Campaign of 1691 in the Netherlands—Fall of Mons—Disaffection of William's councillors—Conclusion of year's campaign—Disgrace and dismissal of Marlborough—Massacre of Glencoe.
The night of William's arrival off the coast of Holland was wild and stormy; but impatient to be ashore, he quitted the ship which had carried him for an open boat, and after a night of extreme danger and hardship, which he passed through with his usual fearlessness and stoicism, effected a landing. His welcome among his people was enthusiastic, and his reception by the assembled notables—electors, princes, dukes, and ministers-plenipotentiary then assembled in Congress—at the Hague was signally respectful. Those among them in whom the statesman was strongest were no doubt chiefly impressed by his successful elevation of himself to a powerful throne; while to the high aristocratic and monarchical party among them it was sufficient that he filled it by a title at least good enough to relieve him of the reproach of mere high-handed usurpation. Each, after his manner, did homage to the qualities of character, or the accidents of birth, which are respectively implied in the two meanings of the word "succeed"; over both alike, however, the ascendency of William was now in all probability much more firmly established. As wielding the power of England he was in a material sense, though not perhaps in any very imposing degree, stronger than he had been; but the accession to his moral prestige from his remarkable achievements, in the field and in the council, of the two previous years was doubtless very great. The banded enemies of the French monarch looked undoubtedly with new feelings upon the head of their coalition.
William addressed the Congress at its opening in a stirring speech in which he impressed on them the necessity of union in counsel and promptitude in action; and with such effect that the Congress resolved to oppose Louis with an army of 220,000 men, to which William, acting as his own war minister—a function which he assumed as constantly as that of the conduct of foreign affairs—engaged to contribute a contingent of 20,000. While the Congress, however, were talking their enemy was acting. A heavy blow was dealt at the confederacy by the capture of Mons, which surrendered to the vigorous siege of the French, commanded by the King in person, within a few weeks of the separation of the Congress. On the news of its danger William collected a force with all speed for its relief, but he was too late to save it; and the short period of suspension of hostilities which followed upon this disaster he took advantage of to return to England. His presence there was really more needed than he at the time imagined, for it is probable that at no time during the early years of his reign had he so much reason to distrust the fidelity of so many of his most highly placed servants. To review the intrigues with the exiled monarch, in which men like Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin, and Shrewsbury were at this moment either voluntarily engaged, or being successfully pressed to join, is altogether beyond the scope of this volume. But it may be worth while to interpose one observation here on what appears to me to be a common, and, in a certain sense, a mitigating feature of all these duplicities. They differ no doubt to a certain extent in depth of moral turpitude one from another, just as the moral characters and motives of those who committed them so differed. The devouring ambition which actuated Marlborough, the disappointed Whiggism which was the dominant impulse with Russell, gave place in a man like Godolphin to mere distrust of the future, and anxiety to provide against the incalculable. But it is only fair to recollect that this last, and for statesmen of that age, most venial motive of action, most probably played a considerable part in all their double-dealing. None of them considered William's position assured. All perceived that he had so far failed, and all doubted whether he would ever succeed, in winning the affection of the people. Whether he would succeed in the experiment of governing by his factious and deeply-divided Parliament was, to say the least of it, a question of the gravest uncertainty; and they governed their conduct accordingly. It is not necessary to suppose that because an individual statesman in William's service maintained communication with James's agents with more or less vague promises of assistance he contemplated any downright betrayal of William's cause. In most cases his deceit was rather of that negative sort which seeks to make to itself friends betimes of the mammon of unrighteousness. The deceiver was anxious in the event of a counter-revolution to stand well with the restored monarch, and intended no further treachery to his existing master than is necessarily involved in the attempt to serve two masters at once.
In May 1691 William returned to Flanders taking Marlborough with him. The day of that great soldier had not yet come, but though invested with no military command, it should seem that he attended councils of war where his great abilities as a general attracted the notice and admiration of experts. In June the business of campaigning was recommenced in the leisurely and ceremonious manner peculiar to the age, and with that strict attention to the limits of the "season" which in our own day is only bestowed upon the gaieties of London and the sports of the country. From early in June until the arrival of what may be called the "close-time," towards the end of September, the armies of France and of the allies continued to perform their stately military minuet to the high satisfaction of their commanders, but without suffering or inflicting on one another any serious blows.
