LONDON, March 25, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I am in great joy at the written and the verbal accounts which
I have received lately of you.
The former, from Mr. Harte; the latter, from Mr. Trevanion, who is
arrived here: they conspire to convince me that you employ your time well
at Leipsig. I am glad to find you consult your own interest and your own
pleasure so much; for the knowledge which you will acquire in these two
years is equally necessary for both. I am likewise particularly pleased
to find that you turn yourself to that sort of knowledge which is more
peculiarly necessary for your destination: for Mr. Harte tells me you
have read, with attention, Caillieres, Pequet, and Richelieu’s “Letters.”
The “Memoirs” of the Cardinal de Retz will both entertain and instruct
you; they relate to a very interesting period of the French history, the
ministry of Cardinal Mazarin, during the minority of Lewis XIV. The
characters of all the considerable people of that time are drawn, in a
short, strong, and masterly manner; and the political reflections, which
are most of them printed in italics, are the justest that ever I met
with: they are not the labored reflections of a systematical closet
politician, who, without the least experience of business, sits at home
and writes maxims; but they are the reflections which a great and able
man formed from long experience and practice in great business. They are
true conclusions, drawn from facts, not from speculations.
As modern history is particularly your business, I will give you some
rules to direct your study of it. It begins, properly with Charlemagne,
in the year 800. But as, in those times of ignorance, the priests and
monks were almost the only people that could or did write, we have
scarcely any histories of those times but such as they have been pleased
to give us, which are compounds of ignorance, superstition, and party
zeal. So that a general notion of what is rather supposed, than really
known to be, the history of the five or six following centuries, seems to
be sufficient; and much time would be but ill employed in a minute
attention to those legends. But reserve your utmost care, and most
diligent inquiries, from the fifteenth century, and downward. Then
learning began to revive, and credible histories to be written; Europe
began to take the form, which, to some degree, it still retains: at least
the foundations of the present great powers of Europe were then laid.
Lewis the Eleventh made France, in truth, a monarchy, or, as he used to
say himself, ‘la mit hors de Page’. Before his time, there were
independent provinces in France, as the Duchy of Brittany, etc., whose
princes tore it to pieces, and kept it in constant domestic confusion.
Lewis the Eleventh reduced all these petty states, by fraud, force, or
marriage; for he scrupled no means to obtain his ends.
About that time, Ferdinand King of Aragon, and Isabella his wife, Queen
of Castile, united the whole Spanish monarchy, and drove the Moors out of
Spain, who had till then kept position of Granada. About that time, too,
the house of Austria laid the great foundations of its subsequent power;
first, by the marriage of Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy; and
then, by the marriage of his son Philip, Archduke of Austria, with Jane,
the daughter of Isabella, Queen of Spain, and heiress of that whole
kingdom, and of the West Indies. By the first of these marriages, the
house of Austria acquired the seventeen provinces, and by the latter,
Spain and America; all which centered in the person of Charles the Fifth,
son of the above-mentioned Archduke Philip, the son of Maximilian. It was
upon account of these two marriages, that the following Latin distich was
made:
Bella gerant alii, Tu felix Austria nube;
Nam qua, Mars aliis; dat tibi regna Venus.
This immense power, which the Emperor Charles the Fifth found himself
possessed of, gave him a desire for universal power (for people never
desire all till they have gotten a great deal), and alarmed France; this
sowed the seeds of that jealousy and enmity, which have flourished ever
since between those two great powers. Afterward the House of Austria was
weakened by the division made by Charles the Fifth of his dominions,
between his son, Philip the Second of Spain, and his brother Ferdinand;
and has ever since been dwindling to the weak condition in which it now
is. This is a most interesting part of the history of Europe, of which it
is absolutely necessary that you should be exactly and minutely informed.
There are in the history of most countries, certain very remarkable eras,
which deserve more particular inquiry and attention than the common run
of history. Such is the revolt of the Seventeen Provinces, in the reign
of Philip the Second of Spain, which ended in forming the present
republic of the Seven United Provinces, whose independency was first
allowed by Spain at the treaty of Munster. Such was the extraordinary
revolution of Portugal, in the year 1640, in favor of the present House
of Braganza. Such is the famous revolution of Sweden, when Christian the
Second of Denmark, who was also king of Sweden, was driven out by
Gustavus Vasa. And such also is that memorable era in Denmark, of 1660;
when the states of that kingdom made a voluntary surrender of all their
rights and liberties to the Crown, and changed that free state into the
most absolute monarchy now in Europe. The Acta Regis, upon that occasion,
are worth your perusing. These remarkable periods of modern history
deserve your particular attention, and most of them have been treated
singly by good historians, which are worth your reading. The revolutions
of Sweden, and of Portugal, are most admirably well written by L’Abbe de
Vertot; they are short, and will not take twelve hours’ reading. There is
another book which very well deserves your looking into, but not worth
your buying at present, because it is not portable; if you can borrow or
hire it, you should; and that is, ‘L’ Histoire des Traits de Paix, in two
volumes, folio, which make part of the ‘Corps Diplomatique’. You will
there find a short and clear history, and the substance of every treaty
made in Europe, during the last century, from the treaty of Vervins.
Three parts in four of this book are not worth your reading, as they
relate to treaties of very little importance; but if you select the most
considerable ones, read them with attention, and take some notes, it will
be of great use to you. Attend chiefly to those in which the great powers
of Europe are the parties; such as the treaty of the Pyrenees, between
France and Spain; the treaties of Nimeguen and Ryswick; but, above all,
the treaty of Munster should be most circumstantially and minutely known
to you, as almost every treaty made since has some reference to it. For
this, Pere Bougeant is the best book you can read, as it takes in the
thirty years’ war, which preceded that treaty. The treaty itself, which
is made a perpetual law of the empire, comes in the course of your
lectures upon the ‘Jus Publicum Imperii’.
In order to furnish you with materials for a letter, and at the same time
to inform both you and myself of what it is right that we should know,
pray answer me the following questions:
How many companies are there in the Saxon regiments of foot? How many men
in each company?
How many troops in the regiments of horse and dragoons; and how many men
in each?
What number of commissioned and non-commissioned officers in a company of
foot, or in a troop of horse or dragoons? N. B. Noncommissioned officers
are all those below ensigns and cornets.
What is the daily pay of a Saxon foot soldier, dragoon, and trooper?
What are the several ranks of the ‘Etat Major-general’? N. B. The Etat
Major-general is everything above colonel. The Austrians have no
brigadiers, and the French have no major-generals in their Etat Major.
What have the Saxons? Adieu!