WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, 1702-1713.--SEA BATTLE OF MALAGA.
During the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, amid all the
strifes of arms and diplomacy, there had been clearly foreseen the
coming of an event which would raise new and great issues. This was
the failure of the direct royal line in that branch of the House of
Austria which was then on the Spanish throne; and the issues to be
determined when the present king, infirm both in body and mind, should
die, were whether the new monarch was to be taken from the House of
Bourbon or from the Austrian family in Germany; and whether, in either
event, the sovereign thus raised to the throne should succeed to the
entire inheritance, the Empire of Spain, or some partition of that
vast inheritance be made in the interests of the balance of European
power. But this balance of power was no longer understood in the
narrow sense of continental possessions; the effect of the new
arrangements upon commerce, shipping, and the control both of the
ocean and the Mediterranean, was closely looked to. The influence of
the two sea powers and the nature of their interests were becoming
more evident.
It is necessary to recall the various countries that were ruled by
Spain at that time in order to understand the strategic questions, as
they may fairly be called, now to be settled. These were, in Europe,
the Netherlands (now Belgium); Naples and the south of Italy; Milan
and other provinces in the north; and, in the Mediterranean, Sicily,
Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. Corsica at that time belonged to
Genoa. In the western hemisphere, besides Cuba and Porto Rico, Spain
then held all that part of the continent now divided among the
Spanish American States, a region whose vast commercial possibilities
were coming to be understood; and in the Asian archipelago there were
large possessions that entered less into the present dispute. The
excessive weakness of this empire, owing to the decay of the central
kingdom, had hitherto caused other nations, occupied as they were with
more immediate interests, to regard with indifference its enormous
extent. This indifference could not last when there was a prospect of
a stronger administration, backed possibly by alliances with one of
the great powers of Europe.
It would be foreign to our subject to enter into the details of
diplomatic arrangement, which, by shifting about peoples and
territories from one ruler to another, sought to reach a political
balance peacefully. The cardinal points of each nation's policy may be
shortly stated. The Spanish cabinet and people objected to any
solution which dismembered the empire. The English and the Dutch
objected to any extension of France in the Spanish Netherlands, and to
the monopoly by the French of the trade with Spanish America, both
which they feared as the results of placing a Bourbon on the Spanish
throne. Louis XIV. wanted Naples and Sicily for one of his sons, in
case of any partition; thus giving France a strong Mediterranean
position, but one which would be at the mercy of the sea powers,--a
fact which induced William III. to acquiesce in this demand. The
Emperor of Austria particularly objected to these Mediterranean
positions going away from his family, and refused to come into any of
the partition treaties. Before any arrangement was perfected, the
actual king of Spain died, but before his death was induced by his
ministers to sign a will, bequeathing all his States to the grandson
of Louis XIV., then Duke of Anjou, known afterward as Philip V. of
Spain. By this step it was hoped to preserve the whole, by enlisting
in its defence the nearest and one of the most powerful States in
Europe,--nearest, if are excepted the powers ruling the sea, which are
always near any country whose ports are open to their ships.
Louis XIV. accepted the bequest, and in so doing felt bound in honor
to resist all attempts at partition. The union of the two kingdoms
under one family promised important advantages to France, henceforth
delivered from that old enemy in the rear, which had balked so many of
her efforts to extend her frontiers eastward. As a matter of fact,
from that time, with rare breaks, there existed between the two
kingdoms an alliance, the result of family ties, which only the
weakness of Spain kept from being dangerous to the rest of Europe. The
other countries at once realized the situation, and nothing could have
saved war but some backward step on the part of the French king. The
statesmen of England and Holland, the two powers on whose wealth the
threatened war must depend, proposed that the Italian States should be
given to the son of the Austrian emperor, Belgium be occupied by
themselves, and that the new king of Spain should grant no commercial
privileges in the Indies to France above other nations. To the credit
of their wisdom it must be said that this compromise was the one which
after ten years of war was found, on the whole, best; and in it is
seen the growing sense of the value of extension by sea. Louis,
however, would not yield; on the contrary, he occupied, by connivance
of the Spanish governors, towns in the Netherlands which had been held
by Dutch troops under treaties with Spain. Soon after, in February,
1701, the English Parliament met, and denounced any treaty which
promised France the dominion of the Mediterranean. Holland began to
arm, and the Emperor of Austria pushed his troops into northern Italy,
where a campaign followed, greatly to the disadvantage of Louis.
In September of the same year, 1701, the two sea powers and the
Emperor of Austria signed a secret treaty, which laid down the chief
lines of the coming war, with the exception of that waged in the
Spanish peninsula itself. By it the allies undertook to conquer the
Spanish Netherlands in order to place a barrier between France and the
United Provinces; to conquer Milan as a security for the emperor's
other provinces; and to conquer Naples and Sicily for the same
security, and also for the security of the navigation and commerce of
the subjects of his Britannic Majesty and of the United Provinces. The
sea powers should have the right to conquer, for the utility of the
said navigation and commerce, the countries and towns of the Spanish
Indies; and all that they should be able to take there should be for
them and remain theirs. The war begun, none of the allies could treat
without the others, nor without having taken just measures--first, to
prevent the kingdoms of France and Spain from ever being united under
the same king; second, to prevent the French from ever making
themselves masters of the Spanish Indies, or from sending ships
thither to engage, directly or indirectly, in commerce; third, to
secure to the subjects of his Britannic Majesty and of the United
Provinces the commercial privileges which they enjoyed in all the
Spanish States under the late king.
It will be noticed that in these conditions there is no suggestion of
any intention to resist the accession of the Bourbon king, who was
called to the throne by the Spanish government and at first
acknowledged by England and Holland; but, on the other hand, the
Emperor of Austria does not withdraw the Austrian claim, which centred
in his own person. The voice of the sea powers was paramount in the
coalition, as the terms of the treaty safeguarding their commercial
interests show, though, as they were about to use German armies for
the land war, German claims also had to be considered. As a French
historian points out:--
"This was really a new treaty of partition.... William III., who
had conducted all, had taken care not to exhaust England and
Holland, in order to restore the Spanish monarchy, intact, to
the emperor; his final condition was to reduce the new king,
Philip V., to Spain proper, and to secure to England and Holland
at once the commercial use of all the regions that had been
under the Spanish monarchy, together with important military and
maritime positions against France."[75]
But though war was imminent, the countries about to engage hesitated.
Holland would not move without England, and despite the strong
feeling of the latter country against France, the manufacturers and
merchants still remembered the terrible sufferings of the last war.
