Berwick was made governor of the Limousin by the king of France, and the king of Spain arranged a marriage between Berwick's only son by his first marriage and Donna Catherina de Veraguas, the richest heiress in Spain, and created the boy Duke of Liria and a grandee of the first class. In 1709 the marshal was recalled from Spain to defend the south-eastern frontier of France against the Austrians and Sardinians under Prince Eugène. This he did in a series of defensive campaigns, unmarked by a single important battle, which have always been considered as models in the art of war.
After the peace of Utrecht Berwick was long unemployed. He refused to co-operate in the attempt of his legitimate brother, the ‘Old Pretender,’ to regain the throne of England in 1715, and preferred French politics to English. He kept clear of party intrigues, and his advice on military questions was received with the highest respect. He cordially supported the English alliance maintained by the Regent Orleans and Fleury, in spite of his family relationship to the exiled Stuart family.
In 1733 the war of the Polish succession broke out, and Berwick was placed in command of the most important French army, which was destined to invade Germany from Strasbourg, and act against Berwick's old adversary, Prince Eugène. He took command of his army, and in October 1733 occupied Kehl, and then went into winter quarters. In March 1734 he again joined his army at Strasbourg; on 1 May he crossed the Rhine, and carried the lines at Ettlingen, and on 13 May he invested Philipsbourg. The siege was carried on in the most scientific manner, and the third parallel had just been opened, when on 12 June the marshal started on his rounds with his eldest son by his second marriage, the Duc de Fitzjames. He had not proceeded far when his head was carried off by a cannon-ball. The news of this catastrophe aroused the greatest sorrow in France, and the marshal's body was brought to France to be interred in the church of the Hôpital des Invalides at Paris. Berwick was a cautious general of the type of Turenne and Moreau, whose genius shone in sieges and defensive operations. He served in twenty-nine campaigns, in fifteen of which he commanded in chief, and in six battles, of which he only commanded in one, the famous victory of Almanza. Montesquieu, in the éloge prefixed to the marshal's memoirs, says of him: ‘He was brought up to uphold a sinking cause, and to utilise in adversity every latent resource. Indeed, I have often heard him say that all his life he had earnestly desired the duty of defending a first-class fortress.’ Berwick left descendants both in France and Spain, who held the highest ranks in both those countries, in Spain as Dukes of Liria and in France as Ducs de Fitzjames.
[The Duke's Mémoires were first published by his grandson in 1777; they only go down to 1705, and are generally published with the prefatory éloge by Montesquieu, into whose hands they were placed to be prepared for the press, and with a continuation to 1734 by the Abbé Hook, who published an English translation in 1779. They have been many times reprinted, notably in Michaud and Poujoulat's great collection of French memoirs. All French histories of the period and all French biographical dictionaries contain information about Berwick and his campaigns, and in English reference may be made to James II and the Duke of Berwick, published 1876, and The Duke of Berwick, published 1883, by C. Townshend Wilson.]
FITZJAMES, Sir JOHN (1470?–1542?), judge, son of John Fitzjames of Redlynch, Somersetshire, and nephew of Richard, bishop of London [q. v.], was a member of the Middle Temple, where he was reader in the autumn of 1504 and treasurer in 1509 (Dugdale, Orig. pp. 215, 221). He also held the office of recorder of Bristol in 1510, a place worth 19l. 6s. 8d. per annum, which he does not seem to have resigned until 1533, when he was succeeded by Thomas Cromwell. In 1511 he was one of the commissioners of sewers for Middlesex (Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, Foreign and Domestic, i. 157, 301, iii. pt. ii. 1458, vi. 263, vii. 557). On or about 26 Jan. 1518–19 he was appointed attorney-general, and in this capacity seems to have been sworn of the council, as his signature is appended to a letter dated 13 June 1520 from the council to the king, then at Calais, congratulating him on his ‘prosperous and fortunate late passage.’ About the same time he was appointed, with Sir Edward Belknap and William Roper, to assist the master of the wards in making out his quarterly reports. He was also attorney-general for the duchy of Lancaster between 1521 and 1523, and probably from a much earlier date; and he seems to be identical with a certain John Fitzjames who acted as collector of subsidies for Somersetshire between 1523 and 1534. As attorney-general he conducted, in May 1521, the prosecution of the Duke of Buckingham. The same summer he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law. On 6 Feb. 1521–2 he was advanced to a puisne judgeship of the king's bench, and two days later he was created chief baron of the
