Our privateer, it was plain, infinitely outsailed her, running two foot for her one, and towards evening came up with them. Had they been able to have held it but six hours longer they would have got into Limerick River, or somewhere under shore, so that we should not have ventured upon them. But we came up with them, and the captain, when he saw there was no remedy, bravely brought to and prepared to fight. She was a ship of thirty guns, but deep in the sea, cumbered between decks with goods, and could not run out her lower-deck guns, the sea also going pretty high, though at last she ventured to open her gun-room ports and fire with three guns on a side. But her worst fate was, she sailed heavy, being deep loaden, and the Frenchman had run up by her side and poured in his broadside, and was soon ready again. However, as she was well manned too, and that the English sailors bestirred themselves, they gave us their broadsides too very nimbly and heartily, and I found the Frenchman had a great many men killed at the first brush. But the next was worse, for the English ship, though she did not sail so well as the Frenchman, was a bigger ship and strong built, and as we (the French) bore down upon them again, the English run boldly on board us, and laid thwart our hawse, lashing themselves fast to us. Then it was that the English captain run out his lower tier of guns, and indeed tore the Frenchman so, that, had he held it, the privateer would have had the worst of it. But the Frenchman, with admirable readiness, indeed, and courage, the captain appearing everywhere with his sword in his hand, bestirred themselves, and loosing themselves from the English ship, thrusting her off with brooms, and pouring their small shot so thick that the other could not appear upon deck; I say, clearing themselves thus, they came to lie a-broadside of each other, when, by long firing, the English ship was at length disabled, her mizzen-mast and bowsprit shot away, and, which was worst of all, her captain killed; so that, after a fight which held all night—for they fought in the dark—and part of the next day, they were obliged to strike.I was civilly desired by the French captain to go down into the hold while the fight held, and, besides the civility of it, I found he was not willing I should be upon deck. Perhaps he thought I might have some opportunity to do hurt, though I know not how it could be. However, I was very ready to go down, for I had no mind to be killed, especially by my own friends; so I went down and sat by the surgeon, and had the opportunity to find that, the first broadside the English fired, seven wounded men were brought down to the surgeon, and three-and-thirty more afterwards, that is to say, when the English lay thwart their bow; and after they cleared themselves there were about eleven more; so that they had one-and-fifty men wounded and about two-and-twenty killed. The Englishman had eighteen men killed and wounded, among whom was the captain.The French captain, however, triumphed in his prize; for it was an exceeding rich ship, having abundance of silver on board. And after the ship was taken and they had plundered all the great cabin afforded, which was very considerable, the mate promised the captain that, if he would give him his liberty, he would discover six thousand pieces of eight to him privately, which none of the men should know of. The captain engaged, and gave it under his hand to set him at liberty as soon as he came on shore. Accordingly, in the night, after all was either turned in, as they call it, or employed on the duty of the watch, the captain and the mate of the prize went on board, and having faithfully discovered the money, which lay in a place made on purpose to conceal it, the captain resolved to let it lie till they arrived, and then he conveyed it on shore for his own use; so that the owners, nor the seamen, ever came to any share of it, which, by the way, was a fraud in the captain. But the mate paid his ransom by the discovery, and the captain gave him his liberty very punctually, as he had promised, and two hundred pieces of eight to carry him to England and to make good his losses.When he had made this prize, the captain thought of nothing more than how to get safe to France with her, for she was a ship sufficient to enrich all his men and his owners also. The account of her cargo, by the captain’s books, of which I took a copy, was in general:260 hogsheads of sugar.187 smaller casks of sugar.176 barrels of indigo.28 casks of pimento.42 bags of cotton wool.80 cwt. of elephants’ teeth.60 small casks of rum.18,000 pieces of eight, besides the six thousand concealed.Several parcels of drugs, tortoise-shell, sweetmeats, called succades, chocolate, lime juice, and other things of considerable value.This was a terrible loss among the English merchants, and a noble booty for the rogues that took it; but as it was in open war and by fair fighting, as they call it, there was no objection to be made against them, and, to give them their due, they fought bravely for it.The captain was not so bold as to meeting the English men-of-war before, but he was as wary now; for, having a prize of such value in his hands, he was resolved not to lose her again, if he could help it. So he stood away to the southward, and that so far that I once thought he was resolved to go into the Straits, and home by Marseilles. But having sailed to the latitude of 45 degrees 3 quarters, or thereabouts, he steered away east, into the bottom of the Bay of Biscay, and carried us all into the river of Bordeaux, where, on notice of his arrival with such a prize, his owners or principals came overland to see him, and where they consulted what to do with her. The money they secured, to be sure, and some of the cargo; but the ships sailed afterwards along the coast to St. Malo, taking the opportunity of some French men-of-war which were cruising on the coast to be their convoy as far as Ushant.Here the captain rewarded and dismissed the English mate, as I have said, who got a passage from thence to Dieppe by sea, and after that into England, by the help of a passport, through Flanders to Ostend. The captain, it seems, the more willingly shipped him off that he might not discover to others what he had discovered to him.I was now at Bordeaux, in France, and the captain asked me one morning what I intended to do. I did not understand him at first, but he soon gave me to understand that I was now either to be delivered up to the state as an English prisoner, and so be carried to Dinan, in Brittany, or to find means to have myself exchanged, or to pay my ransom, and this ransom he told me at first was three hundred crowns.I knew not what to do, but desired he would give me time to write to England to my friends; for that I had a cargo of goods sent to them by me from Virginia, but I did not know but it might have fallen into such hands as his were, and if it was, I knew not what would be my fate. He readily granted that; so I wrote by the post, and had the satisfaction, in answer to it, to hear that the ship I was taken in had been retaken, and carried into Portsmouth; which I doubted would have made my new master more strict, and perhaps insolent; but he said nothing of it to me, nor I to him, though, as I afterwards understood, he had advice of it before.However, this was a help to me, and served to more than pay my ransom to the captain. And my correspondent in London, hearing of my being alive and at Bordeaux, immediately sent me a letter of credit upon an English merchant at Bordeaux for whatever I might have occasion for. As soon as I received this I went to the merchant, who honoured the letter of credit, and told me I should have what money I pleased. But as I, who was before a mere stranger in the place and knew not what course to take, had now, as it were, a friend to communicate my affairs to and consult with, as soon as I told him my case, “Hold,” says he; “if that be your case, I may perhaps find a way to get you off without a ransom.”There was, it seems, a ship bound home to France from Martinico, taken off Cape Finisterre by an English man-of-war, and a merchant of Rochelle, being a passenger, was taken on board, and brought into Plymouth. This man had made great solicitation by his friends to be exchanged, pleading poverty, and that he was unable to pay any ransom. My friend told me something of it, but not much, only bade me not be too forward to pay any money to the captain, but pretend I could not hear from England. This I did till the captain appeared impatient.After some time the captain told me I had used him ill; that I had made him expect a ransom, and he had treated me courteously and been at expense to subsist me, and that I held him in suspense, but that, in short, if I did not procure the money, he would send me to Dinan in ten days, to lie there as the king’s prisoner till I should be exchanged. My merchant gave me my cue, and by his direction I answered I was very sensible of his civility, and sorry he should lose what expenses he had been at, but that I found my friends forgot me, and what to do I did not know, and that, rather than impose upon him, I must submit to go to Dinan, or where he thought fit to send me; but that if ever I obtained my liberty, and came into England, I would not fail to reimburse him what expense he had been at for my subsistence; and so, in short, made my case very bad in all my discourse. He shook his head and said little, but the next day entered me in the list of English prisoners to be at the king’s charge, as appointed by the intendant of the place, and to be sent away into Brittany.I was then out of the captain’s power, and immediately the merchant, with two others who were friends to the merchant prisoner at Plymouth, went to the intendant and gained an order for the exchange, and my friend giving security for my being forthcoming, in case the other was not delivered, I had my liberty immediately, and went home with him to his house.Thus we bilked the captain of his ransom money. But, however, my friend went to him, and letting him know that I was exchanged by the governor’s order, paid him whatever he could say he was in disburse on my account; and it was not then in the captain’s power to object, or to claim anything for a ransom.I got passage from hence to Dunkirk on board a French vessel, and having a certificate of an exchanged prisoner from the intendent at Bordeaux, I had a passport given me to go into the Spanish Netherlands, and so whither I pleased.Accordingly I came to Ghent, in April——, just as the armies were going to take the field. I had no dislike to the business of the army, but I thought I was a little above it now, and had other things to look to; for that, in my opinion, nobody went into the field but those that could not live at home. And yet I resolved to see the manner of it a little too, so, having made an acquaintance with an English officer quartered at Ghent, I told him my intention, and he invited me to go with him, and offered me his protection as a volunteer, that I should quarter with him in his tent, and live as I would, and either carry arms or not, as I saw occasion.The campaign was none of the hardest that had been, or was like to be; so that I had the diversion of seeing the service, as it was proper to call it, without much hazard. Indeed I did not see any considerable action, for there was not much fighting that campaign. As to the merit of the cause on either side, I knew nothing of it, nor had I suffered any of the disputes about it to enter into my thoughts. The Prince of Orange had been made king of England, and the English troops were all on his side; and I heard a great deal of swearing and damning for King William among the soldiers. But as for fighting, I observed the French beat them several times, and particularly the regiment my friend belonged to was surrounded in a village where they were posted, I knew not upon what occasion, and all taken prisoners. But by great good hap, I, being not in service, and so not in command, was strolled away that day to see the country about; for it was my delight to see the strong towns, and observe the beauty of their fortifications; and while I diverted myself thus, I had the happy deliverance of not being taken by the French for that time.When I came back I found the enemy possessed of the town, but as I was no soldier they did me no harm, and having my French passport in my pocket, they gave me leave to go to Nieuport, where I took the packet-boat and came over to England, landing at Deal instead of Dover, the weather forcing us into the Downs; and thus my short campaign ended, and this was my second essay at the trade of soldiering.When I came to London I was very well received by my friend, to whom I had consigned my effects, and I found myself in very good circumstances; for all my goods, which, as above, by several ships, I had consigned to him, came safe to hand; and my overseers that I had left behind had shipped at several times four hundred hogsheads of tobacco to my correspondent in my absence, being the product of my plantation, or part of it, for the time of my being abroad; so that I had above £1000 in my factor’s hands, two hundred hogsheads of tobacco besides left in hand, not sold.I had nothing to do now but entirely to conceal myself from all that had any knowledge of me before. And this was the easiest thing in the world to do; for I was grown out of everybody’s knowledge, and most of those I had known were grown out of mine. My captain, who went with me, or, rather, who carried me away, I found, by inquiring at the proper place, had been rambling about the world, came to London, fell into his own trade, which he could not forbear, and growing an eminent highwayman, had made his exit at the gallows, after a life of fourteen years’ most exquisite and successful rogueries, the particulars of which would make, as I observed, an admirable history. My other brother Jacque, who I called major, followed the like wicked trade, but was a man of more gallantry and generosity; and having committed innumerable depredations upon mankind, yet had always so much dexterity as to bring himself off, till at length he was laid fast in Newgate, and loaded with irons, and would certainly have gone the same way as the captain, but he was so dexterous a rogue that no gaol, no fetters, would hold him; and he, with two more, found means to knock off their irons, worked their way through the wall of the prison, and let themselves down on the outside in the night. So escaping, they found means to get into France, where he followed the same trade, and with so much success that he grew famous by the name of Anthony, and had the honour, with three of his comrades, whom he had taught the English way of robbing generously, as they called it, without murdering or wounding, or ill-using those they robbed;—I say, he had the honour to be broke upon the wheel at the Greve in Paris.All these things I found means to be fully informed of, and to have a long account of the particulars of their conduct from some of their comrades who had the good fortune to escape, and who I got the knowledge of without letting them so much as guess at who I was or upon what account I inquired.I was now at the height of my good fortune. Indeed I was in very good circumstances, and being of a frugal temper from the beginning, I saved things together as they came, and yet lived very well too. Particularly I had the reputation of a very considerable merchant, and one that came over vastly rich from Virginia; and as I frequently bought supplies for my several families and plantations there as they wrote to me for them, so I passed, I say, for a great merchant.I lived single, indeed, and in lodgings, but I began to be very well known, and though I had subscribed my name only “Jack” to my particular correspondent, yet the French, among whom I lived near a year, as I have said, not understanding what Jack meant, called me Monsieur Jacques and Colonel Jacques, and so gradually Colonel Jacque. So I was called in the certificate of exchanging me with the other prisoner, so that I went so also into Flanders; upon which, and seeing my certificate of exchange, as above, I was called Colonel Jacques in England by my friend who I called correspondent. And thus I passed for a foreigner and a Frenchman, and I was infinitely fond of having everybody take me for a Frenchman; and as I spoke French very well, having learned it by continuing so long among them, so I went constantly to the French church in London, and spoke French upon all occasions as much as I could; and, to complete the appearance of it, I got me a French servant to do my business—I mean as to my merchandise, which only consisted in receiving and disposing of tobacco, of which I had about five hundred to six hundred hogsheads a year from my own plantations, and in supplying my people with necessaries as they wanted them.In this private condition I continued about two years more, when the devil, owing me a spleen ever since I refused being a thief, paid me home, with my interest, by laying a snare in my way which had almost ruined me.There dwelt a lady in the house opposite to the house I lodged in, who made an extraordinary figure indeed. She went very well dressed, and was a most beautiful person. She was well-bred, sung admirably fine, and sometimes I could hear her very distinctly, the houses being over against one another, in a narrow court, not much unlike Three King Court in Lombard Street.This lady put herself so often in my way that I could not in good manners forbear taking notice of her, and giving her the ceremony of my hat when I saw her at her window, or at the door, or when I passed her in the court; so that we became almost acquainted at a distance. Sometimes she also visited at the house I lodged at, and it was generally contrived that I should be introduced when she came, and thus by degrees we became more intimately acquainted, and often conversed together in the family, but always in public, at least for a great while.I was a mere boy in the affair of love, and knew the least of what belonged to a woman of any man in Europe of my age. The thoughts of a wife, much less of a mistress, had never so much as taken the least hold of my head, and I had been till now as perfectly unacquainted with the sex, and as unconcerned about them, as I was when I was ten years old, and lay in a heap of ashes at the glass-house.But I know not by what witchcraft in the conversation of this woman, and her singling me out upon several