sent him by the Duke of
Marlborough.[23]

But all men are not Marlboroughs or Eugenes: the really great alone
can witness success without envy, or achieve it without selfishness.
In the base herd of ignoble men who profited by the efforts of these
great leaders, the malignant passions were rapidly gaining strength by
the very magnitude of their triumphs. The removal of danger was
producing its usual effect, among the Allies, of reviving jealousy.
Conquest was spreading its invariable discord in the cupidity to share
its fruits. These divisions had early appeared after the battle of
Ramilies, when the Emperor Joseph, as a natural mark of gratitude to
the general who had delivered his people from their oppressors, as
well as from a regard to his own interests, appointed Marlborough to
the general command as viceroy of the Netherlands. The English general
was highly gratified by this mark of confidence and gratitude; and the
appointment was cordially approved of by Queen Anne and the English
cabinet, who without hesitation authorized Marlborough to accept the
proffered dignity. But the Dutch, who had already begun to conceive
projects of ambition by an accession of territory to themselves on the
side of Flanders, evinced such umbrage at this appointment, as tending
to throw the administration of the Netherlands entirely into the hands
of the English and Austrians, that Marlborough had the magnanimity to
solicit permission to decline an honour which threatened to breed
disunion in the alliance.[24] This conduct was as disinterested as it
was patriotic; for the appointments of the government, thus declined
from a desire for the public good, were no less than sixty thousand
pounds a-year.

Although, however, Marlborough thus renounced this splendid
appointment, yet the court of Vienna were not equally tractable, and
evinced the utmost jealousy at the no longer disguised desire of the
Dutch to gain an accession of territory, and the barrier of which they
were so passionately desirous, at the expense of the Austrian
Netherlands. The project also got wind, and the inhabitants of
Brabant, whom difference of religion and old-established national
rivalry had long alienated from the Dutch, were so much alarmed at the
prospect of being transferred to their hated neighbours, that it at
once cooled their ardour in the cause of the alliance, and went far to
sow the seeds of irrepressible dissension among them. The Emperor,
therefore