impediments they met in their way, they drove the French out of their intrenchments in the woods of Sart and Taisniere.”
During this battle, twenty-two shots went through our hero’s clothes, but he was not wounded.
After the Peace of Utrecht, we find him at the head of the British troops in Minorca. That island had been taken on 30th September 1708 by Admiral Sir John Leake and Major-General Stanhope — as Majorca had been by Sir John Leake in 1706 — for our protégé, whom we recognised as King Charles III. of Spain. Minorca was in our possession, having been ceded to England by the Utrecht Treaty on 17th April 1711. In 1715 Majorca was still occupied by the troops of the quondam Charles III., who had, on the 12th October 1711, become the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany. Charles had succeeded his brother as head of the Imperialists, but shrank from any step that implied an acknowledgment of Philip V. as King of Spain. He signed the Peace with France at Baden, 7th September 1714. But at that date he still garrisoned Majorca; and England virtually sanctioned his occupation until the Peace was universally established and concluded. King Philip being a son of Louis XIV., Spain and France were virtually under one government. In 1715 Charles was willing to evacuate Majorca, and appointed the Earl of Stair, who had just arrived in Paris as the British Ambassador, to negotiate the business. But Philip had resolved, as secretly advised by France, to take forcible possession of the Island. Colonel Ligonier wrote to Lord Stair that the Spanish fleet was in sight. It seems, however, that it sailed away. But soon his lordship received another letter, dated from Port Mahon, in Minorca, of which the following is an extract:—
“Port Mahon, June 20, 1715. — Some time ago I had the honour to inform your Excellency that the Spanish fleet was in sight of this island; a few days after they landed at Majorca, and have met since with all the good success they could desire. By the ill defence of the Governor of Alcudia, they are masters of all except the capital, Palma, where the Viceroy [Marquis de Ruby] is with 2500 regular troops; and as the town is strong, and they attack him but with 7000 men, I believe the siege will be long. The Marquis de Ruby has desired I would enclose this letter to your Excellency, in whose hands he is assured from Vienna the affair of Majorca is entirely left. The Spaniards had given out that they thought no more of this expedition which has been carried on with all the diligence imaginable, so that, though all their ships were dismissed, they were gathered together (at least most of ’em) and under sail in three or four days. . . . .
Lord Stair went to the Marquis de Torcy and charged the French Government with a breach of national honour, at which the Marquis was furiously enraged. The next intelligence was that Majorca was reduced to King Philip’s obedience. On the following 1st September Louis XIV. died. To detach the Regent and statesmen of France from the Jacobite Pretender, through Lord Stair’s diplomacy, was now the main object of the British Government; and nothing more was said about Majorca. As to Colonel Ligonier, his name does not appear for the next few years. In 1717, owing to the aggressive policy of Spain, D’Avenant said, “No time ought to be lost in putting Mahon in a posture of defence.” In 1718, when Admiral Sir George Byng sailed to encounter the Spaniards in the Mediterranean, “he took on board the garrison of Port-Mahon.”
When the Pretender was encouraged by Spain to make warlike preparations within its territory, Ligonier was Colonel and Adjutant-General under Lord Cobham at the taking of Vigo in 1719. Detached to attack the city of Ponto Vedro, he took it; and at the head of a hundred grenadiers, reduced Fort Marin, in which was a garrison with twenty pieces of cannon. He obtained the colonelcy of the 4th regiment of horse on the 18th July 1720; that regiment at a later period was named the 7th Dragoon Guards.
He was one of the six aide-de-camps (with £200 per annum) to King George the Second, with whom he was in high favour, and from whom he obtained, in March 1735. “a grant to Colonel John Ligonier, of the office or place of Chief Ranger or Master of the Game in Ireland.” In the same year (November 14) he became Brigadier-General, and he was promoted to the rank of Major-General on July 2d 1739. The king’s favourite son, William Duke of Cumberland, had lately completed his eighteenth year (having been born April 15, 1721) and Ligonier was appointed his military tutor.
A storm burst in 1740, in consequence of the death of Lord Galway’s ancient friend or enemy, the Emperor Charles VI. (the King Charles III. of the War of the
- ↑ “Annals of the Earls of Stair,” by John Murray Graham, vol. i., p. 386.