occasions, I began to be ensnared, I knew not how, or to what end; and was on a sudden so embarrassed in my thoughts about her that, like a charm, she had me always in her circle. If she had not been one of the subtlest women on earth, she could never have brought me to have given myself the least trouble about her, but I was drawn in by the magic of a genius capable to deceive a more wary capacity than mine, and it was impossible to resist her.She attacked me without ceasing, with the fineness of her conduct, and with arts which were impossible to be ineffectual. She was ever, as it were, in my view, often in my company, and yet kept herself so on the reserve, so surrounded continually with obstructions, that for several months after she could perceive I sought an opportunity to speak to her, she rendered it impossible; nor could I ever break in upon her, she kept her guard so well.This rigid behaviour was the greatest mystery that could be, considering, at the same time, that she never declined my seeing her or conversing with me in public. But she held it on; she took care never to sit next me, that I might slip no paper into her hand or speak softly to her; she kept somebody or other always between, that I could never come up to her; and thus, as if she was resolved really to have nothing to do with me, she held me at the bay several months.All this while nothing was more certain than that she intended to have me, if she could catch; and it was indeed a kind of a catch, for she managed all by art, and drew me in with the most resolute backwardness, that it was almost impossible not to be deceived by it. On the other hand, she did not appear to be a woman despicable, neither was she poor, or in a condition that should require so much art to draw any man in; but the cheat was really on my side; for she was unhappily told that I was vastly rich, a great merchant, and that she would live like a queen; which I was not at all instrumental in putting upon her, neither did I know that she went upon that motive.She was too cunning to let me perceive how easy she was to be had; on the contrary, she run all the hazards of bringing me to neglect her entirely that one would think any woman in the world could do. And I have wondered often since how that it was possible it should fail of making me perfectly averse to her; for as I had a perfect indifferency for the whole sex, and never till then entertained any notion of them, they were no more to me than a picture hanging up against a wall.As we conversed freely together in public, so she took a great many occasions to rally the men, and the weakness they were guilty of in letting the women insult them as they did. She thought if the men had not been fools, marriage had been only treaties of peace between two neighbours, or alliances offensive or defensive, which must necessarily have been carried on sometimes by interviews and personal treaties, but oftener by ambassadors, agents, and emissaries on both sides; but that the women had outwitted us, and brought us upon our knees, and made us whine after them, and lower ourselves, so as we could never pretend to gain our equality again.I told her I thought it was a decency to the ladies to give them the advantage of denying a little, that they might be courted, and that I should not like a woman the worse for denying me. “I expect it, madam,” says I, “when I wait on you to-morrow;” intimating that I intended it. “You shan’t be deceived, sir,” says she, “for I’ll deny now, before you ask me the question.”I was dashed so effectually with so malicious, so devilish an answer that I returned with a little sullenness, “I shan’t trespass upon you yet, madam; and I shall be very careful not to offend you when I do.”“It is the greatest token of your respect, sir,” says she, “that you are able to bestow upon me, and the most agreeable too, except one, which I will not be out of hopes of obtaining of you in a little time.”“What is in my power to oblige you in, madam,” said I, “you may command me in at any time, especially the way we are talking of.” This I spoke still with a resentment very sincere.“It is only, sir, that you would promise to hate me with as much sincerity as I will endeavour to make you a suitable return.”“I granted that request, madam, seven years before you asked it,” said I, “for I heartily hated the whole sex, and scarce know how I came to abate that good disposition in compliment to your conversation; but I assure you that abatement is so little that it does no injury to your proposal.”“There’s some mystery in that indeed, sir,” said she, “for I desire to assist your aversion to women in a more particular manner, and hoped it should never abate under my management.” We said a thousand ill-natured things after this, but she outdid me, for she had such a stock of bitterness upon her tongue as no woman ever went beyond her, and yet all this while she was the pleasantest and most obliging creature in every part of our conversation that could possibly be, and meant not one word of what she said; no, not a word. But I must confess it no way answered her end, for it really cooled all my thoughts of her, and I, that had lived in so perfect an indifferency to the sex all my days, was easily returned to that condition again, and began to grow very cold and negligent in my usual respects to her upon all occasions.She soon found she had gone too far with me, and, in short, that she was extremely out in her politics; that she had to do with one that was not listed yet among the whining sort of lovers, and knew not what it was to adore a mistress in order to abuse her; and that it was not with me as it was with the usual sort of men in love, that are warmed by the cold, and rise in their passions as the ladies fall in their returns. On the contrary, she found that it was quite altered. I was civil to her, as before, but not so forward. When I saw her at her chamber-window, I did not throw mine open, as I usually had done, to talk with her. When she sung in the parlour, where I could easily hear it, I did not listen. When she visited at the house where I lodged, I did not always come down; or if I did, I had business which obliged me to go abroad; and yet all this while, when I did come into her company, I was as intimate as ever.I could easily see that this madded her to the heart, and that she was perplexed to the last degree, for she found that she had all her game to play over again; that so absolute a reservedness, even to rudeness and ill manners, was a little too much; but she was a mere posture-mistress in love, and could put herself into what shapes she pleased.She was too wise to show a fondness or forwardness that looked like kindness. She knew that was the meanest and last step a woman can take, and lays her under the foot of the man she pretends to. Fondness is not the last favour indeed, but it is the last favour but one that a woman can grant, and lays her almost as low; I mean, it lays her at the mercy of the man she shows it to; but she was not come to that neither. This chameleon put on another colour, turned, on a sudden, the gravest, soberest, majestic madam, so that any one would have thought she was advanced in age in one week from two-and-twenty to fifty, and this she carried on with so much government of herself that it did not in the least look like art; but if it was a representation of nature only, it was so like nature itself that nobody living can be able to distinguish. She sung very often in her parlour, as well by herself as with two young ladies who came often to see her. I could see by their books, and her guitar in her hand, that she was singing; but she never opened the window, as she was wont to do. Upon my coming to my window, she kept her own always shut; or if it was open, she would be sitting at work, and not look up, it may be, once in half-an-hour.If she saw me by accident all this while, she would smile, and speak as cheerfully as ever; but it was but a word or two, and so make her honours and be gone; so that, in a word, we conversed just as we did after I had been there a week.She tired me quite out at this work; for though I began the strangeness, indeed, yet I did not design the carrying it on so far. But she held it to the last, just in the same manner as she began it. She came to the house where I lodged as usual, and we were often together, supped together, played at cards together, danced together; for in France I accomplished myself with everything that was needful to make me what I believed myself to be even from a boy—I mean a gentleman. I say, we conversed together, as above, but she was so perfectly another thing to what she used to be in every part of her conversation that it presently occurred to me that her former behaviour was a kind of a rant or fit; that either it was the effect of some extraordinary levity that had come upon her, or that it was done to mimic the coquets of the town, believing it might take with me, who she thought was a Frenchman, and that it was what I loved. But her new gravity was her real natural temper, and indeed it became her so much better, or, as I should say, she acted it so well, that it really brought me back to have, not as much only, but more mind to her than ever I had before.However, it was a great while before I discovered myself, and I stayed indeed to find out, if possible, whether this change was real or counterfeit; for I could not easily believe it was possible the gay humour she used to appear in could be a counterfeit. It was not, therefore, till a year and almost a quarter that I came to any resolution in my thoughts about her, when, on a mere accident, we came to a little conversation together.She came to visit at our house as usual, and it happened all the ladies were gone abroad; but, as it fell out, I was in the passage or entry of the house, going towards the stairs, when she knocked at the door; so, stepping back, I opened the door, and she, without any ceremony, came in, and ran forward into the parlour, supposing the women had been there. I went in after her, as I could do no less, because she did not know that the family was abroad.Upon my coming in she asked for the ladies. I told her I hoped she came to visit me now, for that the ladies were all gone abroad. “Are they?” said she, as if surprised—though I understood afterwards she knew it before, as also that I was at home—and then rises up to be gone. “No, madam,” said I, “pray do not go; when ladies come to visit me, I do not use to tire them of my company so soon.” “That’s as ill-natured,” says she, “as you could possibly talk. Pray don’t pretend I came to visit you. I am satisfied who I came to visit, and satisfied that you know it.” “Yes, madam,” said I; “but if I happen to be all of the family that’s left at home, then you came to visit me.”Jacque and ladyCOLONEL JACQUE AND THE LADY“I never receive visits from those that I hate,” says she.“You have me there, indeed,” said I; “but you never gave me leave to tell you why I hated you. I hated you because you would never give me an opportunity to tell you I loved you. Sure, you took me for some frightful creature, that you would never come near enough so much as to let me whisper to you that I love you.”“I never care to hear anything so disagreeable,” says she, “though it be spoken ever so softly.”We rallied thus for an hour. In short, she showed the abundance of her wit, and I an abundant deficiency of mine; for though three or four times she provoked me to the last degree, so that once I was going to tell her I had enough of her company, and, if she pleased I would wait upon her to the door, yet she had always so much witchcraft on her tongue that she brought herself off again; till, to make the story short, we came at last to talk seriously on both sides about matrimony, and she heard me freely propose it, and answered me directly upon many occasions. For example, she told me I would carry her away to France or to Virginia, and that she could not think of leaving England, her native country. I told her I hoped she did not take me for a kidnapper. (By the way, I did not tell her how I had been kidnapped myself.) She said no; but the consequence of my affairs, which were, it seems, mostly abroad, might oblige me to go, and she could never think of marrying any man that she could not be content to go all over the world with, if he had occasion to go himself. This was handsomely expressed indeed. I made her easy on that point, and thus we began the grand parley; which indeed she drew me into with the utmost art and subtilty, such as was peculiar to herself, but was infinitely her advantage in our treating of marriage; for she made me effectually court her, though at the same time in her design she courted me with the utmost skill, and such skill it was that her design was perfectly impenetrable to the last moment.In short, we came nearer and nearer every time we met; and after one casual visit more, in which I had the mighty favour of talking with her alone, I then waited on her every day at her own house, or lodgings rather, and so we set about the work to a purpose, and in about a month we gave the world the slip, and were privately married, to avoid ceremony and the public inconveniency of a wedding.We soon found a house proper for our dwelling, and so went to housekeeping. We had not been long together but I found that gay temper of my wife returned, and she threw off the mask of her gravity and good conduct, that I had so long fancied was her mere natural disposition; and now, having no more occasion for disguises, she resolved to seem nothing but what really she was, a wild, untamed colt, perfectly loose, and careless to conceal any part, no, not the worst of her conduct.She carried on this air of levity to such an excess that I could not but be dissatisfied at the expense of it; for she kept company that I did not like, lived beyond what I could support, and sometimes lost at play more than I cared to pay. Upon which, one day, I took occasion to mention it, but lightly; and said to her, by way of raillery, that we lived merrily, for as long as it would last. She turned short upon me, “What do you mean?” says she. “Why, you don’t pretend to be uneasy, do ye?” “No, no, madam, not I, by no means; it is no business of mine, you know,” said I, “to inquire what my wife spends, or whether she spends more than I can afford, or less. I only desire the favour to know, as near as you can guess, how long you will please to take to despatch me, for I would not be too long a-dying.”“I do not know what you talk of,” says she. “You may die as leisurely, or as hastily, as you please, when your time comes; I a’nt a-going to kill you, as I know of.”“But you are a-going to starve me, madam,” said I, “and hunger is as leisurely a death as breaking upon the wheel.”“I starve you! Why, are not you a great Virginia merchant, and did not I bring you £1500? What would you have? Sure, you can maintain a wife out of that, can’t you?”“Yes, madam,” says I, “I could maintain a wife, but not a gamester, though you had brought me £1500 a year; no estate is big enough for a box and dice.”She took fire at that, and flew out in a passion, and after a great many bitter words, told me, in short, that she saw no occasion to alter her conduct; and as for my not maintaining her, when I could not maintain her longer she would find some way or other to maintain herself.Some time after the first rattle of this kind, she vouchsafed to let me know that she was pleased to be with child. I was at first glad of it, in hopes it would help to abate her madness; but it was all one, and her being with child only added to the rest, for she made such preparations for her lying-in, and the other appendixes of a child’s being born, that, in short, I found she would be downright distracted. And I took the liberty to tell her one day that she would soon bring herself and me to destruction, and entreated her to consider that such figures as those were quite above us, and out of our circle; and, in short, that I neither could nor would allow such expenses; that, at this rate, two or three children would effectually ruin me, and that I desired her to consider what she was doing.She told me, with an air of disdain, that it was none of her business to consider anything of that matter; that if I could not allow it, she would allow it herself, and I might do my worst.I begged her to consider things for all that, and not drive me to extremities; that I married her to love and cherish her, and use her as a good wife ought to be used, but not to be ruined and undone by her. In a word, nothing could mollify her, nor any argument persuade her to moderation, but withal she took it so heinously that I should pretend to restrain her, that she told me in so many words she would drop her burthen with me, and then, if I did not like it, she would take care of herself; she would not live with me an hour, for she would not be restrained, not she; and talked a long while at that rate.I told her, as to her child, which she called her burthen, it should be no burthen to me; as to the rest, she might do as she pleased; it might, however, do me this favour, that I should have no more lyings in at the rate of £136 at a time, as I found she intended it should be now. She told me she could not tell that; if she had no more by me, she hoped she should by somebody else. “Say you so, madam?” said I. “Then they that get them shall keep them.” She did not know that neither, she said, and so turned it off jeering, and, as it were, laughing at me.This last discourse nettled me, I must confess, and the more because I had a great deal of it and very often, till, in short, we began at length to enter into a friendly treaty about parting.Nothing could be more criminal than the several discourses we had upon this subject. She demanded a separate maintenance, and, in particular, at the rate of £300 a year, and I demanded security of her that she should not run me in debt. She demanded the keeping of the child, with an allowance of £100 a year for that, and I demanded that I should be secured from being charged for keeping any she might have by somebody else, as she had threatened me.In the interval, and during these contests, she dropped her burthen (as she called it), and brought me a son, a very fine child.She was content during her lying-in to abate a little, though it was but a very little indeed, of the great expense she had intended, and, with some difficulty and persuasion, was content with a suit of child-bed linen of £15 instead of one she had intended of threescore; and this she magnified as a particular testimony of her condescension and a yielding to my avaricious temper, as she called it. But after she was up again, it was the same thing, and she went on with her humour to that degree that in a little time she began to carry it on to other excesses, and to have a sort of fellows come to visit her, which I did not like, and once, in particular, stayed abroad all night. The next day, when she came home, she began to cry out first; told me where (as she said) she lay, and that the occasion was a christening, where the company had a feast and stayed too late; that, if I was dissatisfied, I might inform myself there of all the particulars, where she lay, and the like. I told her coldly, “Madam, you do well to suggest my being dissatisfied, for you may be sure I am, and you could expect no other; that as to going to your haunts to inform myself, that is not my business: it is your business to bring testimonies of your behaviour, and to prove where you lay, and in what company. It is enough to me that you lay out of your own house, without your husband’s knowledge or consent, and before you and I converse again I must have some satisfaction of the particulars.”She answered, with all her heart; she was as in different as I; and since I took so ill her lying at a friend’s house on an extraordinary occasion, she gave me to understand that it was what she would have me expect, and what she would have the liberty to do when she thought fit.