taken by one general for a week at a time, and so by each of the confederate generals week after week in rotation. Much credit was given to Lord Galway for overruling the delays of the Portuguese, so that the troops took the field by the 24th of April near Estremos. On the 26th the investment of Valencia d’Alcantara was commenced, and it was successfully terminated on the 8th of May. The surrender of Albuquerque took place on the 20th May. The garrison spoke of surrendering the town only, and not the castle. Lord Galway rejected the proposal with scorn, and threatened to put them all to the sword. The besiegers prepared to second the threat with a roar of artillery; but this was rendered unnecessary by the capitulation of the besieged. “The Annals of Queen Anne” say, “The garrison obtained a piece of cannon, which the Earl of Galway granted (as was expressly mentioned in the articles) as a mark of the esteem and value he had for the Spanish nation.” He was formally complimented by the Spanish governor for his honourable observance of all the articles. It being now summer, the Portuguese sank into inaction; and Lord Galway returned to Lisbon. Here he was met by the Earl of Peterborough (formerly known as Viscount Mordaunt and as Earl of Monmouth), whose mendacity has been used to assail Lord Galway’s conduct and veracity.
Lord Peterborough was a brave officer. In him was revived the prowess of Blake and Prince Rupert, when generals were not confined to the land, but commanded at sea. He was well known to Lord Galway. During King William’s campaign in Ireland in 1690, he was the torment of Queen Mary and her council, promoting every kind of alarm, with a view to his being quieted by obtaining command of the fleet. As a statesman he had failed; Lord Godolphin, coming into the Treasury, by his superior abilities snuffed him out at once. His conduct regarding the prosecution of Sir John Fenwick was censured by the House of Lords as false and fraudulent. And it was only at the intercession of the Duchess of Marlborough that he was entrusted with the temporary command in Spain, which he trumpeted so long and loudly. All the books that made him the sole hero of the War of the Spanish Succession were written at his dictation. And it was he who put Lord Galway in the background of his autobiographical word-pictures, as an unknown upstart and adventurer.
The restoration of Lord Galway’s reputation as a man of high position, intrepid courage, and acknowledged talents, we owe to Lord Macaulay. It is true that, in an Essay written in 1833, Macaulay says, “the sluggish Galway,” instead of “the sluggish Portuguese;” but this was before he had paid any attention of his own to Lord Galway’s career, and when he was giving only a summary of a History of this war by Lord Mahon, who had culled from the Peterborough fictions the glaring misstatement that Lord Galway hampered and restrained the Portuguese general.
The Peterborough squibs placed Peterborough first in the field, wishing us to believe that Galway was a new-comer, and ultimately a supplanter; whereas Peterborough was the last comer, and latterly aimed at supplanting Galway. Under the Methuen treaty, Lord Galway had succeeded Schomberg as the British general; but he was consulted as a statesman also. His policy was that Charles must hasten to Madrid, and lose no time in assuming the throne of Spain proper; this was the true anti-French policy of Britain. Austria and Savoy cared nothing for Spain proper. The Emperor and the Duke were always in covetous imagination dividing the foreign dominions of Spain as their spoils. The former had delayed too long to send his son, Charles, to push for Madrid; so that of the two rival princes, Philip, in the eyes of Spaniards, had long been the one who really cared for Spain. Lord Peterborough, having none of the ballast of a true statesman, could easily be tempted by Austria and Savoy to throw the British policy overboard, and to ridicule the steady head of Lord Galway.
While Lord Galway was on foreign service, Lord Peterborough and others at home heard of the growing unpopularity of Philip in Spain, and rumours of readiness for revolution in Catalonia. Secretary Sir Charles Hedges wrote to the Right Hon. Richard Hill, our ambassador at Piedmont, on the 2d March 1705,[1] that Mr. Mitford Crowe, who was to reside at Genoa, was to have a frigate placed at his disposal by Mr. Hill, “the intention being chiefly for him to give an account from time to time to the Earl of Galway, the Prince of Hesse, or the fleet, how the Catalans are disposed, &c.” In the following summer, Lord Peterborough was sent to Lisbon, as general of some troops, and as (with Sir Cloudesly Shovel) joint-admiral of a fleet, where he was met by Lord Galway. Here there was unanimity and a cordiality which, in after times, the “eccentric and unscrupulous” Peterborough chose to forget; but his word cannot be believed when contradicted by Lord Galway, to
- ↑ Hill’s Diplomatic Correspondence, p. 186.
