FROM THE PEACE OF NIMEGUEN TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT
A.D. 1678--1713
A few years passed over after this period, without the occurrence
of any transaction sufficiently important to require a mention
here. Each of the powers so lately at war followed the various
bent of their respective ambition. Charles of England was
sufficiently occupied by disputes with parliament, and the discovery,
fabrication, and punishment of plots, real or pretended. Louis
XIV., by a stretch of audacious pride hitherto unknown, arrogated
to himself the supreme power of regulating the rest of Europe, as
if all the other princes were his vassals. He established courts,
or chambers of reunion as they were called, in Metz and Brisac,
which cited princes, issued decrees, and authorized spoliation,
in the most unjust and arbitrary manner. Louis chose to award to
himself Luxemburg, Chiny, and a considerable portion of Brabant
and Flanders. He marched a considerable army into Belgium, which
the Spanish governors were unable to oppose. The Prince of Orange,
who labored incessantly to excite a confederacy among the other
powers of Europe against the unwarrantable aggressions of France,
was unable to arouse his countrymen to actual war; and was forced,
instead of gaining the glory he longed for, to consent to a truce
for twenty years, which the states-general, now wholly pacific
and not a little cowardly, were too happy to obtain from France.
The emperor and the king of Spain gladly entered into a like
treaty. The fact was that the peace of Nimeguen had disjointed
the great confederacy which William had so successfully brought
about; and the various powers were laid utterly prostrate at the
feet of the imperious Louis, who for a while held the destinies
of Europe in his hands.
Charles II. died most unexpectedly in the year 1685; and his
obstinately bigoted and unconstitutional successor, James II.,
seemed, during a reign of not four years' continuance, to rush
wilfully headlong to ruin. During this period, the Prince of
Orange had maintained a most circumspect and unexceptionable
line of conduct; steering clear of all interference with English
affairs; giving offence to none of the political factions; and
observing in every instance the duty and regard which he owed to
his father-in-law. During Monmouth's invasion he had despatched
to James's assistance six regiments of British troops which were
in the Dutch service, and he offered to take the command of the
king's forces against the rebels. It was from the application
of James himself that William took any part in English affairs;
for he was more widely and much more congenially employed in the
establishment of a fresh league against France. Louis had aroused
a new feeling throughout Protestant Europe by the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. The refugees whom he had driven from
their native country inspired in those in which they settled
hatred of his persecution as well as alarm of his power. Holland
now entered into all the views of the Prince of Orange. By his
immense influence he succeeded in forming the great confederacy
called the League of Augsburg, to which the emperor, Spain, and
almost every European power but England became parties.
James gave the prince reason to believe that he too would join
in this great project, if William would in return concur in his
views of domestic tyranny; but William wisely refused. James, much
disappointed, and irritated by the moderation which showed his
own violence in such striking contrast, expressed his displeasure
against the prince, and against the Dutch generally, by various
vexatious acts. William resolved to maintain a high attitude;
and many applications were made to him by the most considerable
persons in England for relief against James's violent measures,
and which there was but one method of making effectual. That method
was force. But as long as the Princess of Orange was certain of
succeeding to the crown on her father's death, William hesitated
to join in an attempt that might possibly have failed and lost
her her inheritance. But the birth of a son, which, in giving
James a male heir, destroyed all hope of redress for the kingdom,
decided the wavering, and rendered the determined desperate.
The prince chose the time for his enterprise with the sagacity,
arranged its plan with the prudence, and put it into execution
with the vigor, which were habitual qualities of his mind.
Louis XIV., menaced by the League of Augsburg, had resolved to
strike the first blow against the allies. He invaded Germany; so
that the Dutch preparations seemed in the first instance intended
as measures of defence against the progress of the French. But
Louis's envoy at The Hague could not be long deceived. He gave
notice to his master, who in his turn warned James. But that
infatuated monarch not only doubted the intelligence, but refused
the French king's offers of assistance and co-operation. On the
21st of October, the Prince of Orange, with an army of fourteen
thousand men, and a fleet of five hundred vessels of all kinds,
set sail from Helvoetsluys; and after some delays from bad weather,
he safely landed his army in Torbay, on the 5th of November, 1688.
