From an anecdote in Boswell's Life of Johnson, we are referred to the following Memoirs for the best account of the military achievements of the Earl of Peterborough.

'The best account of Lord Peterborough that I have happened to meet with, is in Captain Carleton's Memoirs. Carleton was descended of an officer who had distinguished himself at the siege of Derry. (1) He was an officer, and, what was rare at that time, had some knowledge in engineering. Johnson said he had never heard of the book. Lord Elliot had a copy at Port Elliot; but, after a good deal of enquiry, procured a copy in London, and sent it to Johnson; who told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he was going to bed when it came, but was so much pleased with it, that he tat up till he read it through, and found in it such an air of truth, that he could not doubt its authenticity; adding with a smile, in allusion to Lord Elliot's having recently been raised to the peerage, I did not think a young lord could have mentioned to me a book in the English history that was not known to me.' [Boswell's Life of Johnson].

A short sketch of the life of this celebrated general may be no unpleasing introduction to a volume, which derives its chief value from narrating his glorious successes.

Charles Mordaunt, afterwards Earl of Peterborough, was born in 1658; and, in June 1675, succeeded to the title of Lord Mordaunt and the estate of his family. he was educated in the navy, and in his youth served with the Admirals Torrington and Narborough in the Mediterranean. In 1680 he accompanied the Earl of Plymouth in the expedition to Tangier, when be distinguished himself against the Moors.

In the succeeding reign, Lord Mordaunt opposed the repeal of the Test Act in the House of Lords; and having thus become obnoxious to the court, obtained liberty to go into the Dutch service. When he arrived in Holland, he was, as we learn from Burnet, amongst the most forward of those who advised the Prince of Orange to his grand enterprise. But the cold and considerate William saw obstacles, which escaped the fiery and enthusiastic Mordaunt; nor, although that prince used his services in the Revolution, does he appear to have reposed entire confidence in a character so opposite to his own. Yet Mordaunt reaped the reward of his zeal, being in 1688 created Earl of Monmouth, lord of the bedchamber, and first commissioner of the treasury, which last office be did not long retain. He accompanied William in his campaign of 1692, and in 1697 succeeded to the title, which he has so highly distinguished, by the death of his uncle Henry, the second Earl of Peterborough.

In the first year of Queen Anne's reign, Peterborough was to have been sent out as Governor- general of Jamaica, but the appointment did not take place. In 1705 he was appointed general and commander-in-chief of the forces sent to Spain, upon the splendid and almost romantic service of placing Charles of Austria on the throne of that monarchy. The wonders which he there wrought, are nowhere more fully detailed than in the pages of Carleton. Barcelona was taken by a handful of men, and afterwards relieved in the face of a powerful enemy, whom Peterborough compelled to decamp, leaving their battering artillery, ammunition, stores, provisions, and all their sick and wounded men.

He drove before him, and finally expelled from Spain, the Duke of Anjou, with his army of twenty-five thousand French, although his own forces never amounted to half that number. All difficulties sunk before the creative power of his genius. Doomed as he was, by the infatuated folly of Charles, and by the private envy of his enemies at home, to conduct a perilous expedition, in a country ill affected to the cause, without supplies, stores, artillery, reinforcements, or money; he created substitutes for all these deficiencies - even for the last of them. He took walled towns with dragoons, and stormed the caskets of the bankers of Genoa, without being able to offer them security. He gained possession of Catalonia, of the kingdoms of Valencia, Aragon, and Majorca, with part of Murcia and Castile, and thus opened the way for the Earl of Galway's marching to Madrid without a blow.

Nor was his talent at conciliating the natives less remarkable than his military achievements. With the feeling of a virtuous, and the prudence of a wise man, he restrained the excesses of his troops, respected the religion, the laws, even the prejudices of the Spaniards; and heretic as he was, became more popular amongst them than the Catholic prince whom he was essaying to place on their throne. Yet--as Swift has strongly expressed it-- "the only general, who, by a course of conduct and fortune almost miraculous, had nearly put us into the possession of the kingdom of Spain, was left wholly unsupported, exposed to the envy of his rivals, disappointed by the caprices of a young unexperienced prince, under the guidance of of a rapacious German ministry, and at last called home in discontent."

The cause of this strange step it would be tedious here to investigate. One ostensible reason was, that Peterborough's parts were of too lively and mercurial a quality, and that his letters showed more wit than became a general; a commonplace objection, raised by the dull malignity of commonplace minds against those whom they see discharging with ease and indifference the tasks which they themselves execute (if at all) with the sweat of their brow, and in the heaviness of their heart. It is no uncommon error of judgement to maintain, a priori, that a thing cannot possibly be well done, which has taken less time in doing than the person passing sentence had anticipated. There is also a certain hypocrisy in business, whether civil or military, as well as in religion, which they will do well to observe, who, not satisfied with discharging their duty, desire also the good report of men.

