Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1115 page)

William III paid far too little attention to these questions of Ireland and Scotland, but his excuse was that he and his Dutch and
German allies were engaged in a desperate struggle to save Flanders and the line of the river Rhine from King Louis of France. With great difficulty could he squeeze out of the
English Parliament men and money for these wars. None of the English statesmen, Whigs or Tories, really liked the war, and the Tories in particular began to dislike the Revolution which they had helped to make. But wherever the English regiments fought they covered themselves with glory, especially at Steinkirk
(1692), and Landen (1693), though they were defeated in both battles. William was a fierce and dogged fighter, but he was not a first-rate general, and France had still the upper hand when a sort of truce was concluded in 1697.
Parliament, in which the Tories then had the upper hand, at once reduced the army to
7,000 men.

This was most foolish, as every one knew that old King Louis XIV was only preparing for a fresh war in order to put his own grandson on the throne of Spain, which fell vacant in
1700. The Austrians also claimed the Spanish crown, and it was the plain duty of England to help them. Many Englishmen, however,said, “No, let them fight it out. What does it matter to England? This- is what comes of your foreign king,” and so on. William,
foreigner as he was, knew better. The growing power of France threatened every nation in
Europe. The time had gone by when England could afford to stand aside from the quarrels of her neighbours.

William might, however, have failed altogether to convince Englishmen of this if
Louis had not made one great mistake. Old
King James II died in 1701, and Louis at once recognized his son (the same Prince of Wales who was born in 1688) as “James III.” This was the same as dictating to Englishmen who should be their king; and the whole nation voted for war at once. William would have led it to battle as bravely as ever but for his death in 1702. His good wife, Mary, had died childless seven years before, and her sister
Anne now became Queen. But Anne, too, was now childless, and so, to find an heir of the old royal blood who was also a Protestant, England would have to go back a long way, in fact to the descendants of James I. James I’s daughter
Elizabeth had married a German Prince, and that Elizabeth’s youngest child, Sophia of
Hanover, a very old lady, was the best Protestant heir. She had already a son and a

grandson, who were one day to be King George
I and King George II. No one liked the prospect of a petty German prince as our king,
but most people thought anything was better than a Papist, and unfortunately our lawful
King, James III, remained a Papist all his days. He could have bought his throne at any moment by turning Protestant, but he was far too honourable to do that.

Before we leave King William we must i notice an important change which took place
‘ during his reign, a change which really transferred the
sovereignty
of the country from King to Parliament. To previous kings Parliament had usually voted, at the beginning of the reign,
. a certain sum of money to be paid each year out of taxes, which sum, they thought, should be enough to pay all the expenses of governing and defending the country. It never was enough, and extra money had always to be voted for wars. Now, however, William’s
Parliament voted him only a small sum for his life — enough for himself and his court
“to live on”; but the expenses of governing and defending the country, paying the Army and Navy and Civil Service, they only voted from year to year. So since his time the kings have always been obliged to call a Parliament every year whether they wanted to or

not I- or else to leave Army and Navy without pay.

Further, as William’s wars cost a great deal of money, and as Parliament shrank from laying on the heavy taxes which were necessary to pay for them, it allowed the Crown to
borrow
money from any one who would lend it at interest. The interest had to be paid yearly till the loan was repaid. Few such loans ever were repaid, and so a perpetual debt was created called the “National Debt,” which has now increased to an enormous amount.
But people are always glad to lend money to the Crown, because they know they will get the interest on it paid quite punctually. As long as we pay the interest on this National
Debt we are still paying for some of King
William’s wars and for those of all later sovereigns; but we need not grumble, because,
if these great wars had not been fought, there would have been no British Colonies or Empire,
and probably no independent Great Britain;
our country would have been a province of
France. So let King William sleep in peace.

Queen Anne’s wars were going to be very successful indeed, though they continued till the last year of her reign. She herself was almost the stupidest woman in her dominions;
but she was a good and kindly soul, devotedto the Church of England, and had generally the sense to leave affairs of State to her ministers. She called herself a Tory, and her ministers called themselves Tories; but they were going to fight a “Whig War.” By this
I mean a war to maintain the Protestant
Kings in England, and to increase the trade and Empire of England. And so they really had to act as Whigs. The hero of that war was
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, the greatest soldier England ever produced. He was not only great in planning a campaign and in fighting a battle, but also in his care for his soldiers, their food, their clothing, their comfort and their pay. Also he was very clever at keeping the allies of Great Britain united.
These allies — Dutch, Austrians, and Germans, were very difficult to manage; for each thought mainly of their own interests, and quarrelled with the others continually. But
Marlborough thought of only one thing —
how to beat the French, and very handsomely did he beat them. At Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde (1708), Malplaquet
(1709), he won victories as complete as those of
Edward III and Henry V. And our redcoats were foremost in all these battles and won immortal glory. By 1710 we had swept the
French out of Germany and Flanders, and werewell on the road to Paris. Our Navy had been equally successful; we had beaten a great
French fleet off Malaga in Spain, and had taken Gibraltar and the Isle of Minorca. In
America our colonists, with little aid from home,
had begun to bite away the frontier of the
French colony of Canada. All looked like ending in a Treaty of Peace of great glory for Great Britain.