Just then, as the scales were wavering, James II. died. Louis,
yielding to a sentiment of sympathy and urged by his nearest
intimates, formally recognized the son of James as king of England;
and the English people, enraged at what they looked on as a threat and
an insult, threw aside all merely prudential considerations. The House
of Lords declared that "there could be no security till the usurper of
the Spanish monarchy was brought to reason;" and the House of Commons
voted fifty thousand soldiers and thirty-five thousand seamen, besides
subsidies for German and Danish auxiliaries. William III. died soon
after, in March, 1702; but Queen Anne took up his policy, which had
become that of the English and Dutch peoples.
Louis XIV. tried to break part of the on-coming storm by forming a
league of neutrals among the other German States; but the emperor
adroitly made use of the German feeling, and won to his side the
Elector of Brandenburg by acknowledging him as king of Prussia, thus
creating a North-German Protestant royal house, around which the other
Protestant States naturally gathered, and which was in the future to
prove a formidable rival to Austria. The immediate result was that
France and Spain, whose cause was thenceforth known as that of the two
crowns, went into the war without any ally save Bavaria. War was
declared in May by Holland against the kings of France and Spain; by
England against France and Spain, Anne refusing to recognize Philip V.
even in declaring war, because he had recognized James III. as king of
England; while the emperor was still more outspoken, declaring against
the King of France and the Duke of Anjou. Thus began the great War of
the Spanish Succession.
It is far from easy, in dealing with a war of such proportions,
lasting for more than ten years, to disentangle from the general
narrative that part which particularly touches our subject, without at
the same time losing sight of the relation of the one part to the
whole. Such a loss, however, is fatal to the end in view, which is
not a mere chronicle of naval events, nor even a tactical or strategic
discussion of certain naval problems divorced from their surroundings
of cause and effect in general history, but an appreciation of the
effect of sea power upon the general result of the war and upon the
prosperity of nations. It will conduce to clearness, however, to point
out again that the aim of William III. was not to dispute the claim of
Philip V. to the throne,--a matter of comparative indifference to the
sea powers,--but to seize, to the benefit of their commerce and
colonial empire, such portions of the Spanish American possessions as
he could, and at the same time to impose such conditions upon the new
monarchy as would at least prevent any loss, to English and Dutch
commerce, of the privileges they had had under the Austrian line. Such
a policy would not direct the main effort of the sea nations upon the
Spanish peninsula, but upon America; and the allied fleets might not
have entered the Straits. Sicily and Naples were to go, not to
England, but to Austria. Subsequent causes led to an entire change in
this general plan. A new candidate, a son of the Emperor of Germany,
was set up in 1703 by the coalition under the name of Carlos III., and
the peninsula became the scene of a doubtful and bloody war, keeping
the Anglo-Dutch fleets hovering round the coasts; with the result, as
regards the sea powers, that nothing of decisive importance was done
in Spanish America, but that England issued from the strife with
Gibraltar and Port Mahon in her hands, to be thenceforth a
Mediterranean power. At the same time that Carlos III. was proclaimed,
a treaty was negotiated with Portugal, known as the Methuen Treaty,
which gave England the practical monopoly of Portuguese trade, and
sent the gold of Brazil by way of Lisbon to London,--an advantage so
great that it aided materially in keeping up the war on the continent
as well as in maintaining the navy. At the same time the efficiency of
the latter so increased that the losses by French cruisers, though
still heavy, were at no time unendurable.
When the war broke out, in pursuance of the original policy, Sir
George Rooke, with a fleet of fifty ships-of-the-line and transports
carrying fourteen thousand troops, was sent against Cadiz, which was
the great European centre of the Spanish-American trade; there came
the specie and products of the West, and thence they were dispersed
through Europe. It had been the purpose of William III. also to seize
Cartagena, one of the principal centres of the same trade in the other
hemisphere; and to that end, six months before his death, in
September, 1701, he had despatched there a squadron under that
traditional seaman of the olden time, Benbow. Benbow fell in with a
French squadron sent to supply and strengthen the place, and brought
it to action north of Cartagena; but though superior in force, the
treason of several of his captains, who kept out of action, defeated
his purpose, and after fighting till his ship was helpless and he
himself had received a mortal wound, the French escaped and Cartagena
was saved. Before his death Benbow received a letter from the French
commodore to this effect: "Yesterday morning I had no hope but I
should have supped in your cabin. As for those cowardly captains of
yours, hang them up, for, by God! they deserve it." And hanged two of
them were. Rooke's expedition against Cadiz also failed, as it was
nearly certain to do; for his instructions were so to act as to
conciliate the Spanish people and disincline them to the Bourbon king.
Such doubtful orders tied his hands; but after failing there, he
learned that the galleons from the West Indies, loaded with silver and
merchandise, had put into Vigo Bay under escort of French
ships-of-war. He went there at once, and found the enemy in a harbor
whose entrance was but three quarters of a mile wide, defended by
fortifications and a heavy boom; but a passage was forced through the
boom under a hot fire, the place seized, and all the shipping, with
much of the specie, either taken or sunk. This affair, which is known
in history as that of the Vigo galleons, was a brilliant and
interesting feat of arms, but has no military features calling for
mention, except the blow it gave to the finances and prestige of the
two crowns.
The affair at Vigo had, however, important political results, and
helped to that change in the general plan of the sea powers which has
been mentioned. The King of Portugal, moved by fear of the French, had
acknowledged Philip V.; but his heart was against him, for he dreaded
French influence and power brought so near his little and isolated
kingdom. It had been a part of Rooke's mission to detach him from the
alliance of the two crowns; and the affair of Vigo, happening so near
his own frontiers, impressed him with a sense of the power of the
allied navies. In truth, Portugal is nearer to the sea than to Spain,
and must fall naturally under the influence of the power controlling
the sea. Inducements were offered,--by the Emperor of Austria a
cession of Spanish territory, by the sea powers a subsidy; but the
king was not willing to declare himself until the Austrian claimant
should have landed at Lisbon, fairly committing the coalition to a
peninsular as well as a continental war. The emperor transferred his
claims to his second son, Charles; and the latter, after being
proclaimed in Vienna and acknowledged by England and Holland, was
taken by the allied fleets to Lisbon, where he landed in March, 1704.
This necessitated the important change in the plans of the sea powers.
Pledged to the support of Carlos, their fleets were thenceforth tied
to the shores of the peninsula and the protection of commerce; while
the war in the West Indies, becoming a side issue on a small scale,
led to no results. From this time on, Portugal was the faithful ally
of England, whose sea power during this war gained its vast
preponderance over all rivals. Her ports were the refuge and support
of English fleets, and on Portugal was based in later days the
Peninsular war with Napoleon. In and through all, Portugal, for a
hundred years, had more to gain and more to fear from England than
from any other power.