“Well, madam,” said I, “if I must expect what I cannot allow, you must expect I shall shut my doors by day against those that keep out of them at night.”She would try me, she said, very speedily; and if I shut the doors against her, she would find a way to make me open them.“Well, madam,” says I, “you threaten me hard, but I would advise you to consider before you take such measures, for I shall be as good as my word.” However, it was not long that we could live together upon these terms; for I found very quickly what company she kept, and that she took a course which I ought not to bear. So I began the separation first, and refused her my bed. We had indeed refrained all converse as husband and wife for about two months before, for I told her very plainly I would father no brats that were not of my own getting; and matters coming thus gradually to an extremity, too great to continue as it was, she went off one afternoon, and left me a line in writing, signifying that affairs had come to such a pass between us that she did not think fit to give me the opportunity of shutting her out of doors, and that therefore she had retired herself to such a place, naming a relation of her own, as scandalous as herself; and that she hoped I would not give her the trouble to sue for her support in the ordinary course of law, but that, as her occasions required, she should draw bills upon me, which she expected I would not refuse.I was extremely satisfied with this proceeding, and took care to let her hear of it, though I gave no answer at all to her letter; and as I had taken care before that whenever she played such a prank as this, she should not be able to carry much with her, so, after she was gone, I immediately broke up housekeeping, sold my furniture by public outcry, and in it everything in particular that was her own, and set a bill upon my door, giving her to understand by it that she had passed the Rubicon, that as she had taken such a step of her own accord, so there was no room left her ever to think of coming back again.This was what any one may believe I should not have done if I had seen any room for a reformation; but she had given me such testimonies of a mind alienated from her husband, in particular espousing her own unsufferable levity, that there was indeed no possibility of our coming afterwards to any terms again.However, I kept a couple of trusty agents so near her that I failed not to have a full account of her conduct, though I never let her know anything of me but that I was gone over to France. As to her bills which she said she would draw upon me, she was as good as her word in drawing one of £30, which I refused to accept, and never gave her leave to trouble me with another.It is true, and I must acknowledge it, that all this was a very melancholy scene of life to me, and but that she took care by carrying herself to the last degree provoking, and continually to insult me, I could never have gone on to the parting with so much resolution; for I really loved her very sincerely, and could have been anything but a beggar and a cuckold with her, but those were intolerable to me, especially as they were put upon me with so much insult and rudeness.But my wife carried it at last to a point that made all things light and easy to me, for after above a year’s separation, and keeping such company as she thought fit, she was pleased to be with child again, in which she had, however, so much honesty as not to pretend that she had had anything to do with me. What a wretched life she led after this, and how she brought herself to the utmost extremity of misery and distress, I may speak of hereafter.I had found, soon after our parting, that I had a great deal of reason to put myself into a posture at first not to be imposed upon by her; for I found very quickly that she had run herself into debt in several places very considerably, and that it was upon a supposition that I was liable to those debts. But I was gone, and it was absolutely necessary I should do so; upon which she found herself obliged, out of her wicked gains, however, whatever she made of them, to discharge most of those debts herself.As soon as she was delivered of her child, in which my intelligence was so good that I had gotten sufficient proof of it, I sued her in the ecclesiastical court, in order to obtain a divorce; and as she found it impossible to avoid it, so she declined the defence, and I gained a legal decree, or what they call it, of divorce, in the usual time of such process; and now I thought myself a free man once again, and began to be sick of wedlock with all my heart.I lived retired, because I knew she had contracted debts which I should be obliged to pay, and I was resolved to be gone out of her reach with what speed I could. But it was necessary that I should stay till the Virginia fleet came in, because I looked for at least three hundred hogsheads of tobacco from thence, which I knew would heal all my breaches; for indeed the extravagance of three years with this lady had sunk me most effectually, even far beyond her own fortune, which was considerable, though not quite £1500, as she had called it.But all the mischiefs I met with on account of this match were not over yet; for when I had been parted with her about three months, and had refused to accept her bill of £30, which I mentioned above, though I was removed from my first lodgings too, and thought I had effectually secured myself from being found out, yet there came a gentleman well dressed to my lodgings one day, and was let in before I knew of it, or else I should scarce have admitted him.He was led into a parlour, and I came down to him in my gown and slippers. When I came into the room he called me as familiarly by my name as if he had known me twenty years, and pulling out a pocket-book, he shows me a bill upon me, drawn by my wife, which was the same bill for £30 that I had refused before.“Sir,” says I, “this bill has been presented before, and I gave my answer to it then.”“Answer, sir!” says he, with a kind of jeering, taunting air. “I do not understand what you mean by an answer; it is not a question, sir; it is a bill to be paid.”“Well, sir,” says I, “it is a bill; I know that, and I gave my answer to it before.”“Sir, sir,” says he very saucily, “your answer! There is no answer to a bill; it must be paid. Bills are to be paid, not to be answered. They say you are a merchant, sir; merchants always pay their bills.”I began to be angry too a little, but I did not like my man, for I found he began to be quarrelsome. However, I said, “Sir, I perceive you are not much used to presenting bills. Sir, a bill is always first presented, and presenting is a question; it is asking if I will accept or pay the bill, and then whether I say yes or no, it is an answer one way or other. After ’tis accepted, it indeed requires no more answer but payment when ’tis due. If you please to inform yourself, this is the usage which all merchants or tradesmen of any kind who have bills drawn upon them act by.”“Well, sir,” says he, “and what then? What is this to the paying me the £30?”“Why, sir,” says I, “it is this to it, that I told the person that brought it I should not pay it.”“Not pay it!” says he. “But you shall pay it; ay, ay, you will pay it.”“She that draws it has no reason to draw any bills upon me, I am sure,” said I; “and I shall pay no bills she draws, I assure you.”Upon this he turns short upon me: “Sir, she that draws this bill is a person of too much honour to draw any bill without reason, and ’tis an affront to say so of her, and I shall expect satisfaction of you for that by itself. But first the bill, sir—the bill; you must pay the bill, sir.”I returned as short: “Sir, I affront nobody. I know the person as well as you, I hope; and what I have said of her is no affront. She can have no reason to draw bills upon me, for I owe her nothing.”I omit intermingling the oaths he laced his speech with, as too foul for my paper. But he told me he would make me know she had friends to stand by her, that I had abused her, and he would let me know it, and do her justice. But first I must pay his bill.I answered, in short, I would not pay the bill, nor any bills she should draw.With that he steps to the door and shuts it, and swore by G—d he would make me pay the bill before we parted, and laid his hand upon his sword, but did not draw it out.I confess I was frighted to the last degree, for I had no sword; and if I had, I must own that, though I had learned a great many good things in France to make me look like a gentleman, I had forgot the main article of learning how to use a sword, a thing so universally practised there; and, to say more, I had been perfectly unacquainted with quarrels of this nature; so that I was perfectly surprised when he shut the door, and knew not what to say or do.However, as it happened, the people of the house, hearing us pretty loud, came near the door, and made a noise in the entry to let me know they were at hand; and one of the servants, going to open the door, and finding it locked, called out to me, “Sir, for God’s sake open the door! What is the matter? Shall we fetch a constable?” I made no answer, but it gave me courage; so I sat down composed in one of the chairs, and said to him, “Sir, this is not the way to make me pay the bill; you had much better be easy, and take your satisfaction another way.”He understood me of fighting, which, upon my word, was not in my thoughts; but I meant that he had better take his course at law.“With all my heart,” says he; “they say you are a gentleman, and they call you colonel. Now, if you are a gentleman, I accept your challenge, sir; and if you will walk out with me, I will take it for full payment of the bill, and will decide it as gentlemen ought to do.”“I challenge you, sir!” said I. “Not I; I made no challenge,” I said. “This is not the way to make me pay a bill that I have not accepted; that is, that you had better seek your satisfaction at law.”“Law!” says he; “law! Gentlemen’s law is my law. In short, sir, you shall pay me or fight me.” And then, as if he had mistaken, he turns short upon me, “Nay,” says he, “you shall both fight me and pay me, for I will maintain her honour;” and in saying this he bestowed about six or seven “damme’s” and oaths, by way of parenthesis.This interval delivered me effectually, for just at the words “fight me, for I will maintain her honour,” the maid had brought in a constable, with three or four neighbours to assist him.He heard them come in, and began to be a little in a rage, and asked me if I intended to mob him instead of paying; and laying his hand on his sword, told me, if any man offered to break in upon him, he would run me through the first moment, that he might have the fewer to deal with afterwards.I told him he knew I had called for no help (believing he could not be in earnest in what he had said), and that, if anybody attempted to come in upon us, it was to prevent the mischief he threatened, and which he might see I had no weapons to resist.Upon this the constable called, and charged us both in the king’s name to open the door. I was sitting in a chair, and offered to rise. He made a motion as if he would draw, upon which I sat down again, and the door not being opened, the constable set his foot against it and came in.“Well, sir,” says my gentleman, “and what now? What’s your business here?” “Nay, sir,” says the constable, “you see my business. I am a peace-officer; all I have to do is to keep the peace, and I find the people of the house frightened for fear of mischief between you, and they have fetched me to prevent it.” “What mischief have they supposed you should find?” says he. “I suppose,” says the constable, “they were afraid you should fight.” “That’s because they did not know this fellow here. He never fights. They call him colonel,” says he. “I suppose he might be born a colonel, for I dare say he was born a coward; he never fights; he dares not see a man. If he would have fought, he would have walked out with me, but he scorns to be brave; they would never have talked to you of fighting if they had known him. I tell you, Mr. Constable, he is a coward, and a coward is a rascal;” and with that he came to me, and stroked his finger down my nose pretty hard, and laughed and mocked most horribly, as if I was a coward. Now, for aught I knew, it might be true, but I was now what they call a coward made desperate, which is one of the worst of men in the world to encounter with; for, being in a fury, I threw my head in his face, and closing with him, threw him fairly on his back by mere strength; and had not the constable stepped in and taken me off, I had certainly stamped him to death with my feet, for my blood was now all in a flame, and the people of the house were frighted now as much the other way, lest I should kill him, though I had no weapon at all in my hand.The constable too reproved me in his turn; but I said to him, “Mr. Constable, do you not think I am sufficiently provoked? Can any man bear such things as these? I desire to know who this man is and who sent him hither.”“I am,” says he, “a gentleman, and come with a bill to him for money, and he refuses to pay it.” “Well,” says the constable very prudently, “that is none of my business; I am no justice of the peace to hear the cause. Be that among yourselves, but keep your hands off one another, and that is as much as I desire; and therefore, sir,” says the constable to him, “if I may advise you, seeing he will not pay the bill, and that must be decided between you as the law directs, I would have you leave it for the present and go quietly away.”He made many impertinent harangues about the bill, and insisted that it was drawn by my own wife. I said angrily, “Then it was drawn by a whore.” He bullied me upon that, told me I durst not tell him so anywhere else; so I answered, “I would very soon publish her for a whore to all the world, and cry her down;” and thus we scolded for near half-an-hour, for I took courage when the constable was there, for I knew that he would keep us from fighting, which indeed I had no mind to, and so at length I got rid of him.I was heartily vexed at this rencounter, and the more because I had been found out in my lodging, which I thought I had effectually concealed. However, I resolved to remove the next day, and in the meantime I kept within doors all that day till the evening, and then I went out in order not to return thither any more.Being come out into Gracechurch Street, I observed a man follow me, with one of his legs tied up in a string, and hopping along with the other, and two crutches; he begged for a farthing, but I inclining not to give him anything, the fellow followed me still, till I came to a court, when I answered hastily to him, “I have nothing for you! Pray do not be so troublesome!” with which words he knocked me down with one of his crutches.Being stunned with the blow, I knew nothing what was done to me afterwards; but coming to myself again, I found I was wounded very frightfully in several places, and that among the rest my nose was slit upwards, one of my ears cut almost off, and a great cut with a sword on the side of the forehead; also a stab into the body, though not dangerous.Who had been near me, or struck me, besides the cripple that struck me with his crutch, I knew not, nor do I know to this hour; but I was terribly wounded, and lay bleeding on the ground some time, till, coming to myself, I got strength to cry out for help, and people coming about me, I got some hands to carry me to my lodging, where I lay by it more than two months before I was well enough to go out of doors; and when I did go out, I had reason to believe that I was waited for by some rogues, who watched an opportunity to repeat the injury I had met with before.This made me very uneasy, and I resolved to get myself out of danger if possible, and to go over to France, or home, as I called it, to Virginia, so to be out of the way of villains and assassinations; for every time I stirred out here I thought I went in danger of my life; and therefore, as before, I went out at night, thinking to be concealed, so now I never went out but in open day, that I might be safe, and never without one or two servants to be my lifeguard.But I must do my wife a piece of justice here too, and that was, that, hearing what had befallen me, she wrote me a letter, in which she treated me more decently than she had been wont to do. She said she was very sorry to hear how I had been used, and the rather because she understood it was on presenting her bill to me. She said she hoped I could not, in my worst dispositions, think so hardly of her as to believe it was done by her knowledge or consent, much less by her order or direction; that she abhorred such things, and protested, if she had the least knowledge or so much as a guess at the villains concerned, she would discover them to me. She let me know the person’s name to whom she gave the bill, and where he lived, and left it to me to oblige him to discover the person who had brought it and used me so ill, and wished I might find him