But in Great Britain itself things were not going so well. “Politics” had now become a sort of unpleasant cheating game between a lot of great families of the nobility, Whigs on one side, Tories on the other. Each party strove to control the House of Commons by getting its own friends elected to it, and thus to get itself into office. The Tories, who were also the “High Church” men, hated, or pretended to hate, the war and the Duke of Marlborough. They said, “It is a Whig war, a war for the interests of the merchants, many of them Dissenters too, the brutes! It is a war for foreigners. It is all the fault of those who made that wicked Revolution of 1688 and turned out our natural King. Anne, of course,
is a native, but who is to come after her ? — a disgusting, fat German!”

Moreover, the war was expensive, and, what-’
ever ministers may pretend, no one
likes
payingtaxes. So these men got the ear of the electors,
and a Tory Parliament came in determined to end the war at any price. The Duke of Marlborough was accused of prolonging it for his own reasons, and being bribed by foreigners to do so. Of course this was ridiculous nonsense,
but he was dismissed from the command, and in 1713 peace with France was concluded at the Treaty of Utrecht, and Great Britain openly deserted her allies.

Yet so great had been our victories that this treaty of Utrecht could not fail to be of great advantage to us. It was, in the eyes of all
Europe, the foundation of the British Empire.
It was like a notice-board: ..

there is a british empire:
foreigners please take notice and keep off it

For we kept not only Gibraltar and Minorca,
which were the beginnings of the power of our fleet in the Mediterranean, but also Nova
Scotia and Newfoundland, which had been the outworks of French Canada. Also we secured certain definite rights to trade with the
Spanish colonies in South America. It was on trade the Empire was founded, and by trade it must be maintained. But, remember, a

great trade needs a great defence by a great fleet and a great army. One gets nothing for nothing in this world.

Yet old King Louis XIV had won his point;
his grandson kept the throne of Spain, to prevent which we had originally begun to fight.
He did, indeed, give up the “Low Countries”
(which in the Middle Ages we called “Flanders”
and now call Belgium) to our Austrian ally;
and the French and Spanish crowns were not united on the same head, which was what we had most feared. But the alliance of France and Spain remained, with hardly an interruption, a serious danger for us until 1808; and we had to fight four great wars against that alliance if we were to remain an Empire at all.

In Anne’s last years, the question again came up — who was to succeed her? The
Tories, who were in power, were
almost
inclined to say James III, in spite of his being a Papist.
But “almost” is not “quite”; and while the
Tories talked the Whigs were ready to act,
and, on Anne’s death in 1714, George I became
King. A Scottish rising on behalf of James in 1715 was put down with some difficulty;
and the result was that both English and
Scottish Tories remained sore and disloyal for many years, always with half an eye to the
“King over the water.”

The Whigs, however, got their King, a dull,
honest, heavy fellow, and they allowed him no power whatever. All the officers of State were divided among a few great Whig families.
George cared nothing for England, only for his native Hanover. The churchmen growled,
the country gentlemen growled; but the Dissenters and merchants rejoiced, and made haste to become very rich. Ordinary quiet persons agreed to accept King George, but without enthusiasm. Affection for King and Crown entirely died away until it was revived by the wonderful goodness and high spirit of the great
Queen Victoria.

There is practically nothing to record of the reign of George I. The only important law passed was one which said there shall be a new Parliament every seven years, instead of every three years. Abroad there is nothing interesting either. France, which had been very hard hit by the war, only wanted peace.
The new King of Spain occasionally growled at our holding Gibraltar, and twice tried to take it from us; which was unlucky for him, as we blew his fleet into the air.

George I died in 1727, and the first few years of the reign of his son, George II, were almost as quiet as the late reign had been. The new
King was a short, ridiculous, red-faced person,with great goggle-eyes. He cared as little for England and as much for Hanover as his father; but he had fought bravely in Marlborough’s wars when he was young, and was always longing to fight somebody. He at least knew how to swear in English, and he was rather too fond of swearing. His prime minister, till 1742, was Sir Robert Walpole,
who had ruled his father since 1721. This man, though he shockingly neglected the Army and the Navy, managed money matters remarkably well; and the result was that our trade increased enormously.

But the price of his neglect of the fighting services had soon to be paid. France, when she had recovered from Marlborough’s wars,
made a close alliance with Spain, and in 1737
Spain began to attack our trade in America.
Sorely against his will, Walpole had to declare war on Spain to defend that trade. France came to Spain’s assistance and the war then grew much more serious. It was, in fact, a struggle for power and empire both in America and India and lasted for eight or nine years;
and, as our old Austrian and Dutch allies were also attacked by France, she had to send soldiers to Germany and Flanders as well, though she could ill spare them, for it was quite possible that our own island might be invaded. Un-fortunately, we could hire, with our abundant
British guineas, Dutch and German troops to fight our battles for us. I cannot imagine a worse plan than this for any country, but it remained a regular British habit down to our grandfathers’ days; and it still further increased the unwillingness of our own people to serve in their own army.

Walpole was dreadfully badgered in Parliament over the badness of this plan, and over many other things, not so much by the few remaining Tory members as by those Whigs who were not actually in office, but wanted to get into office. And when they did come in,
they had no better plans to propose. Walpole resigned in 1742, and his successor, Carteret,
a far greater man than Walpole, was badgered almost worse, until he too resigned in 1744.
Meanwhile King George himself had led British troops to a great victory at Dettingen in Germany, and his second son, the Duke of Cumberland, led them to a defeat almost as glorious at Fontenoy in Flanders, 1745. The French
King had been seriously thinking of an invasion of Britain on behalf of the exiled King James
III. But the French were justly afraid of risking their ships against the British navy;
and so Prince Charles Edward, son of James
III, resolved to strike for himself even without