish history, took for granted the account of the war which passed current with English historians in the nineteenth century and which was derived largely from the so-called Memoirs of Captain Carleton. Colonel Parnell, who has rewritten the history of the war from original documents and in the light of professional knowledge, claims to have disproved the traditional story in almost every particular. In his pages Lord Galway appears as an illustrious commander, equally firm and skilful; Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt as a hero whom only a premature death debarred from winning the highest honours; and Peterborough as the most unsoldierly of generals, destitute of science, of resolution and even of common honesty, throwing away all the favours of fortune and filching from better men the glory of those successes which he had only not prevented.

If Colonel Parnell is correct the Memoirs of Captain Carleton must be a cheat. Colonel Parnell has therefore had to explain by whom and for what object they were written. In the eighteenth century the Memoirs were little known and were not followed by any historian. After they had been edited by Scott in the year 1809 they became famous, and were taken as authentic by historians. But Scott apparently knew nothing of Captain Carleton, and misdated the first publication of the Memoirs. On the other hand Mr. Wilson came to the conclusion that the Memoirs were really written by Defoe, whose genius for rendering romance indistinguishable from fact has seldom

been paralleled. Every editor of Defoe, since Wilson wrote, has included the Memoirs among Defoe's works. Colonel Parnell, however, believes them to have been written by Swift. Whether the author of Robinson Crusoe or the author of Gulliver's Travels was better qualified to delight and to deceive the public with such a feat of ingenuity might well be doubted. Colonel Parnell rests his opinion partly upon internal evidence too intricate to be summed up here, partly on the circumstance that Swift, as a friend and admirer of Peterborough, had a motive for palming off on the public a flattering tale of his achievements by a professed eye-witness. Colonel Parnell has stated the facts, on which he relies, briefly in an appendix to his History, and more fully in an article in the English Historical Review for January, 1891. Whatever we may think respecting the probable author of the Memoirs we must admit that Colonel Parnell has destroyed their historical credit.

WAR OF THE SUCCESSION IN SPAIN

History of the War of the Succession in Spain. BY LORD MAHON. 8vo. London:

TH

1832.

HE days when Miscellanies in Prose and Verse by a Person of Honour, and Romances of M. Scuderi,1 done into English by a Person of Quality, were attractive to readers and profitable to booksellers, have long gone by. The literary privileges once enjoyed by Lords are as obsolete as their right to kill the king's deer on their way to Parliament, or as their old remedy of scandalum magnatum.2 Yet we must acknowledge that, though our political opinions are by no means aristocratical, we always feel kindly disposed towards noble authors. Industry, and a taste for intellectual pleasures, are peculiarly respectable in those who can afford to be idle and who have every temptation to be dissipated. It is impossible not to wish success to a man who, finding himself placed, without any exertion or any merit on his part, above the mass of society, voluntarily descends from his eminence in search of distinctions which he may justly call his

own.

This is, we think, the second appearance of Lord Mahon in the character of an author. His first book was creditable to him, but was in every respect inferior to the work which now lies before us. He has undoubtedly some of the most valuable qualities of a historian, great diligence in examining authorities, great judgment in weighing testimony, and great impartiality

1 Georges de Scudéri, 1601-1667, a playwright and poet, once famous. In his name his sister, Madeleine de Scudéri, the real author, published her first romances, Ibrahim, or the Illustrious Bassa; Artamene, or the Great Cyrus and the first volumes of Clelia. These romances, extending to a length of many volumes, full of elaborate and euphuistic conversations and pervaded by high-flown sentiment, were for many years the delight of the fashionable world and more especially of the fair sex.