and bring him to justice, and have him punished with the utmost severity of the law.I took this so kindly of my wife that I think in my conscience, had she come after it herself to see how I did, I had certainly taken her again; but she satisfied herself with the civility of another letter, and desiring me to let her know as often as I could how I was; adding that it would be infinitely to her satisfaction to hear I was recovered of the hurt I had received, and that he was hanged at Tyburn who had done it.She used some expressions signifying, as I understood them, her affliction at our parting and her continued respect for me; but did not make any motion towards returning. Then she used some arguments to move me to pay her bills, intimating that she had brought me a large fortune, and now had nothing to subsist on, which was very severe.I wrote her an answer to this letter, though I had not to the other, letting her know how I had been used; that I was satisfied, upon her letter, that she had no hand in it; that it was not in her nature to treat me so, who had never injured her, used any violence with her, or been the cause or desire of our parting; that, as to her bill, she could not but know how much her expensive way of living had straitened and reduced me, and would, if continued, have ruined me; that she had in less than three years spent more than as much as she brought to me, and would not abate her expensive way, though calmly entreated by me, with protestations that I could not support so great an expense, but chose rather to break up her family and go from me than to restrain herself to reasonable limits; though I used no violence with her, but entreaties and earnest persuasions, backed with good reason; letting her know how my estate was, and convincing her that it must reduce us to poverty at least; that, however, if she would recall her bill, I would send her £30, which was the sum mentioned in her bill, and, according to my ability, would not let her want, if she pleased to live within due bounds; but then I let her know also that I had a very bad account of her conduct, and that she kept company with a scandalous fellow, who I named to her; that I was loth to believe such things of her, but that, to put an entire end to the report and restore her reputation, I let her know that still, after all I heard, if she would resolve to live without restraints, within the reasonable bounds of my capacity, and treat me with the same kindness, affection, and tenderness as I always had treated her, and ever would, I was willing to receive her again, and would forget all that was past; but that, if she declined me now, it would be forever; for if she did not accept my offer, I was resolved to stay here no longer, where I had been so ill-treated on many occasions, but was preparing to go into my own country, where I would spend my days in quiet, and in a retreat from the world.She did not give such an answer to this as I expected; for though she thanked me for the £30, yet she insisted upon her justification in all other points; and though she did not refuse to return to me, yet she did not say she accepted it, and, in short, said little or nothing to it, only a kind of claim to a reparation of her injured reputation, and the like.This gave me some surprise at first, for I thought, indeed, any woman in her circumstances would have been very willing to have put an end to all her miseries, and to the reproach which was upon her, by a reconciliation, especially considering she subsisted at that time but very meanly. But there was a particular reason which prevented her return, and which she could not plead to in her letter, yet was a good reason against accepting an offer which she would otherwise have been glad of; and this was, that, as I have mentioned above, she had fallen into bad company, and had prostituted her virtue to some of her flatterers, and, in short, was with child; so that she durst not venture to accept my offer.However, as I observed above, she did not absolutely refuse it, intending (as I understood afterward) to keep the treaty of it on foot till she could drop her burthen, as she had called it before, and having been delivered privately, have accepted my proposal afterward; and, indeed, this was the most prudent step she could take, or, as we may say, the only step she had left to take. But I was too many for her here too. My intelligence about her was too good for her to conceal such an affair from me, unless she had gone away before she was visibly big, and unless she had gone farther off too than she did; for I had an account to a tittle of the time when, and place where, and the creature of which she was delivered; and then my offers of taking her again were at an end, though she wrote me several very penitent letters, acknowledging her crime and begging me to forgive her. But my spirit was above all that now, nor could I ever bear the thoughts of her after that, but pursued a divorce, and accordingly obtained it, as I have mentioned already.Things being at this pass, I resolved, as I have observed before, to go over to France, after I had received my effects from Virginia; and accordingly I came to Dunkirk in the year ——, and here I fell into company with some Irish officers of the regiment of Dillon, who by little and little entered me into the army, and by the help of Lieutenant-General ——, an Irishman, and some money, I obtained a company in his regiment, and so went into the army directly.I was exceeding pleased with my new circumstances, and now I used to say to myself I was come to what I was born to, and that I had never till now lived the life of a gentleman.Our regiment, after I had been some time in it, was commanded into Italy, and one of the most considerable actions that I was in was the famous attack upon Cremona, in the Milanese, where the Germans, being privately and by treachery let into the town in the night through a kind of common sewer, surprised the town and got possession of the greatest part of it, surprising the mareschal, Duke de Villeroi, and taking him prisoner as he came out of his quarters, and beating the few French troops which were left in the citadel; but were in the middle of their victory so boldly and resolutely attacked by two Irish regiments who were quartered in the street leading to the river Po, and who kept possession of the water-gate, or Po gate, of the town, by which the German reinforcements should have come in, that, after a most desperate fight, the Germans had their victory wrung out of their hands, and not being able to break through us to let in their friends, were obliged at length to quit the town again, to the eternal honour of those Irish regiments, and indeed of their whole nation, and for which we had a very handsome compliment from the king of France.I now had the satisfaction of knowing, and that for the first time too, that I was not that cowardly, low-spirited wretch that I was when the fellow bullied me in my lodgings about the bill of £30. Had he attacked me now, though in the very same condition, I should, naked and unarmed as I was, have flown in the face of him and trampled him under my feet. But men never know themselves till they are tried, and courage is acquired by time and experience of things.Philip de Comines tells us that, after the battle of Monteleri, the Count de Charolois, who till then had an utter aversion to the war, and abhorred it and everything that belonged to it, was so changed by the glory he obtained in that action, and by the flattery of those about him, that afterwards the army was his mistress and the fatigues of the war his chief delight. It is too great an example for me to bring in my own case, but so it was, that they flattered me so with my bravery, as they called it, on the occasion of this action, that I fancied myself brave, whether I was so or not, and the pride of it made me bold and daring to the last degree on all occasions. But what added to it was, that somebody gave a particular account to the Court of my being instrumental to the saving the city, and the whole Cremonese, by my extraordinary defence of the Po gate, and by my managing that defence after the lieutenant-colonel who commanded the party where I was posted was killed; upon which the king sent me a public testimony of his accepting my service, and sent me a brevet to be lieutenant-colonel, and the next courier brought me actually a commission for lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of ——.I was in several skirmishes and petty encounters before this, by which I gained the reputation of a good officer; but I happened to be in some particular posts too, by which I got somewhat that I liked much better, and that was a good deal of money.Our regiment was sent from France to Italy by sea. We embarked at Toulon, and landed at Savona, in the territory of Genoa, and marched from thence to the duchy of Milan. At the first town we were sent to take possession of, which was Alexandria, the citizens rose upon our men in a most furious manner, and drove the whole garrison, which consisted of eight hundred men—that is, French and soldiers in the French service—quite out of the town.I was quartered in a burgher’s house, just by one of the ports, with eight of my men and a servant, where, calling a short council with my men, we were resolved to maintain the house we were in, whatever it cost, till we received orders to quit it from the commanding officer. Upon this, when I saw our men could not stand their ground in the street, being pressed hard by the citizens, I turned out of doors all the family, and kept the house as a castle, which I was governor in; and as the house joined to the city gate, I resolved to maintain it, so as to be the last that should quit the place, my own retreat being secured by being so near the port.Having thus emptied the house of the inhabitants, we made no scruple of filling our pockets with whatever we could find there. In a word, we left nothing we could carry away, among which it came to my lot to dip into the burgher’s cabinet whose house it was where we were, and there I took about the quantity of two hundred pistoles in money and plate, and other things of value. There was great complaint made to Prince Vaudemont, who was then governor of the Milanese, of this violence. But as the repulse the citizens gave us was contrary to his order, and to the general design of the prince, who was then wholly in the interest of King Philip, the citizens could obtain nothing; and I found that if we had plundered the whole city it would have been the same thing; for the governor had orders to take our regiment in, and it was an act of open rebellion to resist us as they did. However, we had orders not to fire upon the burghers, unless constrained to it by evident necessity, and we rather chose to quit the place as we did than dispute it with a desperate body of fellows, who wanted no advantage of us, except only that of having possession of two bastions and one port of our retreat. First, they were treble our number; for the burghers, being joined by seven companies of the regular troops, made up above sixteen hundred men, besides rabble, which was many more, whereas we were about eight hundred in all; they also had the citadel and several pieces of cannon, so that we could have made nothing of it if we had attacked them. But they submitted three or four days after to other forces, the soldiers within turning upon them and taking the citadel from them.After this we lay still in quarters eight months. For the prince, having secured the whole Milanese for King Philip, and no enemy appearing for some time, had nothing to do but to receive the auxiliary troops of France, and as they came, extend himself every way as he could, in order to keep the imperialists (who were preparing to fall into Italy with a great army) as much at a distance as possible, which he did by taking possession of the city of Mantua, and of most of the towns on that side, as far as the Lake De la Guarda and the river Adige.We lay in Mantua some time, but were afterwards drawn out by order of the Count de Tesse (afterwards Marshal of France), to form the French army, till the arrival of the Duke de Vendôme, who was to command in chief. Here we had a severe campaign,anno1701, having Prince Eugene of Savoy and an army of forty thousand Germans, all old soldiers, to deal with; and though the French army was more numerous than the enemy by twenty-five thousand men, yet, being on the defensive, and having so many posts to cover, not knowing exactly where the Prince of Savoy, who commanded the imperial army, would attack us, it obliged the French to keep their troops so divided and so remote from one another that the Germans pushed on their design with great success, as the histories of those times more fully relate.I was at the action of Carpi, July 1701, where we were worsted by the Germans; indeed, were forced to quit our encampment and give up to the prince the whole river Adige, and where our regiment sustained some loss. But the enemies got little by us, and Monsieur Catinat, who commanded at that time, drew up in order of battle the next day in sight of the German army, and gave them a defiance; but they would not stir, though we offered them battle two days together; for, having gained the passage over the Adige by our quitting Rivoli, which was then useless to us, their business was done.Finding they declined a decisive action, our generals pressed them in their quarters, and made them fight for every inch of ground they gained; and at length, in the September following, we attacked them in their intrenched posts of Chiar. Here we broke into the very heart of their camp, where we made a very terrible slaughter. But I know not by what mistake among our generals, or defect in the execution of their orders, the brigade of Normandy and our Irish Brigade, who had so bravely entered the German intrenchments, were not supported as we should have been, so that we were obliged to sustain the shock of the whole German army, and at last to quit the advantage we had gained, and that not without loss; but, being timely reinforced by a great body of horse, the enemy were in their turn beaten off too, and driven back into their very camp. The Germans boasted of having a great victory here, and indeed, in repulsing us after we had gained their camp, they had the advantage. But had Monsieur de Tesse succoured us in time, as old Catinat said he ought to have done, with twelve thousand foot which he had with him, that day’s action had put an end to the war, and Prince Eugene must have been glad to have gone back to Germany in more haste than he came, if, perhaps, we had not cut him short by the way.But the fate of things went another way, and the Germans continued all that campaign to push forward and advance one post after another, till they beat us quite out of the Milanese.The latter part of this campaign we made only a party war, the French, according to their volatile temper, being every day abroad, either foraging or surprising the enemy’s foragers, plundering or circumventing the plunders of the other side. But they very often came short home, for the Germans had the better of them on several occasions; and indeed so many lost their lives upon these petty encounters that I think, including those who died of distempers gotten by hard service and bad quarters, lying in the field even till the middle of December among rivers and bogs, in a country so full of canals and rivers as that part of Italy is known to be; I say, we lost more men, and so did the enemy also, than would have been lost in a general decisive battle.The Duke of Savoy, to give him his due, pressed earnestly to put it to a day and come to a battle with Prince Eugene; but the Duke de Villeroi, Monsieur Catinat, and the Count de Tesse were all against it; and the principal reason was, that they knew the weakness of the troops, who had suffered so much on so many occasions that they were in no condition to give battle to the Germans. So after, as I say, about three months’ harassing one another with parties, we went into winter quarters.Before we marched out of the field, our regiment, with a detachment of dragoons of six hundred, and about two hundred and fifty horse, went out with a design to intercept Prince Commercy, a general of note under Prince Eugene of Savoy. The detachment was intended to be only horse and dragoons; but because it was the imperialists’ good luck to beat many of our parties, and, as was given out, many more than we beat of theirs, and because it was believed that the prince, who was an officer of good note among them, would not go abroad but in very good company, the Irish regiment of foot was ordered to be added, that, if possible, they might meet with their match.I was commanded, about two hours before, to pass about two hundred foot and fifty dragoons at a small wood where our general had intelligence that prince would post some men to secure his passage, which accordingly I did. But Count Tesse, not thinking our party strong enough, had marched himself, with a thousand horse and three hundred grenadiers, to support us. And it was very well he did so; for Prince Commercy, having intelligence of the first party, came forward sooner than they expected, and fell upon them, and had entirely routed them had not the Count, hearing the firing, advanced with the thousand horse he had, with such expedition as to support his men in the very heat of the action, by which means the Germans were defeated and forced to retire. But the prince made a pretty good retreat, and after the action came on to the wood where I was posted; but the surprise of his defeat had prevented his sending a detachment to secure the pass at the wood, as he intended.The Count de Tesse, understanding that we were sent, as above, to the wood, followed them close at the heels, to prevent our being cut off, and, if it were possible that we should give them any check at the wood, to fall in and have another brush with them. It was near night before they came to the wood, by which means they could not discern our number. But when they came up to the wood, fifty dragoons advanced to discover the pass and see if all was clear. These we suffered to pass a great way into the defile, or lane, that went through the wood, and then clapping in between them and the entrance, cut off their retreat so effectually that when they discovered us and fired, they were instantly surrounded and cut in pieces, the officers who commanded them and eight dragoons only being made prisoners.