Great as were the effects of the maritime supremacy of the two sea
powers upon the general result of the war, and especially upon that
undisputed empire of the seas which England held for a century after,
the contest is marked by no one naval action of military interest.
Once only did great fleets meet, and then with results that were
indecisive; after which the French gave up the struggle at sea,
confining themselves wholly to a commerce-destroying warfare. This
feature of the War of the Spanish Succession characterizes nearly the
whole of the eighteenth century, with the exception of the American
Revolutionary struggle. The noiseless, steady, exhausting pressure
with which sea power acts, cutting off the resources of the enemy
while maintaining its own, supporting war in scenes where it does not
appear itself, or appears only in the background, and striking open
blows at rare intervals, though lost to most, is emphasized to the
careful reader by the events of this war and of the half-century that
followed. The overwhelming sea power of England was the determining
factor in European history during the period mentioned, maintaining
war abroad while keeping its own people in prosperity at home, and
building up the great empire which is now seen; but from its very
greatness its action, by escaping opposition, escapes attention. On
the few occasions in which it is called to fight, its superiority is
so marked that the affairs can scarcely be called battles; with the
possible exceptions of Byng's action at Minorca and Hawke's at
Quiberon, the latter one of the most brilliant pages in naval history,
no decisive encounter between equal forces, possessing military
interest, occurs between 1700 and 1778.
Owing to this characteristic, the War of the Spanish Succession, from
the point of view of our subject, has to be blocked out in general
outline, avoiding narrative and indicating general bearings,
especially of the actions of the fleets. With the war in Flanders, in
Germany, and in Italy the navies had naturally no concern; when they
had so protected the commerce of the allies that there was no serious
check to that flow of subsidies upon which the land war depended,
their part toward it was done. In the Spanish peninsula it was
different. Immediately after landing Carlos III. at Lisbon, Sir George
Rooke sailed for Barcelona, which it was understood would be handed
over when the fleets appeared; but the governor was faithful to his
king and kept down the Austrian party. Rooke then sailed for Toulon,
where a French fleet was at anchor. On his way he sighted another
French fleet coming from Brest, which he chased but was unable to
overtake; so that both the enemy's squadrons were united in the port.
It is worth while to note here that the English navy did not as yet
attempt to blockade the French ports in winter, as they did at a later
date. At this period fleets, like armies, went into winter quarters.
Another English admiral, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, had been sent in the
spring to blockade Brest; but arriving too late, he found his bird
flown, and at once kept on to the Mediterranean. Rooke, not thinking
himself strong enough to resist the combined French squadrons, fell
back toward the Straits; for at this time England had no ports, no
base, in the Mediterranean, no useful ally; Lisbon was the nearest
refuge. Rooke and Shovel met off Lagos, and there held a council of
war, in which the former, who was senior, declared that his
instructions forbade his undertaking anything without the consent of
the kings of Spain and Portugal. This was indeed tying the hands of
the sea powers; but Rooke at last, chafing at the humiliating
inaction, and ashamed to go home without doing something, decided to
attack Gibraltar for three reasons: because he heard it was
insufficiently garrisoned, because it was of infinite importance as a
port for the present war, and because its capture would reflect credit
on the queen's arms. The place was attacked, bombarded, and then
carried by an assault in boats. The English possession of Gibraltar
dates from August 4, 1704, and the deed rightly keeps alive the name
of Rooke, to whose judgment and fearlessness of responsibility England
owes the key of the Mediterranean.
The Bourbon king of Spain at once undertook to retake the place, and
called upon the French fleet in Toulon to support his attack.
Tourville had died in 1701, and the fleet was commanded by the Count
of Toulouse,--a natural son of Louis XIV., only twenty-six years old.
Rooke also sailed eastward, and the two fleets met on the 24th of
August off Velez Malaga. The allies were to windward with a northeast
wind, both fleets on the port tack heading to the southward and
eastward. There is some uncertainty as to the numbers; the French had
fifty-two ships-of-the-line, their enemy probably half a dozen more.
The allies kept away together, each ship for its opposite; there was
apparently no attempt on Rooke's part at any tactical combination. The
battle of Malaga possesses indeed no military interest, except that it
is the first in which we find fully developed that wholly unscientific
method of attack by the English which Clerk criticised, and which
prevailed throughout the century. It is instructive to notice that the
result in it was the same as in all others fought on the same
principle. The van opened out from the centre, leaving quite an
interval; and the attempt made to penetrate this gap and isolate the
van was the only tactical move of the French. We find in them at
Malaga no trace of the cautious, skilful tactics which Clerk rightly
thought to recognize at a later day. The degeneracy from the able
combinations of Monk, Ruyter, and Tourville to the epoch of mere
seamanship is clearly marked by the battle of Malaga, and gives it its
only historical importance. In it was realized that primitive mode of
fighting which Macaulay has sung, and which remained for many years
the ideal of the English navy:--
"Then on both sides the leaders
Gave signal for the charge;
And on both sides the footmen
Strode forth with lance and targe;
And on both sides the horsemen
Struck their spurs deep in gore,
And _front to front_ the armies
Met with a mighty roar."
Human movement is not always advance; and there are traces of a
somewhat similar ideal in the naval periodical literature of our own
day. The fight was severe, lasting from ten in the morning till five
in the afternoon, but was entirely indecisive. The next day the wind
shifted, giving the weather-gage to the French, but they did not use
the opportunity to attack; for which they were much to blame, if their
claim of the advantage the day before is well founded. Rooke could not
have fought; nearly half his fleet, twenty-five ships, it is said, had
used up all their ammunition. Even during the battle itself several of
the allied ships were towed out of line, because they had not powder
and ball for a single broadside. This was doubtless due to the attack
upon Gibraltar, in which fifteen thousand shot were expended, and to
the lack of any port serving as a base of supplies,--a deficiency
which the new possession would hereafter remove. Rooke, in seizing
Gibraltar, had the same object in view that prompted the United States
to seize Port Royal at the beginning of the Civil War, and which made
the Duke of Parma urge upon his king, before sending the Spanish Great
Armada, to seize Flushing on the coast of Holland,--advice which, had
it been followed, would have made unnecessary that dreary and
disastrous voyage to the north of England. The same reasons would
doubtless lead any nation intending serious operations against our
seaboard, to seize points remote from the great centres and
susceptible of defence, like Gardiner's Bay or Port Royal, which in an
inefficient condition of our navy they might hold with and for their
fleets.