The desertion of James's best friends; his own consternation,
flight, seizure, and second escape; and the solemn act by which he
was deposed; were the rapid occurrences of a few weeks: and thus
the grandest revolution that England had ever seen was happily
consummated. Without entering here on legislative reasonings or
party sophisms, it is enough to record the act itself; and to
say, in reference to our more immediate subject, that without
the assistance of Holland and her glorious chief, England might
have still remained enslaved, or have had to purchase liberty
by oceans of blood. By the bill of settlement, the crown was
conveyed jointly to the Prince and Princess of Orange, the sole
administration of government to remain in the prince; and the
new sovereigns were proclaimed on the 23d of February, 1689.
The convention, which had arranged this important point, annexed
to the settlement a declaration of rights, by which the powers
of royal prerogative and the extent of popular privilege were
defined and guaranteed.
William, now become king of England, still preserved his title
of stadtholder of Holland; and presented the singular instance
of a monarchy and a republic being at the same time governed by
the same individual. But whether as a king or a citizen, William
was actuated by one grand and powerful principle, to which every
act of private administration was made subservient, although
it certainly called for no sacrifice that was not required for
the political existence of the two nations of which he was the
head. Inveterate opposition to the power of Louis XIV. was this
all-absorbing motive. A sentiment so mighty left William but
little time for inferior points of government, and everything
but that seems to have irritated and disgusted him. He was soon
again on the Continent, the chief theatre of his efforts. He
put himself in front of the confederacy which resulted from the
congress of Utrecht in 1690. He took the command of the allied
army; and till the hour of his death, he never ceased his
indefatigable course of hostility, whether in the camp or the
cabinet, at the head of the allied armies, or as the guiding
spirit of the councils which gave them force and motion.
Several campaigns were expended, and bloody combats fought, almost
all to the disadvantage of William, whose genius for war was
never seconded by that good fortune which so often decides the
fate of battles in defiance of all the calculations of talent.
But no reverse had power to shake the constancy and courage of
William. He always appeared as formidable after defeat as he
was before action. His conquerors gained little but the honor
of the day. Fleurus, Steinkerk, Herwinde, were successively the
scenes of his evil fortune, and the sources of his fame. His
retreats were master-strokes of vigilant activity and profound
combinations. Many eminent sieges took place during this war.
Among other towns, Mons and Namur were taken by the French, and
Huy by the allies; and the army of Marshal Villeroi bombarded
Brussels during three days, in August, 1695, with such fury that
the town-house, fourteen churches, and four thousand houses,
were reduced to ashes. The year following this event saw another
undecisive campaign. During the continuance of this war, the naval
transactions present no grand results. Du Bart, a celebrated
adventurer of Dunkirk, occupies the leading place in those affairs,
in which he carried on a desultory but active warfare against the
Dutch and English fleets, and generally with great success.
All the nations which had taken part in so many wars were now
becoming exhausted by the contest, but none so much so as France.
The great despot who had so long wielded the energies of that
country with such wonderful splendor and success found that his
unbounded love of dominion was gradually sapping all the real
good of his people, in chimerical schemes of universal conquest.
England, though with much resolution voting new supplies, and in
every way upholding William in his plans for the continuance of
war, was rejoiced when Louis accepted the mediation of Charles
XI., king of Sweden, and agreed to concessions which made peace
feasible. The emperor and Charles II. of Spain, were less satisfied
with those concessions; but everything was finally arranged to meet
the general views of the parties, and negotiations were opened
at Ryswyk. The death of the king of Sweden, and the minority of
his son and successor, the celebrated Charles XII., retarded
them on points of form for some time. At length, on the 20th of
September, 1697, the articles of the treaty were subscribed by
the Dutch, English, Spanish, and French ambassadors. The treaty
consisted of seventeen articles. The French king declared he
would not disturb or disquiet the king of Great Britain, whose
title he now for the first time acknowledged. Between France
and Holland were declared a general armistice, perpetual amity,
a mutual restitution of towns, a reciprocal renunciation of all
pretensions upon each other, and a treaty of commerce which was
immediately put into execution. Thus, after this long, expensive,
and sanguinary war, things were established just on the footing they
had been by the peace of Nimeguen; and a great, though unavailable
lesson, read to the world on the futility and wickedness of those
quarrels in which the personal ambition of kings leads to the
misery of the people. Had the allies been true to each other
throughout, Louis would certainly have been reduced much lower
than he now was. His pride was humbled, and his encroachments
stopped. But the sufferings of the various countries engaged in
the war were too generally reciprocal to make its result of any
material benefit to either. The emperor held out for a while,
encouraged by the great victory gained by his general, Prince
Eugene of Savoy, over the Turks at Zenta in Hungary; but he finally
acceded to the terms offered by France; the peace, therefore,
became general, but, unfortunately for Europe, of very short
duration.