Our privateer, it was plain, infinitely outsailed her, running two foot for her one, and towards evening came up with them. Had they been able to have held it but six hours longer they would have got into Limerick River, or somewhere under shore, so that we should not have ventured upon them. But we came up with them, and the captain, when he saw there was no remedy, bravely brought to and prepared to fight. She was a ship of thirty guns, but deep in the sea, cumbered between decks with goods, and could not run out her lower-deck guns, the sea also going pretty high, though at last she ventured to open her gun-room ports and fire with three guns on a side. But her worst fate was, she sailed heavy, being deep loaden, and the Frenchman had run up by her side and poured in his broadside, and was soon ready again. However, as she was well manned too, and that the English sailors bestirred themselves, they gave us their broadsides too very nimbly and heartily, and I found the Frenchman had a great many men killed at the first brush. But the next was worse, for the English ship, though she did not sail so well as the Frenchman, was a bigger ship and strong built, and as we (the French) bore down upon them again, the English run boldly on board us, and laid thwart our hawse, lashing themselves fast to us. Then it was that the English captain run out his lower tier of guns, and indeed tore the Frenchman so, that, had he held it, the privateer would have had the worst of it. But the Frenchman, with admirable readiness, indeed, and courage, the captain appearing everywhere with his sword in his hand, bestirred themselves, and loosing themselves from the English ship, thrusting her off with brooms, and pouring their small shot so thick that the other could not appear upon deck; I say, clearing themselves thus, they came to lie a-broadside of each other, when, by long firing, the English ship was at length disabled, her mizzen-mast and bowsprit shot away, and, which was worst of all, her captain killed; so that, after a fight which held all night—for they fought in the dark—and part of the next day, they were obliged to strike.
I was civilly desired by the French captain to go down into the hold while the fight held, and, besides the civility of it, I found he was not willing I should be upon deck. Perhaps he thought I might have some opportunity to do hurt, though I know not how it could be. However, I was very ready to go down, for I had no mind to be killed, especially by my own friends; so I went down and sat by the surgeon, and had the opportunity to find that, the first broadside the English fired, seven wounded men were brought down to the surgeon, and three-and-thirty more afterwards, that is to say, when the English lay thwart their bow; and after they cleared themselves there were about eleven more; so that they had one-and-fifty men wounded and about two-and-twenty killed. The Englishman had eighteen men killed and wounded, among whom was the captain.
The French captain, however, triumphed in his prize; for it was an exceeding rich ship, having abundance of silver on board. And after the ship was taken and they had plundered all the great cabin afforded, which was very considerable, the mate promised the captain that, if he would give him his liberty, he would discover six thousand pieces of eight to him privately, which none of the men should know of. The captain engaged, and gave it under his hand to set him at liberty as soon as he came on shore. Accordingly, in the night, after all was either turned in, as they call it, or employed on the duty of the watch, the captain and the mate of the prize went on board, and having faithfully discovered the money, which lay in a place made on purpose to conceal it, the captain resolved to let it lie till they arrived, and then he conveyed it on shore for his own use; so that the owners, nor the seamen, ever came to any share of it, which, by the way, was a fraud in the captain. But the mate paid his ransom by the discovery, and the captain gave him his liberty very punctually, as he had promised, and two hundred pieces of eight to carry him to England and to make good his losses.
When he had made this prize, the captain thought of nothing more than how to get safe to France with her, for she was a ship sufficient to enrich all his men and his owners also. The account of her cargo, by the captain’s books, of which I took a copy, was in general:
260 hogsheads of sugar.187 smaller casks of sugar.176 barrels of indigo.28 casks of pimento.42 bags of cotton wool.80 cwt. of elephants’ teeth.60 small casks of rum.18,000 pieces of eight, besides the six thousand concealed.Several parcels of drugs, tortoise-shell, sweetmeats, called succades, chocolate, lime juice, and other things of considerable value.
This was a terrible loss among the English merchants, and a noble booty for the rogues that took it; but as it was in open war and by fair fighting, as they call it, there was no objection to be made against them, and, to give them their due, they fought bravely for it.
The captain was not so bold as to meeting the English men-of-war before, but he was as wary now; for, having a prize of such value in his hands, he was resolved not to lose her again, if he could help it. So he stood away to the southward, and that so far that I once thought he was resolved to go into the Straits, and home by Marseilles. But having sailed to the latitude of 45 degrees 3 quarters, or thereabouts, he steered away east, into the bottom of the Bay of Biscay, and carried us all into the river of Bordeaux, where, on notice of his arrival with such a prize, his owners or principals came overland to see him, and where they consulted what to do with her. The money they secured, to be sure, and some of the cargo; but the ships sailed afterwards along the coast to St. Malo, taking the opportunity of some French men-of-war which were cruising on the coast to be their convoy as far as Ushant.
Here the captain rewarded and dismissed the English mate, as I have said, who got a passage from thence to Dieppe by sea, and after that into England, by the help of a passport, through Flanders to Ostend. The captain, it seems, the more willingly shipped him off that he might not discover to others what he had discovered to him.
I was now at Bordeaux, in France, and the captain asked me one morning what I intended to do. I did not understand him at first, but he soon gave me to understand that I was now either to be delivered up to the state as an English prisoner, and so be carried to Dinan, in Brittany, or to find means to have myself exchanged, or to pay my ransom, and this ransom he told me at first was three hundred crowns.
I knew not what to do, but desired he would give me time to write to England to my friends; for that I had a cargo of goods sent to them by me from Virginia, but I did not know but it might have fallen into such hands as his were, and if it was, I knew not what would be my fate. He readily granted that; so I wrote by the post, and had the satisfaction, in answer to it, to hear that the ship I was taken in had been retaken, and carried into Portsmouth; which I doubted would have made my new master more strict, and perhaps insolent; but he said nothing of it to me, nor I to him, though, as I afterwards understood, he had advice of it before.
However, this was a help to me, and served to more than pay my ransom to the captain. And my correspondent in London, hearing of my being alive and at Bordeaux, immediately sent me a letter of credit upon an English merchant at Bordeaux for whatever I might have occasion for. As soon as I received this I went to the merchant, who honoured the letter of credit, and told me I should have what money I pleased. But as I, who was before a mere stranger in the place and knew not what course to take, had now, as it were, a friend to communicate my affairs to and consult with, as soon as I told him my case, “Hold,” says he; “if that be your case, I may perhaps find a way to get you off without a ransom.”
There was, it seems, a ship bound home to France from Martinico, taken off Cape Finisterre by an English man-of-war, and a merchant of Rochelle, being a passenger, was taken on board, and brought into Plymouth. This man had made great solicitation by his friends to be exchanged, pleading poverty, and that he was unable to pay any ransom. My friend told me something of it, but not much, only bade me not be too forward to pay any money to the captain, but pretend I could not hear from England. This I did till the captain appeared impatient.
After some time the captain told me I had used him ill; that I had made him expect a ransom, and he had treated me courteously and been at expense to subsist me, and that I held him in suspense, but that, in short, if I did not procure the money, he would send me to Dinan in ten days, to lie there as the king’s prisoner till I should be exchanged. My merchant gave me my cue, and by his direction I answered I was very sensible of his civility, and sorry he should lose what expenses he had been at, but that I found my friends forgot me, and what to do I did not know, and that, rather than impose upon him, I must submit to go to Dinan, or where he thought fit to send me; but that if ever I obtained my liberty, and came into England, I would not fail to reimburse him what expense he had been at for my subsistence; and so, in short, made my case very bad in all my discourse. He shook his head and said little, but the next day entered me in the list of English prisoners to be at the king’s charge, as appointed by the intendant of the place, and to be sent away into Brittany.
I was then out of the captain’s power, and immediately the merchant, with two others who were friends to the merchant prisoner at Plymouth, went to the intendant and gained an order for the exchange, and my friend giving security for my being forthcoming, in case the other was not delivered, I had my liberty immediately, and went home with him to his house.
Thus we bilked the captain of his ransom money. But, however, my friend went to him, and letting him know that I was exchanged by the governor’s order, paid him whatever he could say he was in disburse on my account; and it was not then in the captain’s power to object, or to claim anything for a ransom.
I got passage from hence to Dunkirk on board a French vessel, and having a certificate of an exchanged prisoner from the intendent at Bordeaux, I had a passport given me to go into the Spanish Netherlands, and so whither I pleased.
Accordingly I came to Ghent, in April——, just as the armies were going to take the field. I had no dislike to the business of the army, but I thought I was a little above it now, and had other things to look to; for that, in my opinion, nobody went into the field but those that could not live at home. And yet I resolved to see the manner of it a little too, so, having made an acquaintance with an English officer quartered at Ghent, I told him my intention, and he invited me to go with him, and offered me his protection as a volunteer, that I should quarter with him in his tent, and live as I would, and either carry arms or not, as I saw occasion.
The campaign was none of the hardest that had been, or was like to be; so that I had the diversion of seeing the service, as it was proper to call it, without much hazard. Indeed I did not see any considerable action, for there was not much fighting that campaign. As to the merit of the cause on either side, I knew nothing of it, nor had I suffered any of the disputes about it to enter into my thoughts. The Prince of Orange had been made king of England, and the English troops were all on his side; and I heard a great deal of swearing and damning for King William among the soldiers. But as for fighting, I observed the French beat them several times, and particularly the regiment my friend belonged to was surrounded in a village where they were posted, I knew not upon what occasion, and all taken prisoners. But by great good hap, I, being not in service, and so not in command, was strolled away that day to see the country about; for it was my delight to see the strong towns, and observe the beauty of their fortifications; and while I diverted myself thus, I had the happy deliverance of not being taken by the French for that time.
When I came back I found the enemy possessed of the town, but as I was no soldier they did me no harm, and having my French passport in my pocket, they gave me leave to go to Nieuport, where I took the packet-boat and came over to England, landing at Deal instead of Dover, the weather forcing us into the Downs; and thus my short campaign ended, and this was my second essay at the trade of soldiering.
When I came to London I was very well received by my friend, to whom I had consigned my effects, and I found myself in very good circumstances; for all my goods, which, as above, by several ships, I had consigned to him, came safe to hand; and my overseers that I had left behind had shipped at several times four hundred hogsheads of tobacco to my correspondent in my absence, being the product of my plantation, or part of it, for the time of my being abroad; so that I had above £1000 in my factor’s hands, two hundred hogsheads of tobacco besides left in hand, not sold.
I had nothing to do now but entirely to conceal myself from all that had any knowledge of me before. And this was the easiest thing in the world to do; for I was grown out of everybody’s knowledge, and most of those I had known were grown out of mine. My captain, who went with me, or, rather, who carried me away, I found, by inquiring at the proper place, had been rambling about the world, came to London, fell into his own trade, which he could not forbear, and growing an eminent highwayman, had made his exit at the gallows, after a life of fourteen years’ most exquisite and successful rogueries, the particulars of which would make, as I observed, an admirable history. My other brother Jacque, who I called major, followed the like wicked trade, but was a man of more gallantry and generosity; and having committed innumerable depredations upon mankind, yet had always so much dexterity as to bring himself off, till at length he was laid fast in Newgate, and loaded with irons, and would certainly have gone the same way as the captain, but he was so dexterous a rogue that no gaol, no fetters, would hold him; and he, with two more, found means to knock off their irons, worked their way through the wall of the prison, and let themselves down on the outside in the night. So escaping, they found means to get into France, where he followed the same trade, and with so much success that he grew famous by the name of Anthony, and had the honour, with three of his comrades, whom he had taught the English way of robbing generously, as they called it, without murdering or wounding, or ill-using those they robbed;—I say, he had the honour to be broke upon the wheel at the Greve in Paris.
All these things I found means to be fully informed of, and to have a long account of the particulars of their conduct from some of their comrades who had the good fortune to escape, and who I got the knowledge of without letting them so much as guess at who I was or upon what account I inquired.
I was now at the height of my good fortune. Indeed I was in very good circumstances, and being of a frugal temper from the beginning, I saved things together as they came, and yet lived very well too. Particularly I had the reputation of a very considerable merchant, and one that came over vastly rich from Virginia; and as I frequently bought supplies for my several families and plantations there as they wrote to me for them, so I passed, I say, for a great merchant.
I lived single, indeed, and in lodgings, but I began to be very well known, and though I had subscribed my name only “Jack” to my particular correspondent, yet the French, among whom I lived near a year, as I have said, not understanding what Jack meant, called me Monsieur Jacques and Colonel Jacques, and so gradually Colonel Jacque. So I was called in the certificate of exchanging me with the other prisoner, so that I went so also into Flanders; upon which, and seeing my certificate of exchange, as above, I was called Colonel Jacques in England by my friend who I called correspondent. And thus I passed for a foreigner and a Frenchman, and I was infinitely fond of having everybody take me for a Frenchman; and as I spoke French very well, having learned it by continuing so long among them, so I went constantly to the French church in London, and spoke French upon all occasions as much as I could; and, to complete the appearance of it, I got me a French servant to do my business—I mean as to my merchandise, which only consisted in receiving and disposing of tobacco, of which I had about five hundred to six hundred hogsheads a year from my own plantations, and in supplying my people with necessaries as they wanted them.
In this private condition I continued about two years more, when the devil, owing me a spleen ever since I refused being a thief, paid me home, with my interest, by laying a snare in my way which had almost ruined me.
There dwelt a lady in the house opposite to the house I lodged in, who made an extraordinary figure indeed. She went very well dressed, and was a most beautiful person. She was well-bred, sung admirably fine, and sometimes I could hear her very distinctly, the houses being over against one another, in a narrow court, not much unlike Three King Court in Lombard Street.
This lady put herself so often in my way that I could not in good manners forbear taking notice of her, and giving her the ceremony of my hat when I saw her at her window, or at the door, or when I passed her in the court; so that we became almost acquainted at a distance. Sometimes she also visited at the house I lodged at, and it was generally contrived that I should be introduced when she came, and thus by degrees we became more intimately acquainted, and often conversed together in the family, but always in public, at least for a great while.
I was a mere boy in the affair of love, and knew the least of what belonged to a woman of any man in Europe of my age. The thoughts of a wife, much less of a mistress, had never so much as taken the least hold of my head, and I had been till now as perfectly unacquainted with the sex, and as unconcerned about them, as I was when I was ten years old, and lay in a heap of ashes at the glass-house.
