BERWICK, THE DUKE OF, was a natural son of James II. by Arabella Churchill, sister to the great Duke of Marlborough. "The youth, named James Fitzjames (Macaulay's Hist. of Eng., vol. ii. p. 326), had as yet given no promise of the eminence which he afterwards attained; but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that he had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of the concubine with the bitter hatred of a childless wife. A small part of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the Princess of Orange. It does not appear that this absurd design was ever countenanced by the king. The boy, however, was acknowledged; and whatever distinction a subject not of the royal blood could hope to attain were bestowed on him. He had been created Duke of Berwick; and he was now loaded with honourable and lucrative employments, taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply with the royal commands." At the revolution of 1688, he became an exile with his father in France, where he was recommended to the court by his superior merit. He was created marshal of France, knight of the Holy Ghost, duke and peer of France, grandee of Spain, and commander-in-chief of the French armies; nor were these honours and employments greater than his services merited. He lived in an age when the Prince of Orange and many other great generals commanded against him; yet his reputation as a warrior suffered no eclipse by the comparison; while the victory of Almanza, which secured Spain to the Bourbon dynasty, stamped his character as a great and successful commander. His courage was cool and steady; and he was eminently remarkable for entire self-possession in all circumstances, even the most critical;—watchful, cautious, and persevering; ever ready to take advantage of a fault or an oversight committed by an antagonist, yet, throughout his whole career, frugal of the blood of his soldiers, and anxious that it should not on any occasion be wantonly or unnecessarily shed. The system of discipline he maintained was rigid; and although the wants of the soldier were scrupulously attended to, no commander ever punished excesses with greater severity.
The Duke of Berwick was much blamed by the more zealous and violent adherents of the Stuart family for not being sufficiently attached to the Jacobite party, which was that of his own family. But on a cool examination of his actions it will appear that his behaviour in this particular was, like the rest of his conduct, equally sensible and just. When he accepted of employments, received honours and dignities, and became naturalized in France, he considered it his duty to become a Frenchman in reality, and to be regulated in regard to the cause of the Stuarts according to the will and pleasure of the sovereign whom he served. But when commanded by his king to promote the views of the Stuart family, he acted with the greatest sincerity, and took the most sensible and effectual methods to serve his unhappy house. In a word, the Duke of Berwick was a man of high principle and honour; and he showed by his life and actions that moral integrity is compatible and consistent with the life of a statesman and a great general. He was killed by a cannon-ball at the siege of Philippsburg on the Rhine, in 1734, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.