Rooke retired in peace to Lisbon, bestowing by the way on Gibraltar
all the victuals and ammunition that could be spared from the fleet.
Toulouse, instead of following up his victory, if it was one, went
back to Toulon, sending only ten ships-of-the-line to support the
attack on Gibraltar. All the attempts of the French against the place
were carried on in a futile manner; the investing squadron was finally
destroyed and the land attack converted into a blockade. "With this
reverse," says a French naval officer, "began in the French people a
regrettable reaction against the navy. The wonders to which it had
given birth, its immense services, were forgotten. Its value was no
longer believed. The army, more directly in contact with the nation,
had all its favor, all its sympathy. The prevailing error, that the
greatness or decay of France depended upon some Rhenish positions,
could not but favor these ideas adverse to the sea service, which have
made England's strength and our weakness."[76]
During this year, 1704, the battle of Blenheim was fought, in which
the French and Bavarian troops were wholly overthrown by the English
and German under Marlborough and Prince Eugene. The result of this
battle was that Bavaria forsook the French alliance, and Germany
became a secondary theatre of the general war, which was waged
thereafter mainly in the Netherlands, Italy, and the Peninsula.
The following year, 1705, the allies moved against Philip V. by two
roads,--from Lisbon upon Madrid, and by way of Barcelona. The former
attack, though based upon the sea, was mainly by land, and resultless;
the Spanish people in that quarter showed unmistakably that they would
not welcome the king set up by foreign powers. It was different in
Catalonia. Carlos III. went there in person with the allied fleet. The
French navy, inferior in numbers, kept in port. The French army also
did not appear. The allied troops invested the town, aided by three
thousand seamen and supported by supplies landed from the fleet, which
was to them both base of supplies and line of communications.
Barcelona surrendered on the 9th of October; all Catalonia welcomed
Carlos, and the movement spread to Aragon and Valencia, the capital of
the latter province declaring for Carlos.
The following year, 1706, the French took the offensive in Spain on
the borders of Catalonia, while defending the passes of the mountains
toward Portugal. In the absence of the allied fleet, and of the
succors which it brought and maintained, the resistance was weak, and
Barcelona was again besieged, this time by the French party supported
by a French fleet of thirty sail-of-the-line and numerous transports
with supplies from the neighboring port of Toulon. The siege, begun
April 5, was going on hopefully; the Austrian claimant himself was
within the walls, the prize of success; but on the 10th of May the
allied fleet appeared, the French ships retired, and the siege was
raised in disorder. The Bourbon claimant dared not retreat into
Aragon, and so passed by Roussillon into France, leaving his rival in
possession. At the same time there moved forward from Portugal--that
other base which the sea power of the English and Dutch at once
controlled and utilized--another army maintained by the subsidies
earned from the ocean. This time the western attack was more
successful; many cities in Estremadura and Leon fell, and as soon as
the allied generals learned the raising of the siege of Barcelona,
they pressed on by way of Salamanca to Madrid. Philip V., after
escaping into France, had returned to Spain by the western Pyrenees;
but on the approach of the allies he had again to fly, leaving to them
his capital. The Portuguese and allied troops entered Madrid, June 26,
1706. The allied fleet, after the fall of Barcelona, seized Alicante
and Cartagena.
So far success had gone; but the inclinations of the Spanish people
had been mistaken, and the strength of their purpose and pride,
supported by the natural features of their country, was not yet
understood. The national hatred to the Portuguese was aroused, as well
as the religious dislike to heretics, the English general himself
being a Huguenot refugee. Madrid and the surrounding country were
disaffected, and the south sent the Bourbon king assurance of its
fidelity. The allies were not able to remain in the hostile capital,
particularly as the region around was empty of supplies and full of
guerillas. They retired to the eastward, drawing toward the Austrian
claimant in Aragon. Reverse followed reverse, and on the 25th of
April, 1707, the allied army was disastrously overthrown at Almansa,
losing fifteen thousand men. All Spain fell back again into the power
of Philip V., except the province of Catalonia, part of which also was
subdued. The next year, 1708, the French made some progress in the
same quarter, but were not able to attack Barcelona; Valencia and
Alicante, however, were reduced.
The year 1707 was not marked by any naval event of importance. During
the summer the allied fleets in the Mediterranean were diverted from
the coast of Spain to support an attack upon Toulon made by the
Austrians and Piedmontese. The latter moved from Italy along the coast
of the Mediterranean, the fleet supporting the flank on the sea, and
contributing supplies. The siege, however, failed, and the campaign
was inconclusive. Returning home, the admiral, Sir Cloudesley Shovel,
with several ships-of-the-line, was lost on the Scilly Islands, in one
of those shipwrecks which have become historical.
In 1708 the allied fleets seized Sardinia, which from its fruitfulness
and nearness to Barcelona became a rich storehouse to the Austrian
claimant, so long as by the allied help he controlled the sea. The
same year Minorca, with its valuable harbor, Port Mahon, was also
taken, and from that time for fifty years remained in English hands.
Blocking Cadiz and Cartagena by the possession of Gibraltar, and
facing Toulon with Port Mahon, Great Britain was now as strongly based
in the Mediterranean as either France or Spain; while, with Portugal
as an ally, she controlled the two stations of Lisbon and Gibraltar,
watching the trade routes both of the ocean and of the inland sea. By
the end of 1708 the disasters of France by land and sea, the frightful
sufferings of the kingdom, and the almost hopelessness of carrying on
a strife which was destroying France, and easily borne by England, led
Louis XIV. to offer most humiliating concessions to obtain peace. He
undertook to surrender the whole Spanish monarchy, reserving only
Naples for the Bourbon king. The allies refused; they demanded the
abandonment of the whole Spanish Empire without exception by the Duke
of Anjou, refusing to call him king, and added thereto ruinous
conditions for France herself. Louis would not yield these, and the
war went on.
During the remaining years the strenuous action of the sea power of
the allies, which had by this time come to be that of Great Britain
alone, with little help from Holland, was less than ever obtrusive,
but the reality of its effect remained. The Austrian claimant,
confined to Catalonia for the most part, was kept in communication
with Sardinia and the Italian provinces of Germany by the English
fleet; but the entire disappearance of the French navy and the evident
intention on the part of Louis to keep no squadrons at sea, allowed
some diminution of the Mediterranean fleet, with the result of greater
protection to trade. In the years 1710 and 1711 expeditions were also
made against the French colonies in North America. Nova Scotia was
taken, but an attempt on Quebec failed.