On the 19th of October William arrived in England, and three days later he opened Parliament. The circumstances under which he met the Houses were on the whole favourable, and the mood of the Sovereign and Legislature was one of mutual good humour. It is true that the campaign in the Netherlands had been ineffectual, but its failure was more than balanced by successes nearer home. Ireland had been subdued and pacified, the navy of England had recovered its ascendency in the Channel. The King's speech to the two Houses elicited a warm reply, and the large supplies which he had still to demand for the prosecution of continental warfare was granted to him without demur. Nor was the session in other respects one of much difficulty for the King. The House of Commons indeed renewed its complaints of the magnitude of official salaries and fees, but, showing little or no capacity to discriminate between legitimate remuneration for public services and mere corrupt abuses, they naturally failed to agree upon any measure of reform. The Bill for regulating trials for high treason—a measure destined to be a subject of long contention between the two Houses—was introduced for the first time this session, and, passing the Commons, underwent in the House of Lords an amendment to which the Lower House refused to assent. On the merits of the case it ought undoubtedly to have been adopted, but it happened to touch the royal prerogative, and the Commons made this the excuse for gratifying their not unreasonable jealousy of the exclusive privileges in the matter of justiciability which were possessed by the Peers. They showed no hesitation a little later on in making a distinct encroachment on the royal rights by imposing the salaries of the judges as a permanent charge upon the hereditary revenues of the Crown without the sovereign's consent. On this Bill William exercised for the first time his right of veto. That such first employment of it should have been on a matter touching his own interests, and at the same time affecting the independence of the judicial bench, was unfortunate; but it is impossible to complain of his exerting his constitutional authority in this case to arrest a measure of such a kind as would not, even in our more advanced days, be introduced without the express assent of the Crown. The "event" of the year 1691 was undoubtedly the political intrigue, the discovery of which led to the dismissal and disgrace of Marlborough. That indefatigable plotter, who was still holding active communication with St. Germains, undertook to move an address in the House of Lords requesting that all foreigners might be dismissed from the service of the Crown. It was said and believed that his object in doing this was to inflame the national and professional jealousies of the country and the army against the Dutch officers in William's service, so that in the event of William declining to act upon the advice of his Parliament, he would find both the people and the soldiery prepared to support him in an ulterior design of deposing the King and placing Anne upon the throne, with himself as mayor of the palace. The plot, however, if plot there was, fell through; and assuming it to have been really conceived, the natural resentment with which it inspired William would of course sufficiently account for the disgrace and dismissal of Marlborough which followed immediately afterwards.[14] The attempt of the half-lunatic, half-villain Fuller to repeat the exploits of Oates, with a trumped-up and promptly disproved charge of conspiracy against many prominent personages, inspired doubts in the public mind as to whether there had ever been any Scotch plot at all.
Here, too,—that is, among the record of the events of the winter of 1691 and the spring of 1692,—seems the most fitting place to take notice of a strange and terrible incident, which, though of little importance from the historical point of view, could on no account be omitted from a biography of William III. On the 13th of February 1692, at five o'clock in the morning, was perpetrated, under circumstances of signal perfidy and barbarity, the crime known as the Massacre of Glencoe—the surprise and slaughter of the chief and thirty-eight men of the Macdonalds by two companies of soldiers, who had been quartered upon the clan for the preconcerted purpose of their extirpation, under the command of Captain Campbell of Glenlyon. It is not necessary, and would here be impossible, to give more than a highly condensed account of the intrigues, amounting almost to conspiracy, among various enemies of the ill-fated clan, which preceded the massacre. Suffice it to say that private revenge combined with public policy to suggest the act. It was the joint work of the Earls of Breadalbane and Argyle—hereditary foes of the Macdonalds—and of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir John Dalrymple, Master of Stair; but the order upon which this official assumed to act was signed and countersigned by the King himself. It was in these words: "As for MacIan of Glencoe and that tribe, if they can be distinguished from the other Highlanders, it will be proper for the vindication of public justice to extirpate that set of thieves." The "other Highlanders" from whom they were to be distinguished had, in accordance with a proclamation issued in the autumn of the previous year, made formal submission to the Government and taken the oath of allegiance to the sovereign before the 1st of January 1692. This, by an accident, MacIan had failed to do. He had