ation was got up in Scotland by a
number of Jacobite noblemen and other gentlemen, pledging themselves to
stake fortune and life on the Stuart cause whenever its standard,
supported by foreign auxiliaries, should be raised in Great Britain.
This was the shadow cast before by the coming events of
"forty-five"--events which Walpole was not destined to see.

[Sidenote: 1743--George at Dettingen]

One link of personal interest connects England with the war. George
sent a body of British and Hanoverian troops into the field to support
Maria Theresa of Hungary. The troops were under the command of Lord
Stair, the veteran soldier and diplomatist, whose brilliant career has
been already described in this history. George himself joined Lord
Stair and fought at the battle of Dettingen, where the French were
completely defeated; one of the few creditable events of the war, so
far as English arms were concerned. George behaved with great courage
and spirit. If the poor, stupid, puffy, plucky little man did but know
what a strange, picturesque, memorable figure he was as he stood up
against the enemy at that battle of Dettingen! {183} The last king of
England who ever appeared with his army in the battle-field! There, as
he gets down off his unruly horse, determined to trust to his own stout
legs--because, as he says, they will not run away--there is the last
successor of the Williams, and the Edwards, and the Henrys; the last
successor of the Conquerer, and Edward the First, and the Black Prince,
and Henry the Fourth, and Henry of Agincourt, and William of Nassau;
the last English king who faces a foe in battle. With him went out, in
this country, the last tradition of the old and original duty and right
of royalty--the duty and the right to march with the national army in
war. A king in older days owed his kingship to his capacity for the
brave squares of war. In other countries the tradition lingers still.
A continental sovereign, even if he have not really the generalship to
lead an army, must appear on the field of battle, and at least seem to
lead it, and he must take his share of danger with the rest. But in
England the very idea has died out, never in all probability to come
back to life again. If one were to follow some of the examples set us
in classical imaginings, we might fancy the darkening clouds on the
west, where the sun has sunk over the battlefield, to be the phantom
shapes of the great English kings