Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/73

A.D. 1692.] upon the matter. Still more, M. Mazure has produced the most positive evidence that James after this kept hired assassins to kill William.

This conspiracy, however, like so many others, failed by letting too many people into it. Barbesieux, not contented with employing Grandval and Dumont, engaged one Leefdale, a Dutchman, and imparted the secret to Chanlas, quartermaster-general of the French army. Probably the discovery of so many being cognisant of the design alarmed Dumont; for though he had proceeded to the camp of the allies in the Netherlands, and remained some weeks, he left it and retired to Hanover, where he discovered the whole scheme to the duke of Zell. The duke instantly wrote and put William and the allies on their guard. Meantime Leefdale, who had been sent to the allied camp to watch the accomplishment of the design, probably alarmed at the movement of Dumont, and by the incautious talking of Grandval, who had thrown out broad intimations of the scheme to Morel, a Swiss protestant minister in France, who directly wrote to inform Burnet of it—confessed the whole affair, and was employed by William to secure Grandval. Accordingly the assassin was induced by Leefdale to meet him at Eyndhoven, where he was apprehended. About a week after the battle of Steinkirk he was tried by a court-martial, and finding that Leefdale and Dumont had put William in full possession of the particulars, he made a complete confession, and was shot. The sensation which the discovery of this devilish plot occasioned over the whole continent, as well as in England, was such as may be supposed. The characters of James and Louis, who were capable of such things, fell in proportion; and whilst they were execrated by the whole Christian world, they themselves took no pains to deny the charge. On the contrary, Barbesieux still continued, as before, the minister of war to Louis, which could not have been the case if Louis really abhorred such devilish measures.

After this nothing of consequence distinguished the campaign in the Netherlands. On the 26th of September, William left the army under command of the elector of Bavaria, and retired to his hunting seat at Loo. The camp was broken up, and the infantry marched to Marienkirke, and the horse to Caure. But hearing that Boufflers had invested Charleroi and Luxembourg, he sent troops under the elector of Bavaria to raise the siege of those towns. Boufflers retired, and then the elector distributed his troops into winter quarters; and Luxembourg on his side left the army under Boufflers, and went to Paris.

Besides this there had been an attempt on the part of England to besiege Dunkirk. The duke of Leinster was sent over with troops, which were joined by others from William's camp; but they thought the attempt too hazardous, and returned, having done nothing. William quitted Holland, and on the 18th of October arrived in England. The result of this expensive campaign, where such unexampled preparations had been followed only by defeat and the loss of five thousand men, excited deep dissatisfaction; and the abortive attempt to recover Dunkirk increased it. The public complained that William had lain inactive at Grammcnt whilst Louis took Namur, and that if he could not cross the Scheldt in the face of the French army, he might have crossed it higher up, and taken Louis in the flank; that he might, instead of lying inert to witness his enemy's triumph, have boldly marched into France and laid waste Louis's own territories, which would have quickly drawn him away from Namur. Such, indeed, might have been the decisive movements of a great military genius, but there is no reason to think William such a genius. His most striking qualities appear to have been dogged perseverance and insensibility to defeat.

In other directions the campaign of this year had teen quite as unsatisfactory. In Germany, the landgrave of Hesse-Cassell had been compelled to abandon the siege of Eberemburg. On the Rhine the duke administrator of Würtemberg had been surprised and taken prisoner by the duke de Lorges at Eidelsheim. Count Tallard had repulsed the Germans from Rhinefeldt; the elector of Saxony and the emperor had, instead of supporting the allies, fallen to feud themselves; and Schöning, the Saxon general, had been seized on his way to the hot baths of Toplitz, and was kept in prison two years. The war against the Turks was indecisive. On the side of Piedmont alone had it had success. There the duke of Savoy, accompanied by prince Eugene and the young duke Schomberg, made a descent into Dauphiny, overran a great tract of country, laying it waste in revenge of the French devastation of the palatinate. They took several towns, burnt eighty villages and chateaux, marched from Ambrnu to Gap on the frontiers of Provence, and threw Grenoble and Lyons into consternation. The seizure of the duke with the small-pox, and the approach of winter, induced them to retire; but they had done enough to show that France was open to the same incursions which Louis had so cruelly made into Flanders, Holland, Germany, and Savoy; and had the allies adopted more of this system, they would soon have made both France and Louis sick of the war.

During William's absence, circumstances had transpired which threw a dark shade upon his fame, which had tended to shake his throne, and which gratified the naval pride of the country, and at the same time mortified it. We must briefly review them.

The horrible event which had taken place in Scotland, still popularly styled the Massacre of Glencoe, had just become known to the English public as he left for the continental campaign, and threw no little odium upon him. The dissatisfaction which William felt with his bill of toleration for Scotland having been refused by the Scottish parliament, induced him to remove lord Melville, who had suffered the liberal views of the king to be swamped by the Presbyterians, as William thought, too facilely. He therefore appointed Sir James Dalrymple, whom he had created viscount Stair, lord president of the court of session; and his son. Sir John—called now, according to the custom of Scotland, the master of Stair—as lord advocate, took the lead in the management of the Scottish affairs. Amongst the matters which came under his attention was that of settling the highlands; and it was resolved by William's cabinet, where lord Stair and the earl of Argyll were consulted as the great authorities on Scotch measures, that twelve thousand pounds should be distributed amongst the highland chiefs, to secure their good-will. Unfortunately, as we have