During the winter of 1709 and 1710 Louis withdrew all the French
troops from Spain, thus abandoning the cause of his grandson. But when
the cause of France was at the very lowest, and it seemed as though
she might be driven to concessions which would reduce her to a
second-class power, the existence of the coalition was threatened by
the disgrace of Marlborough, who represented England in it. His loss
of favor with the queen was followed by the accession to power of the
party opposed to the war, or rather to its further continuance. This
change took place in the summer of 1710, and the inclination toward
peace was strengthened both by the favorable position in which England
then stood for treating, and by the heavy burden she was bearing;
which it became evident could bring in no further advantages
commensurate to its weight. The weaker ally, Holland, had gradually
ceased to contribute her stipulated share to the sea forces; and
although far-sighted Englishmen might see with complacency the
disappearance of a rival sea power, the immediate increase of expense
was more looked to and felt by the men of the day. The cost both of
the continental and Spanish wars was also largely defrayed by
England's subsidies; and while that on the continent could bring her
no further gain, it was seen that the sympathies of the Spanish people
could not be overborne in favor of Carlos III. without paying more
than the game was worth. Secret negotiations between England and
France soon began, and received an additional impulse by the
unexpected death of the Emperor of Germany, the brother of the
Austrian claimant of the Spanish throne. There being no other male
heir, Carlos became at once emperor of Austria, and was soon after
elected emperor of Germany. England had no more wish to see two crowns
on an Austrian head than on that of a Bourbon.
The demands made by England, as conditions of peace in 1711, showed
her to have become a sea power in the purest sense of the word, not
only in fact, but also in her own consciousness. She required that the
same person should never be king both of France and Spain; that a
barrier of fortified towns should be granted her allies, Holland and
Germany, as a defensive line against France; that French conquests
from her allies should be restored; and for herself she demanded the
formal cession of Gibraltar and Port Mahon, whose strategic and
maritime value has been pointed out, the destruction of the port of
Dunkirk, the home nest of the privateers that preyed on English
commerce, the cession of the French colonies of Newfoundland, Hudson's
Bay, and Nova Scotia, the last of which she held at that time, and
finally, treaties of commerce with France and Spain, and the
concession of the monopoly of the slave trade with Spanish America,
known as the Asiento, which Spain had given to France in 1701.
Negotiations continued, though hostilities did not cease; and in June,
1712, a four months' truce between Great Britain and France removed
the English troops from the allied armies on the continent, their
great leader Marlborough having been taken from their head the year
before. The campaign of 1712 was favorable to France; but in almost
any event the withdrawal of Great Britain made the end of the war a
question of but a short time. The remonstrances of Holland were met by
the reply that since 1707 the Dutch had not furnished more than one
third their quota of ships, and taking the war through, not over one
half. The House of Commons in an address to the throne in 1712
complained that--
"The service at sea hath been carried on through the whole
course of the war in a manner highly disadvantageous to your
Majesty's kingdom, for the necessity requiring that great fleets
should be fitted out every year for maintaining a superiority
in the Mediterranean and for opposing any force which the enemy
might prepare either at Dunkirk or in the ports of west France;
your Majesty's readiness, in fitting out your proportion of
ships for all parts of that service, hath not prevailed with
Holland, which has been greatly deficient every year in
proportion to what your Majesty hath furnished.... Hence your
Majesty hath been obliged to supply those deficiencies with
additional reinforcements of your own ships, and your Majesty's
ships have been forced in greater numbers to continue in remote
seas, and at unseasonable times of the year, to the great damage
of the navy. This also hath straitened the convoys for trade;
the coasts have been exposed for want of cruisers; and you have
been disabled from annoying the enemy in their most beneficial
commerce with the West Indies, whence they received those vast
supplies of treasure, without which they could not have
supported the expenses of the war."
In fact, between 1701 and 1716 the commerce of Spanish America had
brought into France forty million dollars in specie. To these
complaints the Dutch envoy to England could only reply that Holland
was not in a condition to fulfil her compacts. The reverses of 1712,
added to Great Britain's fixed purpose to have peace, decided the
Dutch to the same; and the English still kept, amid their
dissatisfaction with their allies, so much of their old feeling
against France as to support all the reasonable claims of Holland.
April 11, 1713, an almost general peace, known as the Peace of
Utrecht, one of the landmarks of history, was signed between France on
the one hand, and England, Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy on
the other. The emperor still held out, but the loss of British
subsidies fettered the movements of his armies, and with the
withdrawal of the sea powers the continental war might have fallen of
itself; but France with her hands freed carried on during 1713 a
brilliant and successful campaign in Germany. On the 7th of March,
1714, peace was signed between France and Austria. Some embers of the
war continued to burn in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, which
persisted in their rebellion against Philip V.; but the revolt was
stifled as soon as the arms of France were turned against them.
Barcelona was taken by storm in September, 1714; the islands submitted
in the following summer.
The changes effected by this long war and sanctioned by the peace,
neglecting details of lesser or passing importance, may be stated as
follows: 1. The House of Bourbon was settled on the Spanish throne,
and the Spanish empire retained its West Indian and American
possessions; the purpose of William III. against her dominion there
was frustrated when England undertook to support the Austrian prince,
and so fastened the greater part of her naval force to the
Mediterranean. 2. The Spanish empire lost its possessions in the
Netherlands, Gelderland going to the new kingdom of Prussia and
Belgium to the emperor; the Spanish Netherlands thus became the
Austrian Netherlands. 3. Spain lost also the principal islands of the
Mediterranean; Sardinia being given to Austria, Minorca with its fine
harbor to Great Britain, and Sicily to the Duke of Savoy. 4. Spain
lost also her Italian possessions, Milan and Naples going to the
emperor. Such, in the main, were the results to Spain of the fight
over the succession to her throne.
France, the backer of the successful claimant, came out of the strife
worn out, and with considerable loss of territory. She had succeeded
in placing a king of her own royal house on a neighboring throne, but
her sea strength was exhausted, her population diminished, her
financial condition ruined. The European territory surrendered was on
her northern and eastern boundaries; and she abandoned the use of the
port of Dunkirk, the centre of that privateering warfare so dreaded by
English merchants. In America, the cession of Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland was the first step toward that entire loss of Canada
which befell half a century later; but for the present she retained
Cape Breton Island, with its port Louisburg, the key to the Gulf and
River St. Lawrence.