France, as if looking forward to the speedy renewal of hostilities,
still kept her armies undisbanded. Let the foresight of her
politicians have been what it might, this negative proof of it was
justified by events. The king of Spain, a weak prince, without any
direct heir for his possessions, considered himself authorized to
dispose of their succession by will. The leading powers of Europe
thought otherwise, and took this right upon themselves. Charles
died on the 1st of November, 1700, and thus put the important
question to the test. By a solemn testament he declared Philip,
duke of Anjou, second son of the dauphin, and grandson of Louis
XIV., his successor to the whole of the Spanish monarchy. Louis
immediately renounced his adherence to the treaties of partition,
executed at The Hague and in London, in 1698 and 1700, and to which
he had been a contracting party; and prepared to maintain the act
by which the last of the descendants of Charles V. bequeathed
the possessions of Spain and the Indies to the family which had
so long been the inveterate enemy and rival of his own.
The emperor Leopold, on his part, prepared to defend his claims;
and thus commenced the new war between him and France, which took
its name from the succession which formed the object of dispute.
Hostilities were commenced in Italy, where Prince Eugene, the
conqueror of the Turks, commanded for Leopold, and every day
made for himself a still more brilliant reputation. Louis sent
his grandson to Spain to take possession of the inheritance,
for which so hard a fight was yet to be maintained, with the
striking expression at parting--"My child, there are no longer
any Pyrenees!" an expression most happily unprophetic for the
future independence of Europe; for the moral force of the barrier
has long existed after the expiration of the family compact which
was meant to deprive it of its force.
Louis prepared to act vigorously. Among other measures, he caused
part of the Dutch army that was quartered in Luxemburg and Brabant
to be suddenly made prisoners of war, because they would not own
Philip V. as king of Spain. The states-general were dreadfully
alarmed, immediately made the required acknowledgment, and in
consequence had their soldiers released. They quickly reinforced
their garrisons, purchased supplies, solicited foreign aid, and
prepared for the worst that might happen. They wrote to King
William, professing the most inviolable attachment to England;
and he met their application by warm assurances of support and
an immediate reinforcement of three regiments.
William followed up these measures by the formation of the celebrated
treaty called the Grand Alliance, by which England, the States,
and the emperor covenanted for the support of the pretensions
of the latter to the Spanish monarchy. William was preparing,
in spite of his declining health, to take his usual lead in the
military operations now decided on, and almost all Europe was
again looking forward to his guidance, when he died on the 8th of
March, 1701, leaving his great plans to receive their execution
from still more able adepts in the art of war.
William's character has been traced by many hands. In his capacity
of king of England, it is not our province to judge him in this
place. As stadtholder of Holland, he merits unqualified praise.
Like his great ancestor William I., whom he more resembled than
any other of his race, he saved the country in a time of such
imminent peril that its abandonment seemed the only resource
left to the inhabitants, who preferred self-exile to slavery.
All his acts were certainly merged in the one overwhelming object
of a great ambition--that noble quality, which, if coupled with
the love of country, is the very essence of true heroism. William
was the last of that illustrious line which for a century and a
half had filled Europe with admiration. He never had a child;
and being himself an only one, his title as Prince of Orange
passed into another branch of the family. He left his cousin,
Prince Frison of Nassau, the stadtholder of Friesland, his sole
and universal heir, and appointed the states-general his executors.
William's death filled Holland with mourning and alarm. The meeting
of the states-general after this sad intelligence was of a most
affecting description; but William, like all master-minds, had
left the mantle of his inspiration on his friends and followers.
Heinsius, the grand pensionary, followed up the views of the
lamented stadtholder with considerable energy, and was answered
by the unanimous exertions of the country. Strong assurances
of support from Queen Anne, William's successor, still further
encouraged the republic, which now vigorously prepared for war.
