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The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly called Colonel Jack

"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 instru mental 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 what ever 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 (after wards 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, anno 1701, 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.

This made the prince halt, not knowing what the case was or how strong we were, and, to get better intelligence, sent two hundred horse to surround or skirt the wood and beat up our quarter, and in the interim the Count de Tesse appeared in his rear. We found the strait he was in by the noise of our own troops at a distance; so we resolved to engage the two hundred horse immediately. Accordingly our little troop of horse drew up in the entrance of the lane and offered to skirmish, and our foot, lying behind the hedge which went round the wood, stood ready to act as occasion should offer. The horse, being attacked, gave way, and retired into the lane; but the Germans were too old for us there. They contented themselves to push us to the entrance, but would not be drawn into a narrow pass without knowing whether the hedges were lined or no.