To the want of that grave, serious, business-like deportment, which admits of no levity in the exercise of its office; but especially to the envy excited by his success, Britain owed the recall of the Earl of Peterborough from Spain, during the full career of his victories. The command of the troops devolved on the Earl of Gallway; a thoroughbred soldier, as he was called; a sound-headed, steady, solid general, who proceeded, with all decency, decorum, and formal attention to the discipline of war, to lose the battle of Almanza, and to ruin the whole expedition to Spain.

Thanks

In June 1710-11, the thanks of the House of Peers were returned to the Earl of Peterborough for his services in Spain; and the chancellor used these remarkable words in expressing them:- 'Had your lordship's wise counsels, particularly your advice at the council of war in Valencia, been pursued in the following campaign, the fatal battle of Almanza, and our greatest misfortunes which have since happened in Spain, had been prevented, and the design upon Toulon might have happily succeeded!'

In the years 1710 and 1711, the earl was employed in embassies to Turin, and other courts of Italy, and finally at Vienna. He returned from the German capital with such expedition, that none of his servants were able to keep up with him, but remained scattered in the different towns where he had severally outstripped them. He outrode, upon this same occasion, several expresses which he had himself dispatched to announce his motions. Swift at this time received a letter from him, dated Hanover, and desiring an answer to be sent to him at his country-house in England.

Indeed, Peterborough's characteristic rapidity of travelling was about this time celebrated by the dean, in a little poem inscribed to him:

Mordanto fills the trump of fame,
The Christian world his deeds proclaim,
And prints are crowded with his name.

In journies he outrides the post,
Sits up till midnight with his host,
Talks politics, and gives the toast.

Knows every prince in Europe's face,
Flies like a squib from place to place,
And travels not, but runs a race.

From Paris Gazette a-la-main,
This day arrived, without his train,
Mordanto in a week from Spain.

A messenger comes all a-reek,
Mordanto at Madrid to seek;
He left the town above a week.

Next day the post-boy winds his horn,
And rides through Dover in the morn:
Mordanto's landed from Leghorn.

Mordanto gallops on alone,
The roads are with his followers strown,
This breaks a girth, and that a bone.

His body active as his mind,
Returning sound in limb and wind,
Except some leather lost behind.

A skeleton in outward figure;
His meagre corpse, though full of vigour,
Would halt behind him, were it bigger.

So wonderful his expedition,
When you have not the least suspicion,
He's with you like an apparition.

Shines in all climates like a star,
In senates bold, and fierce in war,
A land commander, and a tar.

Heroic actions early bred in,
Ne'er to be matched, in modern reading,
But by his namesake, Charles of Sweden.

Return to England

Peterborough's haste was, in 1711, probably stimulated by the interest he took in the great public discussions on the policy of continuing the war with France. He argued in the affirmative with great ability, but without success. Although a strenuous Whig in principle, he was disliked by most of his own party, and greatly caressed in consequence by the Tories. After his return to England, he obtained the regiment of the royal horse guards, and the honours of the garter, being installed 4th August 1713. In November following, we find the earl British plenipotentiary to the King of Sicily and other Italian potentates; and in March, 1713-14, he was appointed governor of the island of Minorca.

Under George I and George II the Earl of Peterborough was general of the marine forces in Great Britain.

Health

In October 1735, he found it necessary to set sail for Lisbon for recovery of his health; 'no body,' to use Pope's expression, 'being so much wasted, no soul being more alive.' He was cut in the bladder for a suppression of urine; immediately after which cruel operation, he took coach, and travelled no less a journey than from Bristol to Southampton, 'like a man,' says the same poet, 'determined neither to live nor die like any other mortal.' he died on his voyage to Lisbon, 25th October 1735, aged seventy-seven.

The Earl of Peterborough was twice married, and left two sons and a daughter by his first wife.

To all the talents of a general and negotiator, this wonderful man added those belonging to a literary character. He associated with all the wits of Queen Anne's reign, was a lively poet, and his familiar letters are read to advantage amongst those of Gay, Arbuthnot, Swift, and Pope. He lived in great intimacy with the last, who boasts that,

He, whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines,
Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines;
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain,
Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.

To Pope, Peterborough bequeathed on his deathbed his watch, a present from the King of Sardinia, that, as he expressed it, his friend might have something to put him every day in mind of him.

The frame, in which were lodged such comprehensive talents, was thin, short, spare, and well calculated to endure the eternal fatigue imposed by the reckless tenant within. The famous lines of Dryden might be happily applied to the Earl of Peterborough:

A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er informed the tenement of clay.

His face, judging from the print in Dr. Birch's Lives, was thin; his eye lively and penetrating.

Such was Charles, Earl of Peterborough, one of those phenomena whom nature products once in the revolution of centuries, to show to ordinary men what she can do in a mood of prodigiality.

(1) Mackenzie, in his Narrative of the Siege: of Londonderry, mentions no officer called Carleton. There is indeed a Colonel Crofton frequently spoken of. But as Carleton himself served in the great Dutch war of 1665, we can hardly suppose him descended of a person distinguished by feats of arms in 1688.