But it did not lose this occasion of recurring to the form of
government of 1650. No new stadtholder was now appointed; the
supreme authority being vested in the general assembly of the
states, and the active direction of affairs confided to the grand
pensionary. This departure from the form of government which had
been on various occasions proved to be essential to the safety,
although at all times hazardous to the independence, of the States,
was not attended with any evil consequences. The factions and
the anarchy which had before been the consequence of the course
now adopted were prevented by the potent influence of national
fear lest the enemy might triumph, and crush the hopes, the
jealousies, and the enmities of all parties in one general ruin.
Thus the common danger awoke a common interest, and the splendid
successes of her allies kept Holland steady in the career of
patriotic energy which had its rise in the dread of her redoubtable
foe.
The joy in France at William's death was proportionate to the
grief it created in Holland; and the arrogant confidence of Louis
seemed to know no bounds. "I will punish these audacious merchants,"
said he, with an air of disdain, when he read the manifesto of
Holland; not foreseeing that those he affected to despise so
much would, ere long, command in a great measure the destinies
of his crown. Queen Anne entered upon the war with masculine
intrepidity, and maintained it with heroic energy. Efforts were
made by the English ministry and the states-general to mediate
between the kings of Sweden and Poland. But Charles XII., enamored
of glory, and bent on the one great object of his designs against
Russia, would listen to nothing that might lead him from his
immediate career of victory. Many other of the northern princes
were withheld, by various motives, from entering into the contest
with France, and its whole brunt devolved on the original members
of the Grand Alliance. The generals who carried it on were
Marlborough and Prince Eugene. The former, at its commencement
an earl, and subsequently raised to the dignity of duke, was
declared generalissimo of the Dutch and English forces. He was
a man of most powerful genius, both as warrior and politician.
A pupil of the great Turenne, his exploits left those of his
master in the shade. No commander ever possessed in a greater
degree the faculty of forming vast designs, and of carrying them
into effect with consummate skill; no one displayed more coolness
and courage in action, saw with a keener eye the errors of the
enemy, or knew better how to profit by success. He never laid
siege to a town that he did not take, and never fought a battle
that he did not gain.
Prince Eugene joined to the highest order of personal bravery a
profound judgment for the grand movements of war, and a capacity
for the most minute of the minor details on which their successful
issue so often depends. United in the same cause, these two great
generals pursued their course without the least misunderstanding.
At the close of each of those successive campaigns, in which they
reaped such a full harvest of renown, they retired together to The
Hague, to arrange, in the profoundest secrecy, the plans for the
next year's operations, with one other person, who formed the great
point of union between them, and completed a triumvirate without
a parallel in the history of political affairs. This third was
Heinsius, one of those great men produced by the republic whose
names are tantamount to the most detailed eulogium for talent
and patriotism. Every enterprise projected by the confederates
was deliberately examined, rejected, or approved by these three
associates, whose strict union of purpose, disowning all petty
rivalry, formed the centre of counsels and the source of
circumstances finally so fatal to France.
Louis XIV., now sixty years of age, could no longer himself command
his armies, or probably did not wish to risk the reputation he
was conscious of having gained by the advice and services of
Turenne, Conde, and Luxemburg. Louvois, too, was dead; and Colbert
no longer managed his finances. A council of rash and ignorant
ministers hung like a dead weight on the talent of the generals
who succeeded the great men above mentioned. Favor and not merit
too often decided promotion, and lavished command. Vendome, Villars,
Boufflers, and Berwick were set aside, to make way for Villeroi,
Tallard, and Marsin, men every way inferior.
The war began in 1702 in Italy, and Marlborough opened his first
campaign in Brabant also in that year. For several succeeding
years the confederates pursued a career of brilliant success,
the details of which do not properly belong to this work. A mere
chronology of celebrated battles would be of little interest, and
the pages of English history abound in records of those deeds.
Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, are names that
speak for themselves, and tell their own tale of glory. The utter
humiliation of France was the result of events, in which the
undying fame of England for inflexible perseverance and unbounded
generosity was joined in the strictest union with that of Holland;
and the impetuous valor of the worthy successor to the title
of Prince of Orange was, on many occasions, particularly at
Malplaquet, supported by the devotion and gallantry of the Dutch
contingent in the allied armies. The naval affairs of Holland
offered nothing very remarkable. The states had always a fleet
ready to support the English in their enterprises; but no eminent
admiral arose to rival the renown of Rooke, Byng, Benbow, and others
of their allies. The first of those admirals took Gibraltar, which
has ever since remained in the possession of England. The great
earl of Peterborough carried on the war with splendid success in
Portugal and Spain, supported occasionally by the English fleet
under Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and that of Holland under Admirals
Allemonde and Wapenaer.