But I know not by what witchcraft in the conversation of this woman, and her singling me out upon several occasions, I began to be ensnared, I knew not how, or to what end; and was on a sudden so embarrassed in my thoughts about her that, like a charm, she had me always in her circle. If she had not been one of the subtlest women on earth, she could never have brought me to have given myself the least trouble about her, but I was drawn in by the magic of a genius capable to deceive a more wary capacity than mine, and it was impossible to resist her.
She attacked me without ceasing, with the fineness of her conduct, and with arts which were impossible to be ineffectual. She was ever, as it were, in my view, often in my company, and yet kept herself so on the reserve, so surrounded continually with obstructions, that for several months after she could perceive I sought an opportunity to speak to her, she rendered it impossible; nor could I ever break in upon her, she kept her guard so well.
This rigid behaviour was the greatest mystery that could be, considering, at the same time, that she never declined my seeing her or conversing with me in public. But she held it on; she took care never to sit next me, that I might slip no paper into her hand or speak softly to her; she kept somebody or other always between, that I could never come up to her; and thus, as if she was resolved really to have nothing to do with me, she held me at the bay several months.
All this while nothing was more certain than that she intended to have me, if she could catch; and it was indeed a kind of a catch, for she managed all by art, and drew me in with the most resolute backwardness, that it was almost impossible not to be deceived by it. On the other hand, she did not appear to be a woman despicable, neither was she poor, or in a condition that should require so much art to draw any man in; but the cheat was really on my side; for she was unhappily told that I was vastly rich, a great merchant, and that she would live like a queen; which I was not at all instrumental in putting upon her, neither did I know that she went upon that motive.
She was too cunning to let me perceive how easy she was to be had; on the contrary, she run all the hazards of bringing me to neglect her entirely that one would think any woman in the world could do. And I have wondered often since how that it was possible it should fail of making me perfectly averse to her; for as I had a perfect indifferency for the whole sex, and never till then entertained any notion of them, they were no more to me than a picture hanging up against a wall.
As we conversed freely together in public, so she took a great many occasions to rally the men, and the weakness they were guilty of in letting the women insult them as they did. She thought if the men had not been fools, marriage had been only treaties of peace between two neighbours, or alliances offensive or defensive, which must necessarily have been carried on sometimes by interviews and personal treaties, but oftener by ambassadors, agents, and emissaries on both sides; but that the women had outwitted us, and brought us upon our knees, and made us whine after them, and lower ourselves, so as we could never pretend to gain our equality again.
I told her I thought it was a decency to the ladies to give them the advantage of denying a little, that they might be courted, and that I should not like a woman the worse for denying me. “I expect it, madam,” says I, “when I wait on you to-morrow;” intimating that I intended it. “You shan’t be deceived, sir,” says she, “for I’ll deny now, before you ask me the question.”
I was dashed so effectually with so malicious, so devilish an answer that I returned with a little sullenness, “I shan’t trespass upon you yet, madam; and I shall be very careful not to offend you when I do.”
“It is the greatest token of your respect, sir,” says she, “that you are able to bestow upon me, and the most agreeable too, except one, which I will not be out of hopes of obtaining of you in a little time.”
“What is in my power to oblige you in, madam,” said I, “you may command me in at any time, especially the way we are talking of.” This I spoke still with a resentment very sincere.
“It is only, sir, that you would promise to hate me with as much sincerity as I will endeavour to make you a suitable return.”
“I granted that request, madam, seven years before you asked it,” said I, “for I heartily hated the whole sex, and scarce know how I came to abate that good disposition in compliment to your conversation; but I assure you that abatement is so little that it does no injury to your proposal.”
“There’s some mystery in that indeed, sir,” said she, “for I desire to assist your aversion to women in a more particular manner, and hoped it should never abate under my management.” We said a thousand ill-natured things after this, but she outdid me, for she had such a stock of bitterness upon her tongue as no woman ever went beyond her, and yet all this while she was the pleasantest and most obliging creature in every part of our conversation that could possibly be, and meant not one word of what she said; no, not a word. But I must confess it no way answered her end, for it really cooled all my thoughts of her, and I, that had lived in so perfect an indifferency to the sex all my days, was easily returned to that condition again, and began to grow very cold and negligent in my usual respects to her upon all occasions.
She soon found she had gone too far with me, and, in short, that she was extremely out in her politics; that she had to do with one that was not listed yet among the whining sort of lovers, and knew not what it was to adore a mistress in order to abuse her; and that it was not with me as it was with the usual sort of men in love, that are warmed by the cold, and rise in their passions as the ladies fall in their returns. On the contrary, she found that it was quite altered. I was civil to her, as before, but not so forward. When I saw her at her chamber-window, I did not throw mine open, as I usually had done, to talk with her. When she sung in the parlour, where I could easily hear it, I did not listen. When she visited at the house where I lodged, I did not always come down; or if I did, I had business which obliged me to go abroad; and yet all this while, when I did come into her company, I was as intimate as ever.
I could easily see that this madded her to the heart, and that she was perplexed to the last degree, for she found that she had all her game to play over again; that so absolute a reservedness, even to rudeness and ill manners, was a little too much; but she was a mere posture-mistress in love, and could put herself into what shapes she pleased.
She was too wise to show a fondness or forwardness that looked like kindness. She knew that was the meanest and last step a woman can take, and lays her under the foot of the man she pretends to. Fondness is not the last favour indeed, but it is the last favour but one that a woman can grant, and lays her almost as low; I mean, it lays her at the mercy of the man she shows it to; but she was not come to that neither. This chameleon put on another colour, turned, on a sudden, the gravest, soberest, majestic madam, so that any one would have thought she was advanced in age in one week from two-and-twenty to fifty, and this she carried on with so much government of herself that it did not in the least look like art; but if it was a representation of nature only, it was so like nature itself that nobody living can be able to distinguish. She sung very often in her parlour, as well by herself as with two young ladies who came often to see her. I could see by their books, and her guitar in her hand, that she was singing; but she never opened the window, as she was wont to do. Upon my coming to my window, she kept her own always shut; or if it was open, she would be sitting at work, and not look up, it may be, once in half-an-hour.
If she saw me by accident all this while, she would smile, and speak as cheerfully as ever; but it was but a word or two, and so make her honours and be gone; so that, in a word, we conversed just as we did after I had been there a week.
She tired me quite out at this work; for though I began the strangeness, indeed, yet I did not design the carrying it on so far. But she held it to the last, just in the same manner as she began it. She came to the house where I lodged as usual, and we were often together, supped together, played at cards together, danced together; for in France I accomplished myself with everything that was needful to make me what I believed myself to be even from a boy—I mean a gentleman. I say, we conversed together, as above, but she was so perfectly another thing to what she used to be in every part of her conversation that it presently occurred to me that her former behaviour was a kind of a rant or fit; that either it was the effect of some extraordinary levity that had come upon her, or that it was done to mimic the coquets of the town, believing it might take with me, who she thought was a Frenchman, and that it was what I loved. But her new gravity was her real natural temper, and indeed it became her so much better, or, as I should say, she acted it so well, that it really brought me back to have, not as much only, but more mind to her than ever I had before.
However, it was a great while before I discovered myself, and I stayed indeed to find out, if possible, whether this change was real or counterfeit; for I could not easily believe it was possible the gay humour she used to appear in could be a counterfeit. It was not, therefore, till a year and almost a quarter that I came to any resolution in my thoughts about her, when, on a mere accident, we came to a little conversation together.
She came to visit at our house as usual, and it happened all the ladies were gone abroad; but, as it fell out, I was in the passage or entry of the house, going towards the stairs, when she knocked at the door; so, stepping back, I opened the door, and she, without any ceremony, came in, and ran forward into the parlour, supposing the women had been there. I went in after her, as I could do no less, because she did not know that the family was abroad.
Upon my coming in she asked for the ladies. I told her I hoped she came to visit me now, for that the ladies were all gone abroad. “Are they?” said she, as if surprised—though I understood afterwards she knew it before, as also that I was at home—and then rises up to be gone. “No, madam,” said I, “pray do not go; when ladies come to visit me, I do not use to tire them of my company so soon.” “That’s as ill-natured,” says she, “as you could possibly talk. Pray don’t pretend I came to visit you. I am satisfied who I came to visit, and satisfied that you know it.” “Yes, madam,” said I; “but if I happen to be all of the family that’s left at home, then you came to visit me.”
Jacque and ladyCOLONEL JACQUE AND THE LADY
“I never receive visits from those that I hate,” says she.
“You have me there, indeed,” said I; “but you never gave me leave to tell you why I hated you. I hated you because you would never give me an opportunity to tell you I loved you. Sure, you took me for some frightful creature, that you would never come near enough so much as to let me whisper to you that I love you.”
“I never care to hear anything so disagreeable,” says she, “though it be spoken ever so softly.”
We rallied thus for an hour. In short, she showed the abundance of her wit, and I an abundant deficiency of mine; for though three or four times she provoked me to the last degree, so that once I was going to tell her I had enough of her company, and, if she pleased I would wait upon her to the door, yet she had always so much witchcraft on her tongue that she brought herself off again; till, to make the story short, we came at last to talk seriously on both sides about matrimony, and she heard me freely propose it, and answered me directly upon many occasions. For example, she told me I would carry her away to France or to Virginia, and that she could not think of leaving England, her native country. I told her I hoped she did not take me for a kidnapper. (By the way, I did not tell her how I had been kidnapped myself.) She said no; but the consequence of my affairs, which were, it seems, mostly abroad, might oblige me to go, and she could never think of marrying any man that she could not be content to go all over the world with, if he had occasion to go himself. This was handsomely expressed indeed. I made her easy on that point, and thus we began the grand parley; which indeed she drew me into with the utmost art and subtilty, such as was peculiar to herself, but was infinitely her advantage in our treating of marriage; for she made me effectually court her, though at the same time in her design she courted me with the utmost skill, and such skill it was that her design was perfectly impenetrable to the last moment.
In short, we came nearer and nearer every time we met; and after one casual visit more, in which I had the mighty favour of talking with her alone, I then waited on her every day at her own house, or lodgings rather, and so we set about the work to a purpose, and in about a month we gave the world the slip, and were privately married, to avoid ceremony and the public inconveniency of a wedding.
We soon found a house proper for our dwelling, and so went to housekeeping. We had not been long together but I found that gay temper of my wife returned, and she threw off the mask of her gravity and good conduct, that I had so long fancied was her mere natural disposition; and now, having no more occasion for disguises, she resolved to seem nothing but what really she was, a wild, untamed colt, perfectly loose, and careless to conceal any part, no, not the worst of her conduct.
She carried on this air of levity to such an excess that I could not but be dissatisfied at the expense of it; for she kept company that I did not like, lived beyond what I could support, and sometimes lost at play more than I cared to pay. Upon which, one day, I took occasion to mention it, but lightly; and said to her, by way of raillery, that we lived merrily, for as long as it would last. She turned short upon me, “What do you mean?” says she. “Why, you don’t pretend to be uneasy, do ye?” “No, no, madam, not I, by no means; it is no business of mine, you know,” said I, “to inquire what my wife spends, or whether she spends more than I can afford, or less. I only desire the favour to know, as near as you can guess, how long you will please to take to despatch me, for I would not be too long a-dying.”
“I do not know what you talk of,” says she. “You may die as leisurely, or as hastily, as you please, when your time comes; I a’nt a-going to kill you, as I know of.”
“But you are a-going to starve me, madam,” said I, “and hunger is as leisurely a death as breaking upon the wheel.”
“I starve you! Why, are not you a great Virginia merchant, and did not I bring you £1500? What would you have? Sure, you can maintain a wife out of that, can’t you?”
“Yes, madam,” says I, “I could maintain a wife, but not a gamester, though you had brought me £1500 a year; no estate is big enough for a box and dice.”
She took fire at that, and flew out in a passion, and after a great many bitter words, told me, in short, that she saw no occasion to alter her conduct; and as for my not maintaining her, when I could not maintain her longer she would find some way or other to maintain herself.
Some time after the first rattle of this kind, she vouchsafed to let me know that she was pleased to be with child. I was at first glad of it, in hopes it would help to abate her madness; but it was all one, and her being with child only added to the rest, for she made such preparations for her lying-in, and the other appendixes of a child’s being born, that, in short, I found she would be downright distracted. And I took the liberty to tell her one day that she would soon bring herself and me to destruction, and entreated her to consider that such figures as those were quite above us, and out of our circle; and, in short, that I neither could nor would allow such expenses; that, at this rate, two or three children would effectually ruin me, and that I desired her to consider what she was doing.
She told me, with an air of disdain, that it was none of her business to consider anything of that matter; that if I could not allow it, she would allow it herself, and I might do my worst.
I begged her to consider things for all that, and not drive me to extremities; that I married her to love and cherish her, and use her as a good wife ought to be used, but not to be ruined and undone by her. In a word, nothing could mollify her, nor any argument persuade her to moderation, but withal she took it so heinously that I should pretend to restrain her, that she told me in so many words she would drop her burthen with me, and then, if I did not like it, she would take care of herself; she would not live with me an hour, for she would not be restrained, not she; and talked a long while at that rate.
I told her, as to her child, which she called her burthen, it should be no burthen to me; as to the rest, she might do as she pleased; it might, however, do me this favour, that I should have no more lyings in at the rate of £136 at a time, as I found she intended it should be now. She told me she could not tell that; if she had no more by me, she hoped she should by somebody else. “Say you so, madam?” said I. “Then they that get them shall keep them.” She did not know that neither, she said, and so turned it off jeering, and, as it were, laughing at me.
This last discourse nettled me, I must confess, and the more because I had a great deal of it and very often, till, in short, we began at length to enter into a friendly treaty about parting.
Nothing could be more criminal than the several discourses we had upon this subject. She demanded a separate maintenance, and, in particular, at the rate of £300 a year, and I demanded security of her that she should not run me in debt. She demanded the keeping of the child, with an allowance of £100 a year for that, and I demanded that I should be secured from being charged for keeping any she might have by somebody else, as she had threatened me.
In the interval, and during these contests, she dropped her burthen (as she called it), and brought me a son, a very fine child.
