He has corrupted my army. He has corrupted my child. He would have put me into their hands, but for God's special providence." The selfish treachery of Churchill was indeed ignoble, but the bonds which unite a courtier to a king are generally those of interest alone, and James had not his careless brother's power over the hearts of his servants. The terms on which the favours bestowed on Churchill were granted, were doubtless humiliating enough. The seduction of his sister Arabella, though used by the selfish young aspirant for worldly advancement, could not make him love her seducer. His great talents and subsequent fame have made his treason conspicuous, yet was it countenanced by the conduct of men bearing the most illustrious names in England—men very near to the throne, and very high in the confidence of the king.
When the vote was taken for making William of Orange king of England, Churchill, who was in favour of a regency, absented himself from parliament. He was nevertheless appointed a lord of the bedchamber and created Earl of Marlborough. He continued to be the warm partisan of the Princess Anne, and strove hard to procure for her that allowance of £50,000 a year, which was the cause of dissension between Anne and Queen Mary. In the summer of 1689 William sent him to command the English forces employed against the French in Holland, where he had but one slight opportunity of displaying his consummate ability in the art of war, namely, in the defence of the post of Walcourt against a great superiority of numbers. He declined to accompany King William to Ireland, while James was there in person; but after the battle of the Boyne and the return of the exiled monarch to France, he accepted the command of the troops in Ireland, and speedily reduced the troubled districts to order. Marlborough felt no attachment to William, and would seem to have built his hopes of greatness on his influence with the Princess Anne. Early in 1690 when the stability of William's government began to appear uncertain, Marlborough again consulted his own interest by a treasonable correspondence with James at St. Germains. He had an interview with Colonel Sackville, a jacobite agent, expressed deep repentance for his past conduct, and implored the colonel to intercede for him with the exiled king. He attested his sincerity by giving information of facts known only to persons in high office, and hinted at the possibility of his carrying over the English forces in Flanders to the French camp, if James should so wish. The banished king, too glad to be thus imposed on, forgave the powerful penitent, and sent him an assurance to that effect in writing. This document the earl kept locked up in readiness for a second restoration should it arrive. Meanwhile King William, unsuspicious of these intrigues, took Marlborough with him to Holland, where the graces and accomplishments of the English general excited universal admiration. While arranging the camp at Brussels, he received from St. Germains a request to fulfil his promise of deserting to the French camp. He excused himself for the time being by saying that to carry over a regiment or two would be worse than useless, and that time was required to prepare an army for such a step. On his return to England, however, in the autumn of 1691, he proposed to the jacobites a plan for profiting by the extreme unpopularity of the Dutch in the English service, to obtain a vote in parliament for the dismissal of all foreigners from public employ. William would be certain to resent such treatment of his faithful followers; a rupture would ensue, and by a judicious management of the British army which Marlborough promised to conduct himself, William's government would be overthrown, and James be restored to his throne. The Jacobites refused to believe in the last part of the notable scheme, having reason to suspect that the ambitious commander intended to proclaim Anne, and govern England in her name. The project, therefore, was betrayed to William, who felt keenly the perfidy of the ablest man in his service. On the night of the 9th January, 1692, the queen had a painful explanation with the Princess Anne, and early the next morning Marlborough was dismissed from all his employments, and forbidden to appear at court. Anne, rather than dismiss the countess of Marlborough and her husband, quitted the palace at Whitehall, and went to reside with them at Sion house on the banks of the Thames, occupying Berkeley house when in London. In May of the same year 1692, just before the battle of La Hogue, England being in great apprehension of a jacobite descent upon her shores, and William absent on the continent, Marlborough was placed in great peril by a scheme of peculiar villany known as Young's plot. One Robert Young, who had long earned a dishonest livelihood by perjury and forgery, concocted a document purporting to be an association for the restoration of the banished king, which, having contrived to get it placed in the house of Bishop Sprat at Bromley, he denounced to the government. At the head of the forged signatures to this paper was the name of Marlborough, who was thereupon arrested on the 8th of May, and committed to the Tower. On the discovery of the fictitious nature of the plot the earl was admitted to bail. His name, however, was struck out of the list of the privy council, and for five years he remained without any public employment. A dreadful crime is laid to his charge by Lord Macaulay and others, of having informed the court of St. Germains in May, 1694, of the intended English expedition against Brest, and of having caused thereby the death of the brave Talmash, the commander of the troops, on whose removal he counted for his own restoration to the public service. Proofs of the treasonable intelligence exist in the Macpherson Papers, but the motive ascribed seems too foul for belief. The denunciation of Sir John Fenwick when apprehended for conspiring against the king's life included Marlborough, Godolphin, and even Shrewsbury, but failed to convince parliament; for both houses voted the allegations to be false and scandalous. Whether William believed in the innocence or dreaded the power of these noblemen is still doubtful. Certain it is that when the Princess Anne after the death of Queen Mary was reconciled to the king, Marlborough was appointed, in 1698, governor to the duke of Gloucester the presumptive heir to the throne, and received from William a pretty compliment on the occasion "My lord," said the king, "make him but what you are, and my nephew will be all I wish to see him." Two years before, while his resentment still glowed, William had been heard to say, "If I had been a private gentleman, my Lord Marlborough and I must have measured swords." Marlborough was also at the same time restored to his seat in the privy council, and to his former military rank and command. His treasonable intercourse with the exiled Stewarts rapidly cooled after the death of Queen Mary, when no one but the sickly king stood between Anne and the throne.
In the summer of 1701 he accompanied William to Holland, was appointed commander of the forces in the Netherlands, and intrusted with the most extensive powers for negotiating with the various states then combining against France in a confederacy, the power of which he subsequently wielded with such tremendous success. After displaying the sagacity and address of a profound diplomatist, he was returning with the hope of applying his talents to domestic politics, when he learned that William had dismissed the tory administration headed by Godolphin, Marlborough's bosom friend. Four months later the king died, and Anne ascended the throne. Her first thought was to raise to the highest honours the man who was destined to make her reign glorious. Three days after her accession he received the garter, the day after was made commander-in-chief, and ere long master general of the ordnance. The deceased king had not in vain recommended Marlborough to Anne as the fittest person to command her armies. William's policy lived after him, and through Marlborough's personal influence war was declared against France ere three months of the new reign had expired. The conduct of that war is Marlborough's greatest glory. The history of his campaigns from 1704 to 1711 fill some of the brightest pages of the annals of the British empire. The records of historians leave little for the biographer to say. Marlborough was past middle life when he entered on this eventful period of his history. He was still robust and indefatigable, but a martyr to distracting maladies. From dimness of sight, headache, fever, or ague, he was hardly ever free. Yet what work he performed from the writing of letters to every court in Europe, to the organizing of armies, the achievement of splendid victories, and the negotiation of treaties of peace and alliance! Not only was he the presiding genius in the councils of England, but his guiding hand directed the course of events all over Europe. In June, 1702, he was appointed generalissimo of the allied forces, and departed for the Hague. "By the death of William," says Bolingbroke, no friend to the object of his eulogy, "the duke of Marlborough was raised to the head of the army, and indeed of the confederacy; where he, a new, a private man, a subject, acquired by merit and by management a more deciding influence than high birth, confirmed authority, and even the crown of
