

331 

 GENERAL STANHOPE AND MADAME DE MUCI. 



LORD Mahon's History of the Succession War in Spain, fairly de- 

 serves many of the praises which have been liberally awarded to it in 

 the leading reviews of our day. It it generally temperate and impartial,, 

 and written with much power and sagacity. These high qualifications 

 in this historian are further enhanced by a style which, whilst no 

 ways theatrical, like many of the popular tirades and descriptions now 

 assuming the rank of standard works, has, nevertheless, much eloquence 

 and ease. Our author's general account of the courage and national 

 pride of the Spaniards, during this war, is forcible, and he seems 

 thoroughly to have comprehended the Spanish character. Some of his 

 descriptions remind us of passages in Colonel Napier's eloquent account 

 of scenes and transactions in the same country, a century later; and 

 much higher praise cannot be given to any historian of Spain, than to 

 be placed in no disparaging comparison with the author of the best 

 history of the Peninsular War. The gallant Earl of Peterborough is 

 here most excellently pourtrayed, though we wish the plan of the work 

 had allowed more use to have been made of his letters, which are as 

 singular and eccentric as he was himself. 



Our main object, however, in drawing particular notice to Lord 

 Mahon's interesting work, is to refer to some singular memoirs which we 

 have chanced to meet with, and which, being out of the way of searchers 

 for historical authorities, appear wholly to have escaped our noble 

 author and his reviewers. It will be seen by a perusal of this work, 

 that the disastrous surprise of General Stanhope, at Brihuega, was the 

 result of other combinations than those advanced by his defender and 

 panegyrist. The memoirs we refer to are those of Madame de Muci, 

 professedly written by a Mademoiselle D***, her fille-de-chambre, or 

 humble companion, and published at Amsterdam, without editor's name, 

 in 1731. A detailed account of the capture of General Stanhope is here 

 given, and we request our readers carefully to compare it with that of 

 Lord Mahon ; perhaps they will be as much surprised as we have been 

 at the result of this comparison. But for the evidence it furnishes, we 

 should have regarded the whole histoire of Madame de Muci, merely as 

 one of the thousand and one scandalous fictions which France has so 

 infamously promulgated to pandar to vicious tastes. There are, however, 

 so many of those minute coincidences, which, as Paley so justly remarks, 

 are the surest tests of truth, being scarcely within the power of fiction, 

 that we have been more than surprised we have been almost convinced. 

 The circumstances of the Arch-Duke's entry into Madrid of his stay 

 there, and retreat thence the account of the different counsels and 

 opinions of the allied generals, particularly Starenberg and Stanhope 

 the letter from the latter to the former, prolonging the stay at Brihuega, 

 and the final catastrophe will be all found detailed, with just the precise 

 degree of accuracy, neither ostentatiously minute, nor notoriously incor- 

 rect, which the position of the writer (if her memoirs be true), would 

 entitle us to expect in her relation of military affairs. Let it be remem- 

 bered, that Lord Mahon wrote with the original unpublished letters and 

 papers before him, to which the writer of these memoirs (be they true 

 or false) could have no access ; and it will, perhaps, be conceded, that 

 truth alone could have produced a correspondence so complete as we 

 shall shew (where the test of comparison was necessarily unknown to 



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