She was content during her lying-in to abate a little, though it was but a very little indeed, of the great expense she had intended, and, with some difficulty and persuasion, was content with a suit of child-bed linen of £15 instead of one she had intended of threescore; and this she magnified as a particular testimony of her condescension and a yielding to my avaricious temper, as she called it. But after she was up again, it was the same thing, and she went on with her humour to that degree that in a little time she began to carry it on to other excesses, and to have a sort of fellows come to visit her, which I did not like, and once, in particular, stayed abroad all night. The next day, when she came home, she began to cry out first; told me where (as she said) she lay, and that the occasion was a christening, where the company had a feast and stayed too late; that, if I was dissatisfied, I might inform myself there of all the particulars, where she lay, and the like. I told her coldly, “Madam, you do well to suggest my being dissatisfied, for you may be sure I am, and you could expect no other; that as to going to your haunts to inform myself, that is not my business: it is your business to bring testimonies of your behaviour, and to prove where you lay, and in what company. It is enough to me that you lay out of your own house, without your husband’s knowledge or consent, and before you and I converse again I must have some satisfaction of the particulars.”
She answered, with all her heart; she was as in different as I; and since I took so ill her lying at a friend’s house on an extraordinary occasion, she gave me to understand that it was what she would have me expect, and what she would have the liberty to do when she thought fit.
“Well, madam,” said I, “if I must expect what I cannot allow, you must expect I shall shut my doors by day against those that keep out of them at night.”
She would try me, she said, very speedily; and if I shut the doors against her, she would find a way to make me open them.
“Well, madam,” says I, “you threaten me hard, but I would advise you to consider before you take such measures, for I shall be as good as my word.” However, it was not long that we could live together upon these terms; for I found very quickly what company she kept, and that she took a course which I ought not to bear. So I began the separation first, and refused her my bed. We had indeed refrained all converse as husband and wife for about two months before, for I told her very plainly I would father no brats that were not of my own getting; and matters coming thus gradually to an extremity, too great to continue as it was, she went off one afternoon, and left me a line in writing, signifying that affairs had come to such a pass between us that she did not think fit to give me the opportunity of shutting her out of doors, and that therefore she had retired herself to such a place, naming a relation of her own, as scandalous as herself; and that she hoped I would not give her the trouble to sue for her support in the ordinary course of law, but that, as her occasions required, she should draw bills upon me, which she expected I would not refuse.
I was extremely satisfied with this proceeding, and took care to let her hear of it, though I gave no answer at all to her letter; and as I had taken care before that whenever she played such a prank as this, she should not be able to carry much with her, so, after she was gone, I immediately broke up housekeeping, sold my furniture by public outcry, and in it everything in particular that was her own, and set a bill upon my door, giving her to understand by it that she had passed the Rubicon, that as she had taken such a step of her own accord, so there was no room left her ever to think of coming back again.
This was what any one may believe I should not have done if I had seen any room for a reformation; but she had given me such testimonies of a mind alienated from her husband, in particular espousing her own unsufferable levity, that there was indeed no possibility of our coming afterwards to any terms again.
However, I kept a couple of trusty agents so near her that I failed not to have a full account of her conduct, though I never let her know anything of me but that I was gone over to France. As to her bills which she said she would draw upon me, she was as good as her word in drawing one of £30, which I refused to accept, and never gave her leave to trouble me with another.
It is true, and I must acknowledge it, that all this was a very melancholy scene of life to me, and but that she took care by carrying herself to the last degree provoking, and continually to insult me, I could never have gone on to the parting with so much resolution; for I really loved her very sincerely, and could have been anything but a beggar and a cuckold with her, but those were intolerable to me, especially as they were put upon me with so much insult and rudeness.
But my wife carried it at last to a point that made all things light and easy to me, for after above a year’s separation, and keeping such company as she thought fit, she was pleased to be with child again, in which she had, however, so much honesty as not to pretend that she had had anything to do with me. What a wretched life she led after this, and how she brought herself to the utmost extremity of misery and distress, I may speak of hereafter.
I had found, soon after our parting, that I had a great deal of reason to put myself into a posture at first not to be imposed upon by her; for I found very quickly that she had run herself into debt in several places very considerably, and that it was upon a supposition that I was liable to those debts. But I was gone, and it was absolutely necessary I should do so; upon which she found herself obliged, out of her wicked gains, however, whatever she made of them, to discharge most of those debts herself.
As soon as she was delivered of her child, in which my intelligence was so good that I had gotten sufficient proof of it, I sued her in the ecclesiastical court, in order to obtain a divorce; and as she found it impossible to avoid it, so she declined the defence, and I gained a legal decree, or what they call it, of divorce, in the usual time of such process; and now I thought myself a free man once again, and began to be sick of wedlock with all my heart.
I lived retired, because I knew she had contracted debts which I should be obliged to pay, and I was resolved to be gone out of her reach with what speed I could. But it was necessary that I should stay till the Virginia fleet came in, because I looked for at least three hundred hogsheads of tobacco from thence, which I knew would heal all my breaches; for indeed the extravagance of three years with this lady had sunk me most effectually, even far beyond her own fortune, which was considerable, though not quite £1500, as she had called it.
But all the mischiefs I met with on account of this match were not over yet; for when I had been parted with her about three months, and had refused to accept her bill of £30, which I mentioned above, though I was removed from my first lodgings too, and thought I had effectually secured myself from being found out, yet there came a gentleman well dressed to my lodgings one day, and was let in before I knew of it, or else I should scarce have admitted him.
He was led into a parlour, and I came down to him in my gown and slippers. When I came into the room he called me as familiarly by my name as if he had known me twenty years, and pulling out a pocket-book, he shows me a bill upon me, drawn by my wife, which was the same bill for £30 that I had refused before.
“Sir,” says I, “this bill has been presented before, and I gave my answer to it then.”
“Answer, sir!” says he, with a kind of jeering, taunting air. “I do not understand what you mean by an answer; it is not a question, sir; it is a bill to be paid.”
“Well, sir,” says I, “it is a bill; I know that, and I gave my answer to it before.”
“Sir, sir,” says he very saucily, “your answer! There is no answer to a bill; it must be paid. Bills are to be paid, not to be answered. They say you are a merchant, sir; merchants always pay their bills.”
I began to be angry too a little, but I did not like my man, for I found he began to be quarrelsome. However, I said, “Sir, I perceive you are not much used to presenting bills. Sir, a bill is always first presented, and presenting is a question; it is asking if I will accept or pay the bill, and then whether I say yes or no, it is an answer one way or other. After ’tis accepted, it indeed requires no more answer but payment when ’tis due. If you please to inform yourself, this is the usage which all merchants or tradesmen of any kind who have bills drawn upon them act by.”
“Well, sir,” says he, “and what then? What is this to the paying me the £30?”
“Why, sir,” says I, “it is this to it, that I told the person that brought it I should not pay it.”
“Not pay it!” says he. “But you shall pay it; ay, ay, you will pay it.”
“She that draws it has no reason to draw any bills upon me, I am sure,” said I; “and I shall pay no bills she draws, I assure you.”
Upon this he turns short upon me: “Sir, she that draws this bill is a person of too much honour to draw any bill without reason, and ’tis an affront to say so of her, and I shall expect satisfaction of you for that by itself. But first the bill, sir—the bill; you must pay the bill, sir.”
I returned as short: “Sir, I affront nobody. I know the person as well as you, I hope; and what I have said of her is no affront. She can have no reason to draw bills upon me, for I owe her nothing.”
I omit intermingling the oaths he laced his speech with, as too foul for my paper. But he told me he would make me know she had friends to stand by her, that I had abused her, and he would let me know it, and do her justice. But first I must pay his bill.
I answered, in short, I would not pay the bill, nor any bills she should draw.
With that he steps to the door and shuts it, and swore by G—d he would make me pay the bill before we parted, and laid his hand upon his sword, but did not draw it out.
I confess I was frighted to the last degree, for I had no sword; and if I had, I must own that, though I had learned a great many good things in France to make me look like a gentleman, I had forgot the main article of learning how to use a sword, a thing so universally practised there; and, to say more, I had been perfectly unacquainted with quarrels of this nature; so that I was perfectly surprised when he shut the door, and knew not what to say or do.
However, as it happened, the people of the house, hearing us pretty loud, came near the door, and made a noise in the entry to let me know they were at hand; and one of the servants, going to open the door, and finding it locked, called out to me, “Sir, for God’s sake open the door! What is the matter? Shall we fetch a constable?” I made no answer, but it gave me courage; so I sat down composed in one of the chairs, and said to him, “Sir, this is not the way to make me pay the bill; you had much better be easy, and take your satisfaction another way.”
He understood me of fighting, which, upon my word, was not in my thoughts; but I meant that he had better take his course at law.
“With all my heart,” says he; “they say you are a gentleman, and they call you colonel. Now, if you are a gentleman, I accept your challenge, sir; and if you will walk out with me, I will take it for full payment of the bill, and will decide it as gentlemen ought to do.”
“I challenge you, sir!” said I. “Not I; I made no challenge,” I said. “This is not the way to make me pay a bill that I have not accepted; that is, that you had better seek your satisfaction at law.”
“Law!” says he; “law! Gentlemen’s law is my law. In short, sir, you shall pay me or fight me.” And then, as if he had mistaken, he turns short upon me, “Nay,” says he, “you shall both fight me and pay me, for I will maintain her honour;” and in saying this he bestowed about six or seven “damme’s” and oaths, by way of parenthesis.
This interval delivered me effectually, for just at the words “fight me, for I will maintain her honour,” the maid had brought in a constable, with three or four neighbours to assist him.
He heard them come in, and began to be a little in a rage, and asked me if I intended to mob him instead of paying; and laying his hand on his sword, told me, if any man offered to break in upon him, he would run me through the first moment, that he might have the fewer to deal with afterwards.
I told him he knew I had called for no help (believing he could not be in earnest in what he had said), and that, if anybody attempted to come in upon us, it was to prevent the mischief he threatened, and which he might see I had no weapons to resist.
Upon this the constable called, and charged us both in the king’s name to open the door. I was sitting in a chair, and offered to rise. He made a motion as if he would draw, upon which I sat down again, and the door not being opened, the constable set his foot against it and came in.
“Well, sir,” says my gentleman, “and what now? What’s your business here?” “Nay, sir,” says the constable, “you see my business. I am a peace-officer; all I have to do is to keep the peace, and I find the people of the house frightened for fear of mischief between you, and they have fetched me to prevent it.” “What mischief have they supposed you should find?” says he. “I suppose,” says the constable, “they were afraid you should fight.” “That’s because they did not know this fellow here. He never fights. They call him colonel,” says he. “I suppose he might be born a colonel, for I dare say he was born a coward; he never fights; he dares not see a man. If he would have fought, he would have walked out with me, but he scorns to be brave; they would never have talked to you of fighting if they had known him. I tell you, Mr. Constable, he is a coward, and a coward is a rascal;” and with that he came to me, and stroked his finger down my nose pretty hard, and laughed and mocked most horribly, as if I was a coward. Now, for aught I knew, it might be true, but I was now what they call a coward made desperate, which is one of the worst of men in the world to encounter with; for, being in a fury, I threw my head in his face, and closing with him, threw him fairly on his back by mere strength; and had not the constable stepped in and taken me off, I had certainly stamped him to death with my feet, for my blood was now all in a flame, and the people of the house were frighted now as much the other way, lest I should kill him, though I had no weapon at all in my hand.
The constable too reproved me in his turn; but I said to him, “Mr. Constable, do you not think I am sufficiently provoked? Can any man bear such things as these? I desire to know who this man is and who sent him hither.”
“I am,” says he, “a gentleman, and come with a bill to him for money, and he refuses to pay it.” “Well,” says the constable very prudently, “that is none of my business; I am no justice of the peace to hear the cause. Be that among yourselves, but keep your hands off one another, and that is as much as I desire; and therefore, sir,” says the constable to him, “if I may advise you, seeing he will not pay the bill, and that must be decided between you as the law directs, I would have you leave it for the present and go quietly away.”
He made many impertinent harangues about the bill, and insisted that it was drawn by my own wife. I said angrily, “Then it was drawn by a whore.” He bullied me upon that, told me I durst not tell him so anywhere else; so I answered, “I would very soon publish her for a whore to all the world, and cry her down;” and thus we scolded for near half-an-hour, for I took courage when the constable was there, for I knew that he would keep us from fighting, which indeed I had no mind to, and so at length I got rid of him.
I was heartily vexed at this rencounter, and the more because I had been found out in my lodging, which I thought I had effectually concealed. However, I resolved to remove the next day, and in the meantime I kept within doors all that day till the evening, and then I went out in order not to return thither any more.
Being come out into Gracechurch Street, I observed a man follow me, with one of his legs tied up in a string, and hopping along with the other, and two crutches; he begged for a farthing, but I inclining not to give him anything, the fellow followed me still, till I came to a court, when I answered hastily to him, “I have nothing for you! Pray do not be so troublesome!” with which words he knocked me down with one of his crutches.
Being stunned with the blow, I knew nothing what was done to me afterwards; but coming to myself again, I found I was wounded very frightfully in several places, and that among the rest my nose was slit upwards, one of my ears cut almost off, and a great cut with a sword on the side of the forehead; also a stab into the body, though not dangerous.
Who had been near me, or struck me, besides the cripple that struck me with his crutch, I knew not, nor do I know to this hour; but I was terribly wounded, and lay bleeding on the ground some time, till, coming to myself, I got strength to cry out for help, and people coming about me, I got some hands to carry me to my lodging, where I lay by it more than two months before I was well enough to go out of doors; and when I did go out, I had reason to believe that I was waited for by some rogues, who watched an opportunity to repeat the injury I had met with before.
This made me very uneasy, and I resolved to get myself out of danger if possible, and to go over to France, or home, as I called it, to Virginia, so to be out of the way of villains and assassinations; for every time I stirred out here I thought I went in danger of my life; and therefore, as before, I went out at night, thinking to be concealed, so now I never went out but in open day, that I might be safe, and never without one or two servants to be my lifeguard.