2 In ancient times words spoken in derogation of a peer, a judge or any other great officer of the realm rendered the speaker liable to imprisonment and damages even when they would not have been enough to give an ordinary person an action for defamation. This special remedy was known as scandalum magnatum,

The Life of Belisarius, published in 1829.

in estimating characters. We are not aware that he has in any instance forgotten the duties belonging to his literary functions in the feelings of a kinsman. He does no more than justice to his ancestor Stanhope;1 he does full justice to Stanhope's enemies and rivals. His narrative is very perspicuous, and is also entitled to the praise, seldom, we grieve to say, deserved by modern writers, of being very concise. It must be admitted, however, that, with many of the best qualities of a literary veteran, he has some of the faults of a literary novice. He has not yet acquired a great command of words. His style is seldom easy, and is now and then unpleasantly stiff. He is so bigoted a purist that he transforms the Abbé d'Estrées into an Abbot. We do not like to see French words introduced into English composition; but, after all, the first law of writing, that law to which all other laws are subordinate, is this, that the words employed shall be such as convey to the reader the meaning of the writer. Now an Abbot is the head of a religious house; an Abbé is quite a different sort of person. It is better undoubtedly to use an English word than a French word; but it is better to use a French word than to misuse an English word.

Lord Mahon is also a little too fond of uttering moral reflections in a style too sententious and oracular. We will give one instance: "Strange as it seems, experience shows that we usually feel far more animosity against those whom we have injured than against those who injure us and this remark holds good with every degree of intellect, with every class of fortune, with a prince or a peasant, a stripling or an elder, a hero or a prince." This remark might have seemed strange at the court of Nimrod or Chedorlaomer; but it has now been for many generations considered as a truism rather than a paradox. Every boy has written on the thesis "Odisse quem læseris."3 Scarcely any lines in English

poetry are better known than that vigorous couplet,

"Forgiveness to the injured does belong;

But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong."

"4

The historians and philosophers have quite done with this maxim,

1 See p. 525.

2 An abbé was originally the same as an abbot. But by the concordat of 1516 between Leo X. and Francis I. the Crown of France obtained the right of naming commendatary abbés who drew a large part of the revenue, but left the government of the house to a prior, had no intention of doing clerical duty and were not always in holy orders.

311 Proprium humani ingenï est odisse quem læseris." -TACITUS, Life of Agricola, ch. xlii. ♦ Dryden, "Conquest of Grenada," pt. ii,, act i., scene 2,

and have abandoned it, like other maxims which have lost their gloss, to bad novelists, by whom it will very soon be worn to rags. It is no more than justice to say that the faults of Lord Mahon's book are precisely the faults which time seldom fails to cure, and that the book, in spite of those faults, is a valuable addition to our historical literature.

Whoever wishes to be well acquainted with the morbid anatomy of governments, whoever wishes to know how great states may be made feeble and wretched, should study the history of Spain. The empire of Philip the Second was undoubtedly one of the most powerful and splendid that ever existed in the world. In Europe, he ruled Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands on both sides of the Rhine, Franche Comté, Roussillon, the Milanese, and the two Sicilies. Tuscany, Parma, and the other small states of Italy, were as completely dependent on him as the Nizam and the Rajah of Berar now are on the East India Company.1 In Asia, the King of Spain was master of the Philippines and of all those rich settlements which the Portuguese had made on the coast of Malabar and Coromandel, in the Peninsula of Malacca, and in the Spice-islands of the Eastern Archipelago. In America his dominions extended on each side of the equator into the temperate zone. There is reason to believe that his annual revenue amounted, in the season of his greatest power, to a sum near ten times as large as that which England yielded to Elizabeth.2 He had a standing army of fifty thousand excellent troops, at a time when England had not a single battalion in constant pay. His ordinary naval force consisted of a hundred and forty galleys. He held, what no other prince in modern times has held, the dominion both of the land and of the sea. During the greater part of his reign, he was supreme on both elements. His soldiers marched up to the capital of France; his ships menaced the shores of England.

It is no exaggeration to say that, during several years, his power over Europe was greater than even that of Napoleon. The

3

1 The Nizam of Hyderabad is still the greatest feudatory prince of India. But the state of Berar was annexed by Lord Dalhousie in 1853 upon the failure of issue of the reigning house and is now comprised in the Central Provinces.

2 The revenue of Elizabeth never exceeded £500,000 a year. The revenue of Philip in his first and most prosperous years may, perhaps, have been as large as Macaulay suggests, but then the great bulk of it was drawn from America, the Netherlands and the Italian possessions. Spain was already declining in wealth, and the Cortes over and over declared the inability of the people to pay even a moderate amount.

3 Philip's naval power, though in large measure fictitious, was greater than Napoleon's. But the geographical situation of Spain, the state of the military art