Thackeray, whose reading of the character of Swift is far too generally accepted, finds fault with the phrase, and blames somewhat bitterly the man who uses it, "as if," he says, "the wretch who lay under that stone waiting God's judgment had a right to be angry." But it was natural that Swift, scanning life from his own point of view, should feel a fierce indignation against wrong-doing, injustice, dishonesty. He was an erring man, but he had the right to be angry with crimes of which he could never be guilty. His ways were not always our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts; but he walked his way, such as it was, courageously, and the temper of his thoughts was not unheroic. He was loyal to his leaders in adversity; he was true to friends who were sometimes untrue to him; his voice was always raised against oppression; he had the courage to speak up for Ireland and her liberties in some of the darkest days in our common history. To Thackeray he is only a "lonely guilty wretch," a bravo, and a bully--a man of genius, employing that genius for selfish or vindictive purpose. To soberer and more sympathetic judgment Thackeray's study of Swift is a cruel caricature. He may have been "miserrimus," but Grattan was right when he appealed long after to the "spirit of Swift" as the spirit of one in true sympathy with the expanding freedom of every people--a champion, strenuous to his uttermost, of liberty. {239} CHAPTER XXXVII. CHESTERFIELD IN DUBLIN CASTLE. [Sidenote: 1746--Chesterfield in Dublin Castle] The Jacobite rebellion had compelled the Government to withdraw some of their troops from the continent. France for a while was flattered and fluttered by a series of brisk successes which left almost the whole of the Austrian Netherlands in her possession at the end of the campaign of 1746. The battle of Lauffeld, near Maestricht, in Holland, in the summer of 1747, in which the allied Austrian, Dutch, and English armies were defeated, especially exhilarated the French Jacobites. The French were commanded by Marshal Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy. The English troops were under the command of Cumberland, and Lauffeld was therefore regarded by them as in some sort avenging Culloden. The victory was largely due at Lauffeld, as it had been at Fontenoy, to the desperate courage of the Irish Brigade, who, in the words of one of their enemies, "fought like devils," and actually came very near to capturing Cumberland himself. But the tide of victory soon turned for France on land and sea, and she became as anxious to make a peace as any other of the belligerent powers could be. The French were sick of the war. Henry Pelham was writing to the Duke of Cumberland to tell him that no more troops were to be had by England, and that, if they were to be had, there was no more money wherewith to pay them.