But I must do my wife a piece of justice here too, and that was, that, hearing what had befallen me, she wrote me a letter, in which she treated me more decently than she had been wont to do. She said she was very sorry to hear how I had been used, and the rather because she understood it was on presenting her bill to me. She said she hoped I could not, in my worst dispositions, think so hardly of her as to believe it was done by her knowledge or consent, much less by her order or direction; that she abhorred such things, and protested, if she had the least knowledge or so much as a guess at the villains concerned, she would discover them to me. She let me know the person’s name to whom she gave the bill, and where he lived, and left it to me to oblige him to discover the person who had brought it and used me so ill, and wished I might find him and bring him to justice, and have him punished with the utmost severity of the law.
I took this so kindly of my wife that I think in my conscience, had she come after it herself to see how I did, I had certainly taken her again; but she satisfied herself with the civility of another letter, and desiring me to let her know as often as I could how I was; adding that it would be infinitely to her satisfaction to hear I was recovered of the hurt I had received, and that he was hanged at Tyburn who had done it.
She used some expressions signifying, as I understood them, her affliction at our parting and her continued respect for me; but did not make any motion towards returning. Then she used some arguments to move me to pay her bills, intimating that she had brought me a large fortune, and now had nothing to subsist on, which was very severe.
I wrote her an answer to this letter, though I had not to the other, letting her know how I had been used; that I was satisfied, upon her letter, that she had no hand in it; that it was not in her nature to treat me so, who had never injured her, used any violence with her, or been the cause or desire of our parting; that, as to her bill, she could not but know how much her expensive way of living had straitened and reduced me, and would, if continued, have ruined me; that she had in less than three years spent more than as much as she brought to me, and would not abate her expensive way, though calmly entreated by me, with protestations that I could not support so great an expense, but chose rather to break up her family and go from me than to restrain herself to reasonable limits; though I used no violence with her, but entreaties and earnest persuasions, backed with good reason; letting her know how my estate was, and convincing her that it must reduce us to poverty at least; that, however, if she would recall her bill, I would send her £30, which was the sum mentioned in her bill, and, according to my ability, would not let her want, if she pleased to live within due bounds; but then I let her know also that I had a very bad account of her conduct, and that she kept company with a scandalous fellow, who I named to her; that I was loth to believe such things of her, but that, to put an entire end to the report and restore her reputation, I let her know that still, after all I heard, if she would resolve to live without restraints, within the reasonable bounds of my capacity, and treat me with the same kindness, affection, and tenderness as I always had treated her, and ever would, I was willing to receive her again, and would forget all that was past; but that, if she declined me now, it would be forever; for if she did not accept my offer, I was resolved to stay here no longer, where I had been so ill-treated on many occasions, but was preparing to go into my own country, where I would spend my days in quiet, and in a retreat from the world.
She did not give such an answer to this as I expected; for though she thanked me for the £30, yet she insisted upon her justification in all other points; and though she did not refuse to return to me, yet she did not say she accepted it, and, in short, said little or nothing to it, only a kind of claim to a reparation of her injured reputation, and the like.
This gave me some surprise at first, for I thought, indeed, any woman in her circumstances would have been very willing to have put an end to all her miseries, and to the reproach which was upon her, by a reconciliation, especially considering she subsisted at that time but very meanly. But there was a particular reason which prevented her return, and which she could not plead to in her letter, yet was a good reason against accepting an offer which she would otherwise have been glad of; and this was, that, as I have mentioned above, she had fallen into bad company, and had prostituted her virtue to some of her flatterers, and, in short, was with child; so that she durst not venture to accept my offer.
However, as I observed above, she did not absolutely refuse it, intending (as I understood afterward) to keep the treaty of it on foot till she could drop her burthen, as she had called it before, and having been delivered privately, have accepted my proposal afterward; and, indeed, this was the most prudent step she could take, or, as we may say, the only step she had left to take. But I was too many for her here too. My intelligence about her was too good for her to conceal such an affair from me, unless she had gone away before she was visibly big, and unless she had gone farther off too than she did; for I had an account to a tittle of the time when, and place where, and the creature of which she was delivered; and then my offers of taking her again were at an end, though she wrote me several very penitent letters, acknowledging her crime and begging me to forgive her. But my spirit was above all that now, nor could I ever bear the thoughts of her after that, but pursued a divorce, and accordingly obtained it, as I have mentioned already.
Things being at this pass, I resolved, as I have observed before, to go over to France, after I had received my effects from Virginia; and accordingly I came to Dunkirk in the year ——, and here I fell into company with some Irish officers of the regiment of Dillon, who by little and little entered me into the army, and by the help of Lieutenant-General ——, an Irishman, and some money, I obtained a company in his regiment, and so went into the army directly.
I was exceeding pleased with my new circumstances, and now I used to say to myself I was come to what I was born to, and that I had never till now lived the life of a gentleman.
Our regiment, after I had been some time in it, was commanded into Italy, and one of the most considerable actions that I was in was the famous attack upon Cremona, in the Milanese, where the Germans, being privately and by treachery let into the town in the night through a kind of common sewer, surprised the town and got possession of the greatest part of it, surprising the mareschal, Duke de Villeroi, and taking him prisoner as he came out of his quarters, and beating the few French troops which were left in the citadel; but were in the middle of their victory so boldly and resolutely attacked by two Irish regiments who were quartered in the street leading to the river Po, and who kept possession of the water-gate, or Po gate, of the town, by which the German reinforcements should have come in, that, after a most desperate fight, the Germans had their victory wrung out of their hands, and not being able to break through us to let in their friends, were obliged at length to quit the town again, to the eternal honour of those Irish regiments, and indeed of their whole nation, and for which we had a very handsome compliment from the king of France.
I now had the satisfaction of knowing, and that for the first time too, that I was not that cowardly, low-spirited wretch that I was when the fellow bullied me in my lodgings about the bill of £30. Had he attacked me now, though in the very same condition, I should, naked and unarmed as I was, have flown in the face of him and trampled him under my feet. But men never know themselves till they are tried, and courage is acquired by time and experience of things.
Philip de Comines tells us that, after the battle of Monteleri, the Count de Charolois, who till then had an utter aversion to the war, and abhorred it and everything that belonged to it, was so changed by the glory he obtained in that action, and by the flattery of those about him, that afterwards the army was his mistress and the fatigues of the war his chief delight. It is too great an example for me to bring in my own case, but so it was, that they flattered me so with my bravery, as they called it, on the occasion of this action, that I fancied myself brave, whether I was so or not, and the pride of it made me bold and daring to the last degree on all occasions. But what added to it was, that somebody gave a particular account to the Court of my being instrumental to the saving the city, and the whole Cremonese, by my extraordinary defence of the Po gate, and by my managing that defence after the lieutenant-colonel who commanded the party where I was posted was killed; upon which the king sent me a public testimony of his accepting my service, and sent me a brevet to be lieutenant-colonel, and the next courier brought me actually a commission for lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of ——.
I was in several skirmishes and petty encounters before this, by which I gained the reputation of a good officer; but I happened to be in some particular posts too, by which I got somewhat that I liked much better, and that was a good deal of money.
Our regiment was sent from France to Italy by sea. We embarked at Toulon, and landed at Savona, in the territory of Genoa, and marched from thence to the duchy of Milan. At the first town we were sent to take possession of, which was Alexandria, the citizens rose upon our men in a most furious manner, and drove the whole garrison, which consisted of eight hundred men—that is, French and soldiers in the French service—quite out of the town.
I was quartered in a burgher’s house, just by one of the ports, with eight of my men and a servant, where, calling a short council with my men, we were resolved to maintain the house we were in, whatever it cost, till we received orders to quit it from the commanding officer. Upon this, when I saw our men could not stand their ground in the street, being pressed hard by the citizens, I turned out of doors all the family, and kept the house as a castle, which I was governor in; and as the house joined to the city gate, I resolved to maintain it, so as to be the last that should quit the place, my own retreat being secured by being so near the port.
Having thus emptied the house of the inhabitants, we made no scruple of filling our pockets with whatever we could find there. In a word, we left nothing we could carry away, among which it came to my lot to dip into the burgher’s cabinet whose house it was where we were, and there I took about the quantity of two hundred pistoles in money and plate, and other things of value. There was great complaint made to Prince Vaudemont, who was then governor of the Milanese, of this violence. But as the repulse the citizens gave us was contrary to his order, and to the general design of the prince, who was then wholly in the interest of King Philip, the citizens could obtain nothing; and I found that if we had plundered the whole city it would have been the same thing; for the governor had orders to take our regiment in, and it was an act of open rebellion to resist us as they did. However, we had orders not to fire upon the burghers, unless constrained to it by evident necessity, and we rather chose to quit the place as we did than dispute it with a desperate body of fellows, who wanted no advantage of us, except only that of having possession of two bastions and one port of our retreat. First, they were treble our number; for the burghers, being joined by seven companies of the regular troops, made up above sixteen hundred men, besides rabble, which was many more, whereas we were about eight hundred in all; they also had the citadel and several pieces of cannon, so that we could have made nothing of it if we had attacked them. But they submitted three or four days after to other forces, the soldiers within turning upon them and taking the citadel from them.
After this we lay still in quarters eight months. For the prince, having secured the whole Milanese for King Philip, and no enemy appearing for some time, had nothing to do but to receive the auxiliary troops of France, and as they came, extend himself every way as he could, in order to keep the imperialists (who were preparing to fall into Italy with a great army) as much at a distance as possible, which he did by taking possession of the city of Mantua, and of most of the towns on that side, as far as the Lake De la Guarda and the river Adige.
We lay in Mantua some time, but were afterwards drawn out by order of the Count de Tesse (afterwards Marshal of France), to form the French army, till the arrival of the Duke de Vendôme, who was to command in chief. Here we had a severe campaign,anno1701, having Prince Eugene of Savoy and an army of forty thousand Germans, all old soldiers, to deal with; and though the French army was more numerous than the enemy by twenty-five thousand men, yet, being on the defensive, and having so many posts to cover, not knowing exactly where the Prince of Savoy, who commanded the imperial army, would attack us, it obliged the French to keep their troops so divided and so remote from one another that the Germans pushed on their design with great success, as the histories of those times more fully relate.
I was at the action of Carpi, July 1701, where we were worsted by the Germans; indeed, were forced to quit our encampment and give up to the prince the whole river Adige, and where our regiment sustained some loss. But the enemies got little by us, and Monsieur Catinat, who commanded at that time, drew up in order of battle the next day in sight of the German army, and gave them a defiance; but they would not stir, though we offered them battle two days together; for, having gained the passage over the Adige by our quitting Rivoli, which was then useless to us, their business was done.
Finding they declined a decisive action, our generals pressed them in their quarters, and made them fight for every inch of ground they gained; and at length, in the September following, we attacked them in their intrenched posts of Chiar. Here we broke into the very heart of their camp, where we made a very terrible slaughter. But I know not by what mistake among our generals, or defect in the execution of their orders, the brigade of Normandy and our Irish Brigade, who had so bravely entered the German intrenchments, were not supported as we should have been, so that we were obliged to sustain the shock of the whole German army, and at last to quit the advantage we had gained, and that not without loss; but, being timely reinforced by a great body of horse, the enemy were in their turn beaten off too, and driven back into their very camp. The Germans boasted of having a great victory here, and indeed, in repulsing us after we had gained their camp, they had the advantage. But had Monsieur de Tesse succoured us in time, as old Catinat said he ought to have done, with twelve thousand foot which he had with him, that day’s action had put an end to the war, and Prince Eugene must have been glad to have gone back to Germany in more haste than he came, if, perhaps, we had not cut him short by the way.
But the fate of things went another way, and the Germans continued all that campaign to push forward and advance one post after another, till they beat us quite out of the Milanese.
The latter part of this campaign we made only a party war, the French, according to their volatile temper, being every day abroad, either foraging or surprising the enemy’s foragers, plundering or circumventing the plunders of the other side. But they very often came short home, for the Germans had the better of them on several occasions; and indeed so many lost their lives upon these petty encounters that I think, including those who died of distempers gotten by hard service and bad quarters, lying in the field even till the middle of December among rivers and bogs, in a country so full of canals and rivers as that part of Italy is known to be; I say, we lost more men, and so did the enemy also, than would have been lost in a general decisive battle.
The Duke of Savoy, to give him his due, pressed earnestly to put it to a day and come to a battle with Prince Eugene; but the Duke de Villeroi, Monsieur Catinat, and the Count de Tesse were all against it; and the principal reason was, that they knew the weakness of the troops, who had suffered so much on so many occasions that they were in no condition to give battle to the Germans. So after, as I say, about three months’ harassing one another with parties, we went into winter quarters.
Before we marched out of the field, our regiment, with a detachment of dragoons of six hundred, and about two hundred and fifty horse, went out with a design to intercept Prince Commercy, a general of note under Prince Eugene of Savoy. The detachment was intended to be only horse and dragoons; but because it was the imperialists’ good luck to beat many of our parties, and, as was given out, many more than we beat of theirs, and because it was believed that the prince, who was an officer of good note among them, would not go abroad but in very good company, the Irish regiment of foot was ordered to be added, that, if possible, they might meet with their match.
I was commanded, about two hours before, to pass about two hundred foot and fifty dragoons at a small wood where our general had intelligence that prince would post some men to secure his passage, which accordingly I did. But Count Tesse, not thinking our party strong enough, had marched himself, with a thousand horse and three hundred grenadiers, to support us. And it was very well he did so; for Prince Commercy, having intelligence of the first party, came forward sooner than they expected, and fell upon them, and had entirely routed them had not the Count, hearing the firing, advanced with the thousand horse he had, with such expedition as to support his men in the very heat of the action, by which means the Germans were defeated and forced to retire. But the prince made a pretty good retreat, and after the action came on to the wood where I was posted; but the surprise of his defeat had prevented his sending a detachment to secure the pass at the wood, as he intended.
The Count de Tesse, understanding that we were sent, as above, to the wood, followed them close at the heels, to prevent our being cut off, and, if it were possible that we should give them any check at the wood, to fall in and have another brush with them. It was near night before they came to the wood, by which means they could not discern our number. But when they came up to the wood, fifty dragoons advanced to discover the pass and see if all was clear. These we suffered to pass a great way into the defile, or lane, that went through the wood, and then clapping in between them and the entrance, cut off their retreat so effectually that when they discovered us and fired, they were instantly surrounded and cut in pieces, the officers who commanded them and eight dragoons only being made prisoners.