presented himself on the 31st of December 1691 to the officer in command at Fort William; but, being informed by him that he had no power to administer the oaths, the old chief was obliged to betake himself to Inverary, to be there sworn by the Sheriff of Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, who, although the submitted Highlander did not arrive there till the 6th of January, consented, after some demur, to administer to him the oaths. A certificate setting forth the circumstances was transmitted to the Council at Edinburgh, but was there cancelled for irregularity; and the fact of MacIan's tardy submission does not appear to have been—indeed, we may affirm with confidence that it never was—brought to the knowledge of the King. Acting, however, on the pretended authority of the royal order, the Master of Stair gave directions to the military authorities that "the thieving tribe of Glencoe be rooted out to purpose"; adding in a later despatch to the commander of Fort William: "Pray, when the thing concerning Glencoe is resolved let it be secret and sudden; better not meddle with them than not to purpose;" and again, in a still later communication: "I hope the soldiers will not trouble the Government with prisoners." Acting on these sinister injunctions, Captain Campbell of Glenlyon marched his men to Glencoe, and, pretending that he came as a friend and not as an enemy, quartered them upon the Macdonalds, by whom they were cordially received and hospitably entertained. After a twelve days' sojourn among the clan, Glenlyon received orders from his superior officer to proceed to his bloody work, and at five in the morning of the 13th of February the soldiers fell upon their unsuspecting hosts in their sleep. The massacre, however, was less skilfully executed than it had been cunningly planned. The greater portion of the Macdonalds, including the sons of the chief, effected their escape; but MacIan himself, with his wife and thirty-eight of his clansmen, including some women and children, were ruthlessly murdered. As many more, in all probability, fell victims to the rigours of a Highland winter in their attempted flight. In those days of slow communication it was long before the story of the savage deed became known, or at least before it was recognised as possessing a more trustworthy character than the ordinary Jacobite fables of the day; and it was eagerly caught up, of course, by the political enemies of the King and the Government. History has acquitted William of all complicity with the crime in the precise form in which it was committed, as indeed it would only be reasonable to acquit any ruler possessing, we will not say common humanity, but the common instincts of the soldier. But Burnet's attempt to exonerate his master on the plea of having signed the order of "extirpation" through inadvertence, and Macaulay's half-suggestion that it was his general incuriousness in Scotch affairs which made him Stair's unquestioning instrument in the matter, must be alike dismissed. It was not William's practice to affix his signature to public documents of which he knew not the purport; and the mere fact that the Macdonalds of Glencoe were excepted by name from the submitted clans, and with the careful proviso that the proposed measure should only be taken against them "if they could well be separated from the rest," seems to afford sufficient proof that to this particular matter of Scotch administration, at any rate, his attention was specially called.
There is, in short, no good reason to doubt that when William signed the order for the "extirpation" of the Macdonalds he meant them to be extirpated. He treated his act as equivalent to the issue of one of those "letters of fire and sword" which in those wild days of Highland history formed a recognised instrument of police. He would undoubtedly have been quite prepared to hear that a regiment had been marched into the valley of Glencoe, had put the contumacious clansmen (as he believed them to be) to the sword, and left their village a heap of smoking ruins. As undoubtedly he was not prepared to hear that a body of soldiers had quartered themselves on the clan under pretence of amity, and had treacherously slaughtered them at unawares. But though it is likely enough that when he did hear of this he was disgusted with the unsoldierly cowardice of the proceeding, we should mistake both the man and the time in supposing that he viewed it with the horror and detestation which in our own days it excites. He regarded it, so far as one can judge, as a mere blundering excess of duty and nothing more. Four years later, when an inquiry was instituted into the matter by the Scotch Parliament, he showed no disposition to press it forward;[15] and later on, when a commission reported that the affair of Glencoe was a murder for which the Master of Stair was primarily responsible, he steadily declined to inflict any further penalty on the chief culprit than he had already suffered in his dismissal from office. Burnet's excuse for William that he was alarmed at finding how many men it would be necessary for him to punish for the massacre is, as Macaulay rightly says, no justification for his screening the one criminal whose case was so easily distinguishable from the others, and whose guilt was so much more heinous than theirs. It is idle, in short, to deny that in the matter of the Glencoe Massacre William incurred something of the responsibility of an accessory after the fact.
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