The gains of England, by the treaty and the war, corresponded very
nearly to the losses of France and Spain, and were all in the
direction of extending and strengthening her sea power. Gibraltar and
Port Mahon in the Mediterranean, and the colonies already mentioned in
North America, afforded new bases to that power, extending and
protecting her trade. Second only to the expansion of her own was the
injury to the sea power of France and Holland, by the decay of their
navies in consequence of the immense drain of the land warfare;
further indications of that decay will be given later. The very
neglect of Holland to fill up her quota of ships, and the bad
condition of those sent, while imposing extra burdens upon England,
may be considered a benefit, forcing the British navy to greater
development and effort. The disproportion in military power on the sea
was further increased by the destruction of the works at Dunkirk; for
though not in itself a first-class port, nor of much depth of water,
it had great artificial military strength, and its position was
peculiarly adapted to annoy English trade. It was but forty miles from
the South Foreland and the Downs, and the Channel abreast it is but
twenty miles wide. Dunkirk was one of Louis' earliest acquisitions,
and in its development was as his own child; the dismantling of the
works and filling-in of the port show the depth of his humiliation at
this time. But it was the wisdom of England not to base her sea power
solely on military positions nor even on fighting-ships, and the
commercial advantages she had now gained by the war and the peace were
very great. The grant of the slave trade with Spanish America, in
itself lucrative, became yet more so as the basis for an immense
smuggling intercourse with those countries, which gave the English a
partial recompense for their failure to obtain actual possession;
while the cessions made to Portugal by France in South America were
mainly to the advantage of England, which had obtained the control of
Portuguese trade by the treaty of 1703. The North American colonies
ceded were valuable, not merely nor chiefly as military stations, but
commercially; and treaties of commerce on favorable terms were made
both with France and Spain. A minister of the day, defending the
treaty in Parliament, said: "The advantages from this peace appear in
the addition made to our wealth; in the great quantities of bullion
lately coined in our mint; by the vast increase in our shipping
employed since the peace, in the fisheries, and in merchandise; and by
the remarkable growth of the customs upon imports, and of our
manufactures, and the growth of our country upon export;" in a word,
by the impetus to trade in all its branches.
While England thus came out from the war in good running condition,
and fairly placed in that position of maritime supremacy which she has
so long maintained, her old rival in trade and fighting was left
hopelessly behind. As the result of the war Holland obtained nothing
at sea,--no colony, no station. The commercial treaty with France
placed her on the same terms as England, but she received no
concessions giving her a footing in Spanish America like that obtained
by her ally. Indeed, some years before the peace, while the coalition
was still maintaining Carlos, a treaty was made with the latter by the
British minister, unknown to the Dutch, practically giving the British
monopoly of Spanish trade in America; sharing it only with Spaniards,
which was pretty much the same as not sharing it at all. This treaty
accidentally became known, and made a great impression on the Dutch;
but England was then so necessary to the coalition that she ran no
risk of being left out by its other members. The gain which Holland
made by land was that of military occupation only, of certain
fortified places in the Austrian Netherlands, known to history as the
"barrier towns;" nothing was added by them to her revenue, population,
or resources; nothing to that national strength which must underlie
military institutions. Holland had forsaken, perhaps unavoidably, the
path by which she had advanced to wealth and to leadership among
nations. The exigencies of her continental position had led to the
neglect of her navy, which in those days of war and privateering
involved a loss of carrying-trade and commerce: and although she held
her head high through the war, the symptoms of weakness were apparent
in her failing armaments. Therefore, though the United Provinces
attained the great object for which they began the war, and saved the
Spanish Netherlands from the hands of France, the success was not
worth the cost. Thenceforth they withdrew for a long period from the
wars and diplomacy of Europe; partly, perhaps, because they saw how
little they had gained, but yet more from actual weakness and
inability. After the strenuous exertions of the war came a reaction,
which showed painfully the inherent weakness of a State narrow in
territory and small in the number of its people. The visible decline
of the Provinces dates from the Peace of Utrecht; the real decline
began earlier. Holland ceased to be numbered among the great powers of
Europe, her navy was no longer a military factor in diplomacy, and her
commerce also shared in the general decline of the State.
It remains only to notice briefly the results to Austria, and to
Germany generally. France yielded the barrier of the Rhine, with
fortified places on the east bank of the river. Austria received, as
has been mentioned, Belgium, Sardinia, Naples, and the Spanish
possessions in northern Italy; dissatisfied in other respects, Austria
was especially discontented at her failure to obtain Sicily, and did
not cease negotiating afterward, until she had secured that island. A
circumstance more important to Germany and to all Europe than this
transitory acquisition of distant and alien countries by Austria was
the rise of Prussia, which dates from this war as a Protestant and
military kingdom destined to weigh in the balance against Austria.
Such were the leading results of the War of the Spanish Succession,
"the vastest yet witnessed by Europe since the Crusades." It was a war
whose chief military interest was on the land,--a war in which fought
two of the greatest generals of all times, Marlborough and Prince
Eugene, the names of whose battles, Blenheim, Ramillies, Malplaquet,
Turin, are familiar to the most casual reader of history; while a
multitude of able men distinguished themselves on the other theatres
of the strife, in Flanders, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain. On the
sea only one great battle, and that scarcely worthy of the name, took
place. Yet looking only, for the moment, to immediate and evident
results, who reaped the benefit? Was it France, whose only gain was to
seat a Bourbon on the Spanish throne? Was it Spain, whose only gain
was to have a Bourbon king instead of an Austrian, and thus a closer
alliance with France? Was it Holland, with its barrier of fortified
towns, its ruined navy, and its exhausted people? Was it, lastly,
Austria, even though she had fought with the money of the sea powers,
and gained such maritime States as the Netherlands and Naples? Was it
with these, who had waged war more and more exclusively by land, and
set their eyes more and more on gains on the land, or was it not
rather with England, who had indeed paid for that continental war and
even backed it with her troops, but who meanwhile was building up her
navy, strengthening, extending, and protecting her commerce, seizing
maritime positions,--in a word, founding and rearing her sea power
upon the ruins of that of her rivals, friend and foe alike? It is not
to depreciate the gains of others that the eye fixes on England's
naval growth; their gains but bring out more clearly the immenseness
of hers. It was a gain to France to have a friend rather than an enemy
in her rear, though her navy and shipping were ruined. It was a gain
to Spain to be brought in close intercourse with a living country like
France after a century of political death, and she had saved the
greater part of her threatened possessions. It was a gain to Holland
to be definitively freed from French aggression, with Belgium in the
hands of a strong instead of a weak State. And it doubtless was a gain
to Austria not only to have checked, chiefly at the expense of others,
the progress of her hereditary enemy, but also to have received
provinces like Sicily and Naples, which, under wise government, might
become the foundation of a respectable sea power. But not one of these
gains, nor all together, compared in greatness, and much less in
solidity, with the gain to England of that unequalled sea power which
started ahead during the War of the League of Augsburg, and received
its completeness and seal during that of the Spanish Succession. By it
she controlled the great commerce of the open sea with a military
shipping that had no rival, and in the exhausted condition of the
other nations could have none; and that shipping was now securely
based on strong positions in all the disputed quarters of the world.
