troubled at his praises than ever was his courage at the sight of the Spanish battalions. And he replied that he had endeavoured only to be as instrumental as he could to the glory of his Prince.”
Having brought him home to his adopted France we may again glance at his domestic life. He was a widower, but the date of his wife’s death is not on record. I have already mentioned the death of his son Otho. Another son, Henry, died at Brussels of wounds received in battle; but whether before or after the date at which we have arrived, I cannot ascertain. Three sons remained to him, namely Frederic, Mainhardt, and Charles, all of whom were with him in the Portuguese service. In the following spring he entered upon a second marriage. The lady of his choice was a zealous French Protestant of good family, Susanne d’Aumale, daughter of Daniel d’Aumale, Sieur d’Haucourt, and of Francoise de Saint Pol. The marriage was solemnized in the Parisian Temple of Charenton, on the 14th of April 1669. The witnesses who signed the registration were two gentlemen, Philip de Madaillan, and Jean Jacob Fremont d’Ablancourt, and three ladies, Marguerite de Rohan, Jeanne dAumale, and Madelaine de Montmorency.
Schomberg went to England in 1673. He was brought over by King Charles to command his army on the French model. Burnet says that so high was his reputation in France, that he was “not raised to be a Marshal only on the account of his religion.” The following is Burnet’s description of him: “He was a calm man, of great application and conduct. He thought much better than he spoke. He was a man of true judgment, of great probity, and of a humble and obliging temper; and at any other time of his life he would have been very acceptable to the English.”
The nation now disliked him as “one sent over from France to bring our army under a French discipline.” The Duke of Buckingham hated him, for he wished to be commander-in-chief himself. The Duke of York and Lord Clifford black-balled him as a Presbyterian, because “he liked the way of Charenton so well, that he went once a-week to [the City of] London French Church, which was according to that form.”
“He was always pressing the king,” says Burnet, “to declare himself the head of the Protestant party. He pressed him likewise to bring his brother over from Popery; but the king said to him, ‘You know my brother long ago, that he is as stiff as a mule.” . . . . Schomberg told me he saw it was impossible that the king could bring any great design to a good effect; he loved his ease so much that he never minded business; and everything that was said to him about affairs was heard with so little attention that it made no impression.”
War had been raging since April 1672 between Holland and the united forces of France and England. In 1673 the navies were the most forward in the combat, and the Dutch had fought gallantly with the combined French and English fleet. The latter confederates agreed tolerably well until the removal of the Duke of York from the command of our navy. Then the French captains, through the Duke’s influence with the French ambassador at London, had to obey their admiral by keeping their ships aloof, and allowing the Dutch and English to perform several drawn battles. One French captain, who thought it his duty to co-operate with the English, was sent to the Bastile as soon as he returned to France. The effect of this upon the English and upon Schomberg is thus told by Burnet: “This opened the eyes and mouths of the whole nation. All men cried out and said, we were engaged in a war by the French, that they might have the pleasure to see the Dutch and us destroy one another, while they knew our seas and ports, and learned all our methods, but took care to preserve themselves. Count Schomberg told me he pressed the French ambassador to have the matter examined; otherwise, if satisfaction was not given to the nation, he was sure the next parliament would break the alliance. But by the ambassador’s coldness he saw that the French admiral had acted according to his instructions. So Schomberg made haste to get out of England, to prevent an address to send him away. And he was by that time as weary of the court as the court was of him.” Instead of this rather prosaic exit the enthusiastic Trenchard furnishes us with an eloquent climax as to the motive of the exit, namely, “the never-to-be-forgotten generosity of that great man, General Schomberg, whose mighty genius scorned so ignoble an action as to put chains upon a free people.”[1]
The year 1674 found Louis XIV. grasping at the Spanish Netherlands, sword in hand. The brilliant actions of Turenne in Flanders threw into the shade Schomberg’s successes. The frontier-province of Rousillon had only a small army under a Lieutenant-General to resist Spanish invasion from Catalonia; thither Schomberg was
- ↑ “History of Standing Armies,” by Thomas Trenchard, Esq. (published in 1698), reprinted 1731, p. 29.