During the progress of the war, the haughty and longtime imperial
Louis was reduced to a state of humiliation that excited a compassion
so profound as to prevent its own open expression--the most galling
of all sentiments to a proud mind. In the year 1709 he solicited
peace on terms of most abject submission. The states-general,
under the influence of the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene,
rejected all his supplications, retorting unsparingly the insolent
harshness with which he had formerly received similar proposals
from them. France, roused to renewed exertions by the insulting
treatment experienced by her humiliated but still haughty despot,
made prodigious but vain efforts to repair her ruinous losses.
In the following year Louis renewed his attempts to obtain some
tolerable conditions; offering to renounce his grandson, and to
comply with all the former demands of the confederates. Even these
overtures were rejected; Holland and England appearing satisfied
with nothing short of--what was after all impracticable--the total
destruction of the great power which Louis had so long proved
to be incompatible with their welfare.
The war still went on; and the taking of Bouchain on the 30th
of August, 1711, closed the almost unrivalled military career
of Marlborough, by the success of one of his boldest and best
conducted exploits. Party intrigue had accomplished what, in
court parlance, is called the disgrace, but which, in the language
of common sense, means only the dismissal of this great man. The
new ministry, who hated the Dutch, now entered seriously into
negotiations with France. The queen acceded to these views, and
sent special envoys to communicate with the court of Versailles.
The states-general found it impossible to continue hostilities if
England withdrew from the coalition; conferences were consequently
opened at Utrecht in the month of January, 1712. England took
the important station of arbiter in the great question there
debated. The only essential conditions which she demanded
individually were the renunciation of all claims to the crown of
France by Philip V., and the demolition of the harbor of Dunkirk.
The first of these was the more readily acceded to, as the great
battles of Almanza and Villaviciosa, gained by Philip's generals,
the dukes of Berwick and Vendome, had steadily fixed him on the
throne of Spain--a point still more firmly secured by the death
of the emperor Joseph I., son of Leopold, and the elevation of
his brother Charles, Philip's competitor for the crown of Spain,
to the imperial dignity, by the title of Charles VI.
The peace was not definitively signed until the 11th of April,
1713; and France obtained far better conditions than those which
were refused her a few years previously. The Belgian provinces
were given to the new emperor, and must henceforth be called
the Austrian instead of the Spanish Netherlands. The gold and
the blood of Holland had been profusely expended during this
contest; it might seem for no positive results; but the exhaustion
produced to every one of the other belligerents was a source
of peace and prosperity to the republic. Its commerce was
re-established; its financial resources recovered their level;
and altogether we must fix on the epoch now before us as that
of its utmost point of influence and greatness. France, on the
contrary, was now reduced from its palmy state of almost European
sovereignty to one of the deepest misery; and its monarch, in
his old age, found little left of his former power but those
records of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture which
tell posterity of his magnificence, and the splendor of which
throw his faults and his misfortunes into the shade.
The great object now to be accomplished by the United Provinces
was the regulation of a distinct and guaranteed line of frontier
between the republic and France. This object had become by degrees,
ever since the peace of Munster, a fundamental maxim of their
politics. The interposition of the Belgian provinces between the
republic and France was of serious inconvenience to the former in
this point of view. It was made the subject of a special article in
"the grand alliance." In the year 1707 it was particularly discussed
between England and the States, to the great discontent of the
emperor, who was far from wishing its definitive settlement. But
it was now become an indispensable item in the total of important
measures whose accomplishment was called for by the peace of
Utrecht. Conferences were opened on this sole question at Antwerp
in the year 1714; and, after protracted and difficult discussions,
the treaty of the Barrier was concluded on the 15th of November,
1715.
This treaty was looked on with an evil eye in the Austrian
Netherlands. The clamor was great and general; jealousy of the
commercial prosperity of Holland being the real motive. Long
negotiations took place on the subject of the treaty; and in
December, 1718, the republic consented to modify some of the
articles. The Pragmatic Sanction, published at Vienna in 1713
by Charles VI., regulated the succession to all the imperial
hereditary possessions; and, among the rest, the provinces of
the Netherlands. But this arrangement, though guaranteed by the
chief powers of Europe, was, in the sequel, little respected,
and but indifferently executed.