Although her Indian empire was not yet begun, the vast superiority of
her navy would enable her to control the communications of other
nations with those rich and distant regions, and to assert her will in
any disputes arising among the trading-stations of the different
nationalities. The commerce which had sustained her in prosperity, and
her allies in military efficiency, during the war, though checked and
harassed by the enemy's cruisers (to which she could pay only partial
attention amid the many claims upon her), started with a bound into
new life when the war was over. All over the world, exhausted by their
share of the common suffering, people were longing for the return of
prosperity and peaceful commerce; and there was no country ready as
England was in wealth, capital, and shipping to forward and reap the
advantages of every enterprise by which the interchange of commodities
was promoted, either by lawful or unlawful means. In the War of the
Spanish Succession, by her own wise management and through the
exhaustion of other nations, not only her navy but her trade was
steadily built up; and indeed, in that dangerous condition of the
seas, traversed by some of the most reckless and restless cruisers
France ever sent out, the efficiency of the navy meant safer voyages,
and so more employment for the merchant-ships. The British
merchant-ships, being better protected than those of the Dutch, gained
the reputation of being far safer carriers, and the carrying-trade
naturally passed more and more into their hands; while the habit of
employing them in preference, once established, was likely to
continue.
"Taking all things together," says an historian of the British
navy, "I doubt whether the credit of the English nation ever
stood higher than at this period, or the spirit of the people
higher. The success of our arms at sea, the necessity of
protecting our trade, and the popularity of every step taken to
increase our maritime power, occasioned such measures to be
pursued as annually added to our force. Hence arose that mighty
difference which at the close of the year 1706 appeared in the
Royal Navy; this, not only in the number but in the quality of
the ships, was much superior to what it had been at the time of
the Revolution or even before. Hence it was that our trade
rather increased than diminished during the last war, and that
we gained so signally by our strict intercourse with
Portugal."[77]
The sea power of England therefore was not merely in the great navy,
with which we too commonly and exclusively associate it; France had
had such a navy in 1688, and it shrivelled away like a leaf in the
fire. Neither was it in a prosperous commerce alone; a few years after
the date at which we have arrived, the commerce of France took on fair
proportions, but the first blast of war swept it off the seas as the
navy of Cromwell had once swept that of Holland. It was in the union
of the two, carefully fostered, that England made the gain of sea
power over and beyond all other States; and this gain is distinctly
associated with and dates from the War of the Spanish Succession.
Before that war England was one of the sea powers; after it she was
_the_ sea power, without any second. This power also she held alone,
unshared by friend and unchecked by foe. She alone was rich, and in
her control of the sea and her extensive shipping had the sources of
wealth so much in her hands that there was no present danger of a
rival on the ocean. Thus her gain of sea power and wealth was not only
great but solid, being wholly in her own hands; while the gains of the
other States were not merely inferior in degree, but weaker in kind,
in that they depended more or less upon the good will of other
peoples.
Is it meant, it may be asked, to attribute to sea power alone the
greatness or wealth of any State? Certainly not. The due use and
control of the sea is but one link in the chain of exchange by which
wealth accumulates; but it is the central link, which lays under
contribution other nations for the benefit of the one holding it, and
which, history seems to assert, most surely of all gathers to itself
riches. In England, this control and use of the sea seems to arise
naturally, from the concurrence of many circumstances; the years
immediately preceding the War of the Spanish Succession had, moreover,
furthered the advance of her prosperity by a series of fiscal
measures, which Macaulay speaks of as "the deep and solid foundation
on which was to rise the most gigantic fabric of commercial prosperity
which the world had ever seen." It may be questioned, however, whether
the genius of the people, inclined to and developed by trade, did not
make easier the taking of such measures; whether their adoption did
not at least partially spring from, as well as add to, the sea power
of the nation. However that may be, there is seen, on the opposite
side of the Channel, a nation which started ahead of England in the
race,--a nation peculiarly well fitted, by situation and resources,
for the control of the sea both by war and commerce. The position of
France is in this peculiar, that of all the great powers she alone had
a free choice; the others were more or less constrained to the land
chiefly, or to the sea chiefly, for any movement outside their own
borders; but she to her long continental frontier added a seaboard on
three seas. In 1672 she definitely chose expansion by land. At that
time Colbert had administered her finances for twelve years, and from
a state of terrible confusion had so restored them that the revenue of
the King of France was more than double that of the King of England.
In those days France paid the subsidies of Europe; but Colbert's plans
and hopes for France rested upon making her powerful on the sea. The
war with Holland arrested these plans, the onward movement of
prosperity ceased, the nation was thrown back upon itself, shut off
from the outside world. Many causes doubtless worked together to the
disastrous result which marked the end of the reign of Louis XIV.:
constant wars, bad administration in the latter half of the period,
extravagance throughout; but France was practically never invaded, the
war was kept at or beyond her own frontiers with slight exceptions,
her home industries could suffer little from direct hostilities. In
these respects she was nearly equal to England, and under better
conditions than her other enemies. What made the difference in the
results? Why was France miserable and exhausted, while England was
smiling and prosperous? Why did England dictate, and France accept,
terms of peace? The reason apparently was the difference in wealth and
credit. France stood alone against many enemies; but those enemies
were raised and kept moving by English subsidies. The Lord Treasurer
of England, writing in 1706 to Marlborough, says:--
"Though the land and trade of both England and Holland have
excessive burthens upon them, yet the credit continues good both
of them and us; whereas the finances of France are so much more
exhausted that they are forced to give twenty and twenty-five
per cent for every penny they send out of the kingdom, unless
they send it in specie."
In 1712 the expenditure of France was 240,000,000 francs, while the
taxes brought in only 113,000,000 gross, of which, after deducting
losses and necessary expenses, only 37,000,000 remained in the
treasury; the deficit was sought to be met by anticipating parts of
the revenue for years ahead, and by a series of extraordinary
transactions tedious to name or to understand.
"In the summer of 1715 [two years after the peace] it seemed as
if the situation could not grow worse,--no more public nor
private credit; no more clear revenue for the State; the
portions of the revenue not pledged, anticipated on the
following years. Neither labor nor consumption could be resumed
for want of circulation; usury reigned on the ruins of society.
The alternations of high prices and the depreciation of
commodities finally crushed the people. Provision riots broke
out among them, and even in the army. Manufactures were
languishing or suspended; forced mendicity was preying upon the
cities. The fields were deserted, the lands fallow for lack of
instruments, for lack of manure, for lack of cattle; the houses
were falling to ruin. Monarchical France seemed ready to expire
with its aged king."[78]
Thus it was in France, with a population of nineteen millions at that
time to the eight millions of all the British Islands; with a land
vastly more fertile and productive; before the great days, too, of
coal and iron. "In England, on the contrary, the immense grants of
Parliament in 1710 struck the French prodigiously; for while their
credit was low, or in a manner quite gone, ours was at its zenith."
During that same war "there appeared that mighty spirit among our
merchants which enabled them to carry on all their schemes with a
vigor that kept a constant circulation of money throughout the
kingdom, and afforded such mighty encouragement to all manufactures as
has made the remembrance of those times grateful in worse."
"By the treaty with Portugal we were prodigious gainers.... The
Portuguese began to feel the comfortable effects of their Brazil
gold mines, and the prodigious commerce that followed with us
made their good fortune in great measure ours; and so it has
been ever since; otherwise I know not how the expenses of the
war had been borne.... The running cash in the kingdom increased
very considerably, which must be attributed in great measure to
our Portuguese trade; and this, as I have made manifest, we owed
wholly to our power at sea [which took Portugal from the
alliance of the two crowns, and threw her upon the protection of
the maritime powers]. Our trade with the Spanish West Indies by
way of Cadiz was certainly much interrupted at the beginning of
this war; but afterward it was in great measure restored, as
well by direct communication with several provinces when under
the Archduke, as through Portugal, by which a very great though
contraband trade was carried on. We were at the same time very
great gainers by our commerce with the Spaniards in the West
Indies [also contraband].... Our colonies, though complaining of
neglect, grew richer, more populous, and carried their trade
farther than in former times.... Our national end with respect
to England was in this war particularly in great measure
answered,--I mean the destruction of the French power at sea,
for, after the battle of Malaga, we hear no more of their great
fleets; and though by this the number of their privateers was
very much increased, yet the losses of our merchants were far
less in the latter than in the former reign.... It is certainly
a matter of great satisfaction that ... setting out at first
with the sight of so great a naval power as the French king had
assembled in 1688, while we struggled under such difficulties,
and when we got out of that troublesome war, in 1697, found
ourselves loaded with a debt too heavy to be shaken off in the
short interval of peace, yet by 1706, instead of seeing the navy
of France riding upon our coast, we sent every year a powerful
fleet to insult theirs, superior to them not only in the ocean,
but in the Mediterranean, forcing them entirely out of that sea
by the mere sight of our flag.... By this we not only secured
our trade with the Levant, and strengthened our interests with
all the Italian princes, but struck the States of Barbary with
terror, and awed the Sultan from listening to any proposals from
France. Such were the fruits of the increase of our naval power,
and of the manner in which it was employed.... Such fleets were
necessary; they at once protected our flag and our allies, and
attached them to our interest; and, what is of greater
importance than all the rest, they established our reputation
for maritime force so effectually that we feel even to this day
[1740] the happy effects of the fame thus acquired."[79]
It is needless to add more. Thus stood the Power of the Seas during
the years in which the French historians tell us that their cruisers
were battening on her commerce. The English writer admits heavy
losses. In 1707, that is, in the space of five years, the returns,
according to the report of a committee of the House of Lords, "show
that since the beginning of the war England had lost 30 ships-of-war
and 1146 merchant-ships, of which 300 were retaken; whereas we had
taken from them, or destroyed, 80 ships-of-war, and 1346 merchantmen;
175 privateers also were taken." The greater number of the
ships-of-war were probably on private venture, as has been explained.
But, be the relative numbers what they may, no argument is needed
beyond the statements just given, to show the inability of a mere
cruising warfare, not based upon large fleets, to break down a great
sea power. Jean Bart died in 1702; but in Forbin, Du Casse, and
others, and above all in Duguay-Trouin, he left worthy successors, the
equals of any commerce-destroyers the world has ever seen.
The name of Duguay-Trouin suggests the mention, before finally leaving
the War of the Spanish Succession, of his greatest privateering
expedition, carried to a distance from home rarely reached by the
seamen of his occupation, and which illustrates curiously the spirit of
such enterprises in that day, and the shifts to which the French
government was reduced. A small French squadron had attacked Rio
Janeiro in 1710, but being repulsed, had lost some prisoners, who were
said to have been put to death. Duguay-Trouin sought permission to
avenge the insult to France. The king, consenting, advanced the ships
and furnished the crews; and a regular contract was drawn up between
the king on the one hand and the company employing Duguay-Trouin on the
other, stipulating the expenses to be borne and supplies furnished on
either hand; among which we find the odd, business-like provision that
for every one of the troops embarked who shall die, be killed, or
desert during the cruise, the company should pay a forfeit of thirty
francs. The king was to receive one fifth of the net profits, and was
to bear the loss of any one of the vessels that should be wrecked, or
destroyed in action. Under these provisions, enumerated in full in a
long contract, Duguay-Trouin received a force of six ships-of-the-line,
seven frigates, and over two thousand troops, with which he sailed to
Rio Janeiro in 1711; captured the place after a series of operations,
and allowed it to be ransomed at the price of something under four
hundred thousand dollars, probably nearly equal to a million in the
present day, besides five hundred cases of sugar. The privateering
company cleared about ninety-two per cent on their venture. As two of
the ships-of-the-line were never heard from after sailing on the
return voyage, the king's profits were probably small.
While the War of the Spanish Succession was engaging all western
Europe, a strife which might have had a profound influence upon its
issue was going on in the east. Sweden and Russia were at war, the
Hungarians had revolted against Austria, and Turkey was finally drawn
in, though not till the end of the year 1710. Had Turkey helped the
Hungarians, she would have made a powerful diversion, not for the
first time in history, in favor of France. The English historian
suggests that she was deterred by fear of the English fleet; at all
events she did not move, and Hungary was reduced to obedience. The war
between Sweden and Russia was to result in the preponderance of the
latter upon the Baltic, the subsidence of Sweden, the old ally of
France, into a second-rate State, and the entrance of Russia
definitively into European politics.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] Martin: History of France.
[76] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.
[77] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
[78] Martin: History of France.
[79] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.